Читать книгу Deathscent: Intrigues of the Reflected Realm - Robin Jarvis - Страница 8

Out in the deep darkness, in the one hundred and seventy-eighth year of Elizabeth Tudor’s prodigious reign, the beatified, uplifted realm of Britain was reaching the close of another long summer evening. It was the fifth of June in the Gloriana Kalendar and in the smallest of the twelve floating lands which made up the county of Suffolk, the shadows grew deep and rich about the red-bricked manor of Wutton Old Place.

Malmes-Wutton was not the wealthiest of estates. From the furthest pasture, through the humble village and across to the outlying wood, the greatest measured distance was scarcely a mile.

The manor had once been a splendid residence. Less than a century before, the Queen had progressed there to admire the quality of the horses, for it was widely believed that there were none in Englandia to match them. During those bygone, shimmering days, the manor’s mullion windows blazed with light and a near constant music flowed out over the rose garden.

But the intervening years had changed many things. The fortunes of Wutton Old Place had shifted dramatically. Lord Richard Wutton had fallen from Her Majesty’s favour and the monopolies she granted to him had been revoked. Gone was the grandeur which the manor formerly boasted; the large building now looked shabby and was choked with ivy. Every horse had been sold to pay mounting debts and the neighbouring fields barely provided enough to feed those who tilled them. No one of rank ventured near, for who would be seen to frequent such a dilapidated estate?

Yet someone was making the journey to this remote and isolated region. Beyond the boundaries of Malmes-Wutton, out in the perpetual void, a night barge was approaching.

Sleek and black, it was an elegant craft but, although gilded scrollwork decorated the prow, it bore no other device or marking. Through the great silence the night barge sailed stealthily, blotting out the unnamed stars as it drew closer. A sable canopy sealed the deck from the airless cold and, beneath that midnight shelter, an austere figure gowned in the darkest Puritan style was staring out across the unending emptiness.

There were few in this new world who wielded such power as Sir Francis Walsingham. This was his private vessel. With his large, impassive eyes, the solemn-faced man gazed intently at the isle of Malmes-Wutton which now filled and dominated his vision.

The impoverished estate was enclosed by a protective firmament. Outside the window of the night barge it scrolled by at a ponderous pace. The opaque colours painted within the curved, leaded panes were beginning to turn transparent and the acres of Wutton Old Place were plainly visible far below.

“Did you ever look upon so sad and squalid a spectacle?” a grave voice asked abruptly.

Not bothering to turn around as a second man emerged from the gloom behind him, Walsingham gave the slightest of shrugs. “Does our business still disquiet you, Doctor?” he asked in his usual arch tone. “I thought you were agreed on this course.”

Standing beside him, the white-haired man, cloaked in robes of the deepest red velvet and wearing a black skull cap upon his balding head, stared at the few sheep dotting the pasture now visible through the firmament.

“I understand the necessity,” he answered, curling his long beard in his fingers. “It is the method I find not to my liking.”

The night barge continued to descend, dipping smoothly below the top of the outlying trees so that the view was obscured.

“I had not imagined the sorry depths to which Richard Wutton had fallen. Did you mark the fields? They were almost deserted; is he really reduced to a handful of sheep?”

Walsingham gave an indifferent sniff and recounted a memorised list. “Nine sheep to be precise; four cattle, a large sow with two piglets, a particularly ferocious boar that no one dares hunt, various poultry, a dog and three pheasants he couldn’t give away. The deer, of course, went the route of the horses a long time ago.”

The older man regarded him uneasily. “You merit your reputation, My Lord,” he admitted. “No wonder so many fear you. Truly, your eyes and ears are everywhere.”

“I fear they are not as keen as your own,” Walsingham admitted. “Yet they will be the sharper once this affair is concluded.”

His voice lowered to a whisper and he added, “I am determined to prove our suspicions, whatever the cost, and where better than out here – away from public notice?”

With that, the night barge dropped beneath the Malmes-Wutton horizon and the great expanse of cragged rock upon which the estate was founded now stretched in front of them.

