Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Series Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  ‘He must not find it?’ deduced Betty.

  Janus nodded slowly. ‘His father, Tobias Oakley, was a traitor,’ he added. ‘All these years I was uncertain. Now I know. He left secrets to his son.’

  Despite the heady effect of the wine, Betty found herself flinching at the hatred in Janus’s face.

  ‘You want me to kill this man?’ she suggested. ‘As I did the others? That’s why you set me free.’

  ‘I want you to help me uncover a lost object,’ said Janus. His eyes sought the curtain in the corner, and Betty felt a swirl of unease in the pit of her stomach. ‘An Eye,’ he continued, touching his forehead. ‘The Sight. A power to see as angels see.’

  ‘Sorcery?’ suggested Betty uncertainly.

  ‘Some would call it that.’ Janus drank thoughtfully. ‘De Ryker will use the Eye to defeat the English.’

  Betty blinked uncertainly. Had she heard him right?

  ‘The Dutch pirate?’ she asked.

  Janus’s hand was inside his coat now. He was drawing out a copper-handled knife.

  ‘He is no pirate,’ said Janus. ‘If you saw De Ryker on deck, his tanned face surveying the sea, salt-stiffened captain’s coat barely rippling in the strong breeze . . . You would understand his power,’ he concluded.

  ‘You talk treason,’ she said, appalled.

  Betty tried to move to standing, but Janus grabbed her wrist tightly and forced her back down.

  ‘Let me go! You hurt me!’ She twisted to free herself from his bruising grip.

  The angry movement startled the tussling crows. One flapped upwards in an ungainly circle. It veered across the room and blundered into the mouldering curtain hanging in the corner.

  Janus was on his feet as the ragged cloth fell.

  Betty’s whole body flashed cold with terror. The . . . thing behind the curtain. Arranged at its feet . . . Had they once been children?

  Suddenly there was cold metal at her throat. She swallowed, feeling the blade pressed firmly. Janus was behind her, holding her tightly.

  ‘You meet my master sooner than I intended,’ he said.

  Betty’s eyes filled with panicked tears. Janus twisted her face, forcing her to look at the Thing.

  It glared out, teeth bared savagely. What scared her most was the small boy, dangling upturned by an ankle in the Thing’s terrible grip. The child’s face was stricken in anguish, mouth poised in a silent scream.

  ‘If you mean to kill me,’ she managed, panting the words in her terror, ‘why deliver me from the noose? I was condemned.’

  ‘I mean to keep you from hell,’ said Janus. His face was close to hers. ‘The Romans believed,’ he continued, ‘that everyone’s soul crossed the River Styx. Their crimes were tried. But redemption was always possible.’

  Janus’s free hand was drawing something out of his pocket. As his fingers emerged in front of her, Betty’s eyes locked on the shining object.

  ‘A silver coin,’ continued Janus, ‘is all you need to pay your way.’

  He held the blade tighter at her neck, and Betty stood numbly as he pushed the coin between her lips.

  ‘You are to be offered to the Thames,’ he explained, an icy surety in his voice. ‘You will not suffer. And your body will show me what I seek.’

  Chapter 7

  The approach to Dead Man’s Curve was a solitary patch of water east of Deptford Docks. In contrast to the shipyard, it had only a few low buildings and was slick with ancient mud.

  ‘Judge Walters has great investment in the slave trade,’ Lily was explaining. ‘I couldn’t see a man like that find the Eye.’

  ‘Why should you care about his slave business?’

  ‘Gypsies,’ said Lily quietly. ‘Gypsies are enslaved and shipped abroad.’

  ‘But that is no longer legal,’ said Charlie. ‘The new King made a law—’

  ‘Which the Judge breaks for profit,’ interrupted Lily. ‘Though I can’t make anyone believe me. I’ve heard Judge Walters’s plans,’ added Lily. ‘He thinks the Eye will allow him to grow his slave business tenfold. But if the Eye can find ships at sea,’ she concluded, ‘I could use it to prove the Judge’s crime. Find his slave ships of gypsies and bring him to account.’

  There was something deep in Lily’s eyes when she talked about bringing the Judge to justice. A childlike terror. Charlie remembered her mother had been drowned for the crime of being a gypsy. Most probably by a man like the Judge.

