The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(111)

"No, not at all. Just tired."

"Only… Only I don't know what I would have done if you… if you–"

She flung herself at Coby, sobbing. Coby caught her by the arms and steered her gently but firmly towards the door.

"Perhaps," she said, "you could run along to the Johnsons' and ask if they've seen Pip. That would set your mistress's mind at rest."

Betsy looked up at her, face puffy and streaked with tears.

"But… what if Mistress Naismith needs me?"

"She has her gossips for company. She will not miss you if you are swift, and you will be doing her a great kindness. And it would set my mind at rest, too."

"It would?" Betsy blew her nose on her apron.

"Most certainly," Coby lied. She could not wish ill upon Philip, not after today, but she would not be sorry either if she never saw him again.

"Then I will go straight away," Betsy said. She gave Coby a watery smile. "I'm so glad you came home safe."

"So am I," Coby murmured to the door as it closed behind the girl.

She slid the bolt home, then took off her doublet and hose and hung them up to air, brushing off the worst of the soot. A pity: it had been the best suit she ever owned. With a sigh of relief she stripped off her filthy linens and dropped them in the laundry basket, then washed herself all over with a flannel and a sliver of soap and sluiced the soot from her hair. By the time she had finished, the water was tepid and filthy. She rubbed her hair with a towel and then dressed in a clean corset, breeches, shirt and stockings, and put her old suit on. Mistress Naismith had no need of her here, that was certain. Best to slip away before Betsy returned.

Closing the door quietly behind her, she ventured out onto the landing. The house below her was silent. She padded downstairs in her stocking feet, put on her shoes, and was out in the street in moments.

CHAPTER XXIX

Mal strode along the wall-walk until he reached the Martin Tower. He had insisted on doing this himself: if Ambassador Kiiren had been shocked at Mal's flogging, the sight of one of Topcliffe's victims would distress him beyond measure. He knocked and a yeoman warder let him in, closing the door behind him with an ominous thud.

The warder led Mal down a narrow stair to the lower chamber. It was not unlike the one in the Salt Tower where Mal had stayed on his first visit to the Tower, but with arrow slits instead of glazed windows. In the gloom Mal could just make out the shape of the actor, huddled on a simple cot bed. The stink of fresh urine hung in the air.

Mal waited until the gaoler had left, then walked over to the bed.

"Wheeler?"

The man mumbled something. Mal touched his shoulder and he flinched, whimpering like a whipped dog. Mal took a candlestick from the table and held it up, surveying Topcliffe's handiwork. There was little to be seen, no blood or broken bones, but he could read the story of the actor's torment in the shaking of his limbs and the taut lines of his face. He had been put on the rack and questioned for some considerable time, until his sinews were fit to snap. The warders would have had to carry him here, and still he was in too much pain to even get off the bed to piss in a pot. Mal sat down on the edge of the bed, causing the actor to whimper again as the mattress shifted beneath him.

"Who are your confederates, Wheeler? Where will they attack next?"

"Go to the Devil."

Gritting his teeth, Mal put his hand on the man's shoulder again and pressed down. Wheeler screamed, the cry echoing from the stone walls like the ghosts of all the prisoners kept here over the centuries.

"Who are they?" Mal asked, when Wheeler was quiet again.

The actor rattled off a list of names between sobs of agony. None of them were familiar to Mal.

"Who wrote the poem?"

"I– I don't know. H-H-H-Harris gave it to me, I d-didn't ask."

"Was it your intention to kill the Ambassador of Vinland, by burning the theatre with him inside it?"

"How… How else do you think you kill a demon?" Wheeler tried to laugh but broke off, gasping against the fresh agony it caused him.

"You think the skraylings are demons?"

Wheeler looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. "Don't you?"

"You said the other day you had seen me before," Mal replied. "Are you sure it was me, or someone who just looked like me?"

"How should I know? Demons can look however they want. Perhaps it was one of them masquerading as you."

"You've seen a man who looked like me but was not me?" Hope rose in his breast. Could Hendricks have been right, and these diverse plots were all one?

"You tell me," the actor whispered. "Was it you I saw in the Bull's Head, conspiring with Suffolk's Men?"

"What is your quarrel with Suffolk's Men?"

"They consort with demons. They deserve to die."

The memory of a boyish face, white with terror beneath a layer of ash, came vividly to mind. Mal leant on Wheeler's shoulder again, and this time he took satisfaction in the man's screams.

"No one deserves to die like that," Mal growled. "Not even you."

He got to his feet and went over to the door to summon the gaoler. Behind him, Wheeler's cries turned to manic laughter.

"I die in God's grace," the actor cackled. "Can you say the same? Can you?"