Battle of the Sun (3 page)

Jack didn’t answer. He freed Crispis, and took up a saw beside him. William scowled and looked to Robert to back him up but Robert pretended not to see.

Crispis said, ‘Thank you, Jack.’ Then he said, ‘I wish I were a mouse that lived on peas.’

‘He says things like that,’ said Robert, tapping his head to show that Crispis of the bright and red and curly hair might have peas for brains.

But Jack was busy with his own thoughts. His mind was working feverishly, thinking of how to escape while the Magus was away.

There was a grating noise, and Jack looked round to see that the metal door in the metal wall had opened and the strangest creature in the world was coming in. He was a man;

that is, he was a woman . . . that is, he was a man and a woman, that is, he was . . . he was . . . WHAT . . . ? ? ?

THE CREATURE SAWN IN TWO

T
he Creature who came into the room was cleaved in half straight down the middle, so that one half of it had one eye and one eyebrow, one nostril, one ear, one arm, one leg, one foot, and the other half had just the same.

Well, nearly just the same, because as if the Creature did not astonish enough, one half of it was male and the other half of it was female. The female half had a bosom, or certainly half a bosom.

The Creature appeared to be made of flesh, like a human being, but what human being born is cleaved in half?

The Creature’s clothes were as odd as the Creature itself.

The male half wore a shirt with one sleeve, and a pair of breeches with one leg, and where the other sleeve and other leg should have been, was a cut-off and sewn-up side. The Creature had a sleeveless leather jerkin over his shirt, and his jerkin had not been altered in any way, so it looked as though half of it was unfilled with body, which was true.

Beneath the breeches, or perhaps the breech, as the garment must be called, having one leg and not two, was a stocking fastened at the knee, and a stout leather shoe on the bottom of the stocking.

The Creature had no beard, but wore in his single ear a single gold earring.

Its other half was just as bizarre. This lady wore half a skirt, half a chemise and half a hat on her half of the head.

At her waist, or that portion of herself which would have been a waist, dangled a great bunch of keys. She wore no earring, but her hand, more slender than the other, had a ring on each finger.

The expression on either half of the face was disagreeable.

‘Seven water rats came out of a drain,’ said the Male.

‘And none of ’em went back in again . . . ha ha ha!’ said the Female.

‘They must work harder!’ said the Male.

‘Or nothing from the larder!’ said the Female.

The Creature then hopped swiftly into the room, and instead of standing as one, divided itself into its two halves, each half hopping madly around the room in opposite directions, and beating the boys over the head. Jack hid himself behind the alembic, but he was soon discovered.

‘The Seventh is the one to watch!’

‘Master’s new catch!’

And the two stood balefully in front of Jack, swaying slightly to keep their balance.

‘What are you?’ said Jack.

‘He wants to know What Are You!’ said the Female, laughing, and as she laughed, Jack saw she had but one tooth in her head.

‘The Creature Sawn in Two!’ said the Male. ‘Yes we are, yes we are, yes we are.’

‘Who sawed you in two?’ asked Jack.

‘Master, that’s who. Made us in a jar then split us like we are.’

‘What’s your mother and father, then?’ asked Jack.

‘Ha, mother’s a bottle and father’s a fire,’ said the Female.

‘Like breeds like, desire breeds desire,’ said the Male.

Jack wondered what they were talking about, but he was only asking questions because he was so scared that he wanted time to steady himself so that he would know what to do next. The metal door was open, and he was half thinking of making a run for it. His eyes must have given him away, for in an instant, the Female was hopping off to close it with a clang, while the Male said, ‘Half a thought is worse than none.’

And the Female answered, ‘Least said, less done.’

Jack’s heart clanged shut like the door, but he found courage, and said, ‘Have you names?’

‘My name is Wedge. She who you see is Mistress Split.’

‘That’s it!’ cried she.

They smiled – that is, each end of their half-mouth rose towards each ear, like someone reaching for an apple on a branch too far away.

‘Pleased to meet you, Jackster, I’m sure I’m not,’ said Mistress Split.

‘Another silly boy locked away and forgot,’ said Wedge.

‘You won’t get away, not if you try all your life.’

‘And if you try, there’s always the knife!’ said Mistress Split, pulling from the folds of her skirt, where her other leg should have been, a knife the length of a sword. ‘There’s advantages to a one-legged being.’

Suddenly Wedge grabbed Jack by the neck and with powerful strength forced him to his knees.

‘But what advantage to a no-headed being? Eh, Jackster?’

With a laugh and a push Wedge threw Jack on to the floor. Mistress Split kicked him, and with a gasp and an ouch Jack saw that her shoe had an iron toe and an iron heel. He didn’t move.