“Has my secretary prepared everything?” Walsingham asked. “I wish to disembark at the first moment.”

The white-haired man gave a slight bow and left the deck to attend to it. Alone, Sir Francis watched the immense, barren rockscape swing slowly by and, with his subtle mind contemplating the coming events, a rare smile crept across his face.

A huge, unlit cavern, roughly hewn to form a tremendous arch, reared up beside the night barge and the craft executed a graceful turn to enter it, disappearing into the absolute blackness within.

“You stupid fat pig!” the young apprentice called, beginning to lose his temper. “Come out of there this instant!”

A bass grunt of protest came wheezing from the sty’s low brick entrance and the boy scrunched up his face in irritation.

“Adam!” a voice yelled suddenly from the stables. “Stop idling out there and fetch it in at once!”

Throwing a quick, anxious glance back across the yard, Adam o’the Cogs, or Cog Adam as he was generally known, decided there was only one thing for it. He glowered at the pigsty; that evening there was no time to indulge the old sow’s stubborn nature.

“Obstinate old sulker,” he grumbled, vaulting over the piggery fence. “You’ve done it now. If you won’t come out, I’m coming in.”

Crouching, he barged into the straw-scented darkness and immediately there came an outraged bellowing.

Old Temperance, the great sow of Wutton Old Place, sent up a snorting uproar as the boy tried to catch her. The two piglets, Suet and Flitch, scudded around her, squealing shrilly.

“Keep still!” Adam cried as she thundered to and fro in the sty, knocking him off balance. “Stay put, you moody old porker.”

Tumbling to the ground, he gave the sow a hefty kick and the ensuing baritone bellow almost deafened him in that confined place.

“Adam!” the impatient command came calling from the stables once more.

The boy scrambled to his feet. “I told you there weren’t no time for mucking about,” he warned. “If you’re going to be so block-headed about it, then there’s only one thing I can do.”

A frantic scuffle broke out as, within the sty, Adam changed tack and tried to catch one of the piglets instead. Their high, piping squeaks lasted several minutes until finally one of them was seized.

“Stop that wriggling!” the apprentice said sharply, tucking the piglet under his arm and crawling from the low entrance. Jiggling and squirming, Suet squealed again but Adam gripped it firmly and hurried back to the piggery fence.

Clambering over, he paused to look up at the darkening sky. At the highest point of the leaded firmament the panes had become completely clear and the first gleaming stars were pricking through.

Adam o’the Cogs spared a moment to consider them. He was a slight youth and the untidy crop of hair that sprouted from his head was almost the same colour as the pieces of straw that now clung to it.

“All them little lights,” he declared. “One day I’m going to learn what each is called, even name a few maybe.”

A jab in the ribs from one of Suet’s trotters returned his thoughts to more immediate matters and he went running on his scrawny legs, over the yard and into the stables.

When she was certain the boy had gone, the ample bulk of Old Temperance came trundling from the pigsty, followed closely by her remaining piglet. Out into the gathering dusk they shuffled. The great sow pushed her snout between the fence’s wooden bars to grunt her objections.

Yet the eyes which peered across the yard were lenses of polished glass, set into a roughly carved wooden head, for Old Temperance was not a living creature. In these uplifted lands there were no beasts of flesh and blood except for man himself; every other animal was mechanical. The horses of which Wutton Old Place had once been so renowned were finely tuned automata. Even the ducks which swam in the village pond were engineered with springs and gears that flapped rusting tin feathers.

Old Temperance’s concertina-like snout moved rapidly in and out as the set of bellows fixed inside her large, barrelled frame squeezed together, and she gave a long, protracted and miserable snort.

The stables which had once housed the finest mechanical horses of the realm were now reduced to common workshops. Shelves and benches crowded the once grand stalls and from every beam there dripped a hundred gleaming tools.

To bolster his floundering fortunes, Lord Richard Wutton had been compelled to take in the broken and defective animals of neighbouring estates. Here, under the guidance of Master Edwin Dritchly, a man most learned in the study of motive science, Adam and two other apprentices executed repairs. Many of the county’s best animals had at some point been inside the stable workshops and even in the great isle of London there were mechanicals which bore the discreetly pasted label ‘A Wutton Restoration’.

