The Silver Skull

Начало книги

redit must go to four hundred and thirty years of authors responsible for the primary, secondary, and tertiary texts that provided the research and resources for this work.

On the matter of dates: at the time of this story, England still used the old Julian calendar while the rest of Europe had adopted the new Gregorian calendar, with which we are all familiar today. To avoid any confusion, I have used the Gregorian dates for all events.

Spies are men of doubtful credit, who make a show of one thing and speak another.

-Mary, Queen of Scots

PROLOGUE

ar beneath the slow-moving Thames, a procession of flickering lights drew inexorably towards London from the east. The pace was funereal, the trajectory steady, purposeful. In that hour after midnight, the spectral glow under the black waters passed unseen by all but two observers.

"There! What are they, sir?" In the lantern light, the guard's fear was apparent as he peered over the battlements of the White Tower, ninety feet above the river.

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