The Creature(s) hopped away, yelling at the boys, and laughing their high maniacal laugh; then, as Jack stayed where he was, he heard the metal door open and shut, followed by the hopping noise of what he would come to learn as the iron shoe.

As soon as the Creature(s) had gone, Robert came over to Jack and helped him on to a barrel and gave him water to drink. Anselm fetched him a piece of bread and cheese. Jack realised he was starving.

‘Beware of them, Jack,’ said Robert. ‘They have no pity and great strength. The Magus made them before we came here.’

‘Yes,’ said Anselm. ‘He made them and they were one, like we are one, but they tried to disobey him and as a punishment he tore them in two. Now they are full of fear of him and hate of everyone.’

‘They will never show you any mercy or any kindness, none,’ said Robert.

‘When he made them, were they at once a male and a female?’ asked Jack, finishing his bread.

‘Yes, it was a great wonder,’ said Peter.

‘What is their purpose?’

‘To spy on us, and to keep us here. They know everything,’ said Robert.

‘What of the other servants? The ones in grey?’

‘All too afraid. They do not speak to us.’

‘We will escape,’ said Jack. ‘I promise you I will find a way.’

Robert shook his head sadly. ‘Before you came, we were seven, and the seventh tried to escape.’

‘What became of him?’

Robert stood up from the barrel and gestured at Jack to follow. He went towards the back of the laboratory and opened a door. The room beyond was very dark, except for a row of candles which seemed to be burning in front of some statues.

‘Are these statues from the Catholic churches or the monasteries?’ asked Jack, who knew that King Henry the Eighth, the king before Elizabeth had become queen, had made England a Protestant country and had all the statues taken out of all the Catholic churches. Some people had taken the statues and hidden them in their houses, some because they continued in secret to be Catholics, and some because they were sorry to see the old and colourful ways disappear, with their statues of saints and virgins. They were, after all, someone to talk to, and many an ordinary wife missed her quiet talks with a statue that she would swear seemed to speak.

Robert shook his head. ‘They are the ones who Disobeyed.’

‘Hear what he says?’ said William. ‘DISOBEYED!’

Jack ignored his stare, and went closer to look at the statues.

They were life-size, and life-like. Only a master carver could have made anything so like a human being.

‘They were human beings,’ said Robert.

And Jack noticed the sad expressions on their faces – very sad and very surprised. Two had their mouths a little open, as though they had been about to speak.

A boy, very like Jack in height and build, stood silent and upright at the end of the row. Jack put out his hand and touched the boy’s face. Yes, the boy was stone. Stone-hard and stone-cold. No sun could warm him now.

‘We light the candles here,’ said Peter, ‘so that they are not always in the dark.’

‘Are they alive inside the stone?’ said Jack. ‘Or are they all stone?’

‘No one can tell,’ said Robert. ‘And their lips are stone, so they cannot tell.’

Jack ran his finger over the boy’s lips, and felt something like infinite sadness, but whether it was his own sadness, or that of the stone boy, he could not tell.

Back inside the laboratory, the boys finished sawing and stacking the wood. They built up the furnace and drained and filled the liquids. They seemed cheerful at their work, for, as Robert explained, the laboratory was the only place in the Dark House that was warm, and it was the only place that was not grey. Here in the colour and warmth, and the light flowing down from the windows set in the roof, the boys were as free and as happy as they could be. There was water too, so they were not thirsty, and they were fed bread and cheese at noon and bread and broth at four o’clock, and they ate it sitting by the furnace, talking and joking and playing games. They hated the dark dormitory, and the silent fearful seven o’clock breakfasts, after the long tramp down and down the stairs, Wedge in front, Mistress Split behind. At seven every evening they were summoned for supper, the Magus sweeping through the refectory like a dark wind.

It was evening, and growing dark outside. Wedge came hopping in to the laboratory and herded the boys to their stations in the long refectory. There was a large round loaf on the table, and a cooked leg of mutton. Mistress Split pulled her sword from her skirt and brought it down, SLICE!

WHOOSH! SLICE! WHOOSH! Mutton and bread flew in the air and landed about the table, while the boys fetched their pieces and ate it, all the while listening to the mad rhymes and manic laughter of the Creature(s).

‘What rhymes with Loaf?’

‘Oaf!’

‘What rhymes with Mutton?’

‘Glutton!’

The two sat at the head of the table, so close together that they were nearly one. Each ate noisily, snatching food from the other, and cramming it into their half-mouths. Jack had once seen a snake with two heads that could only feed and not starve if one head was distracted by a twig or a nail while the other head ate. If not both heads spat and snarled so much that neither could swallow.

And Jack thought that perhaps the way to defeat these two that were one that were two, was to turn them against each other.

As he thought this the Magus entered the room, and Jack forced himself not to think at all.

At the end of the meal the boys were marched upstairs and locked into the stone room with the stone beds. The moon herself, usually so soft and kind, seemed made of stone that night, her light hard and held.

