The Silver Skull

CHAPTER 11

s Will and the others were taking their first steps into Alsatia, Grace was already progressing into the filthy, smoke-filled streets. Marlowe had always liked her, and it had not taken a great effort to worm Will's destination out of him. Although he would not speak directly of the nature of Will's business in the Thieves' Quarter, his occasional unguarded comment told Grace her instincts were correct: there was some connection to jenny's disappearance. Marlowe warned her of the dangers awaiting a young woman alone in Alsatia-it was not the court, it was certainly not Warwickshirebut the drive to discover the truth about her sister overrode all else.

But as she stood on a street where a man at a table took receipt of purses, jewellery, silk handkerchiefs, and occasionally coats and boots, she cursed her ignorance. She thought she would be able to find Will easily-he was often recognised and hailed by upstanding men and women-but here there was no trace of his passing, and she was lost, and her perfumed handkerchief could not keep the foul smells from her nose. And now a group of four men were casting surreptitious glances her way, and muttering among themselves. She was not naive; she recognised the hunger in their eyes.

At least a woman alone was no threat and she was not troubled by the majority of the other unsavoury characters she saw. But as she attempted to retrace her steps to the London she knew, the men began to follow her.

Her heart beat faster, but she tried not to give in to panic, for she knew that would only attract more unwanted attention. Keeping her head down, she skipped a stinking puddle, unsure whether she should move down the centre of the street where everyone would see her or keep in the shadow of the tenements where she could be snatched in through one of the open doors. Opting for somewhere between the two, she kept up a fast pace, deciding that she hated that place more than anywhere she had been in her life. Every face had either a hint of cruelty or the stain of life's crushing ills. She saw no hope anywhere. The desolation made her yearn for Will; he had kept his own hope alive in the face of, as she saw it, all reason. He truly believed jenny still lived. More than anything she didn't want that hope crushed, but she feared the worst. Soon he might find out the truth, and what then for him?

That thought prompted a stark memory: on the fourth day after jenny's disappearance when a black carriage had arrived at the home of Will's family just as night fell, a waning moon casting a silver light over the Warwickshire cornfields. A mysterious visitor, armed guards at the door, and then Will emerging at dawn to tell her, "There is a great secret to the way the world works. Nothing is as it seems."

Will appeared to dread that was true, but as Grace glanced back at the four men loping in her wake, elbowing each other and flashing lascivious grins while their eyes remained furtive and hard, she fervently hoped that was the case.

The street to her right was wider and had more traffic. Grace took it in the hope that the men would leave her alone under the gaze of others. But she had not gone more than twenty paces when a rough hand grabbed her arm.

The youngest of the men, with sandy hair and a ruddy complexion covered with pox scars, said, "Walk with us, lady. These are rough parts and you need strong arms to keep you safe."

"I fear that cure will be worse than the disease," Grace said. "Leave me. I would walk alone."

She tried to throw off his hand, but he only held her tighter, and then the other three men were moving to surround her.

"Aid me!" Grace called to the people moving along the street. A man with grey hair and hollow cheeks only winked at the men and moved on. A fat woman threw back her head and laughed, and her friend pointed and made a sexual gesture at the men, who laughed and called back rudely.

"You will get no help round these parts," the pox-scarred man said.

Grace launched a sharp kick at his shins, and as he yelped and staggered back towards his associates, she ran. Along the street, jeers and encouragement to pursuit rose up loudly. Catching her quickly, the men bundled her through the open door of one of the tenements.

Grace careered across the mud floor to come to rest against a damp wall. The place was bare apart from a table and a chair, and a fire stoked with cheap coal smoked into the room.

Laughing as they loosened their hose, the four men ranged across the room, blocking her escape.

"Come near me and I will tear out your eyes," she hissed. The men only laughed harder.

Sliding up the wall, Grace hooked her fingers like claws as her attackers approached. Through the filthy window, she glimpsed movement: more of the jeering locals coming to witness her degradation, she guessed.

But when the door clattered open, it was four cloaked men who burst in. Grace had as little time to react as her attackers before a drawn sword was thrust into the heart of the pox-scarred man, and just as quickly withdrawn and slashed across the throat of another. Grace had only ever seen one person exhibit that degree of skill with the blade.

"Will," she murmured with relief.

The remaining two attackers had only a second to plead for their lives before they too were run through. Sickened by the cold efficiency of the kills, Grace turned away, but she was also troubled that a part of her was triumphant.

When she turned back, her saviour stood before her. She went to throw her arms around Will, only for an unfamiliar face to be revealed when the hood was thrust back: aristocratic, with an aquiline nose and dark eyes that were as charismatic as Will's, a waxed moustache and chin hair, swarthy skin.

"Greetings, mistress," he said. "I am lion Alanzo de las Posadas, and you will now accompany me."

"Spanish spies," Grace gasped.

Don Alanzo gave a curt bow.