Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Series Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  ‘Give him another dip.’ It was the Judge’s voice. ‘We’ll see more blood when he drops unconscious.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Charlie, the words coming thickly. ‘Wait.’

  But before he could get the words out his chest went into spasm, hacking water from deep in his lungs.

  The guards began hauling him to his feet, pushing him back to the edge of the ship.

  ‘The Eye,’ gasped Charlie.

  Walters hesitated.

  ‘I can solve Thorne’s code,’ Charlie breathed. ‘I know how to locate the Eye.’

  Chapter 84

  King Charles raised his hand to knock on Frances Stewart’s door. He hesitated, hardly able to believe his luck. Completely unprompted, she’d coyly suggested she might welcome a king’s visit to her room.

  For a moment he thought he heard voices inside and wondered if Barbara was here with her. He wished suddenly he’d not drunk quite so much wine.

  Charles lowered his fist and knocked loudly. Almost immediately he heard Frances’s girlish voice sail forth.

  ‘Come in!’ she called.

  Charles pushed open the door. To his delight, Frances was in bed, half dressed, the covers pulled up high. For a full few seconds he was in complete bliss. The object of his desires was finally within reach. He decided then and there he would try to make her his Queen.

  Then his slightly blurred vision made out another figure sitting by her bed.

  He could hardly believe it.

  Buckingham.

  Lady Castlemaine’s old lover was perched on the white coverlet, his dark hair tied in a ponytail, long leather boots crossed casually.

  Buckingham was horrified to see the King. He stood uncertainly, stumbling slightly on Frances’s rug.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he stammered, bowing clumsily.

  ‘Buckingham.’ Charles’s voice was icy. ‘What are you doing in a lady-of-waiting’s bedchamber?’

  ‘I . . .’ Buckingham couldn’t answer.

  ‘You are aware,’ thundered Charles furiously, ‘this girl is but fifteen and unmarried. How dare you!’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ began Buckingham again, his eyes on Frances.

  ‘I’ll have you hanged,’ raged Charles, ‘for offending this lady’s honour!’

  ‘Your Majesty.’ Frances was speaking now, letting the cover fall a little. ‘Did your Queen not tell you?’

  Charles twisted towards her drunkenly. ‘My Queen? Catherine?’

  Frances nodded demurely. ‘Her Majesty Queen Catherine has granted permission for us to be married,’ said Frances smoothly. Her brown eyes settled on Buckingham, whose face was aghast. ‘Buckingham is my fiancé,’ she added, ‘and means to remove me from court to his country seat.’

  Deep hurt flashed on Charles’s face. For a moment it looked as though he might erupt in fury again.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said Frances, speaking quickly, ‘you know how sensible I am of the great honours you have done me. But if I might not receive my own fiancé into my chamber, I am no better than a prisoner.’

  There was a tense silence.

  Charles hung his head suddenly. ‘I didn’t know,’ he mumbled, ‘how you felt.’ He swung uncertainly, not sure which way the door was. Tears pricked his eyes and he raised a hand to hide them. ‘I must speak with the Queen,’ he mumbled finally, more to himself than anyone else. He forced himself to stand tall and marched straight-backed from the room.

  As the door thudded shut, Buckingham turned to Frances in horror.

  ‘Your fiancé?’ he said. ‘Have you any idea what kind of trouble you’ve gotten me into?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frances, ‘I do. The King will be furious with you, and you’ll never be allowed back at court. But I think His Majesty loves me well enough to spare your life. I’ll petition for us to be granted use of your family seat and lands outside London.’

  ‘You wish to be my bride?’ said Buckingham. He looked to be seriously considering the idea now.

  ‘I wish to leave court,’ said Frances. ‘You have your faults, but I think you a good man deep down. I believe I could learn to love you.’ She gave a small smile. ‘You told me,’ she said, ‘to learn to play the courtly games. Well, now I have.’

  ‘We could never come to court,’ said Buckingham. ‘The King would be too angry.’

  ‘I never want to come back to court,’ said Frances. ‘I am tired of the intrigues and the rules. At Whitehall an unmarried girl is a pawn for people like you and Lady Castlemaine to shuffle around. I want to be queen of my own simple life. Married and honest. And you are to be my rescuer,’ she added firmly, ‘whether you like it or not.’

