Authors: Jeanette Winterson
Battle of the Sun (18 page)
J
ack went with John Dee to Roger Rover’s study that had become an alchemist’s laboratory. There were the familiar alembics and retorts, and a small furnace burning in the fireplace.
The barrel of mercury had been opened.
Jack looked inside. All he could see was thick liquid silver.
‘Observe!’ said John Dee, and with a cup he scooped out some of the mercury and poured it into a shallow bowl, where it splintered into a thousand tiny droplets.
Jack looked closely, and to his horror he saw that in each droplet was a miniature Silver.
‘There are millions of her!’ he cried.
‘And none at all,’ replied John Dee, ‘for while she is dissolved like this she is in a state of potentiality. Do you know what that means, Jack?’
Jack shook his head. John Dee smiled. ‘I will train you, Jack, after we have won this Battle of the Sun, and you shall learn what it is to be an alchemist.’
‘I am an ordinary boy,’ said Jack.
‘You are the Radiant Boy, and the power within you is great – yet you, like Silver, are in potential.’
‘There aren’t millions of me,’ objected Jack.
‘Are there not? You are young. Are there not many Jacks jostling inside you to see which will become the one Jack, the real Jack?’
Jack went back to look at the Silvers, each in their little ball. John Dee continued. ‘Potential comes from the Latin word
potens
, and that means power. To have potential is to have power that is not shaped into something evident and purposeful. To shape a life needs hard work and training – as well as power. In our great art of alchemy, to be in potential is to be ready and to able, yet more than that is needed. Silver must give up her present state of being endless Silvers and become one Silver. She must choose to be who she is.’
‘How can that be?’ asked Jack in wonder.
‘Heat the furnace!’ said John Dee. ‘I have everything at hand and you must assist me.’
Outside in the courtyard, Roger Rover was haggling with his groom over a jug of water and a pig. The jug of water was a jug of water, and Roger Rover had drawn it himself from the well. The pig was made of solid gold.
‘There’s no water to be had this side of London Bridge,’ said the groom. ‘I set off to seek my fortune – heard the streets were paved with gold, and they are. Gold wherever you look – gold, gold, gold, but what are we going to eat and what are we going to drink when the whole place is nothing but gold?’
Roger Rover gave his groom the jug and the man drank the lot in one greedy swallow.
‘Fill a barrel,’ said Roger Rover, ‘and roll it away as you please. But leave the pig.’
The groom touched his forehead, and while he busied himself Roger Rover walked thoughtfully down to the river.
The Thames was still the Thames, as bright and flowing as ever, but a man who drank the Thames would find himself swallowing all manner of infections. The very poor drank from it, but the very poor didn’t live long.
‘When everything is gold . . .’ said Roger Rover to himself, ‘yes, everything, every spoon, fork, cobblestone, crate, table and chair, hen and pig, then only what is not gold will have any value.’
‘’Tis a great evil,’ said a voice, from just below, on the river. It was a tall, elegant woman in a rich-worked gown, her face veiled, rowing her own boat, which was strange, and on a river that was nearly empty, which was stranger still.
‘’Tis a great wonder,’ said Roger Rover mildly, on his guard, for he had an apprehension that this might be the woman Jack had spoken of, the former Abbess of the Priory.
‘And yet, your own house here seems curiously unaffected,’ she said, looking at the sunflowers whose bright heads shone like sentinels over the entire building.
‘No doubt my time is coming,’ said Roger Rover.
The Abbess nodded her head. ‘Time,’ she said, ‘is more valuable than gold.’
And in that instant Roger Rover knew who she was and where he had seen her before, when the clock that now lay in a thousand pieces in his study was ticking in her hands, in front of the Pope himself in Rome, and this woman had been bargaining for her life.
‘Maria Prophetessa!’ he said out loud, before he could stop himself.
The woman lifted her veil. Yes, it was she, neither old nor young –
timeless
was the word that filled his mind.
