Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  ‘It’s my birthday today,’ he said.

  Bess’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Janus rubbed his dark hair. ‘Born under a dark star,’ he said bitterly. ‘Child of Saturn. Evil.’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ said Bess, moving to his side. She put a comforting arm around him.

  Janus nodded to the sleeping child. ‘What of him?’ he asked. ‘Do you know his stars?’

  Bess patted his arm. ‘He’s a Leo. Well favoured.’

  Janus closed his eyes, feeling relieved. He managed a smile.

  ‘I meant to come sooner,’ he said.

  Bess gave a strange kind of snort. ‘Of course you did.’

  Janus strode over to where she stood, lifted her easily and swung them both to sit on a large rocking chair. Bess shrieked as the chair pivoted beneath them. Her long dark hair fell in a curtain over his arm.

  ‘Let me go,’ she laughed half-heartedly.

  Janus wrapped her tighter in his arms, and she giggled. Bess never could stay angry at him for long.

  ‘Why did you not write?’ she accused.

  He smiled at her. ‘I was captured by De Ryker as a prisoner of war.’

  There was a pause as she examined his face. He’d always liked how she did that, her dark eyes raking his for the truth.

  Just for a moment Janus wanted to tell her everything. How he’d killed to discover Thorne’s Eye. But he knew he’d lose her, and he couldn’t bear this last tiny pocket of ordinary existence to be gone.

  ‘What’s he like?’ asked Bess, apparently deciding to believe him. ‘De Ryker. Is he the devil they say?’

  ‘He is and worse,’ confirmed Janus. ‘I’ll never forget the sight of his huge leather boots descending into the prison quarters. De Ryker looks like an old sea god,’ Janus continued. ‘Craggy, like he’s been preserved in sun and saltwater since the dawn of time. But wise too. One of his eyes is bleached to near blindness from navigating by the sun. The other is brown, deep brown, and it seems to look into your soul.’

  Bess gave a gratifying shudder. ‘Why didn’t De Ryker kill you?’ she asked.

  Janus’s face suddenly fell. ‘He did,’ he said. ‘He did kill part of me.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Bess, touching his face with her fingers.

  ‘He made us fight each other for entertainment,’ whispered Janus. Suddenly he couldn’t meet her eye. ‘I killed men of my own crew.’ Janus had a desperate memory of himself, ragged and blood-smeared.

  Bess swallowed. ‘You did what you had to do,’ she said uncertainly, ‘to survive. Men do worse in war.’

  ‘Thorne twisted me,’ said Janus. ‘But it was De Ryker who made me a killer.’

  ‘Shh,’ said Bess. ‘You’re not a bad man.’

  ‘You only say that,’ said Janus, ‘because you don’t know what I’ve done.’

  Bess flinched.

  ‘De Ryker very nearly had me thrown overboard,’ continued Janus. ‘But I told him about the weapon.’

  ‘The weapon from your boyhood?’ asked Bess uncertainly.

  ‘The Eye,’ confirmed Janus. ‘It’s somewhere in London. Now the stars turn in my favour, I can find it.’

  Bess looked at him for a long time. ‘Then what?’ she demanded. ‘All your life you have looked for one adventure, then the next,’ said Bess. ‘I thought you would change. But you never did.’

  Janus sat up a little. ‘The Eye is all I’ve ever wanted. Since I was a boy. It’s my birthright. Stolen from me.’

  She was shaking her head emphatically.

  ‘I’ll make sure you’re provided for,’ said Janus, confused. ‘Once I have the Eye, I can lay it all to rest. All the horrors.’

  ‘I never wanted your money,’ said Bess sadly. ‘I’d have married you for your handsome ways.’

  ‘Marriage was never so easy for me.’

  She buried her hands in his dark hair. ‘My noble prince,’ she smiled, ‘banished from all he loves most.’

  ‘I’ll get it back,’ he said, ‘no matter what it takes.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She sounded much older suddenly. ‘There’ll be no end. Not until you have destroyed the world or died in the trying.’

  He touched her face, unable to bear her disapproval.

  ‘You’re the only feeling I have left,’ he said helplessly. ‘You’re my one weakness, Bess.’

  As Janus said the words, he realised. Charlie Oakley had a weakness too. All he need do was exploit it.

  Chapter 45

  Lily and Charlie were waiting at the dark edges of Hyde Woods. Stars twinkled above. All around them were encampments. People who had been made homeless by the Great Fire two months earlier.