  Chapter 85

  Charlie pulled himself upright, his clothes dripping with Thames water. The deck of Judge Walters’s prison ship felt reassuringly solid beneath him.

  Lily broke free from the guards holding her and rushed to Charlie’s side. She wrapped her arms around him, staring into his face in concern.

  ‘I can solve the paper,’ said Charlie as Lily helped him into a seated position.

  Walters’s eyes widened in distrust. ‘Then do it,’ he said after a moment. The Judge flung the Chart of All Hallows’ Eve towards him.

  Charlie knelt and spread the paper on the floor. ‘I think parts of the chart,’ he said, ‘are written in a different colour ink.’

  Lily stared. ‘The recipe,’ she said. ‘The Judge said it was for ink.’

  ‘I assumed it must be some exotic alchemy or medicine,’ said Charlie. ‘When Walters dismissed it as an ink recipe, I thought more simply. Shavings of rich red wood can also make a scarlet dye.’ Charlie took the cross of rings and held them over the chart, praying he was right. ‘An ink recipe,’ he continued, ‘for a very subtle shade. This ink is very slightly pigmented red. It’s such a small difference,’ he explained, ‘that the eye doesn’t see it. Only the colour of a certain ruby brings it out.’

  ‘The Chart of All Hallows’ Eve is drawn part in black ink, part in coded ink?’ said Lily.

  Charlie nodded. ‘That’s why the astrology is meaningless,’ he said. ‘Thorne’s chart doesn’t make sense because it’s only a conduit to hide coded letters.’

  Charlie held up the cross of rings so the ship’s lantern light shone through the rubies.

  ‘These rings aren’t marked with symbols to solve a code,’ he said. ‘The red jewels make a kind of spyglass, to read the different colour ink.’

  Carefully he slid the cross shape over the paper. From the dense scrawl of black writing, letters leapt into clear relief through the shaded colour of the rubies.

  ‘The configuration of the rings joined together,’ Charlie continued, ‘reads the coded letters in order. It’s extremely clever,’ he concluded.

  He drew the rubies slowly across the page, revealing Thorne’s lost code. Bit by bit the words took shape.

  ‘It’s . . . a poem,’ said Lily. She began reading aloud. ‘When tide and time a circle make,’ she began, ‘and dread Saturn seals Jupiter’s fate . . .’ She paused as Charlie shifted the rings along, revealing more words. ‘Then luck will break and time will end,’ she continued, ‘And mighty Heavens the world will bend.’ She stopped as the rings came to the edge of the page.

  ‘Tide and time a circle make?’ Charlie frowned.

  ‘Time will end,’ added Lily uneasily. ‘What can it mean?’

  Judge Walters was hovering hawklike over the chart.

  ‘It’s the apocalypse he forecasts,’ said the Judge grimly. ‘Time will end at midnight tonight.’ He turned to Charlie and Lily. ‘It appears you have outlived your usefulness,’ he announced.

  ‘Wait,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s not the apocalypse Thorne forecasts.’ He thought quickly. ‘It’s . . . a location,’ he said.

  The Judge eyed him coolly. ‘You attempt a trick,’ he accused.

  ‘Tide and time form a circle,’ improvised Charlie. ‘It means the Island of the Dead. It forms a circle at high tide. The Eye is hidden on an island d
ownriver.’

  Charlie waited, silently willing the Judge to believe his deception. Beside him he could feel Lily tense.

  ‘The Island of the Dead,’ said Judge Walters thoughtfully. Then he smiled. ‘Where the cholera victims and prisoners are buried. We can be there in less than an hour.’ He paused. ‘What of the rest of the code?’ he asked. ‘Saturn seals Jupiter’s fate?’

  ‘An exact place on the island,’ said Charlie. ‘We need Ishmael Boney. He can read the stars to show the place the Eye is hidden.’

  The Judge nodded. ‘Get Boney,’ he growled to a guard. ‘Give him a spyglass or whatever he needs. Set the sails and take us downriver.’ He smiled to himself. ‘By midnight the Eye will be mine and all the slave bounty of the oceans.’