One by one the boys fell asleep, but Jack did not fall asleep. He lay awake, thinking of his mother and his little black dog, and he thought he heard, far off, his dog barking.

Somehow he would get away.

MOTHER MIDNIGHT

I
t was five minutes to the hour. Jack’s mother rose from her chair by the window and, taking the little leather bag, wrapped her cloak around her shoulders and quietly slipped out of the house and down on to the river.

The night was misty and cool. A swan white as a ghost glided by, silent as a ghost, and like a ghost, without visible means of movement.

Jack’s mother shivered in the air and hurried on. She knew where she was going.

As she made her way to London Bridge, it seemed as though the whole city was whispering to her. The wooden and plaster houses echoed and reverberated any noise, and the noise of the Thames and its water-wheels and conduits was like a giant whisper that jumped from house to house.

TSHSH, TSHSH, TSHSH. Jack’s mother listened, and behind the whispering she heard a horse’s hooves, far off, and the sound of a pail being emptied from an upper room.

At the bridge her old friend the Keeper of the Tides was leaning out of his poop-window that overlooked the river.

It was late, and he had to open the bridge gate to let her cross.

‘What news,’ he called to her, ‘that you are out so late?’

‘My Jack is missing!’ she said.

‘This is a strange time!’ he answered. ‘The river rises too high, the moon sinks too low. Something is going to happen!’

‘So I fear,’ said Anne, ‘but I must hurry on.’

She crossed London Bridge, and disappeared into a maze of narrow alleys around Southwark. There, all noise ended. She was in a silence as thick as cloth.

She walked, hearing nothing but her own footsteps, until she came to a small door with the sign of a pentangle above it on the lintel. She knocked three times.

After a few moments the door opened, and there in the shadows of the doorway stood an old woman with eyes like diamonds. There was a black cat draped across her shoulders, and the cat had eyes like red rubies.

What a figure the woman was – so small she could have lived in a box. So thin that she could have escaped from a hole in a box. Her mouth was as empty as an empty box, and her eyes were as full of secrets as a box that says DO NOT OPEN. She was not a human, not a fish, not a cat, not a dog, not a monster, not a devil, not a born thing, not anything. She was all manner of things. She was Mother Midnight.

Mother Midnight’s house was not like a house – it was like a den round the foot of a tree. Past the door there was a narrow passage that led to a room whose ceiling was so low that Jack’s mother had to stoop until she could sit down.

There were no windows, and the walls were hung with sacking to keep the wind out. A fire roared in the chimney – a fire of such a size that it lit the room without any further light, and heated the room like an oven. And yet there was not a stick of wood to be seen, and the fire had a red look to it, like the eyes of the cat. A kettle and a cauldron hung to the side of the fire.

In the centre of the room was an oak tree of vast girth, whose lower branches seemed to form the roof or ceiling of Mother Midnight’s den. The roots of the tree were in the ground and the tree was alive. Planks of wood had been fitted round the tree to form a table, and there were several chairs carved from fallen oak around this table. On the table was a shallow copper bowl filled with green water.

There was nothing else in the room but a straw mattress and a broom.

Jack’s mother wasted no time. She told of what had happened that day, and how Jack had not come home these twelve hours gone, and of her fears that Jack had been kidnapped.

Mother Midnight sat down, and passed her hands over the copper bowl. She seemed to fall into a kind of trance as the green water clouded over and swirled and steamed with strange colours and mists.

Then, like a vision in the water, was Jack’s face. His mother cried out, putting her hand to her mouth. She could see the stone bed and the stone window and the moon like a pale stone outside. And there was her beloved boy.

‘He is not harmed,’ said Mother Midnight.

‘Who has taken him?’

‘That I cannot tell you, for I am forbidden by a power stronger than mine own.’

‘Then the danger is great!’

‘His spirit is strong and clear,’ said Mother Midnight. ‘I can feel him strong and clear.’

‘Where is he?’

‘You must search for him and find him yourself.’

‘I have the magnet.’

Jack’s mother took the magnet out of its leather bag, and she had a glove belonging to Jack. She passed them over to Mother Midnight, who sat muttering over them and turning them in her old scarred hands.

‘Now it is charged,’ she said. ‘Now the magnet will be drawn to the boy as if to metal.’

‘Is it witchcraft that has him?’ asked Jack’s mother.

‘It is a dark power,’ said Mother Midnight, ‘and more you shall not know until more you shall know.’

The fire hissed and spat like a cat. The water in the bowl settled and became still and green once more.

Jack’s mother stood up, stooping under the ceiling of mud and branches, and leaving money on the table, she left without speaking. The magnet had a heat to it now, and she felt it pulling her towards Lambeth.

She didn’t notice a very small black dog following her.