by C. S. Quinn
‘How can you know that?’
‘I don’t for certain,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s a better chance than at his hands.’
He nodded to Judge Walters, who was scrambling up the deck towards them.
Charlie jumped, throwing himself over the edge. He heard Ishmael and Lily splash into the Thames beside him. Water enclosed his head, and he sunk deep into the river. Then his feet hit soft mud and he righted himself.
They landed with the fields of Greenwich on the dark horizon.
Ishmael was face down in the water, and Charlie heaved the old astrologer to his feet with difficulty.
‘This way,’ said Charlie, scanning for Lily. ‘Head towards the mainland.’
‘It’s boggy,’ gasped Lily, splashing upright.
Charlie was at her side, helping her free her waterlogged skirts.
Above them the huge ship was teetering in the mud.
‘Get up quickly,’ urged Charlie. ‘It’s going to tilt again and crush us.’
They stumbled to their feet and waded fast through the shallow waters. Above them they heard the creaking of the huge hull as it tipped towards them. The shouts of the sailors and the Judge on the deck above rent the night sky.
As they splashed through the boggy marsh, the prison boat seemed to come after them, backlit by the blood-red moon. They dashed free as the beached ship sent a wave of water crashing against their backs. Up ahead was drier land.
‘Where now?’ asked Lily as they made for it.
‘I know where the Eye is,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s not far, but we don’t have long.’
He was looking at the moon, over two-thirds shaded red.
‘Wait!’ Ishmael was gasping, limping with difficulty.
Now free of the water, Charlie could see the old astrologer’s foot was bent at a strange angle.
‘I’ll distract the Judge,’ said Ishmael. ‘Make sure his men don’t follow you.’
‘It’s too dangerous,’ said Charlie. ‘Come with us.’
Ishmael shook his head. ‘If what you say is true, it’s more important to stop Janus getting the Eye,’ he said. ‘I’m an old man. Let me have this last adventure.’
He managed a lopsided smile. ‘I’ll head back to Deptford,’ he promised, ‘making enough noise to draw any pursuers. I’ll only slow you down in any case.’
Lily’s hand was on Charlie’s shoulder. ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘If you want a chance of saving your brother, we need every second on our side.’
‘We’re already there,’ said Charlie, pointing to the large buildings up ahead. ‘I think the Eye is in Greenwich.’
Chapter 88
‘It’s a trick,’ growled Amesbury. ‘De Ryker has no intention of suing for peace.’
King Charles put his head in his hands. All he could think of was Frances. Things seemed so simple with her. He could forget about the pressing weight of kingship and feel like a young man again.
‘De Ryker raised the white flag at Dover,’ said Charles. ‘We must honour the terms of warfare.’
‘I fear he makes so bold,’ said Amesbury carefully, ‘because he has the Eye.’
‘It’s a nonsense,’ muttered Charles. ‘The Eye doesn’t exist. It’s a . . . a fable dreamt up by Civil War propagandists to blacken my father. If the Dutch are fool enough to hunt for it, let them squander their resources.’
Amesbury was silent, remembering a conversation with Thorne all those years ago.
‘You’re hard on the boy,’ said Amesbury.
Thorne nodded. ‘He must learn discretion if he is to survive Republican rule.’
‘But to keep him here.’ Amesbury gestured to Thorne’s ghoulish decorations.
‘The workshop is the safest place for him,’ said Thorne sharply. ‘Cromwell hunts nobles.’
‘The boy is too young,’ said Amesbury. ‘He fears you.’
Thorne closed his eyes. ‘It can’t be helped. The deaths are . . . necessary. He’ll understand when he’s older.’
Amesbury shook his head. ‘He won’t. You’ll twist his mind. Make him a killer.’
Had his predictions come true? Had Thorne’s apprentice turned murderer and traitor?
‘De Ryker will lure us into talks whilst his fleet invades,’ insisted Amesbury. ‘Why else would he have a legion of men-of-war floating off English waters?’
Charles sighed. ‘The Duke of York says it’s better to go into negotiations with your sword held high,’ he said. ‘He thinks De Ryker simply wants to enter negotiations in a strong position. The Dutch know we would see their ships.’