  There was shouting on deck as the guards opened the sails. Then Charlie saw Ishmael Boney, his eyes wide with terror, being led up on deck.

  ‘The Eye,’ Charlie told him as he was manhandled next to them. ‘It’s on the Island of the Dead.’

  Ishmael looked confused.

  ‘The locals call it the Isle of Dogs,’ added Charlie meaningfully, hoping Ishmael had lived long enough in Deptford to have knowledge of the local waters. ‘The high tides form a circle.’

  Something like understanding flashed on Ishmael’s face. The Isle of Dogs was a marshy no man’s land.

  Charlie handed Ishmael the Chart of All Hallows’ Eve.

  ‘Take us here,’ he said, stabbing a random star sign, ‘where Jupiter meets Saturn.’

  Ishmael nodded slowly. He raised his eyes to the sky and pointed upriver.

  ‘Where is it?’ growled the Judge, growing agitated in his excitement to find the Eye. ‘Tell me quickly.’

  ‘Sail towards Greenwich,’ said Ishmael quietly. ‘I can tell you more when we get closer to the Island of the Dead.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Lily had crept close to Charlie. ‘You’re leading the Judge straight to the Eye.’

  ‘No,’ whispered Charlie. ‘The Eye isn’t on the island. Ishmael knows that. It’s mostly marshland that way.’

  ‘Then why are we going there?’

  ‘We’re going to beach the ship.’

  Chapter 86

  Janus was making his arrangements in Deptford. The Eye was tantalisingly close, but he knew it was better to secure his plans.

  No more failures, he promised himself. This time I will succeed.

  With the dockyards all but deserted, it had been easy to steal aboard a small ship and lay out a few flammables on deck. Not a true fireship to be sure, but the flames would rise high enough to cause alarm and ensure his own little craft could sail out of the docks unmolested.

  Magic, he thought to himself, remembering Thorne’s words, is nothing more than distraction.

  Janus observed that the same was true of Charlie Oakley. His attention would be fixed on rescuing his brother when he should be looking for the Eye.

  Janus felt almost sad about it. For all his skills and bravery, the thief taker was so easily beaten. Janus had suffered from such weaknesses for family once. But his time at sea had divested him of such attachments.

  Or had it?

  It occurred to Janus that he’d built an unlikely kinship with De Ryker. The admiral had seen his cleverness and nurtured it. Against all the odds Janus realised he’d grown to feel a kind of love for the old man. He could still remember the bloody cage on board ship, the strange feeling of comfort he drew from it when all the other prisoners were quaking with terror.

  ‘De Ryker means us to beat one another to death for the sport of his crew,’ whispered a fellow captive. ‘They make bets on the sole survivor.’

  Janus looked away. ‘Then you will all die,’ he said, staring at the sea.

  As a boy, Janus had lain awake waiting for the dark god to claim him. After countless nights, waiting for death was familiar, and terror had become a part of him. He knew the other captives, paralysed with fear, would be no match.

  ‘You pretend you are not frightened?’ De Ryker had asked Janus when he’d returned to the cage, soaked in the blood of other prisoners.

  ‘I’m always afraid,’ Janus replied, ‘but I’ve made fear a friend. He lives quietly enough.’

  De Ryker hesitated. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he decided, ‘another trial. Since you fight so well and thrive on terror. You will pilot my fireship. See those cannons?’ De Ryker had explained. ‘They will be aimed at you. Steer your fireship right, and you’ll live. Fail, and I’ll blow you from the waters.’

  He’d studied Janus’s face for a reaction. ‘I’ve seen the bluff and bravado of hundreds of men,’ said De Ryker. ‘There’s something different about you.’

  Janus settled back against the bloody bars of the cage. ‘I have lived in the shadow of the dark god,’ he’d said. ‘You are nothing to him.’

  Janus had learned fast, and by the time De Ryker had put him at the helm of his third fireship, with instructions to fix it to the enemy or die trying, Janus’s expertise had bested any other pilot’s.

  He had come to love the tense power of the fireship, engineering the fuses and the combustibles to make a floating bomb. He remembered the day De Ryker had come to trust his expertise.

