Mark Chadbourn - The Silver Skull

Grace paused briefly before the great clock tower bearing the seal of Cardinal Wolsey, from whom this fine palace had been stolen by Henry when he fell from favour. Everyone had their place, she recognised, and some people were worth more than others.

Carpenter studied the clock briefly with an odd expression of unease: it not only showed the time, but also the phases of the moon, the star sign, the month, the date, the sun, and the season.

"What is it?" she asked.

He shivered, didn't reply, and urged her on into the palace.

She attempted to make small talk as he guided her to the quarters Walsingham had arranged to be set aside for her use, but his mind was elsewhere, and all she got were short, dismissive replies. She wasn't surprised when he refused to discuss her questions about the threat she faced and the rumours of the Spanish invasion, but she didn't like the way his voice grew harder when he spoke of Will. Something lay between them; if Grace were Will she would not want Carpenter at her back.

He led her on a long walk through the palace to a small room overlooking the formal gardens, which was usually reserved for the servants of visiting dignitaries. It was plain but comfortable.

"I will be safe here?" She examined the wide-open spaces beyond the window.

"In our work, we have found it is sometimes better to hide something in the open if it is in a place where no one is looking," Carpenter replied. "Only a handful of people know you have been transported from Whitehall, and they can all be trusted. No one here knows who you are. Stay still, and calm, and let the background swallow you, and all will be well."

"And you?"

"I will be near at hand."

"How long do I stay here?"

"Until Lord Walsingham grows tired of wasting a man, or your friend-" The word rang with contempt. "-has decided the danger has passed."

"No one will give me a good answer why I would be in danger."

"There is no good answer." He shrugged, and left her alone.

The hours passed slowly. She watched the gardeners at work, drawing the weeds and deadheading the roses, and a man and woman from the kitchens grabbing time from the heat and the steam to court, walking together along the lavender path, hands behind their backs, heads down in quiet, intense conversation; it was a gentle love, slowly building upon pleasant foundations, that she didn't quite understand.

Food was delivered to her, and left outside the door. It made her feel like one of the prisoners in the Tower. She paced the room, sat on the bed and dreamed, tried to make sense of the shifting patterns of her life and the world in which she existed, and then as the shadows lengthened and merged into the encroaching grey, she returned to the window to watch the beauty of the silvery twilight drawing in.

At some point she fell asleep, only for a short while, for though the moon was bright in the sky, it was still not yet wholly dark. Long shadows reached across the grey, quiet gardens. Nothing moved. Grace was oddly out of sorts; she hadn't felt tired, or even felt the encroachment of sleep, yet there she was, head on her arms on the small table by the window.

Stretching, she rose and decided she could not bear to be in the room any longer. The palace was quiet, the servants returned to their quarters, the few highborn people drinking in the drawing room, as they always did after dinner.

Opening the door cautiously, she checked for any sign of Carpenter, and when there was none she stepped out with an odd tingle of excitement. She stifled a giggle; it felt like she was trespassing. Humming quietly to herself, she moved along the interconnecting corridors, secretly hoping she would encounter one of the servants so she could have even a passing conversation. She could pretend to be someone else! That excited her even more.

But as the time passed and she met no one, nor did she hear even the vaguest sound rising from the bowels of the vast building, she started to feel unsettled. It was as if everyone had vacated the palace during her short nap.

After a while, her wanderings brought her to the Long Gallery. She paused as she entered it, realising where she was and recalling the disturbing stories that had passed through the entire court. No one came to the Long Gallery after dark. It was only a year since William Grebe had been driven mad with terror. On that night, in high summer, he had seen the ghost of the old queen Catherine Howard running through the gallery, screaming, as she had done in life when she had begged Henry to save her before the guards had dragged her away towards her imminent death.

There were ghosts all over the palace. Jane Seymour haunting the staircase near the room where she gave birth to Edward. Even Anne Boleyn and Henry himself.

Drawing herself up proudly, she stepped into the gallery. Ghosts did not scare her; there was nothing on the other side of life that did not match what she had experienced during her years in the world. But as she reached the halfway mark along the room, she heard, or thought she did, faint words carried on the night breeze rustling under the doors. The insubstantial voice seemed to say: "Death is not the end. "

She hurried on, relieved to leave the strange mood in the gallery behind her, but as she passed through a deserted room with windows overlooking the twilit countryside, something caught her eye. In the row of black trees along the river's edge, she was sure a shadow had swept along at ground level, like the smoke from a bonfire caught in a strong wind. It had gone now, but as she stood at the window to be sure, there was a burst of flames in the trees, and another, and another. Torches igniting? she wondered. Something in those dancing fires made her unaccountably afraid. Hugging her arms around her, she watched them moving slowly, wondering who held them, why it mattered, and then, just as quickly as they had burst into life, they winked out, one by one.

For a moment longer, she watched intently, wondering if anyone would emerge from the tree line, but there was nothing. Were they watching her watching them? she wondered briefly, before discounting the idea as ridiculous; no one could see her at that distance.

Yet for all her rationalising, she felt a sudden urge to find Carpenter. Worried now by the lack of activity, and the silence, in the palace, which was unnatural at that time of the evening, she picked up her pace. Her heels beat out an insistent rhythm on the floorboards. She desperately wanted to call out, but was afraid of attracting attention to herself.

In a large room, where the queen sometimes held a reception for foreign guests before one of the masques, she came to a halt before a long mirror. She didn't know why. For a while, she stared at herself, spectral in the half-light, and had the strangest impression she was looking at someone else, someone who had spent time shaping themselves to resemble her, but who couldn't disguise the malign thoughts that lurked in the features, in the set of the mouth, or the narrowing of the eyes. It felt as if the glass wasn't there, and that she could reach through the space. But then the other Grace would grab her wrist and drag her in. She half realised something about the mirror mesmerised her, was holding her fast, and she forced herself to move on, but not before she caught sight of a shadow on the edge of the mirror following her.

She turned suddenly, but the room was empty. The shadow had been in the mirror and not in the real world, though it was gone now. It must have been a trick of the moonlight, for there was no other explanation. She decided as she hurriedly left the room that she didn't like mirrors at all.

Her feet pounded louder on the floorboards as she raced through the silent rooms, no longer trying to keep her presence a secret. Doors slammed open and shut. Corridors rang with the echoes of her passing. After a while she called out, "Hello?" but there was only the sound of her voice returning to her after a journey around the palace.