Jack of Ravens

by Mark Chadbourn

  A memory came to Church unbidden and he shivered: a face looming over him as he lay close to death en route to Boskawen-Un and his rendezvous with the Fabulous Beast. The thing saying to him, ‘Gods answer to gods answer to gods, and somehow the voice of Existence trickles through to men.’

  Church peered at the cards more closely. ‘Am I in there?’

  Niamh pointed to the Fool. ‘The Fool is on a journey of enlightenment. When he reaches the end of his path he returns to the start again, for there is always something new to learn.’

  Church pulled up a chair and watched the logs crackle and spit. ‘Will Swyfte knew his position and what was expected of him, and he knew he had the abilities to deal with it. He didn’t want to be a spy, I could tell, but he accepted his responsibilities whatever the cost to himself. I wish I had his confidence.’

  ‘Existence chose you for a reason, Jack Churchill.’

  Church looked up to see Niamh watching him tenderly. ‘I’m not going to be able to do this on my own.’

  ‘You have allies. My court stands with you.’

  In her face Church saw a whole host of emotions that had gone unrecognised for a long time. The realisation shocked him, but consideration of the implications was something for another time.

  ‘I want your permission to travel to my own world,’ he said. ‘The fight back starts here, and I have a lot of things to put in place.’

  Chapter Seven

  HELL IS A CITY

  1

  England, 1 May 1851

  Beneath a dreaming night sky, the massive bluestones of Stonehenge stood sentinel on the windswept Downs, their setting barely altered since they had first been raised 4,000 years earlier. Church knew all that was about to change. In a few short decades they would be packaged and presented for the modern world, swarmed over by tourists, imprisoned by roads and traffic and watched over by new buildings that were temples of mundanity.

  For now Church could enjoy the circle as it was originally intended, part of an ancient landscape of tranquillity where the only sound was the wind across the grass.

  ‘Get a bloody move on. They’re only stones.’ Tom had grown bad-tempered on the long walk from where the carriage had dropped them off.

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘Losing your lamp has addled you. Can you not feel it?’ Tom rested one hand on the turf. ‘There’s barely a flicker under here. The Blue Fire has gone to sleep. What did you expect? This is the Age of Reason. People these days haven’t got any time for magic, if the journey here is anything to go by. They like big machines and stinking factories, and as much money as they can possibly make, and damn the consequences and the poorhouses.’

  ‘When I was looking into the Wish-Post, the Libertarian told Shavi that the earth energy was gone, and so were the Fabulous Beasts.’

  ‘Aye, well, maybe they are gone by then. Right now the energy’s just dormant. It’s linked to our unconscious. If we don’t want it around it dies down. And this is the first time in human history when things we make are more important than things we feel.’

  Jerzy gambolled up like a monkey. Despite the failure to remove the Caraprix, his new-found freedom had left him changed: brighter, more optimistic, filled with passion and humour.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Tom strode off, shouting, ‘Damnable ape! What I would give for some intelligent companionship.’

  Niamh followed Jerzy, her cape billowing behind her. ‘There is beauty in these Fixed Lands.’ She lifted her head to survey the sea of stars.

  Jerzy did a little jig. ‘Methinks the beauty she has her eyes on is earthbound.’

  Tom was sitting on a fallen megalith, smoking, when Church reached the circle.

  ‘At least you’re starting to use your God-given brains,’ the Rhymer said.

  ‘You were the inspiration.’ Church searched for landmarks, then began to pace out the distance. ‘I needed to stop seeing time from my own narrow perspective. Start taking the long view.’ He weighed in his hands the stone he had brought from Niamh’s court. ‘I need to send a message from now to then.’

  You’re starting to make as much sense as the monkey-boy,’ Tom observed.

  Church reached the correct spot and then dug a hole with a silver trowel. He dropped the stone in it, replaced the soil and the turf and stamped it down.

  When he looked up he was not where he had been standing and the shock of dislocation almost threw him off his feet. Stonehenge was nowhere to be seen, nor were Tom, Niamh or Jerzy. He was on the Downs somewhere – he could tell from the rolling landscape. Struggling with his disorientation, he walked a few paces, calling to the others.

  ‘What, ho!’

  Church jumped. Jerzy was standing a foot behind him, although he had not been there when Church had looked a moment before.

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  Where did you come from?’ Jerzy mimicked.

  ‘This is no time for your jokes.’ Church looked around uneasily. ‘We need to find out where we are.’

  ‘We are here, and if we were over there we would be here, too.’

  Church ignored the Mocker’s mischief. He was wondering whether this was the start of some attack by the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders, or if the Libertarian or Salazar or Veitch were going to descend on them.

  ‘I must bid you farewell, to seek my fortune in London,’ Jerzy said.

  We’re all going to London,’ Church replied, distracted. You know that. I’ve got to start spreading the word.’

  ‘There is much mischief in these lands, and mischief is what I love the most. Things shall be turned on their head. What is down shall be up, and vice versa, and inside out. I go to serve at the foot of a master.’