Amesbury had heard this argument before. The Duke of York was an excellent sailor, but he tended to favour situations of bravado rather than strategy.
‘Where is James?’ asked the King. ‘Why is he not here?’
‘I sent a message for the Duke of York, but I fear it wasn’t received,’ said Amesbury. He decided to opt for honesty. ‘I think he’s been going out to sea,’ he added, ‘in secret.’
Charles looked less surprised than Amesbury might have imagined.
‘James likes to disguise himself and take the little yacht out,’ admitted the King, ‘the Fan Fan. You know how he misses sailing. He only cruises the Thames. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.’
‘We need him safe,’ said Amesbury. ‘If De Ryker meant to negotiate, he’d force us to meet him in Breda. Make clear his position of strength. A man of his experience does not come seeking a truce, cap in hand.’
They both considered the truth of this.
‘Even so,’ said Charles slowly, his large mouth downturned, ‘we can’t refuse the terms of warfare. If he comes to negotiate peace, we must play along. Publicly at least.’ His eyes swung to the general’s. ‘Amesbury, you must mount a protection for the coast,’ he decided. ‘If De Ryker is trying for some trick, we’ll be ready for it as best we can.’ He rubbed his temples. ‘Find James,’ he decided. ‘Send him to Chatham. Make sure De Ryker sails nowhere near Chatham.’ His mouth set into a tight line. ‘If the admiral sees our mothballed navy, we’ll lose England.’
‘Twice would be careless,’ muttered Amesbury. ‘You’ve only just got England back.’
Chapter 89
‘The location of the Eye came to me straight away,’ explained Charlie as they put distance between them and the beached ship. ‘Tide and time a circle make. It’s not an island. Thorne is referring to a clock. An astronomical clock.’
‘Astronomical?’ asked Lily.
‘An astronomical clock shows star signs and tidal times,’ explained Charlie. ‘There are two in London,’ he added. ‘One in Hampton Court and another in Greenwich. The Tudor rulers used to reach their riverside palaces by barge, and they used the clocks to chart the moon and navigate the tidal changes of the Thames.’
‘When tide and time a circle make,’ said Lily, understanding. ‘The clock is a circle showing the Thames’s movements. But it could equally be at Hampton Court,’ she pointed out.
‘Greenwich is the best place in London for stargazing,’ said Charlie. ‘High land. And the carved bodies washed up at Deptford, less than a mile away. Then there was Thorne’s camera obscura,’ he concluded, ‘facing east. It occurred to me Thorne might have meant for it to sight the river near Deptford, where his Eye was hidden.’
‘So you had Judge Walters sail you directly here,’ said Lily. ‘Clever. But the Queen lives in Greenwich now. Surely the clock will be guarded?’
The marshy land became firmer as they reached Greenwich’s wooded outskirts.
Charlie shook his head. ‘The Queen’s House is new,’ he explained. ‘During the Civil War the royals stayed at old Greenwich Palace. It’s deserted now.’
He was looking through the trees for where the old palace began.
A strange noise stopped them in their tracks.
‘What was that?’ asked Lily. ‘It sounds like . . . bells. Death knells,’ she added uneasily, thinking of the bells rung in church when the dead were brought o
ut.
An uneasy feeling crept through both of them. The pealing of bells had long been associated with restless spirits. The strange noises grew louder as they neared Greenwich Park.
Charlie pointed up into the trees. ‘It is bells,’ he said. ‘Look. Brass bells. Someone has hung them here to deter evil spirits.’
‘Brass to ward away evil,’ said Lily, looking up.
Decaying apples had been hung from the branches, and the trunk bore a carved pentagram.
‘All Hallows’ Eve,’ said Charlie grimly. ‘Locals must have put this here to ward off evil.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked Lily.
‘Nothing,’ said Charlie uneasily. ‘Local superstition. We need to get to the palace.’
Chapter 90
Janus regarded Thorne’s workshop silently. It was completely unchanged. The same as he remembered it from all those years ago. The broken weapons, bent swords and broken shields were still here, silted in a layer of ancient mud.
