The Silver Skull

CHAPTER 9

s the black carriage rattled at speed through the archway and out of the Bull Inn's yard, Grace stepped from the shadows by the east wall and dropped her hood, ignoring the lecherous stares from the carpenters at work on the temporary stage. Her own carriage waited a little further along Bishopsgate. She didn't have to follow Will's carriage to know his destination: Marlowe had been one of his few confidants since Will had recruited him after the reports of a brilliant, and more importantly daring and transgressional, student at Cambridge.

Her heart beat fast as she skipped across the cobbles. Will would be angry if he knew she was following him, but she had recognised the glint in his eye at the Palace of Whitehall: he felt that the business in which he was engaged had something to do with jenny's disappearance. His work remained a mystery to her, as it should, but she could not find peace until she understood the truth of what had happened to her sister and she feared Will would never tell her even if he uncovered it, under some misguided sense of duty to ensure her protection. Marlowe would tell her everything; she had always been able to wrap him around her finger.

Good Kit, she thought. Too gentle and sensitive for the demands placed upon you.

The actors delivered their speeches in declamatory fashion, something about lost love and fairies stealing hearts under cover of the night. It distracted her briefly, so she did not see the four men arrive in the shade beneath the archway. Their well-polished boots were expensive Flemish leather, their cloaks thick and unblemished, their hoods pulled low to mask their features, gloves tight on their hands.

They had followed Grace at a distance from the palace, where they had observed her meeting with Will from the shadows.

Blood was on their minds, and righteous vengeance in their hearts.

The end was drawing near.