The Jade Boy (23 page)

“We’ve failed completely,” Jem groaned, then sank into the melting snow, cradling his forehead in his hands. “We thought we’d defeated him – him and the rest of them, but he outwitted us. If Ann were here, she’d…”

He felt tears of anger, frustration and something much more painful prickle behind his eyes.

“At least we know where he’s taken her.”

Jem looked up. Tolly’s face was a mask of fury as he continued, “I’m sure he’s taken her to St Paul’s. Remember the model cathedral where you hid, Jem? That was Cazalon’s only demand, wasn’t it? He didn’t care what the others wanted as long as he got that. It has to be the key to all this. The old cathedral has to be where he’s taken her.”

Jem nodded, then clenched his fist as a terrible thought occurred to him. “Tolly, do you think he means to sacrifice Ann? Is that what he wanted all along – is she the sacrifice he needs to transform himself into a god, like the old druids in
The Prophecies of Albion
?”

Tolly spat into the snow. When he looked at Jem again his face was set like stone. “I don’t know about that. But one thing I do know: we can still stop him. The prophecy says so, remember? When the dark god rises in the Oak Grove only the moon child, the black traveller and the boy of jade can bind him.”

Jem scowled. “Well, now it looks as if only the black traveller and the boy of jade are left. We have to get into the city, Tolly.”

Gabriel crunched across the courtyard. When he saw the boys’ expressions, his face crumpled.

“We’ll find her, lads. I’ll not lose that girl again…” The showman’s voice cracked and he stopped and bit his lip.

Jem spoke in a rush. “It’s St Paul’s. We think… that is, Tolly thinks, it’s where Cazalon has taken her. And I know he’s right.”

Gabriel nodded slowly. “If that’s so, I bet he’s burning the city to cover his tracks. We have to find her before—” He broke off as a shout echoed across the courtyard.

“Gabriel! Here man!”

It was the king.

Gabriel squeezed Tolly’s shoulder, then turned, bowed and splashed quickly through puddles of
melted snow to King Charles, who was surrounded by a knot of ministers. Even at a distance, the boys could hear the king swearing.

“Damn and blast you all! I’ll not sit by while my city burns! Ah, Mr Jericho, walk with me.”

The king clapped the showman on the shoulder, took a flaming torch from the hand of one his ministers and guided Gabriel away from the rest of the courtiers.

Several minutes of urgent conversation followed and as the boys watched, Gabriel nodded twice and turned to point at his snow-battered player wagons drawn up in a line along the wall beyond the stage. Then the king clapped Gabriel’s shoulder again, strode back to the courtiers and issued some swift instructions. Jem caught the last words, “… and all to be ready before daybreak.”

Gabriel hurried back to the boys. His face was serious, but now his eyes gleamed with hope. “Get yourselves ready, lads,” he said. We’re going into the city – and the king is coming with us.”

It was early morning on Sunday, September 2nd, when a procession of painted player wagons rumbled
along a dusty road towards the city. Jem was not surprised to find that the snowstorm had only battered the garden terrace inside Whitehall Palace.

From his perch high up on the seat between Gabriel and Tolly, Jem saw that an inferno was already raging in London’s oldest and most crowded streets.

The sky above had turned a shade of grimy orange and the air was thick with the smell of burning wood as, one by one, the City’s jostling wooden houses were consumed by flames.

A small voice in his head whispered again and again.

“
Trying to shield your bastard son are you, Sarah – the shameful secret you tried to hide from the world?
” That was what the duke had said, wasn’t it?

In the confusion of the snow and Ann’s disappearance, Jem hadn’t had the chance to speak to his mother properly, but now, at least, a lot of things were clear to him.

His mother had never married his father – a man who was probably a soldier right here in the city, a soldier who might perish in the fire without Jem ever knowing him.

As they neared the western gate in the old city
wall, their carriage was surrounded by hundreds of people. All of them – from the smallest children to the most ancient, crooked women – were staggering beneath bundles of possessions. Some pushed loaded hand-barrows, or, if they were lucky, they dragged the reins of an unwilling horse or donkey with the contents of half a house packed precariously upon its back.

Frustrated by the slow progress of the wagons, Tolly pulled at his friend’s arm and tried to scramble down. “We’ll never get through this crowd, Jem. We should go on foot,” he yelled above the sound of the street.

“No you don’t, lad.” Gabriel grabbed his shirt and yanked him back. “You’ll be crushed by the mob down there. Look around you, Tolly. We’re about the only ones going into the city. You’d never make it through on foot.”

Tolly sank back onto the seat and glowered.

Around them the streets were almost impassable. It seemed that all of London was pushing in the opposite direction. A strong wind – the first for days – seemed to have risen from nowhere to blow them on their way.

“It is a judgement come upon us,” called a preacher
standing on a corner, clutching his hat to his head. “We are being punished for our wickedness.”

The rich had packed their possessions into coaches that blocked the streets. Fat city merchants and their wives leaned from carriage windows and swore at their drivers and the people around them. Jem saw one distraught couple left marooned in their coach at the entrance to their yard. Someone, perhaps their coachman, had cut the horses from the traces and made off with them.

London was melting.

“I never thought it would come to this,” said Gabriel, pulling hard on the reins to keep the bucking wagon horses steady. It was as if they could smell the fear from the crowd pushing around them.

“I thought we’d stopped the fire, but… Whoa there! Easy, girls.” Gabriel pulled hard again on the reins.