‘May I come in?’ she said, and tying her boat swiftly to a ring, she held out her hand and Roger Rover had no choice but to take it, and help her up the steps from the water-gate.
Jack had heated the furnace so hot that the room itself seemed to be wavering in the heat. The vapour from the mercury was making him feel dizzy and lightheaded, but John Dee seemed not to notice as he fitted the arms and legs on to what looked like a large wooden doll.
‘Pour the barrel of mercury into this mould,’ he commanded, ‘taking care not to spill even one drop!’
Jack did as he was told, and with his great strength swung the heavy barrel up on his shoulder, and poured the mercury carefully into the open neck of the doll.
‘Now we must fasten the head!’ said John Dee. ‘And when this part is done, if God wills it, Silver will become herself again.’
The head was fastened. Jack sat back on his heels, sweating with the heat and effort. John Dee was saying something in Latin. The room shook.
But nothing happened.
John Dee spoke again, and this time the doll shook.
Then the doll moved.
Then, as Jack watched, the doll’s blank face took on Silver’s face, and the doll’s stiff limbs began to assume the contours of Silver’s body.
But then, like those dolls cut out from a folded sheet of paper, not one Silver but seven appeared in the room.
‘This is a set-back,’ said John Dee.
‘What has happened?’ asked Jack.
‘We have reduced Silver from infinity to seven. But if even one of these seven escapes us, we shall never return Silver to herself.’
‘Why would they want to escape?’ said Jack.
‘Quickly!’ cried John Dee, as one of the Silvers tried to climb up the chimney. Jack grabbed her from behind, and as he did so, she squashed down into a ball about the size of the jack in a game of bowls.
‘Put her in the alembic!’ said John Dee, who had seized a second Silver halfway out of the window.
The other five Silvers were darting about the room. One had got her head through the keyhole when Jack caught her, and another was rolling out under the gap at the bottom of the door. John Dee stamped on her, and she squealed and turned into a ball.
‘It is the nature of mercury to behave thus,’ said John Dee, ‘but it is very inconvenient. Whatever happens we must keep the three Silvers in this room.’
At that moment Roger Rover opened the door from the outside, and the three Silvers knocked him flat as they raced past him.
‘What’s this?’ said Roger Rover, faintly from the floor.
‘What’s this?’ wondered the Keeper of the Tides, as he scrambled round a pillar supporting the bridge to see just what it was the Magus had attached there. ‘How very unlikely! It is a sunflower!’
‘What’s this?’ said Wedge, who had been sleeping and waking and waking and sleeping by the Egg he had buried in the earth as instructed by Mother Midnight. ‘WHAT IS THIS?’
Truth to tell, it was a stem and two leaves.
‘Power and Glory, Glory and Power!’ shouted Wedge to anyone who was listening, which was no one, as he was alone. ‘I shall be rich, famous, infamous, Master of the Universe! The Egg is growing!’
The three Silvers were running riot around the house. They knocked over suits of armour, they slid down the banister rails, they swung on the tapestries, they bounced on the beds, and all the time that they were doing these things they shouted, ‘Whee! Ha ha!’
It seemed like there was no stopping them as they skidded, slidded, hidded, first upstairs then down, appearing and disappearing so that even Jack who was nimble and fast could hardly keep up.
As he raced past Roger Rover’s armoury, he spied a net furled up against the wall, and he suddenly had a good idea. He took the net, got it ready, and hid at the bottom of the stairs.
Soon he heard the ‘WHEE! HA HA!’ of the three Silvers, and they came tumbling down the stairs like puppies. Quick as a dart, Jack flung his net and caught one of them, squealing and yelping. He squashed her into a ball, and hurried back to put her in the alembic.
‘Got one!’ he shouted as he came through the door. ‘Two left, Master Dee!’
John Dee was in the room with Roger Rover and the Abbess. When Jack saw her, his eyes darkened and he was full of rage.
‘Why is she here? She is in league with the Magus!’
