by Dan Davis
Archer wiped the sea water out of his eyes and shook his head. Writer was there, helping him to his feet.
‘Stop the wind,’ she was saying. ‘It’s too much. It’s too strong. What are you doing?’
Archer was confused. ‘I’m not doing it,’ he said, holding his head. The boat then got smashed by a wave from the side, spinning the boat round to face the land and he fell to his knees into the cold water in the bottom.
‘It is not Archer, the storm is bigger than I thought,’ Cedd cried from the back of the boat where he was frantically pulling a rope hand over hand. Lightning flashed. ‘Got to get the sail down.’ Thunder crashed, shattering the air.
‘What’s happening?’ Archer said, pulling himself up again, his ears full of water and thunder. He looked beyond Cedd out past the heaving brown sea and white-topped waves at a black mass of cloud and rain bearing down on them. He felt confused. Tired.
‘The storm,’ Cedd shouted, looking afraid. ‘It is blowing us onto the land.’
Black Waves Crashing
‘Archer, you have to help,’ Writer shouted at him but he looked at her blankly. She noticed a watery stream of blood pour from beneath his soaking blonde hair. ‘You’re hurt,’ she said, holding on to his narrow shoulders.
‘I’m fine,’ Archer said but his eyes were unfocused and he was clinging to her arms for dear life.
‘Maerwynn,’ Cedd called to her, tying off a rope. ‘Get them to bailing out or we shall be sunk even before we are dashed on the shore. Bailers hooked to the forebench.’ The sail was half-lowered but the Scinnlac was rolling and pitching on the waves, water flooding in over the sides.
‘He’s hurt,’ she said, holding Archer up.
‘I’ll take him,’ Cedd replied, wading through the water in the bottom of the boat toward Archer. ‘Get bailing.’
‘Weaver,’ Writer said as she splashed over to the girl who was crouched and shivering up to her chest in freezing sea water in the bottom of the boat. Weaver did not look up. Writer shook her shoulder, hard. ‘Weaver, we need you to bail out the water or we are going to sink,’ she shouted in the girl’s ear.
Weaver looked up; her teeth chattering and her soaking skin a grey-green. ‘I’m out-t-t-t of m-m-m-my element,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Writer said, not without sympathy. ‘But you must help bail out this boat or we shall all be in my element. Permanently.’
They struggled to the prow where there were two buckets that had long handles. Lightning flashed in the clouds above.
‘Keep one hand on the boat at all times,’ Writer shouted at Weaver over the thunder. ‘And use the other to throw out all the water.’
It seemed impossible that they could do it with two the little buckets as the Scinnlac took in spray from the wave tops and water from below as every wave impact flexed the planks apart.
And then it started to rain. It fell heavily in great sheets, washing over them like a blanket, over and over.
‘Keep bailing,’ Writer shouted. Cedd was helping Archer to the back of the boat where the tiller was. She could not hear over the wind and rain what Cedd was saying to him. Archer still looked groggy when a wave crashed into them, sloshing the water about around her and knocking Archer down again. She saw Cedd slap him in the face. Archer looked angry. Like his old self again. Cedd was shouting, pointing at the sail, pointing off to the landward where the strip of brown beach was coming up fast.
Writer and Weaver were bailing out as fast as they could from before the mast over the side when Writer felt the wind direction change. She glanced back to see Archer standing up at the stern with one hand on the tiller, looking up at the sky through the sheets of rain. Cedd was pulling on ropes again until the half-sail filled and snapped taught. The boat veered so that instead of heading towards the beach they were once again heading southward down the coast.
But that meant the waves were now coming from the side, lifting the boat up, pushing it over and spraying water into the boat.
‘We’re getting swamped again,’ Weaver shouted at her.
‘I know,’ she shouted back. If only the waves were travelling bow to stern. ‘Archer! Face the waves.’
‘Won’t turn,’ he shouted back, angry and bleeding and heaving his skinny body against the tiller. ‘Waves too strong.’
The boat rolled dangerously. It was dark. Hard to see. Lightning and thunder crashed about them. Cedd was gesturing furiously at the waves, water streaming from his hat. She understood what he wanted her to do.