This had been one of Thorne’s obsessions. Collecting the broken things sacrificed to the river gods.
Things were shifting in Janus’s mind now. Certainties from his childhood were taking on a different shape. The once-frightening room was no more than the hoarding place of an obsessive inventor. The dark gods and shadowy spectres had fled.
The Eye, Janus wondered. Was the Eye really what he thought it was?
‘I was only a boy,’ he said aloud. ‘I couldn’t have known those children had died long ago. I thought them your sacrifices. I thought you meant for me to die along with them.’
His accusation was greeted with silence. Then he remembered Thorne’s voice.
‘The old gods,’ his master had explained, ‘are wild and savage. But they can be tolerant and kind. They do not judge. You cannot save a life once Saturn has claimed it. But you can make the passing sacred. You can gift it to Lucifer.’
Janus moved towards the door leading to the clock tower mechanism. He grasped a large handle, hidden to the side of the entrance. Another of Thorne’s little secrets, concealed in the shadows. As the crank shifted, the door to the clock opened.
The dank smell of disuse greeted Janus, but the astronomical workings were still moving, turning the hands, charting the Thames’s tides.
Inside the old tower was a rickety set of wooden steps. Janus climbed them quickly. Behind him the large mechanism whirred and clicked. Interlocking cogs turned relentlessly around.
Janus had almost ascended the stairs when he saw a flash of gold.
A box. A small metal box had been set high up into the workings of the clock.
Breath catching in his throat, Janus climbed the last few stairs.
At the top was a wooden platform, jettied out above the clock mechanism. Behind it the back of the enormous clock face turned slowly, marking the seconds. There were fewer than twenty minutes until midnight.
His eyes settled on the metal box. It was barely a hand high, thick brass and crafted so expertly it was impossible to see the joins.
The unmistakable perfection of Thorne’s work.
On the front was a set of concentric circles cut into the brass plate. They were dotted with metal pegs and jewels. Tiny sapphires, rubies and emeralds winked out.
Janus felt a sudden flush of emotions, remembering his old master. The care he dedicated to his craft. Janus was so taken with the beauty of the box that it took him a long moment to realise its purpose.
Then he realised Thorne’s last trick.
Chapter 91
The wood thinned and the ruins of Greenwich Palace came into view through the trees. It was vast, sprawling out across the waterfront.
Charlie and Lily stared at the rambling building.
‘It must have been a great palace once,’ said Lily, taking in the many fallen roofs, the dilapidated red brick and the stone Tudor roses.
‘It’s big,’ agreed Charlie, considering the enormous building.
‘There’s no clock,’ said Lily, ‘and it seems like midnight is nearly here.’
She was looking up at the moon. The eclipse had almost covered it now. Charlie judged they had around fifteen minutes until the moon turned entirely red and the Eye was destroyed.
Charlie thought for a moment. ‘At Hampton Court the clock is at the front gatehouse. We’re at the back of the palace. The fastest way is through the building.’
They stared at the crumbling edifice. For some reason neither wanted to go inside.
There was a rustle in the bushes and they both started. A rabbit raced away. Charlie drove down a shudder. All Hallows’ Eve was getting to him.
‘This way,’ he said, starting uneasily towards a broken old door. ‘It’s overgrown but we can get inside there.’
They climbed through the battered entrance, pushing aside creepers and foliage, and were greeted by a damp smell of disuse. Inside was gloomy, barely lit. Desecration lay all around.
‘Look at it,’ whispered Lily. ‘It’s all been gutted.’
All that remained of Greenwich Palace was an empty shell. The huge internal doors were long gone, and the frames had been wrenched free. Faded patches on the painted walls showed where grand pictures had been taken down. Broken remains of several enormous mirrors lay shattered. Even the Tudor floor of elaborate black-and-white tiles had been smashed up in places and looted for scrap.
Charlie and Lily moved through the abandoned palace into a second large room.
‘Someone’s been here recently,’ said Charlie. He pointed to the remains of a smoking fire, still smouldering on the tile floor, and a rudimentary palette bed.