An endless ark of faulty creatures passed through those stable doors so there was always enough to keep Master Edwin and his lads busy, but today had been the most frantic and trying that he had known in a long while.

Edwin Dritchly had been with Lord Richard for many years and had adapted to this new, uplifted world with greater ease than most. He was a short, round man with a chubby pink, clean-shaven face which broke out in red blotches whenever he became flustered or agitated. Since that morning, when his Lord had sprung the surprise announcement that they were to expect an illustrious visitor from the court, Master Edwin had resembled a very large and overripe raspberry.

Huffing and sweating, he foraged through boxes of odds and ends, muttering to himself.

“Fourteen year it’s been,” he grumbled under his breath. “Fourteen year without so much as a hafternoon revel on the green, and now all of the sudden I’m hexpected to put those old gleemen back together and make them fit to be heard. Well, I haren’t no conjuror and what I doesn’t have can’t be grabbed out of the hempty hair.”

Thrusting the box to one side, he pushed past the other two apprentices and began searching beneath one of the benches.

The last of Lord Richard Wutton’s finest mechanicals, the only ones which had never been sold for revenue, were two life-size mannequins: a lutanist and a recorder player. These musicians had not been used for many years, and when Master Edwin was commanded to fetch them out and prepare them for a performance that evening, his plump face had fallen and immediately blotched up.

From their dusty corner in the stable loft the mannequins were brought down and Master Edwin groaned loudly. For too long these marvellous mechanicals had been used as the repositories of excellent spares and so when they were laid upon the workbenches he saw that they were in a truly dreadful, ransacked condition. Most of the internal works were either corroded or missing, pipes had perished and brass joints had been stripped away.

“May the celestial orbs fall upon me!” he warbled. “I fear Lord Richard will look like an impoverished fool this night.”

The apprentices, however, were not so easily dismayed and were certain they could manage to lash something together. They were rarely allowed to work on any automata as intricate as the musicians and were eager to show off their skills. For the whole of the afternoon they toiled unceasingly to replace plundered cogs and levers. Gears were removed from several sheep, and the legs of chickens and geese were robbed of their springs. Master Dritchly’s wife took time away from the kitchen, where a feast was being prepared, to whisk the faded velvet costumes from the mannequins. She then set to work beating the dust out of them and sewing up the holes.

Eventually, as the day wore on, their confidence that the task would be completed on time increased.

Inspecting the labour, Master Edwin had congratulated his apprentices. But when he opened the head of the recorder player to check that the breath pipe was still in place, he made an awful discovery and buried his face in his hands. “The cordials are gone!” he had wailed.

Inside every mechanical, from the most crudely fashioned tin fighting cockerel, to the Queen’s own Ladies of the Privy Chamber, were glass phials containing a fluid named ichor. The sophisticated models possessed four vessels of these different coloured ‘humours’, each one governing separate aspects of function.

The basic fluid was the green which maintained balance and motion. Vulgarly called ‘phlegm’, it was present in even the most rudimentary creature. Amber ichor, also known as ‘yellow bile’, controlled intent and obedience; a skilled master of motive science would ensure that this was in harmony with ‘temper’, the red fluid which instilled character. Last and most precious of all was ‘black bile’, a rare elixir to be found in large quantities only within the servitors of the richest households. This costly liquid imparted elementary thought to a mechanical and was valued many times higher than gold.

At some point during the years of repairing the ‘livestock’ of other estates, the ichors of the musicians had been removed and never replaced. Without them, they could neither move nor play a single note.

In the little time that remained before the important guest’s arrival, Master Edwin and the apprentices tried to refill the empty phials. Every cow had been rounded up and their dismantled pieces lay in corners alongside overturned or half-open sheep. Heads of all sizes stared up from the floor, the glass lenses of their eyes gazing sightlessly at the three boys feverishly topping up the musician’s vessels with scavenged cordials. But there was still not quite enough of the amber for the recorder player.