The fear was overwhelming and she knew now to welcome that fear, allow it to wash over her and through her. She waded forward to the prow of the Scinnlac and wedged her feet and knees fast between bench and the hull. The waves were a chain of peaks and troughs flowing in sequence one after another in every direction. She felt the waves nearer to the land moving slower but growing taller than those further out to sea. As the boat was still being pushed landward, the waves were getting taller and taller. The next one could swamp them completely.
They flowed up and flowed up and down and she felt the next wave coming in and with her power she pushed the peak of the wave down and out sideways. The wave hit the Scinnlac and they rose up again, the water in the boat sloshing back and forth as they fell back into the trough between the waves. Her awareness reached out further away from the boat and she felt the next wave that was heading for them so she pushed the strength of the wave outward along its length so that as it reached the boat they barely moved upwards. The wind clutching at the scrap of sail above was pushing the boat forward, and they began moving faster and faster into more waves and before the boat reached each one she smoothed it out, lowered it, redirected its force. And so the boat ploughed in a line through almost perfectly smooth seas while around them to either sides the waves were rushing by, frothing white and wild and lightning cracked and thundered in the gloom.
‘Writer,’ Weaver called out. ‘Why am I bailing this water out by hand?’
Writer flung every drop of water out of the boat back into the sea, up and over she sent it to leeward in three spiralling streams. The boat was immediately lighter and rode higher upon the sea, moving faster.
With Archer directing the wind into the sail from the tiller and her keeping the sea calm and flattened beneath their prow they began to all-but fly across the surface, skimming like a stone, the wind whipping her sodden strands of hair over her face and salty spray ran down her skin like a thousand tiny rivers. A small break in the cloud appeared above and for a moment she was dazzled by the brightness of the sun above the storm. She smiled back at Archer and he grinned, his eyes glowing like lightning.
After some time and many miles, the storm blew right over them heading inland across the wide beaches and saltmarsh with the occasional rumble of thunder. Behind the squall was calm weather and the waves were no longer flecked with white. The sky brightened into a light grey. The boat slowed. Archer sat down by the tiller next to Cedd and hung his head. With the seas calm again, Writer too slumped down on a bench in the middle of the boat. Weaver, looking pale and exhausted, plonked herself next to her. Writer’s head was swimming. Despite being thoroughly soaked to the bone, her mouth felt dry as paper. She had never been so exhausted. Using her power was taxing indeed.
At least, Cedd told them, they were just about finished with the sea. The sun was low in the sky when he turned the Scinnlac west towards it, following the coast as the beaches became a low, marshy headland and a wide river estuary beyond.
‘This is the River Colne,’ Cedd called as they bobbed along down it. ‘It shall take us right in to Coalschester.’ It was a very wide estuary and the land on the far side was just a smudge on the horizon. ‘We shall sail up on tail of the tide.’
‘Will we reach Coalschester before nightfall?’ Writer asked. She did not know how much longer she could keep her eyes open.
‘Before we get half way there the tide shall turn and we would be carried back down river. We shall have to stop for t
he night and get to Coalschester tomorrow.’
‘But Writer can turn the tide back,’ Weaver said. ‘And Archer can blow us up the river all the way there.’
‘Your friends have exhausted their strength,’ Cedd said to her.
Writer wanted to object but it hurt to even keep her eyes open and speaking at all seemed ambitious. The boat bobbed gently as it drifted upriver on the tide. She wrapped her sodden cloak about herself and closed her eyes for the just the briefest of moments.
‘Wake up, Writer,’ Archer was saying softly, shaking her shoulder. ‘We’re here.’
The boat was docked. It was night. There was lamplight and quiet voices, faint music and the smell of food cooking. Her stomach growled.
Archer stood before her in the boat, smiling. She smiled back at him. ‘Where are we?’ she said.
‘A village called Wyvern’s Hill,’ Cedd said from up on the dockside. Weaver was yawning next to him. ‘The last village on the Colne before Coalschester.’
She allowed Archer to help her to her feet and they stepped up and onto the dock. ‘We’re staying here for the night?’ she said, remembering they had been discussing it before she had fallen asleep.
