History Keepers 1: The Storm Begins (2 page)

In truth, the adventurer in Jake was intrigued: by this eccentric man, by the secret door, by the tantalizing staircase. But he continued to stand his ground.

‘I don’t understand, what
is
below?’

‘The bureau is below. The
bureau
!’ snapped Jupitus. ‘If you come, you’ll see!’ His eyes seared into Jake’s. ‘This is a matter of life and death, do you understand? Life and death.’

There was something about his solemn, determined manner that was compelling. He held open the door for the boy.

‘You can leave any time you like, but I can guarantee it will be the last thing you want to do.’

Jake looked into the chamber and down the staircase. He could contain his curiosity no longer. ‘I need my head examined,’ he muttered as he stepped inside. The door closed behind them both with a resonant thud. The wind whistled down the spiral staircase.

‘Now follow me,’ said Jupitus softly, and he started to descend.

2 T
HE
L
ONDON
B
UREAU

JUPITUS GLIDED DOWN
the stairs, his footsteps echoing around the space. Jake followed. The descent was lit at intervals by flickering gas lamps that illuminated a series of ancient murals. Now faded and crumbling, the paintings showed scenes from all the great civilizations of history: from Egypt to Assyria to ancient Athens; from Persia to Rome to Byzantium; from ancient India to the Ottomans to medieval Europe. Jake was transfixed by the pictures of kings and heroes, of epic processions, battles and voyages.

‘They were painted by Rembrandt,’ Jupitus explained in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘when the London bureau moved here in 1667. Have you heard of Rembrandt?’

‘Yes, I think so …’ said Jake tentatively.

Jupitus looked round at him with his haughty eyes.

‘I mean, I like paintings a lot,’ Jake found himself explaining. ‘Old paintings, where you can imagine how they used to live.’

He was surprised to find himself saying this. The truth was, he
did
love old paintings, but he was used to keeping it a secret: he felt that most of his friends at school – and all his enemies – lacked a certain type of imagination. Jake, on the other hand, often slipped off to the Dulwich Picture Gallery on his own, got up close to the paintings, half closed his eyes and imagined he was there, in another era. Often a sour-faced guard would tell him to stand back. He would wait until they had gone before immersing himself once again.

They arrived at the bottom of the stairs. Ahead was a single sturdy door. In the centre of this, engraved in brass, was the same design that Jake had seen in the car: the hourglass with two planets flying around it. It looked ancient, but it also reminded Jake of a diagram he had studied in physics: electrons revolving around the nucleus of an atom.

Jupitus looked at Jake solemnly. ‘Not many people are brought to this door. And those who are
find
their lives changed incontrovertibly. Just a warning.’

Jake involuntarily swallowed a gulp of air.

Jupitus threw open the door and the two of them stepped inside.

‘I will be with you presently. In the meantime, sit here out of the way.’ Jupitus indicated a chair by the door and strode across the room and into an office. ‘We have fifty minutes, everyone!’ he announced, then slammed the door shut behind him.

Jake’s eyes lit up in wonder.

The room had something of the look and dimensions of a great old library. Not a public one, such as Jake’s local library in Greenwich, but one you could only visit by special invitation to look at ancient, precious books. It was two storeys high, with spiral staircases on each side leading up to a mezzanine floor packed haphazardly with shelf after shelf of ancient tomes. High at the top, above the bookcases, were mullioned skylights that rattled and whistled in the storm.

Along the entire length of the room was a great wooden table, lit by flickering green lamps. Old maps, charts, manuscripts, plans and diagrams were spread over it. At intervals amongst these ancient
artefacts
– and perhaps the most eye-catching feature of all – stood a series of globes.

The room was humming with activity. There were several men, dressed in what looked like sailors’ uniforms, quickly but carefully packing items into wooden crates.

