The Archivist nodded, taking the hour reel and slowly cranking forward. At first, the only movement was the copper plates of the Thames, gently rolling with the current. Then the bakery collapsed, from the center of the roof outward, then the buildings around it and the buildings around those, and so on. The fire spread like the plague Bloodworth had wanted to stop.
Jack bent closer to Little Tyburn as the clicking epidemic spread. The walls of the slum went first, as if the fire wanted to encircle its victims. As Jack watched, the flash of the copper became the flicker flames. He could see shadows running back and forth, fire hemming them in on every side, ripping through the tumbledown labyrinth.
“Jack?”
He blinked, jerking upright. The flames were gone, replaced with bright, oiled copper. The model city had become a wasteland. He glanced around at the stares of the others, then recovered his composure and fixed his eyes on Gwen. “What did you say the death toll was for the fire?”
“Jack, I don’t know how that’s going to help—”
“Just tell me.”
“Six,” interrupted Shaw. “Ever’one knows that. Less than wot fell to their deaths from top o’ the Monument itself.” He gave Jack his gargoyle grin. “Ironic. That’s wot that is.”
Gwen shook her head. “The official death toll and the census taken a few years later don’t agree. The census was a hearth tax, meaning they counted apartments and houses rather than individuals, but somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand unnamed poor had gone missing. It’s the biggest mystery of the Great Fire.”
“Or the biggest secret,” Jack said quietly.
A hint of a smile formed at the edge of the Archivist’s lips. “There’s only a tiny difference between the two, isn’t there, Jack?”
Gwen cleared her throat. “Let’s get back to the Ember, shall we? Let’s assume our cobbler really did stop the fire. To contain the Ember, he would first need to acquire from Bloodworth the piece of Hubert’s clock that kept it under control, wouldn’t he?”
Jack could see she already knew the answer to that question. “That sounds right.”
“Of course it does. Bloodworth and the cobbler had to have crossed paths after the fire started and before it ended.”
Jack scanned the copper wasteland. “So where could the two of them have met while London burned? Where would a snobbish aristocrat have gone to seek shelter from the fire?”
“Oh!” Gwen took a step back as if the copper table had given her an electric shock. “I’ve got it! The ravens keep their secret. Why didn’t I see it before?” She looked from Jack to Shaw to the Archivist and back to Jack again. “ ‘The ravens keep their secret.’ The famous denizens of the infamous castle where snobbish aristocrats and commoners alike could tread.” She punched Jack’s sore arm. “Who’s making the big deductions, now, hmm?”
Jack pressed his lips together, rubbing the bruise. He didn’t get it. And judging from the look on the warden’s face, Shaw was equally in the dark. “What denizens, Gwen? What castle?”
Gwen’s face was almost giddy. “The ravens, Jack, at the only castle in the city.”
Chapter 40
JACK PREFERRED TO part ways with Shaw, but Gwen seemed to think keeping him close was a better idea. Despite Jack’s obvious nonverbal cues, she invited the warden to join them, convincing him that Mrs. Hudson would want him to go after Nero’s Globe and the Ember rather than reporting back to the Lost Property Office.
The three of them took the Ministry Express from the Archive to the black granite hub near Pudding Lane, and on to a small station Jack had not yet seen. There, they crammed themselves into a circular lift, with Jack squished against Shaw. The tweed vest was musty, and a little moist. “You couldn’t have taken the next one?” Jack asked, tilting his head awkwardly sideways to look up at the journeyman warden.
“Shut it, you. This is a ministry lift. A thirteen shouldn’t even be here.”
Jack sighed. “Yeah. I’ve heard.”
Moments later, they tumbled out of a round brick structure onto a stone plaza. The walls of a fortress rose before them, right in the middle of the city. Jack pulled his hat on to shield his ears from the cold wind. “The Tower of London. This is the castle with the ravens?”
“Ever since the reign of King Charles the Second.” Gwen gave him a triumphant freckle bounce. “The same king who reigned during the Great Fire.”
