Battle of the Sun (22 page)

J
ohn Dee had prepared his laboratory with great solemnity.

While he roared the mercury in the alembics, and consulted his books, Silver changed into her ordinary clothes, and left her tattered soggy hose and jerkin on the floor. Jack folded the clothes for her, silently, solemnly, then he said, ‘Silver?’ and from his pocket brought out the two drops of gold that had been made by his tears. ‘These are for you.’

Silver took them and she was sad. But John Dee was calling her to stand inside the pentangle. He sprayed magic potions into the air and raised a wind that blew the papers all around the room, but Silver stayed where she was.

‘You have nothing of this place with you?’ fussed John Dee. ‘Nothing – that is most important. Nothing that can hold you here or draw you back.’

Silver shook her head, and closed her fingers around the gold that Jack had given her. It was their secret.

The winds blew, the furnace burned.

Outside, the party went on. Now the courtyard was blazing with lanterns and everyone was dancing. And so no one noticed the tall elegant woman who came by boat and passed through the house like a shadow.

But Max noticed. And stood trying to guard the way to Roger Rover’s study.

‘The ball, Max,’ said the Abbess, quite gently, and although he did not want to do it, Max spat out the tiny ball of silver mercury he had been hiding in his mouth.

The Abbess picked it up, and regarded it. ‘This little lost Silver may come in useful one day,’ she said to herself and, putting it away, she entered the study.

‘I think you need my help,’ she said.

This time she made Jack build a fire right in the centre of the room, and it should have burned through the floorboards, but it didn’t, and it should have burned the rafters down, but it didn’t. And it should have burned everyone and everything to cinders, but . . .

‘Cold fire,’ said the Abbess. ‘The element that lies between worlds.’

‘Silver, you must not trust her!’ said Jack.

‘I have never lied to Silver,’ said the Abbess.

‘You left me to die on the Star Road!’ said Silver.

‘That is true,’ said the Abbess, ‘but I did not lie to you.’

‘Where is the Star Road?’ asked Jack.

‘It is when we meet again,’ said Silver, and the Abbess smiled her silent frightening smile.

‘When will we meet again?’ asked Jack, his throat a big lump of sadness, and Silver couldn’t answer, because she didn’t want him to see her cry. They both knelt down, the dog between them, and as they stroked him, Jack took Silver’s hand.

‘Are you going, truly?’ he said. And Silver said nothing, but hid her head in the soft black head of the soft black dog.

‘Have you any message from the future, that might benefit us?’ asked John Dee, and Silver stood up, brave as she always was, and wiped her eye before the tear fell.

‘John Dee!’ said Silver. ‘In 1666 London will be consumed by fire and St Paul’s will burn to the ground.’

‘I will be an old man by then,’ said Jack, ‘I will have children and grandchildren.’

Silver went forward, took his hand, pulled him up, and hugged him. ‘Goodbye, Jack.’

‘It is time,’ said the Abbess.

And Silver looked for the last time at the panelled walls of Roger Rover’s study, and at the great alchemist John Dee, and at Jack and his dog, but it was the Abbess who held her gaze.

Silver walked into the cold fire.

The flames ate her. Her body disappeared. She felt herself weightless, formless, absent. But she was still Silver. As she passed through the flaming curtain, she was still Silver – many Silvers, many lives of Silver, a piece of time and outside time. She was herself, but that was many. She was herself, but that was one.

* * *

In the study, the cold fire vanished as suddenly as it had come. There was no trace of flame except for the faintest scorch mark on the floor.

‘She is gone!’ said Jack.

‘She is elsewhere,’ said the Abbess.

Jack went upstairs to his mother’s chamber. On the table he saw a little bag with his name on it. Inside was the jewelled hand of the clock called the Timekeeper, and a note from Silver telling Jack to please take this to Tanglewreck, and hide it there.

I sleep in the room at the very top, the one with the bed in the shape of the swan. If you see a ginger cat – it’s mine.

The door opened, and in came Anne, Jack’s mother. She was worried about Crispis. Where was he?

‘He was last seen in the Spital Field,’ said Jack.

At that moment there was a terrific banging, like something trying to escape from a box – and it sounded like something trying to escape from a box because it was something trying to escape from a box; it was the Eyebat.

The sewing box that had been simple plain wood had turned golden and black, and a strange golden light shone round it, like a halo. Jack closed the doors and windows, took the poker, and flipped open the lid of the box.

On a rush of wings the Eyebat flew out, but it was no longer the glaring, staring Eyebat of before; it was a large golden and black butterfly, about the size of a soup plate, and with beautiful shimmering wings and gentle eyes. It fluttered impatiently at the window.

‘Crispis fed it the Dragon’s sunflower seed!’ said Jack, suddenly understanding what had happened. ‘If we follow it . . .’

And Jack opened the window and the Eyebat flew out, but it didn’t fly away, it hovered.

Jack and his mother ran out of the house, faithful Max at their heels. They ran down on to the river and followed the Eyebat all the way to Spital Field. It was dark now, and they could only manage to keep up because of the luminosity of the Eyebat’s wings.

At length they came to the field of sunflowers where Crispis had hidden to escape the guards.

But there were hundreds of sunflowers.

Jack and his mother combed the rows, calling, ‘
Crispis! Crispis!