  ‘The King had plans to make this a park for Londoners,’ Charlie explained, ‘but since the Great Fire he can’t risk it being overrun.’

  He gestured to the hundreds of makeshift tents crammed cheek by jowl around the outskirts of the woods.

  ‘They don’t let the refugees any further into the woods?’ asked Lily, peering into the gloomy trees. The twinkling campfires stopped abruptly where the woods proper began.

  ‘It’s royal land,’ said Charlie. ‘The old King kept it for the deer and the wild boar. Gamekeepers have been brought back to protect it, and they’re a harsh lot.’

  He pointed high up in the trees, where several bloody shapes hung.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Lily, squinting for a better look. ‘Deer?’

  Dangling hooves could just be seen in the moonlight.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘They’re men caught inside the royal boundaries of Hyde Woods. The gamekeepers sewed them into deerskins and hunted them down with dogs for sport. They’re hung there as a warning.’

  Lily swallowed. ‘Then how are we to find the catacombs? I don’t wish to be hunted down.’

  ‘Bitey’s an old friend. He’s been poaching the woods for years,’ Charlie reassured her. ‘He’ll have a way.’

  There was a familiar clanking sound, and they turned to see Bitey shamble into view. He was dressed in his usual thickly grimed coat but had slung a cumbersome-looking bow and arrow over his squat frame.

  ‘Evenin’,’ he grinned, exposing his trademark dark patch of wooden teeth in the night gloom. His gaze settled on Lily.

  ‘You remember Lily Boswell,’ said Charlie. ‘She’s an associate.’

  He suppressed a smile at the slight surprise on Lily’s face. Bitey’s eyes flicked between them.

  ‘Not a good night for poaching,’ he said after a moment, nodding to the bright stars. ‘Could do with some cloud.’

  ‘We’re not here to poach,’ said Charlie. ‘We’re looking for the Cipher. We think he might be hidden in the old catacombs.’

  ‘The Cipher,’ said Bitey thoughtfully. ‘He could be down there I suppose. The man is said to be a ghost.’

  A sudden grunting sound emanated from Bitey’s coat. Lily stared in alarm as a striped nose peeked indignantly from his filthy collar. A small badger was trying to wriggle free.

  ‘A new friend?’ asked Charlie, who was used to Bitey’s fondness for baby animals. Though he usually reserved his guardianship for creatures that would grow large enough to eat.

  ‘He’s a decoy,’ said Bitey, ‘in case we encounter some authority. Don’t go near the head end,’ he added. ‘He bites. Alright then,’ continued Bitey amiably. ‘I think I can remember the old entrance to the tunnels.’

  He looked up to the moon. His gaze shifted to the North Star, and he held up two raddled fingers, closed one eye and squinted at the sky.

  Then he lowered his hands, apparently pleased with his deductions.

  ‘Old sailor trick,’ he said with a wink, ‘to locate things at night. Served me better as a poacher than it ever did at sea,’ he added. ‘Follow me.’

  Bitey set off at a faster pace than his short legs might have suggested. Lily and Charlie followed behind, the edges of the dark woods casting deep shadows.

  The spaced trees of the out
skirts had quickly thickened to woodland, and they found themselves amongst black tree trunks and uneven ground.

  ‘Can he see anything?’ whispered Lily as they followed Bitey’s dark form through the woods.

  ‘He’s got poacher’s eyes,’ said Charlie. ‘Years of tracking in the darkness.’

  A muffled thump alerted them to Bitey making heavy contact with a tree. He swore and retrieved his tricorn hat from where it had been jolted to the ground.

  ‘Sometimes you need to find the trees,’ he said good-naturedly, wedging the hat back down, ‘to see the wood.’

  Lily, whose gypsy childhood steered her expertly through darkened groves, looked unconvinced.

  The old man drew to a sudden halt at a patch of overgrown hedgerow.

  ‘P’raps here,’ he decided, removing his hat.

  He dropped to his knees and vanished beneath the thicket. For a moment the foliage waved wildly. Then Bitey emerged with thorns and brambles clinging to his shaggy head.

  ‘Over here then,’ he muttered to himself, vanishing for a second time.

  ‘If he can’t get us in,’ whispered Lily, ‘do you have another plan?’

  They heard several deep thumps from inside the hedgerow, then a rush of soil dislodging.

