Battle of the Sun (16 page)

‘What, hatch it herself?’ asked Silver.

‘I daresay you are as stupid as Jackster,’ said Mistress Split. ‘By her arts she can find the creature that can hatch the Egg, and release the magical animal that hides inside, and that animal, what’ere it be, so secret to the Magus, will belong to Wedge.’

‘But not to you,’ said Jack. ‘Wedge has abandoned you. Help us and we will reward you and protect you.’

Mistress Split looked cunning. ‘If I take you to where the Magus and Abel Darkwater wait and work, what shall you give me?’

‘Riches,’ said Jack, not knowing where he would get them from.

Mistress Split shook her head. ‘Give me the Boojie dog! Mine own for ever!’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘He is my dog. I love him.’

‘Love?’ shouted Mistress Split. ‘LOVE? I am the one who loves him, and if love it is that owns the dog, then he is mine mine mine!’ and she wrapped the poor dog in her bosom. He only yelped once.

‘It is an unhappy bargain, I say it is,’ said the Keeper of the Tides, ‘yet, you must make it, I fear. You have so little time left!’

Jack was silent. Then he went and knelt by Max and whispered to him, and none could hear what he said, but the dog could hear, and understood, his intelligent head cocked to one side.

Jack stood up. ‘Mistress Split, do you swear that you will take us to the place where we should go, without treachery or betrayal, and that it is the true place where I shall find the Magus?’

‘I do solemnly swear,’ said Mistress Split.

‘Then I accept the bargain,’ said Jack, and sadly, but firmly, he led Max to his new keeper, who hopped all round the poop-house with delight.

‘Now, mistress,’ said the Keeper of the Tides, ‘wringing wet though you are, a bargain has been made and you must do your part. I give you leave to take my small rowboat, and pray you return it to me when you are able.’

It was an unlikely troupe and a strange sight that left the poop-house on London Bridge and packed themselves into the rowboat beneath. But soon, with Jack pulling strongly on the oars, they were moving rapidly along the Thames to a mooring place as directed by Mistress Split, sitting triumphantly in the prow with the dog on a lead-rope in her lap.

‘We have come outside the city walls,’ she said, ‘and now you must follow me to the old Priory.’

THE PLOT THICKENS

M
istress Split hopped from the boat, and while Jack was mooring it securely, she took out one of the many keys that hung at her belt, and opened a little iron door in a wall. This door led deep underground, and soon Jack and Silver and Crispis and Max were holding on to each other as they followed the hop-hopping sound of Mistress Split and her dim, ill-burning flare.

There were rats everywhere, and horrible dripping noises, and once, Mistress Split held up her flare and gave a dark laugh; there chained to the wall, long left without hope, was a skeleton.

‘This passage is secret,’ she said, ‘and was made by the monks fleeing Good King Henry in the Year of Our Lord 1539.’

‘That must have been the dissolution of the monasteries,’ said Silver, to herself, pleased that history could sometimes be useful.

‘Many were the secrets in the keeping of the Priory, and the Abbess,’ said Mistress Split. ‘For you should know that the Abbess is an ally of the Magus.’

‘I thought she had fled to France,’ said Silver.

‘They that flee flee for a purpose and they that return return for a purpose,’ said Mistress Split enigmatically.

‘She must be very old,’ said Silver, ‘this Abbess. The Priory has been dissolved for about sixty years . . .’

‘She is neither old nor not old,’ said Mistress Split, hopping along. ‘Old is as time does. But what is time to her? You are as stupid as you seem.’

Silver didn’t mind being thought stupid; it meant that her enemies wouldn’t be watching out for her to be clever.

‘Ho,’ called Jack from the rear. ‘Ho there!’

Looking round, Silver saw that water was entering the tunnels.

‘’Tis the rise of the tide,’ muttered Mistress Split. ‘Out, out,’ and, lifting her skirts, she hopped through the water beginning to flow around her foot, and with surprising strength in her single arm, pulled herself up a wormy ladder on the wall, and popped out in a dark alley, close by the Priory of St Mary Spital.

The rest followed her, and stood in a circle like conspirators. ‘I had thought to bring you nearer,’ she said, ‘inside the very walls, but the water has prevented us. Yet . . .’ and she pointed at the high wall. ‘The Magus will be found in the ruins of the chapel – the old papal chapel. Now you must manage alone, for I have brought you as I said.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked Jack.

‘To find Wedge,’ answered Mistress Split. Then she went to Jack, and took the lead-rope from his hand, and turned away. Max looked back once, and whined once, and then he vanished round the corner with Mistress Split.

‘Silver,’ said Jack, ‘take Crispis with you and follow her if you are able. I shall find the Magus.’