“Look!” Jem said, pointing.

Two masked horsemen, both wearing red and gold player costumes, were pushing back through the crowd ahead of them. One of the men drew his prancing white stallion parallel to Gabriel’s wagon and leaned closer.

“Well, Mr Jericho.” The voice from beneath the half
mask was a familiar one. “First you helped to unmask the traitors and now you are helping to mask me!” It was the king.

The king turned to the other disguised rider. “I know you don’t approve, Captain, but God’s teeth, man, I’m damned if I’m going to stand idle while my capital burns.”

The captain, who was wearing a long-snouted mask and a pair of chequered breeches, borrowed from Gabriel’s stores, snorted. “You put yourself at great risk, Sire. Not just from the flames but from the citizens. If you are recognised, who is to say that the Londoners will not blame you for the fire? Some may even think that you’ve come to see the city burn.”

Charles laughed grimly. “Let them say what they wish. But if any of them recognise me today, they will see a king willing to stand side by side with his subjects to fight for his capital.” He slapped Jericho’s wagon. “Is everything ready?”

The showman nodded. “Every one of my wagons is packed, Sire.”

He jerked his thumb to the contents stacked behind Jem and Tolly. Instead of the troupe’s usual jumbled possessions, the cart was now full of
giant leather buckets, ladders, pike staffs, axes and long metal poles with hooks on the end.

“Twelve wagons in all, Your Majesty, carrying your men, my players and the tools to fight the flames. We’re ready to help, Sire”

Charles grinned beneath his half mask. “I won’t forget your loyalty, Jericho. Come!”

The king wheeled his horses about and pushed through the surging crowd back to the head of the wagon train. Jem caught sight of a boyish grin on the king’s face as he called over his shoulder to the captain, “Almost like the old days, eh?”

Gabriel grunted and urged the horses forward. Their wagon clattered over the cobbles under the gate arch and immediately the streets narrowed as they entered the old City. Tolly gasped as they looked ahead, and Cleo wrapped her paws around her eyes as she huddled between the boys on the wooden seat.

“Keep Cleo with you at all times, lads. You won’t want to lose her in all this. If I’d known you were bringing her with you, I’d—”

But Gabriel’s complaint was cut short as they turned into a wider street and saw the glowing heart of the city ahead.

The sky was black. But this wasn’t the darkness
of night. Above the rooftops the air was filled with a billowing plume of inky smoke. It swayed and throbbed like a living thing and the leaping flames beneath its canopy made the underside of the cloud blush with pulses of violent orange and red.

Even from this distance the boys could feel the heat on their faces and the skin beneath their shirts began to prickle with sweat.

They could hear the fire, too. Above the cries of the people around them the air thrummed and crackled. The sound was like a constant muffled roar. Jem found that he had to keep swallowing hard to make his ears pop and his head clear.

The wagon horses were terrified now. They rolled their eyes and their ears lay flat against their heads.

Tolly gripped Jem’s arm. “I just heard her! Ann’s alive!”

“Where is she? Can you tell?”

Tolly shook his head. He covered his ears and bent forward for a moment. “She’s very faint… There’s darkness and fear… and… pain. Terrible pain.” He sat bolt upright. “Jem, we have to find her, now!”

Jem saw that his friend’s knuckles were clenched so tightly that the bones showed white through the taut dark skin.

“Mr Jericho, we must go faster!” Jem yelled angrily above the tumult.

He didn’t know what else to do. He felt utterly powerless. The showman hunched his shoulders and flicked the reins.

“Come on, ladies, be brave ponies for Jericho now.”

When they finally reached St Paul’s Cathedral they found that the narrow lanes and roads ahead were completely blocked by fleeing people. The fire was so close here that when ash fell upon their heads it stung their scalps and singed their hair.

The eastern side of the cathedral’s square tower glowed in the light of the flames that danced over the city streets. The flickering shadows cast by the spider-leg scaffolding that propped up the rickety old building made the ancient stones seem oddly alive.

It was as if the cathedral was breathing – and waiting.

The great west doors stood open and scores of people scurried up the steps carrying bundles of papers, books and goods into the gloomy depths.

Gabriel pulled up the wagon on the northern edge of the churchyard. He looked at the men swarming over the steps and shook his head. “I suppose it’s as safe a place as any in the city to store your valuables. Those walls are thick enough to withstand any fire. But tonight I think it’s the last place in London I’d want to place my trust or my belongings.”

Jem was reminded of the time, years ago now, when he’d poked an ants’ nest in the gardens at Pridhow House. He’d goaded the tiny creatures into a frenzy of activity until a steady stream of them marched from the nest, each of them carrying a precious egg to safety.

He stared at the jostling queue and shuddered. St Paul’s was the place he most feared. If Ann was here somewhere, Cazalon was too.

The roaring sound of the fire had turned to a death bellow of terrifying groans and juddering rumbles as six-storey buildings in the streets beyond collapsed into white-hot mounds, consumed by the flames.

As the old buildings fell, the strong east wind scooped glowing ash into a cloud of smouldering destruction, whirling it up into the air until it fell upon roofs and wooden gutters like raindrops from hell.

“Stay close, lads. I want to find Ann as much as you two, but I don’t hold with heroics.” Gabriel jumped heavily from the wagon and started to direct his players as they unloaded.

Moments later, Charles called him over to a patch of scrubby grass where street maps of the city were laid out on the ground. The men knelt to examine them.