  Bitey re-emerged, smiling proudly. ‘Still here,’ he announced. ‘After all these years. Overgrown, mind, but will still fit a man if he’s brave enough.’

  ‘What’s still here?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Poacher’s hole,’ said Bitey. ‘Come with me.’

  And once again he disappeared under the hedgerow.

  Charlie lifted the thicket uncertainly. By the light of the moon he could make out a darker patch amongst the roots and thorns – a hole just large enough for a man.

  Bitey’s thick boots were vanishing through it.

  ‘Are you mad?’ hissed Lily as Charlie poked his head into the hole. ‘He says himself he’s not been here for years. You could be crawling to your death.’

  ‘Bitey’s survived civil war, plague and fire,’ said Charlie, sounding braver than he felt. ‘It’ll take more than a poaching expedition to finish him off.’

  He pushed forward and found the hole was bigger than it looked. Charlie crawled awkwardly through, then dropped down into a wide, round tunnel. Behind him he heard Lily follow him through the rabbit hole.

  Chapter 46

  The Dowager Queen, Henrietta Maria of France, sat straight-backed on a huge carved throne. The Queen Mother’s tiny frame was festooned in grey lace and black silk, fashions from a time when kings had been gods. Her eyes were her son’s, brown and drooping at the edge, but without the warmth. They were currently fastened in annoyance on an unexpected visitor.

  ‘You mean to tell me,’ she accused in the hard French intonation she’d never quite lost, ‘you came to my house in Greenwich without an escort?’

  The Queen Mother’s gnarled old hands were worrying a bloodied pair of riding gloves, a memento from the execution of her husband.

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ admitted Frances Stewart, her voice trembling. Up until this moment she’d been proud of braving the Whitehall-to-Greenwich ferry in a plain dress with her head down. Now all she could think about was the origin of the bloody keepsakes in the old Queen’s liver-spotted hands.

  In an effort not to stare, Frances moved her gaze to the wall behind the Queen Mother. Crowding every inch were pictures of the old, dead King. He stared down imperiously, the curled moustache and little beard giving his neat features a pointed quality. In one picture he rode on horseback in full armour, an ermine robe falling to the floor. In another his hand rested on a large astrological chart, showing the twelve constellations.

  Queen Henrietta fixed Frances in her stony gaze. ‘You’re interested in my paintings?’ she enquired coldly.

  ‘I . . .’ Frances struggled for the right words. ‘I am glad for Your Majesty. I thought such paintings were destroyed by Cromwell.’

  The Queen’s face tightened. ‘They were,’ she said, settling her eyes on the image of herself and the old King. ‘I had painters remake them.’

  Frances realised now what she found odd about the pictures. There were no family portraits. Queen Henrietta had only those of her husband alone.

  ‘He was a god,’ said the Queen, following Frances’s gaze. ‘A god they killed.’ The gloves turned, then turned again. ‘I chose you to attend my son,’ she added. ‘I hope you have not disappointed me.’

  Frances felt herself flush. She had a sudden horror that perhaps the old woman knew every licence she’d allowed Charles to take.

  ‘I came to ask . . . I hoped . . .’ Frances stumbled. ‘I thought you might know of a suitable marriage prospect.’

  ‘For you?’ Henrietta’s voice rose to a kind of shriek.

  Frances gave a shaking nod.

  ‘And why might you need a husband?’ demanded Henrietta. ‘Have you done something you shouldn’t?’

  Frances dissolved into tears.

  Henrietta’s face turned icy. ‘I’ll have you thrown from court,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ pleaded Frances. ‘I never let him . . . It’s just’ – she paused to take a great sobbing breath – ‘he’s so charming. And I fear I might. I truly fear it.’

  She looked up at Henrietta, her eyes brimming with naive hope.

  ‘A husband does not always keep a woman safe,’ said the Queen Mother. ‘I should know.’

  Queen Henrietta closed her eyes. She was tired. And dogged by memories. Since she’d returned to Greenwich, dead girls had been washing up at Deptford again.

  It was the work of the man who had lost them the war. What was his name? Thorne.

  She had a sudden memory so physical it made her stomach turn even now. The old King drawing her inside the darkness of Thorne’s secret workshop. Stumbling on broken things.

  ‘What is this place?’ she whispered. ‘Surely Thorne has run mad.’