Only a few drops more were needed and so Adam o’the Cogs had been sent out to the piggery to fetch in Old Temperance. The great sow had yellow bile in abundance.

“Where is that clotpole of a boy?” Master Edwin called again. “Hum hum, how long does it take to haul the old pig in here?” Even as he spoke Adam came running in with the piglet under his arm.

“I couldn’t get Old Temperance out of the sty,” he explained hurriedly. “So I brought Suet instead; there ought to be just enough in him.”

Master Edwin waved a podgy hand at the main workbench. “Set it down and hopen it up,” he instructed. “Hardly any time left – we won’t have a chance to rehearse these gleemen.”

Taking the piglet from under his arm, Adam placed it upon the wide workbench. The wooden creature gave a shrill squeal and went scooting from the boy’s grasp. Through a heap of small brass wheels and miniature pulleys it bolted, sending them rolling to the floor. Over a sheep’s hind leg the piglet leaped, darting this way and that as it hunted for an escape.

“Catch it!” Master Edwin roared.

Henry Wattle, a curly-haired apprentice who was the same age as Adam, could not help laughing as the small creature scudded across the bench. Suet looked so comical, dodging and swerving on its small trotters, that Henry was of no assistance at all. Still squealing, the piglet darted to the end of the workbench where the recorder player sat awaiting the remaining drops of amber ichor.

Master Edwin’s stout arms came reaching across to grab it but Suet was too nimble. Nipping aside, it ran straight into the musician’s velvet-covered back.

A high squawk sounded as the piglet’s nose squashed flat. To everyone’s dismay, the figure was knocked from the bench and went lurching to the ground.

“Save it!” Master Edwin cried.

Henry Wattle, who had not stopped laughing, slithered across just in time to break the mechanical’s fall.

Pushing its nose out again, Suet hopped a brief victory jig. Then it jumped from the bench, landed upon the musician’s back, sprang on to Henry’s astonished head and leaped the remaining distance to the floor.

With a triumphant shake of its stiff, leathery ears, the piglet rocketed for the stable door. Haring under Adam’s legs it set off, pelting between the disassembled sheep and cattle which lay between it and freedom. But, even as the yard came into view, a pair of strong hands seized its stumpy body and Suet was plucked from the ground.

Jack Flye lifted the small creature high into the air until it was level with his own lean face and stared into the tiny eyeholes cut into the animal’s carved head.

“Now then,” he said firmly, “we’ll have no more of that. You can go back to Old Temperance tomorrow.”

Before Suet could begin to squeak a protest, it was whirled around and the oldest of the apprentices pressed the Wutton crest which was chiselled upon its back. In that instant the piglet’s struggles ceased, the small trotters juddered to a stop and dangled limply from their axles as the concertina snout extended to its full length with a sad whine of escaping air.

“Thank you, Jack,” Master Edwin sighed, mopping his forehead with his cuff. “Hum hum, take hout the cordial and we can lug the gleemen across to the manor house.”

Suspending the inert piglet from a wire by the hook of its tail, Jack unfastened the clip that held the creature together and the wooden keg of its body swung in half. Deftly, the apprentice reached inside and removed a small glass phial which he carried to where Adam was helping Henry lift the fallen musician back on to the bench. Master Edwin fanned his glowing face with his hat while overseeing this final adjustment.

At seventeen years of age, Jack Flye was the most experienced of his apprentices. He was a serious young man, determined in his ambition to possess his own workshop one day. Adam and Henry both looked up to him; they watched in respectful silence as the youth brushed the dark hair from his eyes and measured several drops of Suet’s ichor into a larger glass vessel already swilling with yellow bile.

“There,” he breathed, placing the second phial into the mannequin’s polished brass head. “The level is amended, the amber cordial is in perfect accord with the red. This fellow is ready to toot until his bellows bust.”

Nodding in satisfaction, Master Dritchly closed the musician’s face and fastened it shut.

“Well done, lads,” he said, a great grin splitting his own features. “I never thought has how we’d do it – I never did, most honest I never. Hum hum.”