  Lily’s eyes were burning. ‘So now do you see?’ she said. ‘Do you see why the Judge cannot get to the Eye? If it’s as powerful as the legends say . . .’

  Charlie had a sudden image of a frightened little gypsy girl watching her mother die. He felt a lump rise in his throat.

  ‘You should have told me your reason,’ he said.

  ‘It makes no difference,’ she said stiffly. ‘You have your own reasons for seeking out the Eye. Why should mine concern you?’

  ‘That was why you bought the almanac,’ said Charlie, realisation growing. ‘You thought all along that the rings were linked to the eclipse.’

  ‘Not for certain,’ said Lily defensively. ‘I heard things in Deptford taverns. Sailor stories.’

  ‘Deptford taverns don’t allow gypsies.’

  ‘I’ve made a friend of a landlord’s daughter.’

  Charlie let his face signal his suspicion. ‘I didn’t realise you had friends. Don’t tell me you’re finally learning London ways?’

  Lily dug her toe in the dirt in a curiously childish gesture. ‘The Judge is not to be trusted. I’m sure of it. I tried to find Ishmael Boney, but he’d vanished.’

  ‘You should have told me the truth,’ said Charlie. ‘The Judge is dangerous.’

  ‘You wanted to discover your past,’ she countered. ‘Find your brother. You’re known to the Bloody Judge in any case. I’ve hardly harmed your reputation.’ Lily glanced behind her. ‘And we’ve lost whoever was on our tail.’ She paused. ‘I’ve never been to this part of the river. Why is it so empty?’

  She was looking at the scant bankside dwellings, now noticeably thinner on the ground.

  ‘We near Dead Man’s Curve,’ explained Charlie. ‘It’s the part of the Thames where bodies collect. They drift downstream from the city. Mostly suicides,’ he added, ‘but you get murders too. The current swells on the curve and beaches them on the mud.’

  ‘Only bodies collect?’ said Lily. ‘Surely anything going downstream would gather there.’

  ‘Mudlarks get anything else,’ said Charlie, pointing to the teenaged boys trawling the banks. ‘There’s not a stick of wood or a splinter of metal gets past them. They have anything of value before it passes the Tower, but they won’t touch corpses.’

  ‘They must have made a fine business after the fire,’ observed Lily. ‘Half the city was thrown into the river to be doused.’

  ‘Many things sunk besides,’ said Charlie, ‘as people tried to escape with their goods by water. I imagine Father Thames has been generous these past few months.’

  The river was thick with ships making their way to Custom House to pay tax before entering London.

  ‘Captains fear a Dutch invasion,’ observed Charlie, noting the ships piled with metal and timber, spices and tobacco. ‘They come to sell their wares fast.’

  ‘Or an apocalypse,’ said Lily. ‘All the astrologers say it comes.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’

  Lily thought for a moment. ‘I think the same as everybody else,’ she decided. ‘The stars were put there by God for us to understand something of our future. But astrologers have not yet mastered the science.’

  ‘And what do you hope your future holds?’ It was the first time Charlie had come close to asking Lily about their relationship. Were they just treasure hunters together, or something more?

  In answer she pointed to a large ship sailing out of London. Charlie followed her gaze.

  ‘With the Eye,’ Lily concluded, ‘I’ll buy my own ship and crew and find new lands
. And I’ll sink any slaving ships I see,’ she added with a grim look in her eye.

  This surprised Charlie. He’d always thought Lily meant to return to the country some day.

  ‘I thought you had family,’ he said, ‘north of London.’

  ‘The best of my childhood camp were killed, the men hunted and the women drowned,’ said Lily. ‘The rest are long gone. I learned what I needed. Horses, knives. Winning at cards and spying. I’ve no reason to chase sad memories.’

  She looked at Charlie as if she’d like to suggest he do the same.

  ‘You can’t swim,’ he pointed out.

  Charlie was one of the few to discern her terror of drowning.

  ‘Most sailors can’t,’ countered Lily. ‘I sailed down the Thames once, almost to the great wide ocean. There’s a freedom to the sea,’ she concluded. ‘There are no laws there and a whole world to discover. A woman is not a gypsy or a whore or a wife or a spinster but herself just as she pleases.’

  They walked in silence along the shoreline. It was a sad contrast to the wealth afloat on the river. Slowly, a few feet at a time, the grim sight of Dead Man’s Curve came into view.