  Church was puzzled by Jerzy’s tone, and when he looked at him properly, he caught a strange cast to the Mocker’s face. The unfamiliar expression may have been caused by a shadow passing across the moon, but for one fleeting moment it didn’t look like Jerzy at all.

  Church heard his name called, and when he looked up he saw he was back at the same spot where he had buried the stone. The others were walking across the grassland on the other side of the stones; and Jerzy was with them.

  Church looked behind him, where Jerzy had been standing. He was alone. He shivered, not quite knowing why, and ran to the others. But when he rounded the circle he could only see Tom and Niamh.

  ‘There you are,’ Tom snapped. ‘What are you doing, wandering off? I thought the spiders had got you.’

  Where’s Jerzy?’ Church asked.

  Tom and Niamh looked around, puzzled. ‘He was here only a moment ago,’ Niamh said.

  Though they called his name for more than an hour, there was no sign of him. Church told the others what Jerzy had said about going to London, and they all agreed that they had little choice but to hope Jerzy would meet them there.

  As their carriage pulled away from the moon-shadows sweeping over the Downs, Church felt that they had been at the centre of something very strange indeed.

  2

  The winding, pitch-black cesspit streets of the East End were almost lost beneath the ramshackle buildings that towered over them, seeping degradation and despair. Occasionally there were pools of light, the pubs where the locals attempted to make the best of their lot amidst the vinegary stink of sour beer and the thick smoke of cheap tobacco. But mostly there was darkness.

  Veitch strode purposefully through the dire lanes. His sword was strapped to his back beneath his cloak. He could feel the blade calling out to the shadows, sense its subtle black energies permeating his own flesh and bone, hungrily seeking out his desire for vengeance, and his hatred and his bitterness.

  He had grown up across the river in South London, an area of similar hardness and struggle. South Londoners and East Enders were rivals, but there was an affinity beneath the surface that forged an unspoken bond. They knew life wasn’t easy, that it was about compromise, and attempting to mine whatever nuggets of happiness you could fin
d in the thick seam of day-to-day hardship. That was life; no point moaning about it.

  Though the East End had changed a great deal by his own time, thanks to German bombs and out-of-town developers, he could still find his way around. The old familiar markers were still there: Mile End and Whitechapel, Shoreditch and Ratcliff Highway. The names were comforting. They brought back memories of running with his brothers when he was in his teens, of hot nights and beer and girls, before his mother’s death and his father’s descent into booze, when their only option had become petty crime. That’s when the shutters had started to come down.

  ‘Mister, mister! A fuck for a farthing.’ The reedy voice floated out of a nearby alley. Veitch paused as a woman slowly emerged like a ghost from the shadows. She was hunched over, her hair wild, her arms like sticks. Veitch at first took her to be in her sixties, but only when she neared did he see she was a young girl of around thirteen. Her face and body bore the weight of life on the street; it didn’t look as though she had many years ahead of her.

  ‘What are you doing out here at this time of night, love?’ Veitch already knew the answer.

  ‘I’ll suck for less. Or a quick handshake. Just a farthing, mister. You can put it anywhere.’

  Veitch went over and the girl’s smile was filled with a pathetic gratitude. Behind the hardness of her face he saw something that spoke to him.

  What’s your name?’

  ‘Annie, mister.’

  She looked as if she might faint, and when Veitch put an arm around her for support she felt like a bundle of sticks. ‘You shouldn’t be out here, Annie. It’s dangerous at this time of night.’

  Her look told him that the danger was ever-present. ‘I haven’t earned enough for my lodgings yet, mister, and I don’t want to spend another night under the arches in West Street.’ She looked hunted. ‘My friend was stabbed to death there the other night.’

  ‘Where’s your mum and dad? You should be home with them.’

  ‘My mum died of the pox, not two years gone. I’ve never known my dad. Mum always said he was good for nothing, and spent her pennies on gin.’ She hacked a cough. ‘Will you come down the alley with me, mister?’

  Veitch was horrified by her plain, workaday tone. He dug into his pocket and found the guinea that would have bought his own food and lodgings until the business was finished. He pressed it into her hand.

  ‘You take this and get out of this shit-hole, all right? Get yourself some food. Get up West or … or … down to Bromley or somewhere. Get yourself a maid’s job.’

  Even as the words left his lips he realised the hopelessness in them, but the girl didn’t care. Gasping for breath and words that wouldn’t come, she stared at the guinea on her palm as if it were a sign from God.

  A shadow fell over them both. Veitch glanced around, saw nothing, then looked up as he caught a glimpse of movement dropping from on high. A figure landed before him. Veitch was not easily unsettled, but what he saw shocked him with its sheer strangeness. The figure was white and slippery, though he couldn’t tell if it was clothes or skin for a black cloak billowed all around it. The hands were clawed where they clutched the material. As it raised its head, Veitch saw goat horns and blazing red eyes, a face that was part-human and part-bestial, but before he could fix on it, the thing opened its mouth to release a blaze of Blue Fire.