  ‘Peace.’ The old King smiled at her. ‘Thorne has his ways of working. A man of his talent mustn’t be questioned.’

  ‘I don’t trust the commoner,’ she said, insinuating herself close to her husband. ‘How can you be sure he won’t betray us?’

  ‘Amesbury is useful,’ reassured the King. ‘He is strong. The men like him. And he is loyal to the Crown. My gold makes sure of that.’

  They entered a massive room filled with giant cogs. Henrietta backed away in horror, but the King tightened his grip on her arm. She turned to him in shock and saw a familiar expression – the maniacal glint in his dark eyes that had grown steadily since the war began.

  Thorne was hunched over a tiny object and barely looked up. But it was the wider room that was most disturbing. Henrietta was certain these were pagan things. Tools of Devil worship.

  ‘You see,’ he whispered gleefully, ‘what power I hold?’ His fingers fastened on her arm. He pointed to Thorne. ‘We must not interrupt the sorcerer in his rituals.’

  There was an unexpected movement in the corner. The Queen’s gaze flicked to see a pale-faced boy watching Thorne. His eyes glowed in admiration.

  For a terrible moment she thought it one of her own sons. Then the child stepped back into the shadows and she lost sight of him. She reassured herself her boys were safely back in the palace.

  ‘Behold the power of the Eye,’ whispered the King gleefully. ‘We will see as God sees. We cannot lose this war!’

  Henrietta’s attention fixed on Thorne’s little table, covered in jewels and precious metals. Her eyes widened.

  The Eye.

  This must be it. The weapon her husband had told her about. The Eye was so much smaller than she’d expected – and more beautiful than she’d ever imagined.

  The Queen Mother opened her eyes and was faintly surprised to see Frances still cowering meekly before her. This stupid weak girl with her whole life ahead of her. How dare she complain? What did she know of suffering?

  The Queen sat slightly forward on her
throne. The hard wood must have been uncomfortable, Frances thought.

  ‘I cannot help you,’ said the Queen Mother. ‘You must pray to God.’

  Frances swallowed back her tears. Henrietta had been her last hope.

  Her only option now was to spy for Lady Castlemaine. To put herself alone with Buckingham. The thought terrified her. But it was the last path left.

  Chapter 47

  Charlie and Lily followed Bitey through the dank earth tunnel. They shuffled in the dark on their hands and knees, Hyde Woods vanishing behind them. Charlie could hear the swish of Lily’s silk dress and smell the damp soil.

  Ahead of him he could see Bitey’s square frame illuminated by the flare of a tinderbox. Then unexpectedly the earth opened up. Charlie dropped down, landing on his hands and knees in a dank pool of water.

  Bitey was lighting a rudimentary torch.

  ‘Catacombs,’ he confirmed, patting the slim curving bricks. ‘Been under Hyde Woods for hundreds of years. Poachers been using ’em for the past twenty.’

  ‘What does this mean?’ Lily’s slim fingers were tracing Roman letters, chiselled neatly into the wall. They made a single word.

  ‘Ostium.’

  ‘Means “mouth” in the old Roman tongue,’ explained Bitey. ‘There’s a few marked around London. Mostly old sewers still in use.’

  ‘Mouth?’ Lily was looking uneasily into the dark throat of the tunnel.

  ‘We have a few hours until the torch goes out,’ added Bitey. ‘Plenty of time to make a search.’

  The tunnel was the height of a man, round and neatly bricked. It smelt of long-forgotten damp places. Charlie touched the arc of the low ceiling. The amber bricks felt cool and dry.

  ‘I can’t imagine someone hiding down here,’ said Lily, who’d brought up the rear quickly once she’d seen the torchlight. ‘It’s like a sewer.’

  Charlie agreed with her. Disappointment bloomed. The narrow corridors seemed much too small for anyone to live and sleep in.

  Lily was looking around. The ceiling was curved over, and bricked corridors snaked away in different directions like open mouths.

  Bitey waved the torch. ‘That way leads to under the gamekeeper’s hut,’ he said. ‘We’ll not take that path unless we wish to be hunted and gutted for sport.’ He squinted around. ‘Never been too sure about every path,’ he admitted. ‘’S like a labyrinth. But that one,’ he said, pointing, ‘leads to a safe place. Comes out by the edge of a small lake, near the Upside-down Tree. The big beech tree,’ he added, catching Lily’s face. ‘Where Londoners used to make wishes.’