Jack sucked his teeth thoughtfully as he gazed at the renovated mechanicals. Arrayed in their repaired finery, the figures looked quite presentable. The recorder player was dressed in a peascod paunch doublet of popinjay green, embellished with gold brocade with matching slops. Not an inch of the internal frame could be seen, and that was just as well for one of the arms was undoubtedly a modified cow’s leg with chicken-claw fingers. Hidden from view by sleeve and glove, nobody would be able to guess – especially at a distance and in candlelight, which was the plan.

The lutanist was dressed in much the same manner, except that the velvet was Coventry blue, pinked with silver tinsel. Yet the colours had faded from both costumes, the trimmings were tarnished and, despite Mistress Dritchly’s best efforts, she had been unable to eradicate the worst patches of mildew.

“Let’s just hope they’ll play in tune after all these years,” Jack murmured.

“Hum hum, may God and the heavenly spheres permit it,” Master Edwin said, “for there’s no time to test them.”

Bidding Henry and Adam to follow them with the actual instruments, Master Edwin and Jack hoisted the musicians over their shoulders and marched from the workshop.

Cog Adam glanced around at the wreckage of animals and birds that littered the stables. “Look at the state of this mess. It’ll take three days at least to put everything back the way it was,” he muttered. “We won’t be able to find half of what’s needed, there’ll be bits missing and most of the sheep will end up limping.”

Henry Wattle picked up the detached head of a tin goose and blew through its neck as though it were a trumpet. The head wagged and a loud “HONK” blasted throughout the workshop. “Duck!” he shouted, throwing it at Adam and cackling at the bad joke.

Adam scowled at him, then clambered up to the hay loft where the instruments had been stored. He reappeared a moment later carrying a large recorder and a very dusty lute.

“One of the strings is broken,” he said, passing the unusual, bowl-shaped object to Henry. “Do you think it matters? Will anyone notice?”

The boy shook his curly head and snorted rather like Old Temperance. “Listen, Coggy,” he laughed, “the less strings there are the better. Less racket, see? Do you really think them mechanicals are going to be able to play? I’ll be amazed if they can hold the instruments, never mind a tune.”

“Master Edwin knows what he’s doing,” Adam insisted. “There’s no one better at motive science than him. If he thinks they’ll work that’s good enough for me!”

Henry wiped a hand across his already dirty face and succeeded in making it worse. “Hog’s breath!” he said scornfully. “If Hummy Hum, Dull as Ditch Water Dritchly was really any good he wouldn’t be stuck in this dung pile. He’d be out there on some rich estate making heaps of money. That’s what I’m going to do, soon as I’m able. Sir Henry Wattle, that’s who I’ll be one day. Work for the Queen Herself, maybe, and have pots and pots of gold coin.”

“Well, you’ll just have to make do with that lute for now,” Adam told him as he went into the yard. “Bring it to the house.”

Alone in the workshops, Henry Wattle spat on the floor, then kicked an upended, headless sheep, forcing air through its internal pipes. A hoarse “Baaaaaaa” echoed from the circular neck hole.

“I will be rich,” he said defiantly, “I will live in a great house of my own – I know it.”

Leaving the stables, Henry was surprised to see Adam still in the yard. It was quite dark now and the fair-haired boy was staring out along the dusty road that led to the village.

“What you doing?” Henry asked.

Adam pointed with the recorder. “They’re here,” he murmured. “Lord Richard’s guests.”

Then Henry heard the faint sound of cantering hooves and saw indistinct shapes riding through the shadows.

“Five of them,” Adam counted. “No, there are five horses but only four riders. I wonder who they are.”

The message that Lord Richard Wutton received that morning had not divulged the identity of the important guest who would be visiting his estate. The desire to know the answer to that mystery burned in the hearts of both apprentices. Their errand momentarily forgotten, they stood rooted to the spot as the riders drew closer.

“What if it’s the Queen Herself?” Adam whispered.

“You loony,” Henry scoffed. “Why would Her Majesty come to this muddy backwater? Nowt in this muck hole to interest the likes of Her.”