  Chapter 8

  The child’s skull was staring. For a terrible moment Janus was back there, in Thorne’s cold workshop. He had woken from a dream of boys screaming and knew his turn was to come.

  Then Janus came back to himself. He was in the forgotten palace. In the room he’d made for himself, with Thorne’s old things.

  There was a groan from the other side of the room. The woman. Janus had forgotten about her. She lay in the corner of her wooden cage, eyes growing glassy as her throat pumped out the last of her lifeblood.

  ‘It won’t be long now,’ he promised, moving nearer to the dying woman. ‘A painless end. I kept my word.’

  In her death throes the woman had managed to retreat to the far corner of her cage and was lying on her side, arms wrapped tight around shuddering legs. Janus remembered adopting the same posture himself as De Ryker chose the next prisoner to meet a brutal end. He tried to recall an emotion from the experience and found he couldn’t.

  ‘You’ll cross the river,’ added Janus, ‘and meet with Him.’

  He motioned to his god, Saturn, cold and terrible in the corner of the palace room. The woman had choked in terror as Janus had drawn the blanket back, revealing the deity and his sacrifices.

  Janus couldn’t explain why he’d brought the god and human remains back here. Why he recreated the terrors of his boyhood. It was like a wound he couldn’t help prodding.

  He turned away from the woman and addressed Saturn’s merciless gaze. She blinked now. Was she seeing a terrified child suspended from the god’s hand?

  ‘As a boy I dreamt of you,’ he said, addressing the statue. ‘I saw your knife cutting my throat. Felt myself sink into the dark waters of the river.’

  Saturn’s savagely bared teeth made no reply.

  ‘You were my god,’ continued Janus. ‘How could you have let them take you away from me?’

  They were questions he’d once screamed over and over in his head. But as Janus stared into the stony face he felt nothing. The realisation should have pleased him. Instead he was filled with a painful, unidentifiable feeling.

  ‘Charlie Oakley,’ he tried, ‘will suffer for his father’s betrayal.’

  This time something seemed to stir. Then a sudden guttural rattle alerted him to his victim. She’d breathed her last now. In a few hours he would consign her to the Thames.

  Janus’s gaze switched to the little palette bed he’d made for himself, and he knew suddenly he couldn’t sleep in it.

  His current dwelling was eerie and sinister. It reminded him of the dark place. The room of his nightmares. Janus remembered every last detail of Thorne’s room. He could see the huge black cogs, smell the stench of blood. And the children. Especially the children. Tiny bones haunted his dreams.

  A twist of shame stirred in the pit of his stomach. He moved to the wooden cage and opened the door. The dead woman’s blood had soaked the floor beneath her enclosure. It ran into her hair as Janus dragged her limp body free, painting a waving stain on the palace tiles. Soon he would carve her. But for now he needed to think.

  Ignoring the coiling disgust in his gut, Janus crawled into the bloody cage and wrapped his arms tightly around his knees.

  Chapter 9

  Dappling the bank of Dead Man’s Curve were a few sad wooden huts. They were made of rotting driftwood, bottom halves splashed with mud from the tides. All appeared empty of life, with no fires burning.

  ‘Where are all the people?’ asked Lily as they approached.

  ‘The only people who live here are deathlarks,’ said Charlie. ‘People who drag out the bodies for a few pence. They work at night,’ he added. ‘Sleep during the day.’

  They were nearing the huts, and Charlie pointed to one set slightly further back than the others.

  ‘I’ve paid Norris for information a few times,’ he said, heading towards it. ‘He’s older than the others. Doesn’t work when the tide is so far out.’

  Charlie approached the dark hut and knocked on a half-rotted door. From inside a stream of hacking coughs went up and a wheezing grumble. For a moment it seemed as though the occupant would not emerge. And then they heard footsteps, and the flimsy door creaked back.

  Norris was a bent little man with only a tiny wisp of hair left on his mottled head and two black teeth wobbling in his ancient mouth. He wore an old sack tied at the waist with string and a pair of handmade wooden clogs strapped to his twisted feet with rags. On seeing Charlie, he acknowledged the familiar face with an incline of his head and a grunt. His eyes lingered on Lily’s red silk dress, dark hair and gypsy charms ranged around her slim throat.