  ‘We should use faster ships,’ said Janus, ‘and English gunpowder. Their serpentine powder has a better saltpetre concentration. It flares better and will combust a steadier fuse. Then,’ he concluded, ‘we attack at night.’

  De Ryker’s eyes bulged slightly. ‘Such a thing cannot be done.’

  ‘With your permission,’ said Janus, ‘I think we could flame the Queen Catherine.’

  ‘If you manage to do what you say,’ said De Ryker, ‘you will have earned the title of Fireship Commander. You will no longer be caged and may fit out the next fireship as you see fit.’

  Janus bowed his head in thanks.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ said De Ryker. ‘You haven’t succeeded in the thing you promise.’

  But Janus had succeeded. And after the sinking of the Queen Catherine, he’d been given licence to fit his ships with serpentine powder and travel to England to find the Eye.

  Janus reflected on how his desire to escape De Ryker had ebbed. Already, he knew, De Ryker was overseeing the manufacture of his latest and deadliest fireship. The guided missile that would explode England’s navy as she floated in harbour.

  But it suddenly occurred to Janus that he’d replaced one tyrannical, bloodthirsty master with another. And he’d done it gladly.

  Chapter 87

  The first fingers of eclipse had begun as Judge Walters’s prison ship sailed towards the Isle of Dogs. They cast a blood-red crescent on the side of the shining moon. Charlie guessed that midnight could only be hours away.

  If they didn’t find the Eye by then, the only thing likely to free his brother would be lost forever.

  As they sailed east, a few guards began making noises of protest. Those with more sailing experience were baulking at the marshland around Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs.

  ‘They say the ship could run aground,’ said Judge Walters, speaking to Charlie. ‘You’re certain this is the correct route?’

  ‘Ishmael uses Thorne’s astrology to steer us a safer course,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s a higher kind of navigation not known to most sailors,’ he improvised.

  ‘Head towards Greenwich,’ said Ishmael. ‘There’s a safe landing place there. You’ll need to take a smaller boat to the Island of the Dead.’

  The Judge was staring downriver uncertainly. The ship was gathering speed now, heading towards Greenwich.

  ‘The Eye is said to grant the sight of the angels,’ added Charlie. ‘Thorne hid it well so no ordinary man might find it.’

  The Judge smiled at this. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it will take determination and courage to find. But the rewards will be great.’

  A few sailors were murmuring discontentedly.

  ‘I am your captain,’ growled the Judge. �
�Follow my orders or you’ll go the way of the prisoners below.’ He clicked his fingers impatiently at Ishmael. ‘Which way now?’

  ‘The same course,’ assured Ismael.

  The Judge nodded. ‘Find a craft large enough for a few men,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll steer out to find the Eye with the astrologer and the thief taker.’

  He was grinning at the prospect of his prize, oblivious to the telltale heads of reeds that had begun poking up from the waters around Greenwich.

  Charlie was scanning the river, looking for the firmest marsh hiding beneath.

  ‘Get ready,’ he muttered to Lily and Ishmael. ‘The ship will lurch this way.’ He indicated. ‘We can jump.’

  ‘Into the water?’

  ‘It’s only a few feet deep,’ Charlie assured her. ‘It’s marshland underneath.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Bunch your legs as you fall,’ he added, ‘to lessen the impact.’

  He could see a patch of thick marsh ahead.

  ‘Brace yourselves,’ he said. ‘Get a good grip on the side of the ship.’

  The Judge turned in confusion as they moved to take a hold. Understanding dawned in his single cold eye, but too slowly. He made a lunge towards them, just as the ship gave a great shudder beneath them.

  The Judge was jolted to the side, away from a firm handhold. Men in the rigging were desperately swinging to the sails, trying to alter their course, but with an ominous grinding sound the ship slowed to a halt. Then she began to tip.

  Judge Walters’s face was a picture of shocked rage as he slid uncontrollably across the deck. His shouted orders were drowned out as guards fell this way and that, tumbling down the angled deck.

  A few crashed into rigging. Others clutched helplessly at barrels and falling objects. The ship’s tilt intensified, and now men were slammed hard to port.

  ‘Hold on and climb over!’ shouted Charlie as the floor slanted under them. They pulled themselves up the side of the ship. The marshy Thames was beneath them.