There was a blanket fixed at an angle across a corner of the room. Charlie’s eyes zeroed in on it as he wondered what was hidden behind it.
‘Look.’ Lily was pointing to a vast pentagram on the floor. It was drawn in blood. She swallowed. ‘This is where Janus did it,’ she said. ‘This is where he killed the girls.’
Charlie moved towards the blanket.
‘Don’t.’ Lily’s eyes were round with fear.
He pulled away the curtain and stepped back, stomach churning. The familiar statue was smaller than Charlie remembered it. It was a man with Roman-style curling hair and a beard. The sightless eyes stared coldly outwards. The muscular chest was tensed and a sinewy arm crooked. Gripped in the white fist was the leg of a child, upended and dangling, arms waving in distress and fear.
Saturn. The god who ate his children. Charlie looked to the statue’s feet, but he already knew what he would see, and his stomach tightened in anticipation.
A jawbone, barely longer than his little finger, a broken femur the size of his hand. Pints of blood, now old and caked, had been splashed over them.
Charlie’s gaze lifted to the child’s tiny stone face, twisted in pain and horror.
He felt Lily at his side.
‘The Deptford women,’ said Lily. ‘They were brought here first. A sacrifice to the old gods?’
Her eyes were moving over the old statue. The god’s free arm cupped the writhing child’s back. His bearded head was lowered. The lips and teeth were bared in the attitude of tearing flesh from the child’s exposed chest.
Charlie’s mind felt liquid and jarring. He forced himself to focus.
‘Tidal times,’ he murmured, looking at numbers chalked on the stone floor. ‘Janus made calculations of the tides here.’ He frowned, then a possible reason for the dead girls at Deptford came to him.
‘Corpses,’ he said. ‘Dead bodies are the only things that float all the way downriver. Everything else is taken by the mudlarks. He used them to measure tides. Perhaps he hoped to recreate some calculation of Thorne’s. Find his old master’s hiding place.’
‘Then why not raid a graveyard?’ said Lily, looking at the pile of tiny bones. ‘Hunt the slums? London is not low on corpses.’
Charlie was calling to mind the body at Deptford. A convict with a silver coin in her mouth.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘Janus thinks h
e does no wrong. He kills only those condemned to die. Places a silver coin for an underworld that will deal with them more mercifully.’
‘A Roman afterlife?’ said Lily.
‘Better than a Christian hell,’ said Charlie.
Lily hesitated, eyeing the statue. ‘You remember it,’ she said, ‘don’t you?’
Charlie nodded. ‘It wasn’t here,’ he said, trying to collect himself. ‘It’s been moved.’ He was looking at the bones piled at Saturn’s bare feet. ‘The river silt preserves things,’ he added. ‘These bones could be hundreds of years old. Centuries. Remember what Norris said,’ he added. ‘In ancient times people made sacrifices to the Thames.’
‘Thorne had an obsession with Roman gods,’ said Lily. ‘Perhaps he dragged these from the mud at low tide. A clever man’s interest in the stars that turned dark.’
‘But if Janus was Thorne’s young apprentice,’ said Charlie, ‘he may not have realised how long corpses take to decompose. Perhaps he thought his master killed children. Even feared himself next in line for sacrifice.’
Charlie forced himself to drive away the strange memories, the eerie thoughts assailing him.
Then he heard it. A faint ticking sound.
‘I think I hear the clock,’ he said. ‘Towards the front of the palace.’ He eyed the reddening moon through a broken windowpane.
‘We don’t have long,’ he decided. ‘Let’s go.’
Chapter 92
Janus stared at the box in the clock tower. The little brass square dotted with jewels. A circle to symbolise the heavens, he realised. Rings revolving out from a central sun.
It was a star chart. Tiny crystals etched into the solid brass showed constellations. The pegs marked the planets with their differing colours. But their positions were wrong.
Janus stared for a long time.
It was a puzzle of course. Thorne had always loved puzzles. Put the star chart right and open the box.
The solution was simple to a man who knew Thorne and his workings.
After a few moments’ consideration Janus began moving the pegs.