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were attempting to unlock in the hills not far from San Juan de Ulua," Dee continued. "So fearful were they of the weapon that the king had insisted it be tested far away from the homeland. A weapon that had brought devastation to the great rulers in the far Orient. A weapon that had surfaced during the Crusades and had been fought over by the Knights Templar and the enemies of Christendom." Dee looked from one to the other, now incandescent with passion. "With a weapon like that, England would be a fortress. The Enemy would retreat to their lakes and their underhills and their lonely moors and we would be safe.
    Finally."

    "What is the nature of the weapon?" Will asked.

    "Therein lies the greatest mystery of all." Kneading his hands, Dee paced the room. A tremor ran through him. It is a mask, a silver skull etched with the secret incantations of the long-forgotten race that first created it. A mask that must be bonded with a mortal to unleash its great power. But all we have are stories, fragments, hints. The nature of that power is not known.
    All that is known for sure is that nothing can stand before it and survive."

    "So Hawkins was charged with seizing the weapon from the Spanish," Will surmised.

    "That, at least, was England's fervent hope," Walsingham replied. "While his fleet was being repaired, Hawkins, Francis Drake, and a small group of men slipped secretly into the interior. Five men gave their lives to secure the skull from the Spanish, but before Hawkins could reach his ships, the viceroy, Don Martin Enriquez, took his fleet into the harbour and launched an attack while the English guard was down. Hawkins, Drake, and a small crew escaped in two ships, but the remainder of the English party were tortured and killed by the viceroy as he attempted to discover what we knew about the skull." A shadow passed over Walsingham's face that was like a bellow of rage against his usual detachment. "One of the few survivors, job Hortop, told how the Spanish dogs hanged Hawkins's men from high posts until the blood burst from the ends of their fingers, and flogged them until the bones showed through their flesh. But not a man spoke of the skull. Heroes all."

    Nodding in agreement, Mayhew bowed his head for a moment.

    "Hawkins and Drake returned in two storm-torn ships with just fifteen men,"
    Walsingham said. "Eighty-five stout fellows had starved to death on the journey home. But the skull was ours."

    Several elements of the story puzzled Will. "Then why did we not use this great weapon to drive back the Enemy, and our other, temporal enemies. Spain would not be so bold if it knew we held such a thing," he asked.

    "Because the skull alone is not enough," Dee replied sharply to the note of disbelief in Will's voice. "The stories talk of three parts-a Mask, a Key, and a Shield. All are necessary to use the weapon effectively, though its power can be released without direction and with great consequences for the user by the Mask and Key alone."

    Mayhew refilled his goblet, his hands shaking. "And the Key and the Shield?"

    "The last twenty years were spent in search of them, to no avail," Walsingham replied.
    "They were for a time in the hands of the Knights Templar, this we know for sure."

    "And those warrior monks fought the Enemy long before us," Dee stressed. "The Templars must have known of the importance of these items and hid them well."

    "Then who was the prisoner in the Tower?" Will enquired.

    "Some Spaniard who had been cajoled into trying to make the Mask work. What he cannot have realised is that, once bonded, the Mask cannot be removed until death," Dee said.
    "You are a slave to it, as it is to you."

    Will finally understood. "And so he was locked away in the Tower for twenty years while you attempted to find the other two parts."

    "We could not risk the weapon falling into the hands of the Enemy in case they located the Key," Walsingham said, "and brought devastation down upon us all."

    "But after