“She came here once,” Adam answered. “Supposed to have been good friends with Lord Richard in the old days, when he were rich and important.”

Henry clicked his tongue. “Well he ain’t neither no more,” he said flatly. “I’ll wager this’ll be a big wash out. Won’t be no one worth mentioning at all and our hard slog today will have been wasted. Prob’ly one of the court cooks come to maunder the secret of Mistress Dritchly’s pear tart.”

“Cooks don’t get to ride on steeds like that,” Adam murmured.

The riders were very near now and even in the gloom the boys could see that their horses were infinitely superior to anything they had ever seen.

Then into the yard they came, reining their mounts to a stamping halt.

The horses were magnificent. Fashioned from black steel, they were elegant and powerful and the boys gawped at them. Never had they imagined that any mechanical could be so beautiful as these incredible creatures. Every sinew of the original beast was hammered into the flowing panels and their proud heads tossed and strained at the reins in a most natural and convincing manner.

Yet among those horses there was one even greater than the rest. It was a whole hand taller, the mane and tail were of the finest silken fibres and it was shod with bronze. In the obsidian globes of its eyes there gleamed a fierce intelligence, and both Henry and Adam guessed that somewhere within that fabulous steed there was undoubtedly a quantity of black ichor.

“You, boy!” a clipped, commanding voice called down from its rider whose face was concealed in shadow. “Where is Richard Wutton? Why is he not here to greet us?”

Not certain which of them the stranger was addressing, both apprentices bowed and began gabbling at once in apology.

“I’m sure he don’t know of your arrival yet, sir,” Adam said.

“I’ll go fetch Lord Richard out,” Henry spoke over him.

An impatient, disdainful sniff was the only reply. Then another of the riders said in a conciliatory voice, “Look, Sir Francis, he is here!”

The large oak door of Wutton Old Place was creaking open and a wedge of yellow candlelight flooded the yard. Adam and Henry backed away, for at last they saw just how forbidding and important the strangers appeared. Framed in the entrance, Lord Richard Wutton looked on the grave countenances of the horsemen and the ready smile failed on his lips.

Richard Wutton was a jovial man, much respected by his few tenants. Their remaining with him throughout his years of banishment from court was a testament to the loyalty he inspired. His exile and the subsequent loss of fortunes had, however, grizzled and greyed his temples and he was more fond of the bottle than he ought to have been.

Standing there upon the threshold of his run-down manor, he stared at the faces of his guests and wished he had quaffed a cup of wine before meeting them.

There, upon that splendid horse, was Sir Francis Walsingham, stiff and intractable in his stark black garments, his mirthless face ringed by the white circle of his ruff. Lord Richard’s heart quailed inside his ribs. What could that calculating old spider want here?

Hurriedly he glanced at the others. He did not recognise two of them but guessed that the one closest to Sir Francis was undoubtedly his personal secretary while the other, a sullen-faced man dressed in russets and already dismounting, was his groom. The fourth man Lord Richard knew very well and his mind began to race as it sought for the reason which had brought the old, white-bearded scholar back to Malmes-Wutton after all these years.

“Welcome, My Lord Walsingham,” he called, leaving the doorway and walking towards them. “I am deeply honoured by this visit.”

Like a huge raven unfurling its wings, Sir Francis threw back his black riding cloak and jumped from the saddle. His dark eyes glinted at Lord Richard but he said nothing and his host fidgeted uneasily under their glare.

“I’m afraid the message I received made no mention of whom I was to expect,” the man mumbled to cover the silence.

“That is because I did not want you to know,” came the bleak and disconcerting answer.

“I trust you’ll find the meal and entertainment adequate …” Lord Richard said, his voice falling to a wretched whisper as Sir Francis Walsingham strode rudely away and entered the manor house.

“A most tiring journey,” the secretary broke in. “You must pardon My Lord’s abrupt manner. What a pleasant isle this is; quite the smallest I have seen, but such plaudits I have heard concerning the work that is done here. Most interesting, all your merry apprentices tinkering away with broken cattle.”