Ignoring Jupitus’s instruction to sit, Jake, his school bag still over his shoulder, cautiously stepped over to the long wooden table and examined one of the globes. It was as old as anything he had ever seen. The names of the countries were handwritten in old-fashioned letters. Jake leaned right over to look more closely. He found Britain, a jewel in the North Sea. Below it, Spain covered a vast area nearly the size of Asia. In the centre of Spain was a faded illustration of an imperious-looking king. America contained nothing but drawings of forests and mountains. Jake looked closer still. At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, amongst the faint images of galleons and dolphins, was a date, only just discernible: 1493.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir …’ One of the uniformed men had appeared with a crate. Jake stepped to one side and the man lifted the great old globe off the table and placed it carefully in the
crate
. Then he arranged a bed of straw around it, put the lid into position and hammered it shut with nails.

Jake watched as the man carried the crate towards a large open doorway at the opposite end of the room. He loaded it onto a trolley with a number of other crates. Then the trolley was pulled through the doorway into a corridor beyond.

Jake’s eye was caught by something else. In a panelled partition, a boy sat working at a desk. He had rosy cheeks, unruly brown hair and thick spectacles that had been repaired with tape. Although he was Jake’s age, he was dressed in a suit of brown check that looked like something an eccentric professor might wear. On his shoulder, sitting very upright, was a parrot. The bird’s plumage of soft feathers was a kaleidoscope of colours, from orange to crimson to deep turquoise-blue.

The boy was typing quickly on an instrument that looked a little like a typewriter, though there were fewer keys, and in place of letters there were odd symbols. Sticking up out of the back of the apparatus like an aerial was a crystalline rod that fizzed and buzzed with electrical charges as each key was struck. After typing for a while, the boy quickly
wound
a lever at the side of the machine, then carried on again.

‘Excuse me. You’re blocking my light,’ he told Jake without taking his eyes off the job. ‘If this isn’t sent within the next five minutes, I’ll be done for.’

As Jake moved round to the other side of the desk, the boy looked up and scrutinized him; then he pushed his spectacles up his nose and returned to his work.

On the table next to the typewriter there was a plate of delicious-looking tarts. The boy reached out his hand, took one and popped it into his mouth. Jake’s stomach was rumbling: he hadn’t eaten since lunch time.

‘Have one if you must.’ The curly-haired boy could obviously sense Jake’s hunger. ‘They’re pear and cinnamon. The pastry is as light as air.’

Jake looked at him quizzically; he had a correct, old-fashioned voice, like the people who read the news on serious radio stations. Jake took one of the tarts, and the multi-coloured bird watched him carefully as he bit into it.

‘Is he friendly?’ Jake asked, reaching out his hand to allow the bird to sniff it.

The parrot squawked like a banshee, puffed up
his
feathers and flapped his wings. Jake jumped back in alarm.

‘Mr Drake doesn’t take kindly to strangers!’ his owner pointed out. ‘He was a rescue parrot, from Mustique. If I were you, I would follow Mr Cole’s advice and take a seat.’

The boy carried on typing and muttering to himself as Jake retreated to the chair by the door. Mr Drake, the parrot, watched him very carefully as he did so.

Jake’s thoughts turned to the events of the week. Up until an hour ago they had seemed in no way out of the ordinary …

Jake Djones lived in a small semi-detached house in an ordinary street in an unassuming part of South London. The house had three small bedrooms, one bathroom and an unfinished conservatory. There was a study that Jake’s father amusingly called ‘the communications room’; it was a dumping ground for old computers and a jungle of knotted cables. Jake’s parents, Alan and Miriam, ran a bathroom shop on the high street. At the weekends Miriam would invent inedible dishes and Alan would attempt DIY. All would invariably end in disaster:
lopsided
soufflés, burned sauces, burst pipes and unfinished conservatories.

Jake’s school was a fifteen-minute walk across Greenwich Park. It was neither a particularly bad nor a particularly good school. There was a handful of interesting teachers and a smattering of vindictive ones. Jake was awful at maths, good at geography and excellent at basketball. He enthusiastically auditioned for every school play, but rarely made it beyond the chorus. He was intrigued by history; by the type of powerful, mysterious people in the murals he had just seen – rulers and emperors – but sadly his history teacher was
not
one of the interesting ones.

Jake had last seen his parents four days earlier. They had left him a message to pass by the shop on his way home from school. When Jake had got there, it had been deserted. He’d waited.