The clerk led them to a long square that ran between the fortress and the Thames, its wrought-iron rails all decorated with lighted garlands and bows. With darkness falling, only a few people still braved the wind and the cold, too huddled up to pay any attention to the children. Gwen steered the boys toward a vendor with a steaming cart, parked in the shadow of a tree that overhung the Tower moat—the only tree without a string of lights.
“Candied peanuts, love?”
Gwen snapped her fingers twice at Jack, which he understood as a request for his platinum card. The vendor examined it, raised an eyebrow at Jack, then shrugged and pulled the cart back, revealing a hidden stairway.
“And some nuts as well,” said Gwen, handing him a folded bill.
The vendor touched a finger to his wool cap. “Much obliged, love.” He handed them each a paper cup of warm candied peanuts as they passed. The scents of caramel and cinnamon floated across Jack’s brain in ribbons of deep red, flecked with gold.
The stairs took them down to a short wall between the dry, grassy moat and a channel of water flowing under the square. The water continued into the Tower through an archway blocked by a portcullis, where a small sign read TRAITORS’ GATE. “Why is it the ‘Traitors’ Gate’?” whispered Jack as Gwen waved them through a black door on the other side.
“Because this is where the condemned entered the Tower.” She pulled the door closed behind, shutting out the light from the square. “You know, prisoners about to get the ax.”
Jack pulled his hands away from the stone walls. “Great.”
Moving in and out of the light, Gwen led them up stairwells, through creaking doorways, and down cobblestone lanes until they finally emerged on a grand inner courtyard. Timber and plaster houses lined the defensive walls, interspersed between stone towers, making Jack feel as if he’d stepped into a village from another century. It was a village, it seemed, with real residents. He noticed lights in several of the windows.
“Keep your voices down and stick to the shadows.” Gwen sank her chin down into the coils of her scarf as she led them along the edge of a green yard. “The yeoman warders live here full-time. They won’t be too keen on three children running amok in the courtyard.”
In the quiet that followed, Shaw’s tweed jacket buzzed. Jack half expected him to pull out some anachronistic bronze contraption, with vacuum tubes and copper coils, but the warden produced a very ordinary-looking smartphone. He held it up, showing them Mrs. Hudson’s stern face, looking as if she disapproved of the camera. The label above the picture read LOST PROPERTY. “Chamber must be out o’ lockdown,” mumbled the warden, raising a heavy thumb to answer the call.
“Don’t!” Gwen tried to take the phone, but Shaw pulled it back, letting it buzz.
“And why not? We’re well in front o’ tha’ Clockmaker fellow, ain’t we? Time to call in the pr’fessionals.” His glare shifted to Jack. “Besides, I think it’s time Number Thirteen ’ere should face the music, don’t you?”
“The music?” Jack didn’t like the sound of that. Gwen had said the ministry would hold him, but what else would they do? The British wrote the book on civilized, didn’t they? Then the reason for Gwen slapping his arm in the Archive came to him. Jack had revealed to Shaw that he could spark well before his time. The ministry would want to know why. How would they find out? Torture? Experiments? “What music?”
Shaw curled his thick lips into a sneer. “Just you wait.” He touched the screen to answer Mrs. Hudson’s call, but the phone had stopped buzzing. It went to voice mail. “Not a problem. I’ll just rin
g ’er back, then, shall I?”
“Please, Shaw. This isn’t only about Jack. We need the Ember to save his father.”
“You wot?”
Gwen’s lips were pressed together, trying to hold the explanation in. But the pressure burst and it all came flooding out—Jack’s father, the Clockmaker, the exchange at midnight. “You’d be a hero,” she said, finally taking a breath. “Think of it: saving a tracker’s life, bringing in a pair of seriously dangerous artifacts—the ministry might even promote you to full warden. But you can’t call them about Jack, not yet.”
Shaw slowly pocketed the phone, turning his glare on Jack. “Millions o’ lives, Mr. Thirteen. Buckingham. Those’re the stakes. I s’pose you ’ave a plan, then?”
