Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Series Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  The body was unrecognisable from when she’d gone in the water. Only the markings identified her. Carefully he checked them. The carvings showed the exact time and place he’d floated the corpse.

  Janus began making his ritual. Using rags he’d brought for the purpose, he washed and anointed the body with oil. After a moment’s hesitation, Janus stared up at the stars, mapping the position of Venus’s bright light. His hand closed on the copper-handled knife in his coat. It was time to make one last symbol on his broken thing.

  Saturn was ready to take another child.

  Chapter 38

  Charlie raised the goat’s-head door knocker and struck three times.

  There was movement inside the house. Then a man with long silver hair opened the door a crack.

  ‘What do you want?’ His voice was wheezy, hesitant.

  ‘Are you Ishmael Boney?’ asked Charlie.

  The fear in the man’s face magnified.

  ‘They took him already,’ he whispered. ‘Ishmael isn’t here. Who are you?’

  Charlie toyed with the right answer. ‘We’re . . . enthusiasts of his work,’ he tried. ‘We’re trying to find him.’

  The man’s anxiety seemed to ease slightly.

  ‘I’m very busy,’ he said, ‘preparing for the end of the world.’

  Charlie and Lily hesitated.

  ‘Just a moment of your time,’ said Lily, batting her eyelashes.

  The door opened wider. The man wore a white shirt, purple breeches ending at the knee, and his scrawny legs were stockingless, enclosed at the feet in black buckled shoes.

  ‘I can tell you what I know,’ he said. ‘But I don’t have much time. All Hallows’ Eve approaches. I imagine you must be making arrangements for the apocalypse yourself.’

  Behind the man was a narrow hallway of chaos. Possessions were stacked in a kind of frenzy. Open trunks were ranged around.

  ‘I’m Gabriel Evans,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of my work,’ he added hopefully.

  ‘Your astrology?’ said Charlie, taking a guess. ‘It’s well known in educated circles.’

  Gabriel nodded happily, leading them further inside. His shambling walk made him seem made entirely of loosely joined bones.

  ‘I’m not famed like some of the others,’ he said, ‘but I dedicate myself to understanding the stars, their movements.’

  They were in a small parlour now, furnished only by a large desk and papers. Charlie guessed this room had been cleared in preparation for Doomsday. The cauldron on the fire had obviously not been used for a long time, and Charlie wondered how the old man ate. By the look of him, he didn’t.

  ‘You make predictions,’ asked Charlie, ‘based on the stars?’

  ‘It is simply a matter of knowing the true nature of the stars at the time the question is asked,’ nodded Gabriel.

  ‘You’re never wrong?’ asked Lily sceptically.

  ‘The planets never lie,’ said Gabriel. ‘If I am wrong,’ he concluded grandly, ‘it is because time by the Whitehall clock is never totally accurate.’

  Gabriel pointed to a battered kettle. ‘Will you take some nettle water? Excellent for the bowels.’

  They both declined. The man poured his own cup, and settled himself at the desk with a number of alarming joint pops.

  ‘Ishmael was taken by men who came in the night,’ he said. ‘A kidnap.’

  Charlie and Lily exchanged glances.

  ‘There are many people who might want Ishmael,’ said Charlie grimly. ‘People who think him guilty of murder. Maybe someone found him out.’ He turned back to Gabriel. ‘You were here with Ishmael?’

  ‘No, I came after he was taken.’ Gabriel crossed himself. ‘His Majesty is kind to astrologers and has granted us sanctuary. With the coming eclipse, Londoners are unsettled. I’ve been threatened many times.’

  ‘Ishmael would have made star charts and things of that nature, would he not?’ suggested Charlie. ‘Was nothing of his works left?’

  ‘No,’ said the astrologer. ‘I drew several star charts to be sure.’

  Charlie felt a glimmer of hope. Perhaps Gabriel had not properly searched, relying instead on his astrology.

  ‘If Ishmael were kidnapped,’ said Charlie carefully, ‘he would hardly have had time to gather up his workings.’

  ‘Clothes were left,’ said Gabriel, ‘and a little flour and milk. But nothing astrological. It was mostly as you see it now.’

  He gestured to the neat fire and cauldron. Everything had its rightful place, Charlie noticed. A hook for every spoon, a lid for every pot. Ishmael was a methodical kind of man if his residence was anything to go by.