The bathroom shop was not a success. Jake often wondered how the business continued at all. His parents had started it up just after he was born and had struggled ever since. As one of the many unsatisfied customers had pointed out, ‘They just have no instinct for ceramic!’

Jake tended to agree. Miriam manned the store
in
a whirl of confusion, always losing papers and receipts, and sometimes entire bathroom suites. Alan worked mostly on site, overseeing the inevitable chaos of an installation. He was a big man, well-built and over six feet tall, and Jake always felt he just didn’t fit into neat suburban bathrooms. Not just on account of his size, but also of his larger-than-life personality.

As he’d sat, waiting, two figures had rushed into the showroom.

‘There you are, darling,’ Miriam had puffed, trying to organize her cascades of dishevelled dark hair. She was an attractive woman with an air of voluptuous warmth and an olive complexion like Jake’s. She had big eyes, long, curling lashes and a honey-coloured beauty spot just above the corner of her mouth. Alan was rugged and fair-skinned, with thick blond hair and the shadow of a beard. He looked as if he might give a mischievous grin at any moment.

‘Disaster with Dolores Devises. Her overflow pipes weren’t fitted properly,’ Miriam had sighed with a glance towards Alan. ‘I had to give her her money back.’

‘I could spend all year fitting them,’ Alan had
replied
, ‘but Dolores Devises will never be happy with her overflow pipes!’

There’d been a pause, as there always was – then Alan and Miriam had started giggling. They both had an infectious sense of humour. Anything could set them off, but usually it was a certain type of person: a supercilious bank manager or a pompous customer like Dolores Devises. They would rather laugh at things than let events get them down.

Miriam had turned to Jake. ‘Now, we have something to tell you.’ She’d attempted to keep things upbeat. ‘We have to pop off for a few days.’

Jake had felt a pang of disappointment. Miriam had tried to carry on cheerfully. ‘It’s my fault – got the dates mixed up. Trade event in Birmingham. Boring beyond belief, but we need to – what was it the accountant said? –
broaden our range of merchandise
.’

‘Granite and sandstone are very in at the moment,’ Alan had added sheepishly.

‘We’re leaving today – straight from here.’ Miriam had indicated a packed red suitcase behind the counter. ‘Rose is going to stay while we’re gone. Is that all right, darling?’ she’d asked softly.

Jake had tried to nod, but it came out more like
a
shrug. His parents had started going to these trade shows three years ago – just once annually to begin with, but this year they had already disappeared twice, on both occasions announcing their departure at the last minute.

‘We’ll be back by Friday afternoon!’ Miriam had smiled, running her hands through Jake’s thick curls. ‘And you’ll have our undivided attention then.’

‘We have surprises planned,’ Alan had chipped in. ‘Big ones!’

Miriam had thrown her arms around her son and squeezed him tight. ‘We do love you so much!’

Jake had let himself be squeezed for a short while before pulling away. He had just been straightening his school blazer when his father had also grabbed him in a bear hug.

‘Look after yourself, son,’ he’d told him, sounding like a father in a Hollywood film.

Jake had extricated himself. ‘Thanks. Have a good time anyway,’ he’d mumbled without looking at them. He’d then left the shop and headed into the windy street.

Jake had sulked all the way across Greenwich Park, and had sat on a bench until it started to get
dark
. He’d hated not saying goodbye to his parents properly, but he’d wanted to punish them.

It was not until an hour later that he’d had a change of heart. In an instant he’d forgiven them and felt a pressing need to get back before they left. He’d rushed up the high street, his heart pounding.

He’d arrived too late. The shop had been closed, the lights extinguished. The red suitcase had gone.

As promised, Alan’s sister, Rose, had arrived that evening. She was one of Jake’s favourite people – eccentric, outspoken and very entertaining. She always wore a mass of clanking bangles from her travels around the world. She was the type of person who happily talked to strangers, and she was always saying to Jake, ‘Life’s short, so have a blast!’

It had been fun with her looking after him, but this afternoon, straight after his last class, Jake had flown down the steps of his school. Friday had been the agreed time for his parents’ return and he’d wanted to get home as fast as he could. Once again he’d hurried across Greenwich Park. As the whole panorama of London had opened up before him, he had seen the great black clouds approaching, warlike, from the horizon.