‘We have come for good food, bad drink and lumpy old beds.’ He gestured at a tavern right on the dockside. The faded sign hanging on the outside said The Wyvern’s Hole and there was an awful painting of a dragon just about discernible on it. ‘Also I know a man here who will help us find the dragon. And your friend, of course.’
‘Good,’ Archer said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Just give me some bread and some water and get me a bed,’ Weaver muttered.
‘I’d rather skip the food and get right to bed,’ Writer said, rubbing her eyes.
‘Remember, my young friends, that you are in the world now,’ Cedd said, looking at each of them in turn. He locked eyes with Writer ‘You are outside the Vale. This is England. This is about more than saving your friend. There is a war ripping this country to pieces and all of you are part of it. Perhaps, even, an important part. This is about good and evil. Right and wrong. And you must choose the right side.’
The Wyvern’s Hole
The inn was warm and busy and nobody paid them any mind, despite being strangers in unusual garb. While they slurped hot soup and Writer slept with her face on the table, a man called Winstanley sat down on the bench next to Cedd, opposite Archer. The man was not very old but he looked like he’d seen a lot of life. The clothes he wore were threadbare but they and the man they clothed were scrubbed clean. He seemed somewhat nervous but Archer thought he had an honest, open face. As he sat down Archer saw that, like Cedd, he too wore a thin silver chain about his neck with a stylised fish symbol dangling from it at his throat. The man wore a green cap with a sprig of rosemary stuck in it. Cedd had introduced everyone, calling Winstanley his friend and ally.
‘Winstanley knows Coalschester like the back of his hand,’ Cedd said to them. ‘His agents will know of your friend.’ And Cedd explained to him what had happened to Keeper and Burp.
Archer looked between Winstanley and Cedd. ‘Are you an alchemist like him?’ he asked.
Winstanley looked alarmed. ‘Talk like that could get us killed.’
‘Most everybody in this tavern hates alchemists enough to back Cromwell in a war with them,’ Cedd said, glancing about them.
‘Why?’ Archer asked, tired and totally confused. ‘What’s going on, then? Did Cromwell order the soldiers to take Keeper or was it the Alchemists’ Guild?’
‘They’re almost all gone,’ Cedd said. ‘Other than the useful ones that Cromwell has locked in the Tower of London and the dregs that Charles retains.’
‘How many were there?’ Weaver asked.
‘Thousands, until the war started,’ Winstanley said. ‘At least one alchemist from the Alchemist’s Guild in every town and big village. Most of them just bumbling idiots. Some were good, many bad. The leader of them all was the Lord High Alchemist Dee. King Charlie himself was nought but Dee’s lapdog. But then General Cromwell has smashed the Alchemists’ Guild and their puppet king.’
‘The King and his alchemists are not yet defeated,’ Cedd said. ‘While Cromwell sits in London like a spider in his web, King Charles and his Lord High Alchemist have been raising fresh forces in Scotland, Ireland and Wales and even further afield. The war shall erupt again at any time.’
‘And so Cromwell has his agents looking everywhere for agents of the enemy,’ Winstanley says. ‘He sees Alchemists and Royalists hiding under every rock and bush. And so Cromwell’s agents are scouring England looking for anything that may help him tip the scales of war in his own favour. So I suspect your friend and the beast are prisoners of war. And as such they will be taken to the gaol of Coalschester Castle.’
‘Castle?’ Archer asked.
‘Like Bede’s Tower,’ Cedd replied. ‘Only ten times as big, surrounded by banks and ditches and protected by dozens of cannons and hundreds of soldiers.’
‘Oh,’ Archer said, heart sinking.
‘Therefore, we leave for Coalschester on the morning tide,’ Cedd said. ‘You see, if we hurry and if we are very lucky we may just be able to reach Keeper and the dragon before they reach the castle and capture them back from their captors. It is, I fear, a slim chance but still the course of action that is most likely to succeed. So, time to get to sleep.’
It was a cold but very clear morning, the sky getting lighter by the minute but there were still a few stars dotting the dark blue sky in the west. West was the way they were going, heading up the River Colne on the morning tide. Cedd swore that the water in the river fell so far at low tide that you could wade across the narrow strip of river.