‘We should stick together,’ said Silver, but Jack shook his head.

‘The task is mine as you told me, and right it is that it should be so. Today he will be defeated.’

Silver nodded. ‘But why do you want me to go after Mistress Split?’

‘Mother Midnight will be with Wedge,’ said Jack, ‘and for my own mother’s sake, Mother Midnight must be saved.’

Jack leapt over the ruined Priory wall and was gone.

‘Come on, Crispis!’ said Silver. ‘Let’s run after Mistress Split – there she goes, up ahead . . .’

The inner enclosure of the old Priory was still used for growing herbs and small vegetables, and although it was only just dawn, men and boys were already beginning work tending the plants.

Jack pulled his own cap low over his eyes, and stealthily took a wooden wheelbarrow and a fork, and went among the lettuces. He had to find his way to the ruined chapel.

He saw that at the outer edges of the market gardens was the boundary leading to the open spaces used for archery practice. There was a broad ride along the boundary between the gardens and the target ground and some instinct told him to push his barrow that way.

Suddenly, on the other side of the wall, he saw the Magus, wrapped in his black cloak, with two of his servants setting up an archery target. Other men were already stringing their bows and firing into the padded wheels of the targets.

Jack loaded some earth into his barrow to keep looking busy, and he wheeled it along the outer path so that he could get closer to the Magus, who was standing with his back to him watching the target.

‘You there!’

Jack turned, and it was a good thing he did so, for the Magus turned too, and would have spotted Jack. Someone was waving at him to get out of the way, and as he moved himself and his barrow, a proud, tall woman riding sidesaddle on a fine bay horse cantered past him. She continued towards the archery targets, where the Magus had clearly seen her.

Is that the woman called the Abbess?
Jack wondered to himself. Certainly, by her bearing and the magnificence of her horse, she was no common woman.

A servant held her horse while the Magus helped her down with great courtesy.
She is important and powerful, whoever she is
, thought Jack,
or the Magus would not treat her so
.

The Magus bowed, then he and the tall elegant woman began to walk slowly around the field, talking intently.

Determined to get to the chapel, Jack pushed on and on with his barrow, until he found himself in a lonely part of the market gardens, where frames and barrels and sticks and stakes were kept in piles, along with tools waiting to be mended and heaps of sacking.

He could still hear the thwack-thwack of the target practice over the boundary wall, when he spotted the ruins of the old chapel.

It was not quite ruined, for there was a small stone ante-chapel, roofed and with high windows, and Jack guessed that this must be the place.

Leaving his barrow, and checking that he was alone, Jack cautiously tried the door to the stone chapel. It was locked, but he had his iron tool, and in less than a minute he had opened the door and gone inside, locking it behind him. He looked around. It was not what he had expected.

Inside was an altar, set in the high old Catholic fashion, now outlawed in England since the days of Henry the Eighth, when he had defied the Pope, and made himself Head of the Church of England.

Jack knew that his master, Roger Rover, was a Catholic, and that he had a priest hidden away in the house, and he knew that the penalty for those who followed the old religion was death. But Roger Rover was a favourite of the Queen, and she knew how to overlook what she did not choose to see.

The altar was set for a Mass, but as Jack looked closer, he saw that the candlesticks were made of lead, and that the altar cloth was black, and that there was a strange star on the altar, drawn in gold, like two triangles upside down on one another.

A pentangle
, thought Jack.
This place is being used for magic
.

There was no sign of any of the alchemical apparatus he had expected to find, or that the boys had laboured over in the Dark House. No alembic, no furnace, no jars, no vapours.

It was eerie and empty, waiting, it felt like – but waiting for what?

Jack heard footsteps. He ducked under the altar and held his breath. He could see a pair of feet and two sturdy legs.
Abel Darkwater
, he thought to himself, and he lifted the altar cloth so that he could see more.

Darkwater was rolling a heavy barrel towards the altar. He was breathing heavily at the exertion. Then, he left the barrel and went back outside, leaving the door ajar. Jack peeped out. The barrel was big enough to pickle a man.

What a strange thought to have!
said Jack to himself, but Darkwater was returning, and the Magus was with him.

Silver, with Crispis in tow, had followed Mistress Split to a low broken-down collection of sheds and poultry houses, where fowls were clucking up and down, and a few pigs were snouting in the dirt. She could hear a man shouting. Grabbing Crispis by the hand, they crept through a little side door to one of the poultry houses. There was Wedge.

‘Hatch it! Hatch it!’

Wedge was standing over a turkey and the turkey was sitting on the coconut. Mother Midnight was tied up in a corner, her black cat lying across her shoulders.