‘No,’ said the Abbess, ‘I am not in league with the Magus, nor Abel Darkwater. I help or I hinder according to my own course. That is all.’
‘You did this to Silver,’ said Jack, holding up the ball.
‘Abel Darkwater dissolved Silver in the barrel of mercury,’ said the Abbess. ‘It seemed to be a solution – so to speak – but it appears that Silver is not so easy to dissolve. I admire her persistence. And I am here on business – to see John Dee.’
Jack looked from one to another. Who could he trust? Roger Rover? John Dee?
John Dee held up his hands in a calming gesture. ‘Jack, put that Silver in the alembic. Concentrate on your task. Two of her are left, you say? That is good, and that is bad.’
‘Why bad?’ said Jack.
‘Because of those two, only one Silver is the Silver we want. The other Silver will be her shadow.’
‘I’ll go and find her – them,’ said Jack, and then he looked straight at the Abbess. ‘I will not fail, and then you shall answer to her yourself.’
‘If you want to be sure of finding the right Silver, you had better use the King’s ring,’ said the Abbess in her mild and disconcerting manner.
‘How do you know about that?’ said Jack, his hand going to the sapphire on his finger.
‘You are Adam Kadmon,’ said the Abbess. ‘Jack you may be, but Adam Kadmon is your true name.’
‘Jack,’ said John Dee gently, ‘there is much you do not yet understand about your alchemical nature. All will be shown to you in good time. But now hurry – the quicksilver is unstable, and we must not lose time.’
Jack set off again through the empty house that he knew so well – though peculiar and silent now that the servants were gone. He was worried about Silver, worried about Crispis, worried about his mother, and suddenly he was going past her in the hall, hunting for the Silvers, and there was Sir Boris, standing guard.
‘The day is close at hand,’ said Sir Boris, suddenly.
‘What day?’ said Jack.
‘When you shall summon me for the second time.’
Before Jack could ask any questions of the enigmatic knight, he heard a crashing nearby, and ran off at full pelt, just in time to see the two Silvers disappearing into the armoury.
Jack was after them in no time, but the armoury was full of armour, which was not strange, but what was strange was that the shiny polished suits were like tall mirrors, and in each one the two Silvers multiplied again as they dodged him. As he ran at one with his arms out, he crashed into a breastplate and a helmet; as he ran at another, an empty eerie knight toppled down on him. If it had not been for his great strength, he would have been crushed.
‘Silver!’ called Jack suddenly. ‘Silver, please come back.’
He felt that he was being heard, so he tried again.
‘Silver, it’s Jack and I’ve come to find you. Here’s my hand, here I am.’
There was a shuffle, and the two Silvers came forward, holding hands.
‘Which one of us do you want, Jack? Which one?’
‘The one that is true,’ answered Jack, boldly.
‘Tell us which of us that is,’ said the two Silvers.
Jack had no idea, and then he heard the voice – the low pleasant voice (
the King’s ring . . .
), and he took the ring from his finger and held it out at arm’s length. ‘The one who can wear the King’s ring.’
‘The sapphire,’ said the Silvers in unison. ‘The stone that is not stone, the stone that is a spirit.’
And as Jack stood holding out the ring, it began to give off a pure white light that flooded the whole armoury so bright that Jack had to shield his eyes with his other arm.
He felt someone take the ring.
‘Jack . . .’ said Silver.
And there she was, smiling at him with her green eyes, her red hair standing on end like a startled fox.
‘Quickly,’ said Jack, grabbing the other shrinking Silver just in time. She was rolling away like a marble. He put her in his pocket.
‘What was it like in the barrel of mercury?’ he said, as they walked back towards Roger Rover’s study.
‘It was like everything,’ said Silver, puzzled, ‘all places, all times, all possibilities. I felt like there were millions of me . . .’
‘There were,’ said Jack. ‘I saw them – millions.’
‘What happened in the chapel?’ asked Silver.