Winstanley had left them the night before, riding hard for Coalschester to find out for sure where Keeper had been taken, for Winstanley had a secret way in known to him alone. If he was already in the castle then he and Cedd seemed doubtful that any rescue could be attempted. It would be better if Keeper and Burp were being held somewhere else, even for a day or two before being locked in the castle dungeon. If that was the case then they just may have a chance. Speed was critical and they had to move as quickly as they could.
Archer looked forward beyond the Scinnlac’s mast and gently flapping sail and saw a column of smoke catching the first rays of the morning sun behind.
‘I think there’s one of those... steamships,’ Writer said. ‘Like we saw yesterday out in the sea.’
Archer stood up on the other side of the sail, holding on to the mast. ‘It’s coming right for us.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Cedd. He pushed the tiller over and the boat angled its way toward the left bank. The steamship was bearing down towards them from the darkness of the dawn. It was as tall and as big as a house and an iron chimney spewing smoke from the back. The huge things like wagon wheels on the sides churning through the water. It was making a strange rhythmic sound, like the heartbeat of some kind of giant beast. It was wide, too, filling the middle of the river and splashing water up and out to either side from the strange wheels at the sides.
The steamship ploughed right by them, the bow waves pushing water out to either side.
‘Watch out, old man,’ the men on the steamship shouted down as it splashed past beside them, the great wheels turning and thrusting the ship through the river. The chimney was spewing forth stinking black smoke. Archer threw his arm across his mouth and nose in a vain attempt to block the acrid stench. It was noisy, that terrible rhythmic din. Yet soon it was past.
‘Infernal machines,’ Cedd said, his mouth twisted in disgust. ‘Now, onward to Coalschester. Can you young people see over the tops of those trees there? Upon the hill.’
There was a large grove of trees in the bend of the river ahead. Archer noticed now that above the tallest of them, in the distance beyond, was something man made. The top shimmered in metallic green reflecting the suns morning rays.
‘An alchemist’s tower?’ Archer said.
&
nbsp; ‘It was until recently the tower of a very brilliant young alchemist named Gilbert. But the Parliamentarians kicked him out and he’s now locked up in London. Now they have given the tower to a charlatan named Lilly.’
‘What’s a charlatan?’ Writer asked.
‘A fake,’ Cedd said. ‘A trickster.’
‘Just like an alchemist, then,’ Weaver said, laughing.
‘No,’ Cedd said, with a look so piercing that Weaver stopped laughing. ‘No, among other things, Lilly claims to read people’s futures through the motions of the stars. Utterly ludicrous, of course. Simply exploiting the fears of the ignorant for selfish financial gain.’
‘Sounds like an alchemist to me,’ Weaver muttered under her breath.
‘We shall dock at the Hythe,’ Cedd said, ignoring that one. ‘And walk up into the city.’
The River Colne was getting busy with boats now the sun was fully up and they were nearing Coalschester. The river got too narrow and shallow to be navigable and the docks area was known as the Hythe.
The city above was vast. There were so many houses and the noise was incredible and smells overwhelming. It stank of a thick, choking smoke.
‘How many people live here?’ she asked Cedd.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ Cedd said. ‘Perhaps forty thousand or eighty thousand, I cannot keep up.’
‘It must be the biggest city in England,’ Writer said, sighing.
‘London, not seventy miles to the southwest, holds perhaps a million people.’
Archer didn’t know how many a million was but he whistled as if he was impressed.
Cedd kept talking to Writer while they moored the Scinnlac to the dock. No one paid them any attention, people were coming and going and shouting and then he saw that man Winstanley standing on the dockside, waving.
‘What are you doing, man?’ Cedd hissed at him when he jumped into the boat. ‘We should not be seen in public together.’ Cedd glanced at a group of soldiers up on the dockside but they were not looking.
‘Sorry, Cedd,’ Winstanley muttered. ‘But I thought you should know.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘My friends tell me the dragon is in an iron cage in the marketplace. Yesterday evening they were charging the crowds a penny for a peek at it. For two pennies you could throw a stone or poke it with a stick.’