’

At last, the Eyebat could be seen in the very middle of the field, hovering.

‘There he is!’ cried Jack.

And there he was, a very small sunflower, quite asleep.

‘Crispis . . .’ said Jack, shaking the boy.

Crispis opened his eyes.

‘It’s me, Jack, and it’s safe, and we’ve come to take you home.’

‘I haven’t got a home,’ said Crispis. ‘This is my home, among the sunflowers, who don’t frighten me.’

‘There is nothing to be frightened of,’ said Jack’s mother.

‘You said that before,’ said Crispis, ‘and look what happened!’

‘Well, there’s nothing to be frightened of now,’ said Jack. ‘The Magus has been defeated.’

‘I’m going to stay here,’ said Crispis, ‘I like it here. The other sunflowers are very kind to me, and at night they bend over me to keep me warm.’

‘You’re a boy, not a sunflower,’ said Jack.

‘I’d rather be a sunflower,’ said Crispis.

All of a sudden Max started barking, barking, barking. He had heard someone; that someone was Wedge.

‘Jackster!’ shouted Wedge. ‘I know you’re in there!’

Jack pushed his way through the rows of sunflowers and there was Wedge, accusingly holding a coconut.

‘This ain’t the Cinnabar Egg!’ said Wedge.

‘Very true,’ answered Jack.

‘What is it then?’ asked Wedge.

‘It is a coconut,’ said Jack, ‘according to the Dragon.’

‘Hundreds of ’em!’ said Wedge. ‘This way.’

And Jack followed Wedge back round the Priory, and there, growing in the ground, was the tallest coconut palm you ever saw and covered in coconuts.

Jack took one and split it in half and showed Wedge how to drink the milk and eat the lovely white insides. Wedge was impressed by the splitting in half. ‘My kind of Edible,’ he said, ‘and I’m not sharing with HER. Halves all halves but mine all mine!’

‘If I were you,’ said Jack, ‘I’d start selling these. Very rare in London. The only ones. You could make your fortune.’

‘Could I?’ said Wedge, who was unpleasant but realistic, and knew that a coconut on its own would never make him Master of the Universe, but lots of them could make him rich. ‘Wedge’s Rare Coconuts . . .’

And Jack left him there, counting them.

Jack made his way back to his mother, who was sitting quietly with Crispis. But try as they might they could not persuade him to go with them, and so every day after that for a long time, Anne walked down to the sunflower field, and sat in the middle with the Eyebat hovering, and she talked to Crispis, and told him stories, and so reminded him that he was a boy, and that sometimes, even when you wished you were a sunflower, it was good to have someone to talk to.

And one day Crispis stretched out his hand, which had almost become a shoot of the sunflower. And the day after, he moved his legs, which had almost fused into a stem. And the day after that, he took Anne’s hand, and walked beside her out of the field of sunflowers.

And Crispis came home.

Silver found herself back in the library at Tanglewreck, right by the fireplace. It was night, and the front door was wide open and the night rain was sweeping in. She went to the door and looked out down the bedraggled wind-beaten rain-heavy garden.

‘Jack?’ she said, but no one was there.

She looked at the long case-clock ticking in the hall, and she saw that only five minutes had passed since she had come downstairs, woken by the banging at the door, and the voice calling her.

No time has passed
, she thought to herself,
because I have been outside of time
.

She closed the thick oak front door, and went back upstairs through the sleeping house. The big ginger cat was fast asleep on her bed.

A dream
, she thought,
a dream
, though she knew that was not true and it is what people tell themselves when anything happens that can’t be explained in the usual way.

She started to get undressed. In her pocket were two gold teardrops.

And Jack and his mother had a fine house on the River Thames and a little farm nearby in Bermondsey. And Jack became apprentice to John Dee, and began to learn what it is to be master of oneself.

‘That is the true gold,’ said John Dee, ‘and the hardest to attain. The inner gold of which we speak cannot be bought and sold or traded in the market place. It is yours and yours alone. And the sun is its emblem. And the battle is fought and lost every day. And sometimes, it is won.’

* * *

And Jack took a horse that winter when the snow was falling on the Thames, and he rode wild and long to Cheshire, and through the remote places, and where he had owls and starlings for company, and rabbits and foxes, but nothing of human kind.

And at last he came to the great house called Tanglewreck, and he went into the wide hall, and up the oak staircase, until he came to a small room right under the eaves that no one used. There was a bed there in the shape of a swan.

This is the place
, he thought,
this is where Silver is, and now we are in the same place and the only thing that separates us is time
.

And Jack thought about what Silver had told him of her world; how people could fly, and how they could travel great distances so quickly, but none of them could travel through time – at least not on purpose.

Jack sat on the bed. In four hundred years he could see her again, if he just sat here for four hundred years, Silver would come.

‘I miss you,’ he said, out loud, to no one.

It was nearly dusk, for the days are short in winter. Outside the ground was white. Jack got up and looked out of the window. The setting sun was rich and red, and for a moment everything – the trees, the sundial, the lawns, the hedges – burned red too, their white mantles reflecting the light.

‘Jack . . .’

He knew that voice. He turned quickly back into the room. There was no one there, but a ginger cat had come in and fallen asleep on the bed.