  ‘Did it not strike you as strange,’ asked Charlie, ‘that he left no astrological workings of any kind?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ve made powerful charts to discern where Ishmael’s works could be. My calculations show his papers are aboard a carriage bound for the North of England. I am quite certain on the matter.’

  ‘Ishmael did his stargazing from the attic?’ suggested Charlie. ‘Might we look there?’

  ‘He did,’ said Gabriel. ‘But you won’t find anything. I assure you my workings were perfect. The sun in Aquarius. A carriage headed north. There is no mistake.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Charlie tactfully. ‘We’re both very interested in astrology,’ he added. ‘Do you study the stars from the attic also?’

  Gabriel’s thin chest inflated with pride. ‘I have several devices of my own making up there,’ he said. ‘And I do most of my workings by starlight.’

  ‘We should love to see them,’ said Lily, catching on to Charlie’s tactic. ‘They sound most interesting.’

  ‘Of course.’ Gabriel stood with a gratified expression. ‘It is a science, you understand. Not everyone gives astrology the credit it deserves. It is the fault of charlatans who forecast on cockfights and tea leaves, pretending at real science.’ Gabriel beckoned them through the narrow hallways and the staircase beyond. ‘No man can deny the influence of the stars on the earth,’ continued Gabriel, moving towards the staircase. ‘Men feel more angry and warlike when Mars is ascending. Women scheme their marriages to coincide with lusty Venus.’

  They were ascending the rickety stair now, and beyond, Charlie saw a ladder leading to an attic.

  ‘In day-to-day matters, astrology is also useful,’ prattled Gabriel, moving towards the ladder. ‘My own record for finding lost things is excellent. Only last week I found a man’s spectacles.’ He mounted the ladder with impressive dexterity for his age. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘Have a care; it’s steep.’

  In the small entrance, Charlie could see a shaft of light where the roof had been partially cut away.

  Taking hold of a rung, he followed Gabriel up into Ishmael Boney’s attic.

  Chapter 39

  Lady Castlemaine’s sumptuous apartments had welcomed an unexpected visitor. Amesbury’s military clothing and muddy boots looked conspicuously out of place amongst her artfully amassed furnishings and trinkets.

  ‘So you come for my help?’ Lady Castlemaine had a spiteful look in her eyes. ‘Why did you not help me before?’

  Amesbury sighed. He’d been expecting this. He rested his bullish bulk heavily on a dainty chaise longue. It creaked under his weight.

  ‘What could I have done,’ he asked, ‘about Frances?’

  ‘You might have advised the King against it,’ said Lady Castlemaine angrily. ‘You might have told him how disgusting and debasing it is for a man of his years to chase a fifteen-year-old girl around the palace.’

  Amesbury watched in dull amazement. He had never seen Lady Castlemaine display any kind of vulnerability. Yet here she was, voice quaking, hurt splayed across her beautiful face. He had a sudden terror that she might cry.

  But Lady Castlemaine was made of sterner stuff. He watched in fascination as she pulled her feelings back into alignment. It was like watching a mask being put in place piece by piece.

  ‘So
why,’ she concluded, ‘should I help you?’

  ‘It is not for myself I ask help,’ said Amesbury, spreading his large hands. ‘It is for England.’

  ‘You suggest my loyalty needs prompting?’ said Lady Castlemaine. ‘You forget I was secretly toasting the banished King when you were fighting for Cromwell.’

  Amesbury ignored the dig.

  ‘Buckingham,’ he said. ‘Do you trust him?’

  ‘What disgusting rumours—?’

  Amesbury held up his hands to silence her. ‘Save your acting for His Majesty,’ he interrupted. ‘I have no perturbation who shares your bed. But I do care,’ he concluded, ‘that someone close to the King could be working for the Dutch.’

  Lady Castlemaine arched her high eyebrows. ‘If you wish for my opinion, you must first tell me your suspicions against Buckingham,’ she said.

  Amesbury reached forward to help himself from a crystal decanter of sherry. The chaise longue beneath him gave an audible crack of distress. Lady Castlemaine winced, took hold of the decanter herself and poured the sweet wine into two exquisitely fluted crystal glasses. Amesbury took one in his bear-like hand, frowning at the tiny vessel.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, taking a sip. ‘De Ryker has amassed a fleet at the mouth of the Thames. I think he means to invade. And he would only do so with good reason.’