“I . . . uh—” Jack shot a glance at Gwen. She nodded vigorously and then pretended she was stretching her neck when the warden’s eyes drifted her way. Jack cleared his throat. “Of course I do. I’m a tracker, right?”
Shaw glared at him a few moments longer, then emptied the cup of candied nuts into his mouth and crunched down. “Aw’right, tracker. I’m in. Where do we go next?”
“We . . . um . . .” Jack caught Gwen making subtle flapping movements with her hands. “We follow the ravens, of course.” He scanned the courtyard. There was a lot of ground to cover, nooks and crannies everywhere. “But where are they?”
“Usually right here.” Gwen nodded toward a wooden perch in the grass, on the other side of a memorial with a glass pillow at the center. “This is the lawn where the condemned used to get their heads chopped off. The ravens favor it.”
Shaw snorted. “And the ghosts.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There are no ghosts in the Tower.”
A fleeting shadow caught Jack’s eye, a shift in the light beneath a barren tree at the corner of the grass. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Chapter 41
JACK RACED AHEAD of the others, tossing his paper cup into a bin as he passed, frowning at his own foolishness. Specters had followed him since Pudding Lane. They had popped up at the Monument, at Barking Tower, and in the Archive. Now, finally given the chance to turn and run from a ghost, he was chasing it down.
Gwen caught up at the tree. “What did you see?”
“Just give me a sec.” The cold made it harder for Jack to think, to see. A white cloud shrouded everything. He let out a long breath, waiting until pieces of data rose from the mist.
A dead leaf scratching across the cobblestones: not the movement he’d seen.
Initials carved into the tree: puppy love immortalized in thoughtless graffiti.
A shadow in a doorway to his right: insubstantial. Human.
Release us.
Jack’s eyes snapped to the doorway, but the shadow was gone. The wooden door, banded with iron, stood cracked slightly open. He hurried across the narrow lane.
“I don’t think the ravens go inside the towers,” protested Gwen as Jack eased the creaking door inward.
He knelt down in the darkness and picked up a black feather, holding it up for the others to see. “Really?”
“You saw that in the dark, did you?” asked Shaw, squinting at the token.
Jack pushed the door all the way open, turning away to enter the tower. “Not exactly.”
An empty, vaulted chamber opened before them, lit by city lights seeping in through arrowslits. Before Jack could wonder what to do next, he heard a flapping of wings reverberating from a spiral stair to his left. He rushed up the steps to follow.
After a full turn of climbing, Jack saw a strip of light projected on the steps above him, presumably from an arrowslit around the next bend. He stopped and caught his breath, holding out an arm to keep Gwen from passing. A shadow grew within the light, tall and sharp, with the distinct form of a head and shoulders.
“Tell me you see that,” whispered Jack, touching Gwen’s sleeve.
She nodded in silence.
They crept upward, keeping tight to the inside wall, and both let out a relieved breath at the same time. Their ghost was a raven. The black bird stood in an arrowslit, casting its ghostly shadow on the stairs. It regarded them with shining black eyes, and cocked its head as if trying to understand a question the children had yet to ask.
“You found one!” panted Shaw, coming up behind them, out of breath from the climb. The bird flapped out the window.
“Oh, well done,” huffed Gwen, slapping his arm.
“That ain’t right.” The warden stared after the bird. “Ever’one knows the ravens of the Tower don’t fly. The ravenmaster clips their wings to keep ’em from flappin’ off.”
“They can fly,” argued Gwen, “but only short distances.” She turned to head back down the stairs. “We can follow him if we hurry.”
More light spilled down the stairs from above, and Jack caught a hint of movement, like the shifting light beneath the tree outside.
“Up,” he said, catching Gwen’s sleeve. “We need to go up.”
A pointed archway at the top let them out into another chamber, big and empty. There were alcoves that might once have held furniture, and a tall, yawning fireplace. Jack shivered, suddenly feeling as if his jacket no longer kept the frigid air at bay.
“I thought we was chasin’ the bird,” said Shaw. “Wot’re we doin’ up ’ere?”