  Reaching inside his coat, Charlie brought forth a roll of string and passed it to Norris. The old man took it, unfurled it and tested the strength.

  ‘Good,’ he said, pleased. ‘No mould.’

  ‘We’ve come to know of the bodies with astrological markings,’ said Charlie.

  Norris nodded. ‘We have one still,’ he said. ‘Waiting for a church to claim her.’

  Norris was racked by a sudden fit of wheezing coughing. Charlie moved to thump him on the back.

  ‘River air,’ explained Charlie to Lily as Norris’s coughing abated.

  The old man turned, beckoning them to the shoreline, where a few decaying boats lay upturned.

  ‘We puts ’em under here,’ explained Norris, nodding to the dilapidated boats.

  He moved towards the furthest boat and, showing surprising strength for an old man, heaved it from the slick riverbed, righted it and fell to another fit of heavy coughing.

  Lily inhaled sharply, taking a few sliding steps backwards in the mud. Underneath the boat was a bloated body.

  ‘She came by only last night,’ explained Norris.

  The naked corpse lay prone in the mud. The limbs lolled obscenely, exposing a dark patch of pubic hair travelling down the inner thighs. Her eyes were bleached to a ghoulish translucence, the corneas opaque. Thick black hair was tangled with weeds, giving the staring head a hideous Medusa appearance.

  ‘Why is she that colour?’ asked Lily eventually. ‘She looks . . . burned.’

  The corpse’s remaining skin had a charred appearance, contrasting horrifically with the bloated, bulging eyes.

  ‘’S the water that does it,’ said Norris, gazing philosophically at the body. ‘Turns the skin brown and black. The eyes too,’ he added, pointing. ‘They all look like that.’

  The girl’s wounds seemed to eye them darkly. Her throat was cut completely open. All over the naked flesh were cruel knife marks. Astrological symbols had been slashed and cut in a kind of frenzy. In some places the blade had gashed deep lines to make the shape of constellations and planetary symbols. On other parts of the dead body, thick patches of skin had been removed completely.

  Norris sucked his teeth. ‘We’re closer to the o
ld ways out here,’ he said. ‘Us river folk speak of a dark god,’ he said, ‘who drags people into the deep waters. Drowns ’em, marks ’em for his own.’ The old man cast a glance at the river. ‘Long ago, Londoners made sacrifices to Father Thames to appease his thirst for blood.’

  Norris looked up at the dun-coloured sky. ‘The stars are foul over London, so they say. An eclipse comes. Perhaps old things return.’

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Charlie.

  Norris rubbed his bearded chin. ‘I think astrologers’ dark ways have predicted knowledge mortal men should not be entitled to. It’s troubled the dark nature of the river. Same as all those years ago.’

  ‘You remember the bodies from then?’ asked Charlie, surprised.

  Norris nodded slowly. ‘I remember them alright. Clear as that one lying there. The markings were just the same.’

  He moved forward and picked up a stick from the mud. Then he moved a chunk of muddy hair from the corpse’s face.

  ‘An eye,’ he said, ‘made in the same place.’

  Lily and Charlie stared. There, carved on to the girl’s forehead, was an eye. The murderer had cut through to the white skull, depicting rays of light spanning out and a triangle enclosing the shape.

  ‘I’ve seen that image before,’ said Lily, her voice tight. ‘Gypsies use it to ward off evil.’

  ‘I recognise it too,’ said Charlie. ‘You see it in old churches. The Eye of Providence, watching over us.’ He raked a hand through his dark blond hair. ‘It can’t be a coincidence,’ he said, ‘Riley speaking of an All-Seeing Eye, and this symbol.’

  Lily nodded. ‘But if the Eye is good,’ she said, ‘why is it carved into the body of a dead girl?’

  Chapter 10

  King Charles II was reclined in his private apartments, wine goblet clutched in his long, ringed fingers. His usual expanse of deep rugs had been rolled away to make room for a small stage. Three musicians stood in readiness to play the score.

  Amesbury seated himself next to the King on a carved teak chair. He shuffled back to avoid brushing King Charles’s large black curling wig. They made a strange contrast, the King in his black silk suit and snowy-white shirt, the battle-hardened general in a military jerkin and thick thigh-high boots.