  Amesbury drained the sherry in a single further gulp and looked disappointedly at the tiny vessel.

  ‘But the King doesn’t see the danger,’ concluded Lady Castlemaine, ‘or you wouldn’t come to me.’

  Amesbury held up his empty glass in recognition of her perception. ‘The Duke of York has persuaded the King that a foolish obsession with finding longitude can save them from the Dutch attack.’

  ‘He hopes to find better navigation?’ said Lady Castlemaine. ‘Faster routes to the wealth of the New World?’ Her eyes flashed with imaginary riches.

  It hadn’t escaped Amesbury’s notice that Lady Castlemaine’s apartments were replete with the spoils of conquest. Gold and jewels encrusted every lacquered piece of furniture. Dainty silverware for the preparation of chocolate was arranged with ceramics from China.

  ‘It is a fantasy,’ said Amesbury. ‘We are decades away from such a navigational accomplishment – perhaps centuries – if longitude can even be solved at all. The Dutch are a day away.’

  ‘What has Buckingham to do with this?’ Lady Castlemaine moved forward to refill his dainty glass.

  ‘You remember Thorne?’ said Amesbury. ‘You attended his wedding I believe.’

  ‘They hoped a bride would temper his strange ways,’ agreed Lady Castlemaine. ‘I felt sorry for her. Didn’t Thorne work alongside the Cipher?’ She gave a shudder. ‘Two mad cryptographers together, worshipping Roman gods, making sacrifices to the Thames. That was how I heard it.’

  Amesbury smiled slightly. ‘Thorne made a very powerful weapon,’ he said. ‘It was known as the Eye and thought lost. I believe the Dutch have sent a man to search for it in London.’

  Lady Castlemaine looked interested. ‘You think Buckingham seeks this weapon, meaning to give it to De Ryker?’ She sipped sherry distractedly, her pretty face puckered in thought. ‘A treason?’

  ‘I think Buckingham may have been working for the Dutch as a fireship pilot,’ said Amesbury, ‘calling himself Janus. I think he’s been murdering girls at Deptford, perhaps trying to replicate Thorne’s work.’

  Lady Castlemaine considered this. ‘You have evidence for your suspicions?’ she said eventually.

  ‘Buckingham’s disappearance coincided exactly with Janus’s emergence on De Ryker’s command,’ said Amesbury, ‘and he’s been hiding his nationality. His mother is Dutch. Buckingham has also been sighted several times at Dead Man’s Curve. At night.’

  Lady Castlemaine nodded, thinking of her own discoveries. The lock of bloody hair, the almanac.

  ‘Then you expect me to risk my safety at the hands of a killer?’ she said.

  Amesbury smiled broadly. ‘You are much too clever for that.’

  Lady Castlemaine drank sherry thoughtfully. Amesbury took her silence as acquiescence. But he knew better than to sigh in relief. Lady Castlemaine’s help always came with caveats.

  ‘Then you must do something for me,’ she added.

  Amesbury waved his hand. ‘Name it.’

  ‘Frances Stewart,’ said Lady Castlemaine. ‘I want her ruined. Banished from court.’

  ‘I thought you were making headway there,’ said Amesbury, surprised. ‘From what I heard, she’s your nightly bedfellow.’

  Lady Castlemaine scowled. ‘The girl is nauseatingly pious. She sleeps in my bed most nights. But God is a hard enemy to drive off.’

  Amesbury nodded. He heaved his bulk up with a heavy sigh. Courtly politics was an unpleasant business. He was getting too soft-hearted in his old age.

  ‘It shall be done,’ he said wearily.

  Chapter 40

  Charlie followed Gabriel into the attic, with Lily behind him. They found themselves under a thatched roof, into which had been cut a neat hole. Daylight shone through.

  Packed inside were provisions. Sacks of ships’ biscuits, barrels of ale, pickles and a large side of salted beef. The rafters were ranged with hanging crucifixes, and pages from an old Bible had been torn out and fixed on the beams. They fluttered in the draught from the open roof.

  ‘My arrangements,’ explained Gabriel, gesturing to the stockpiled food, ‘for the coming apocalypse. Enough food for half a year. I bought these protectorates from a Cheapside stall.’

  A spyglass lay on the floor. Charlie picked it up.