Jack walked the perimeter of the room, running a hand along the stones. Several were carved with etchings that looked more like classical art than graffiti. “Who made these?”
“Young Lady Jane Gray, for one,” said Gwen, eyeing one of the simpler carvings, “not long before the headsman took her life in the yard below. A good number of lords and ladies waited for their deaths here, kept in style until their executions.”
Shaw folded his arms. “An’ that’s why this place ’as so many ghosts.”
“Lords and ladies,” muttered Jack. “Wrong ghosts.” A whisper drew his attention to the fireplace, and the shadow beneath the mantel coalesced into a silhouette. It beckoned to him. It is time. Release us. Then it twisted into a wisp of smoke, disappearing up the chimney.
Jack didn’t have to ask if Gwen had seen the specter. She had been looking right at the hearth and hadn’t reacted at all. He ran to the spot where the ghost had vanished. What did it want him to see?
Soot: left by the fires of a half-dozen centuries.
A handprint in the black: ancient, hardly there.
A breath of air: an airy whistle, a string of light gray blowing across his mind, definitely not coming down the chimney.
Jack passed a hand along the wall, an inch from the stone, until he found the air stream. “Help me,” he said, leaning a shoulder against the bricks.
Gwen didn’t question him. She stepped right into the hearth to help, but it wasn’t until Shaw lazily pressed a hand against the bricks that a section of the wall gave way. The hidden door shifted outward, grating against the stones below, and Jack squeezed out into the wind.
Chapter 42
THE DOOR IN the fireplace opened onto a hidden section of the ramparts—a wedge-shaped space of ancient walkway, trapped between the tower they had just climbed and a timber building that had been built right on top of the fortress’s original defensive wall.
“We’re behind the Queen’s House,” said Gwen, touching a wooden beam. The timber structure pressed right up against the crenellated battlements that had once served as cover for archers standing on the wall. She glanced back at the open fireplace. “That passage has to have been there since the days before the Queen’s House was built. Do you think any of the royal prisoners knew about it?”
Shaw stood next to her, peering over the battlements at the long drop to the cobblestone lane that ran between the inner and outer walls of the Tower of London. “Wouldn’t ’ave done ’em any good. Even if they ’ad a rope to climb down, they’d still ’ave to get over the second wall. More likely it was for the comings an’ goings of the torture master—to keep ’is work on the lords an’ ladies out o’ sight
.”
“Quiet.” Jack shushed him, holding a finger to his lips.
“You wot?”
“Be quiet, Shaw.” He heard a scratching sound, faint but definite. Jack ignored the angry look from the warden and leaned out to look along the back of the long timber house. A black vapor swirled above the battlements, untouched by the wind. It moved a little farther away and hovered there. He climbed up onto the stone parapet to follow.
Gwen grabbed the leg of his jeans. “What are you doing?”
“It wants me to follow. You don’t have to come.”
“Who wants you to follow?” She leaned out to look around him. “Oh! You found the raven!”
“It’s not a raven. It’s something else.” Jack pushed her hand away and sidestepped across the first gap in the battlements, pressing his face against the back of the Queen’s House. The cold wind beat against him, trying to tear him off the wall, and the vapor swirled just out of reach. It drifted farther away each time he inched closer. “Where are you taking me?”
“It’s not taking you anywhere, Jack. It’s only a bird. We should go back, look for the rest.”
Jack couldn’t turn his head to look back, but he knew from the proximity of Gwen’s voice that she had followed him out onto the ledge. “I told you, it’s not a raven,” he called into the wind. “It needs me to follow.”
Her hand touched his. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“I’ll just stay ’ere, then, shall I?” Shaw called from the walkway. “Keep watch, an’ all that? Per’aps I’ll call the ’earse for you once you fall to your deaths.”
Jack was so focused on following the black vapor that he didn’t notice a chimney until he was almost upon it, built into a gap in the battlements so that its bricks jutted out past the stones. The black vapor hovered at its edge.
“Don’t,” breathed Jack. “Please don’t.”
The vapor swirled around to the other side and disappeared.
“Of course you did.”
The Lost Property Office Page 15