"You see it?" Carpenter hissed.
And then Will did, and the cold that crushed the forest in its grip swept into every part of him. Standing among the trees, almost swallowed by the encroaching dark, was a woman, her leaf green dress floating around her in the wind.
Jenny.
His Jenny.
The cold did not appear to touch her. Her arms and head were bare, her skin so pale. She looked exactly as she had done that last time he had seen her, stepping through the cornfield to meet him, her eyes like the sun, her smile filled with love. Was she a ghost? A dream caused by the cold? Had she come to haunt him at the moment of his own death, as she had haunted him in the time since she had disappeared?
His heart went out, and then he was running towards her, oblivious to all else but the dim sound of Carpenter calling his name anxiously.
The roaring was so loud it felt like he was in the middle of a tempest. Whirling, he saw a huge, dark shape erupt from the trees and drive into Carpenter with such force he was thrown several feet against a tree. The beast descended on Carpenter in a storm of fangs and rending claws. Will was fixed to the spot in the shock and horror of the moment as the creature ripped through the clothes on Carpenter's back and sent a mist of blood into the air. Carpenter's screams were too painful to hear. Somehow he scrambled free and managed to draw his knife, but then the beast fell on him again.
It looked like a bear, but somehow more than a bear.
Will ran several steps towards the bloody scene and came to a slow halt. There was nothing he could do to save Carpenter.
Whirling, he searched the trees for Jenny, but only the wind whistled through the area where she had stood. He ran, calling her name, but there was no response, nothing to show she had ever been there.
Had she saved him from the beast's attack?
The ache in his heart was agonising, but he drove it down inside him, as he always had, and ran for the light, trying not to think about Carpenter and the awful sounds rising up behind him.
Within minutes, he was packed under heavy blankets in the back of a sleigh, hurtling down a steep track through the trees, with the crack of a whip echoing around him, and promises from his saviour that he would not rest until Will was at Arkhangelsk on a ship chartered by the Muscovy Company. England beckoned.
Lulled by the motion, his despair came and went on the edge of sleep. Wherever he was, he hoped Carpenter would forgive him, but the success of their task was paramount.
Obliquely, he recalled Walsingham telling him, "There is no room for any emotion," and at the time he thought he understood.
And he thought of Jenny, and however much he told himself it was a vision, he was sure something substantial was there, a hint, a hope, although he couldn't understand the whys of it.
Jenny was alive, he was sure. And he would not rest until he had discovered the truth.
CHAPTER 37
ill came round, not knowing how long he had been unconscious. Sensations flooded in: the fragrance of pine and the sweet scent of Spanish broom. Heat leavened by the occasional breeze of chill air. Dust on the back of his throat, and the rough rocking of a carriage.
The bitterness of the Moscow winter lay heavily on his mind, and jenny, always jenny, her face fading as the world around him rose up. His wrists were manacled behind his back and his feet were shackled, and his body ached from too long in one position. Underneath that was the dull throb of new bruises.
Fragmentary memories returned from his stand at the top of the bell tower in Seville, the lashing rain, figures climbing through the arched windows while others came up the steps from the belfry door, too many for him to fight. A flash of light like a glint from a mirror, a sudden pain at the base of his skull, and then nothing.
As he had expected, they hadn't hurt him too badly. They were saving him for the horrors to come, as Cavillex had promised.
He wasn't alone. A glowering Spanish guard sat on the opposite seat next to the other door, but however much Will tried to engage him in conversation, he gave no indication that Will was even there.
Through the window, he could see a mountain peak, the source of the chill air occasionally blowing through the carriage. It was a blazing hot day with no sign of the storm that had swept Seville. The landscape around the road was dusty, and beyond that it drifted into a bleak, depressing vista of rock piles and detritus from old mine-workings scattered far and wide. Beyond that a pine forest rose up the windswept slopes to the foot of the mountain.
"Why, if I did not know better I would say that was Mount Abantos," Will said. The guard's eyes flickered towards him.
The carriage continued ahead for another mile until a grand grey-pinkgranite complex rose up from the desolate landscape. El Escorial shimmered in the hot sun.
"I hear the king is more a monk than a man of the world," Will noted. "He likes his prayers where others enjoy their tupping, and they bring him to a similar climax."
Flinching, the guard went for his knife until he realised Will was trying to goad him. He grunted and looked out of the other window.
Will watched the village of San Lorenzo de El Escorial pass by in the shadow of Philip's gleaming new monument to his ego, twenty-one years in the building and the centre of the Spanish empire. As they drew nearer, he could see the grand achievement of the construction, its magnificence amplified by the scale reflected in the pools of the formal gardens. Nine towers reached for the sky above the vertiginous, plain walls that resembled an unassailable cliff-face. Its appearance was as austere as the king was rumoured to be, yet in its proliferation of fountains and its rows of exquisite statues, its glorious basilica and its spires, and the sheer size of the construction, it appeared as much an illustration of the monolithic power of Philip and Spain as it did a monument to the glory of God.
The carriage rolled up the sweeping driveway where several guards ran out to greet it. Will was dragged roughly from the carriage and thrown onto the stones before he was forced to his feet at sword point and accompanied by six men into the forbidding palace's interior. The Spanish were taking no chances.
The palace was laid out on a huge quadrangle with a series of intersecting corridors, courtyards, and chambers. He was hauled along at a fast clip, cuffed every time he fell, and cuffed again for every sardonic response. Finally, he was thrust into a large hall lined with dark portraits of severe faces and accusing eyes.
At the far end of the hall, dressed in black, lion Alanzo kneeled in prayer. The guards threw Will to the floor before him, and surrounded Will with levelled pikes.
"You think highly of me to believe so many fine men are necessary to keep me contained," Will said.
"You are no threat," Don Alanzo replied. "You never were."
It was only then that Will saw the black coffin resting on a trestle near the window, with a smaller black box on top, which Will guessed contained the head of lion Alanzo's father.
"I would give my condolences," Will began honestly. "Your father was a casualty of our war, but I had no ill feeling towards him personally."
"Shut up!" Don Alanzo raged. "You cut off his head!" He struck Will across the face with the back of his hand.
Turning so the guards would not see his emotion, lion Alanzo rested one hand upon the coffin. "He was a great man, and an honourable one. He gave his life for Spain. That will not be forgotten. An English city will be renamed after him once we crush your country underfoot."
Will had a sudden flash of Sister Adelita inadvertently setting in motion the events that led to her father's death, and he felt a deep regret at the guilt he knew would consume her. The corrupting touch of the Unseelie Court affected everyone, except themselves.