  ‘My own invention,’ said Gabriel. ‘You can see Venus crossing the moon on a clear night. I’ve tracked her pentagram for the last eight years.’

  ‘Venus makes the shape of a pentagram?’ Charlie was thinking of the corpse at Deptford.

  ‘Of course,’ said Gabriel. ‘The five-pointed star. It’s why the apple is the fruit of Venus.’ He took in their blank expressions. ‘The shape of the pips when you cut the fruit, you see?’ He looked at Charlie, pleased to be explaining. ‘Apple pips make the same shape as the Venus star, moving through the heavens.’

  ‘I thought Devil worshippers used the pentagram,’ said Lily.

  ‘If they do, it is ill-used,’ said Gabriel, sounding rather annoyed. ‘The pentagram is Venus. The Love Goddess.’

  ‘What about your goat door knocker?’ said Charlie. ‘That has a pentagram.’

  ‘I presume it belonged to Ishmael,’ said Gabriel vaguely. ‘The goat is Capricorn of course – Saturn’s sign. Venus and Saturn . . .’ He trailed off. ‘Perhaps some association more learned men than I know of.’

  ‘Ishmael made the hole?’ suggested Charlie, eyeing it from several vantage points.

  Gabriel nodded. ‘I believe so.’

  ‘A precise man,’ decided Charlie, taking in the way the thatch had been cut. Ishmael had taken the time to make careful strokes, minimising the fraying of the reed, where another man might have hacked and bludgeoned.

  ‘Knows something about roofing too,’ Charlie decided. ‘The reeds have been slashed on an angle at the weakest point, as a thatcher would do it. Most people would cut horizontal, in line with the roof.’

  Charlie let his gaze sweep the room. There was nowhere here to hide anything apart from the floor. And he could tell at a glance no floorboards had been disturbed.

  He sat on his haunches and considered the scene. His thief taker’s intuition told him Ishmael might have hidden something in the roof. The man obviously knew something about thatching. But the roof was large, and it would take them all day to search.

  Charlie examined the problem. Where might an astrologer hide something if he wished to find it again? His scant knowledge of Ishmael suggested him to be a systematic man.

  Charlie took off his coat.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Gabriel, alarmed, as Charlie fitted his long leather coat across the hole in the thatch.
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  The inside of the attic darkened. As his eyes adjusted, Charlie swept the thatched roof with his eyes, running systematically along the beams. Almost everywhere the thick reeds cut out the sun completely.

  ‘Take away your coat!’ demanded Gabriel. ‘We can’t see a thing.’

  Charlie scanned carefully, tuning out the protests of the outraged astrologer.

  There.

  A suspiciously square patch where a glimmer of autumn sun lightened the thatch. The reed roof was thinner there, Charlie was certain. He removed his coat and walked towards it.

  ‘What is the meaning of it?’ asked Gabriel, less agitated now the attic was in daylight again.

  Charlie raised his hand to where he’d seen that the thatch was thinner. At first he thought he’d been mistaken. Then he felt it. A tiny pocket had been cut into the roof, almost indiscernible to the naked eye. But enough to let a little extra sun through.

  He pushed up his hand. Inside was a sheaf of papers. He pulled them free.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Gabriel. ‘What have you there?’

  ‘I think,’ said Charlie, ‘Ishmael Boney may have left something after all.’

  Chapter 41

  In the dark attic Charlie and Lily stared at the papers. There were tens of them, all made out in a neat crabbed hand. Most were star charts. Circles and squares were dotted with symbols of suns and star signs.

  ‘I was certain,’ Gabriel was saying, ‘the moon was in Cancer. I am all amazement you found them here. I must go back to my charts and reassess.’

  Charlie let his gaze hover over the papers. They looked disappointingly ordinary. Merely workings for what later made their way into Ishmael’s almanacs.

  Lily held up the star charts. ‘These don’t make sense,’ she said sadly, ‘unless you know astrology.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters,’ said Charlie. ‘From what I can remember, most of these have already been published in Ishmael’s almanac.’

  Then Charlie noticed something. A paper that looked different to the rest.

  He picked it up. ‘This is older,’ said Charlie, seizing on it. ‘See how the ink is faded? And the paper is rag mash, not wood pulp like the rest. We make finer stuff nowadays. The writing is different too,’ he noted.