As Mistress Split came in at the door of the shed, Wedge turned and snarled at her, and spat at Max.

‘Found your way home like a stupid dog, did you? Speak to the stupid old woman, you disobedient half!’

‘You were told she would not speak to you, stupid half yourself!’ said Mistress Split, brandishing her sword at Wedge.

‘I want the Egg, Egg, Egg!’ yelled Wedge.

‘Then Beg, Beg, Beg,’ yelled Mistress Split in return.

Mother Midnight laughed. ‘Bury it in the ground and then it will split and come forth.’

Wedge looked at her in astonishment. ‘In the sods?’

‘Get a spade, you clod!’ shouted Mistress Split, and Wedge ran outside, dug a hole as deep as despair, and flung the hard-pressed turkey off the coconut, and buried the coconut in the earth faster than anyone could say idiot.

‘How long?’ demanded Wedge.

Mother Midnight said nothing to him, but grinned her toothy grin at Mistress Split. ‘Say to him three days and three nights and he must not leave it.’

‘Leave? I won’t move to breathe!’ exclaimed Wedge. ‘Three days and the whole world will be at my foot.’

‘And I am made of soot . . .’ muttered Mistress Split, hopping off.

Silver saw that with Wedge minding his coconut and Mistress Split out of the way, she had a chance to reach Mother Midnight and untie her.

‘Crispis, stay very still! I won’t be long.’

Silver ran over to Mother Midnight and began busily untying her hands.

‘Jack sent me to rescue you,’ said Silver. ‘He is at the old Priory.’

‘He is in great danger,’ said Mother Midnight.

AND TWISTS . . .

I
s everything prepared?’ asked the Magus.

‘Everything is in order,’ replied Abel Darkwater. ‘We ‘ have only to wait for the sacrifice.’

‘I bring news of that,’ said a low, pleasant female voice.

‘My horsemen have done their work.’

And from under the altar, peeping out, Jack saw the skirts of the Abbess.

While Silver was untying Mother Midnight, Crispis heard horses nearby, and ran to hide himself. There was nowhere to hide at all, except in a field of sunflowers growing on a patch of ground. The men on the horses saw him dive into the patch, and gave chase, but when they came to the sunflowers, it was impossible to tell which was the child and which were the flowers, so, imagining he had given them the slip, the men rode off. Crispis stood very still and upright because he knew that something awful was about to happen, and it did.

Silver and Mother Midnight hurried round the backs of the sheds, where they had no choice but to cross the open spaces of the Spital Field. Silver would have run for it, but Mother Midnight was old, and she was carrying her cat, so as it was they limped slowly along, and Silver hoped that they looked like any other of the London flotsam and jetsam that walked hither and yon – a beggar woman and her boy.

But as they crossed the Spital Field towards the archery butts, where men were practising, the horsemen saw the two of them, three if you count the cat, and galloped up, tall on their horses. Roughly, one pulled Mother Midnight up into the saddle behind him, and the other caught Silver, and sat her in front of him, wedged against the pommel, and wriggling like an eel, but it was no use.

‘This must be the boy we are looking for!’ said one of the men.

And at that, the horses galloped forward, and in no time at all, Silver found herself tossed to the ground.

‘You may release the old woman,’ said a voice. It was a woman’s voice, and Silver would recognise it anywhere – through the curve of the universe, and all of time.

But no, surely it wasn’t possible? Silver looked at the Abbess, who was jewelled and beautiful and perhaps forty years old, but not forty Elizabethan years old, for her skin was strong and clear. She was not a young woman, but she was youthful. Echoing back into Silver’s head were the words of Mistress Split, hopping through the Priory tunnels: ‘Old is as time does, what is time to her?’

‘This is not the boy,’ said the Abbess. The horsemen looked at one another. ‘There was another, very small, but he escaped us. We shall seek him.’

The Abbess shook her head, watching Silver all the while.

‘The other will be nearby. And this one will do very well for my purposes. She is, is she not,
blood most dear
?’

As the Abbess said these words from the Book of the Phoenix, she pulled off Silver’s cap, and her girlish hair fell down in its unruly curls. The woman and the girl looked at each other, and it was a long look, with centuries in it.

‘Silver . . .’ said the Abbess. ‘Is it really four hundred years and more since our last meeting?’

And without another word, the Abbess signalled to her men, who clipped Silver to a chain in the wall outside the ruined chapel.

Then the Abbess went inside, and through the open window Silver could hear the voices of the Magus and Abel Darkwater.

She waited. Nothing happened.

Nothing happened. She waited.

Then, with a shiver and a shadow, Silver looked up and saw that the edge of the moon was beginning to pass across the sun.