Lord Richard was hardly paying attention. Walsingham frightened him and he turned to the other man he had recognised.

“And you, Doctor?” he began. “Why are you here? Have you ceased casting horoscopes and conversing with angels?”

Doctor John Dee met his questioning glance for an instant, then had the grace to look away. “I should have called upon you earlier, Richard,” he said regretfully. “I am most sorry for that. Fourteen years is too long.”

There was an awkward pause and, watching from nearby, Adam saw that the embers of an old argument lay between these two men.

“Come!” the secretary cried, clapping his hands together. “Let us not tarry without when light and merriment awaits us. Let all quarrels be put aside this night.”

Lord Richard remembered his duties as host and, clearing his very dry throat, guided the men to the doorway, leaving the groom behind.

Adam o’the Cogs watched them enter the manor but, on the topmost step, the white-bearded man known as Doctor Dee paused and stared back at him. The boy shuddered under the intense scrutiny, before the elderly stranger followed Lord Richard inside.

“I wouldn’t sleep easy this night if I were you, boy!” the groom chuckled unpleasantly. “Don’t you know who that were?”

Adam shook his head. The name “Doctor Dee” had meant nothing to him.

Holding the reins of all five horses, the groom gave him a leering smile. “Astrologer to the Queen, that’s who,” he said, affecting a hollow, sepulchral voice. “Invented the new Kalendar, he did, and more besides if rumours be true. Decent folk are scared of him, more so than they are of my master.”

“Why?” Henry demanded.

The groom’s eyes slid quickly from side to side as if afraid of the surrounding shadows. “They say he digs up corpses,” he hissed. “Grubs up the churchyard dirt and, by his wicked arts, speaks with the dead bodies.”

Henry snapped his fingers in disbelief. “Donkey warts!” he said.

“Is it?” the man murmured. “Jenks here thinks not. An imp from Hell does his bidding, that’s no lie – there’s plenty enough who’ve seen it. A crafty, clever man is Doctor Dee, but also a mighty dangerous one. You’d best watch out, lad, if he takes notice of you – no knowing what might come for you in the night to cart you off.”

Adopting Henry’s sceptical stance, Adam managed a feeble laugh but he did not like the look of the groom. The man had a suspicious face and, when he saw that his attempts to frighten them had failed, his mouth twisted into an arrogant sneer.

“Now then,” he began, his sly glance darting around the yard, “where are my master’s steeds to be housed?”

Adam returned the hostile stare. “There’s the barn yonder,” he answered with an impudent tone which set the man’s lip curling again. “Over there, behind the piggery.”

“The barn!” came the insulted response. “Do you know how costly these beasts are? Have you no proper stable?”

The boys shook their heads. “We don’t have horses here no more,” Henry said. “But when we did, I reckon they’d have been even better than your fancy one with the bronze shoes. Even Old Dritchly could cobble up something like that if he had a mind to.”

Strolling forward for a better view of the creature, he asked, “What are the innards like? How many pendulums do it have and how big are the cordial vessels?”

“Don’t you even think of coming no closer,” the groom growled. “That’s far enough. These ain’t none of your peasanty clankers, specially not Belladonna here. If anyone touches these fine beasts, Jenks’ll cut their throats for them, you understand?”

Leaving the threat hanging in the air, he led the mechanical horses over to the barn and the boys stared after him, mouthing insults to his back.

“Who wants to see the workings of your old nags anyway?” Henry grumbled.

“What do you think the extra horse was for?” Adam asked.

“To carry the baggage,” Henry suggested. “Had a dirty great chest strapped to it.”

Adam was not so certain. “No,” he said, “there’s something weird and secret happening here. Lord Richard didn’t like it and nor do I.”

As he spoke he tapped the mouthpiece of the recorder against his lips until he suddenly realised what he was doing and gave a horrified yelp.

“The instruments!” he cried. “We should have took them inside ages ago.”

And so the two apprentices raced into the manor house and the tragic events that were to occur that fateful evening were set in motion.