  Grabbing Annie to protect her, Veitch threw them both backwards. Then the creature gave a remarkable bound and cleared a good twenty feet, where it turned and waited for Veitch to follow.

  ‘God help us!’ Annie shrieked. ‘It’s Spring-heeled Jack!’

  At her cry windows were flung open and men and women stumbled out of the rank tenements in various states of drunkenness.

  ‘Oi, you bleeder!’ one broken-nosed man yelled. ‘Be off wiv ya!’ He ran for the creature, three other men quickly joining him. The thing waited until they were almost upon it before giving a massive leap that sent it sailing up to the rooftops, its cloak folding around it like bat-wings. It landed on the roof in a clattering of tiles, and turned to look back. Veitch thought he glimpsed a demonic grin and then it was away across the rooftops.

  The broken-nosed man hurried up. ‘Are you all right, mate? Did he hurt ya?’

  A prostitute in her forties came over wearing dirty white muslin and greasy blue silk. She reeked of cheap gin, and her face was seamed with smallpox scars and the scabs of some sexually transmitted disease.

  ‘That was Spring-heeled Jack, that was. Lor’, you were lucky,’ she slurred.

  What is it?’ Veitch asked.

  ‘The Devil hisself,’ the broken-nosed man said.

  ‘He’s been coming round these parts for thirteen year,’ the prostitute said. ‘Lost souls aplenty in the East End.’

  ‘Surely you’ve heard of ’im?’ the broken-nosed man said. Even the Lord Mayor of London talks about Spring-heeled Jack.’

  ‘He blinded poor Lucy Squires down in Limehouse with that fiery breath of his.’ The prostitute staggered around, talking to no one in particular. ‘Down in Green Dragon Alley. Only eighteen, she was, the little darlin’.’

  Veitch looked around for Annie, but she’d run off in the confusion.

  Irritated by the distraction, he pushed his way past the prostitute and marched into the maze of stinking alleys.

  Ten minutes later he found his way to the courtyard. He could smell the horses and hear the rattle of their hooves and the hiss of their breath long before he saw them. In the shadows the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders stood like statues, dead eyes staring damnation.

  Veitch kissed Etain on her dry, cold cheek. She turned the icy lamps of her eyes on him, and Tannis, Branwen and Owein followed suit immediately, like the gears of a machine turning.

  ‘I’m glad you lot are here,’ Veitch said. ‘You need friends in a city like this. It’s a sewer. All the poor left to fend for themselves in the shit, dying from diseases, killing each other slowly. And all the rich up West, sipping their claret and not giving a toss.’ He couldn’t get the image of Annie out of his mind and he was surprised how much it troubled him.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘No point moaning about shit you can’t do anything about. I’ve found where the first one is. Let’s get to business.’

  3

  2,300 girders. 3,300 columns. 300,000 panes of glass. The Crystal Palace was a cathedral dedicated to Victorian ingenuity and excellence. It sprawled across the southern edge of Hyde Park for nineteen acres and soared up 108 feet to tower above the London skyline, encompassing several of the park’s elm trees within its massive bulk.

  Church stood in the shimmering celestial interior and marvelled; nothing that he’d read about the Great Exhibition had prepared him for the spectacle. A rich spectrum of hues burst from the displays on every side. In the centre a gigantic fountain rose up, illuminated by shafts of sunlight. To the north was a bank of forest trees and verdant tropical plants. Everywhere sculptures had been placed in the most harmonious settings, some of them colossal and of unrivalled beauty.

  Niamh stood close, so entranced she appeared unaware her shoulder was brushing his. ‘Why, this is a thing of wonder. It would not look out of place in one of the great courts.’

  Tom snorted. ‘Open your eyes. It’s a big shop to sell spoons to foreigners.’

  You’re just a cynic,’ Church said.

  And you are a small child, entranced by shiny things.’

  Must you two bicker all the time?’ Niamh sighed regally.

  ‘I wish Jerzy could see this,’ Church said.

  ‘Oh, will you stop worrying about the prancing buffoon.’ Tom sniffed. If he’s too empty-headed to accompany us on our jaunt, he deserves all he gets.’ He shuffled towards one of the halls displaying the wares of Persia, Greece, Egypt and Turkey. ‘Besides, the lad’s only just gained his freedom. He should have some time to follow his own feet.’

  Church heard the half-buried note of sympathy, but Tom refused to meet his gaze.

&nb
sp; ‘Where do we find this man with whom you wish to speak?’ Niamh asked.

  ‘He’s here with the Archbishop of Canterbury on an official visit,’ Church said. ‘Queen Victoria opened this place with Prince Albert yesterday, and today all the other dignitaries get their chance at being big shots. So just look for a bunch of stuffed shirts pretending they’re something important.’

  They moved through the crowded courts amongst the exhibits of arts and crafts from all parts of the globe until they came across a crowd of finely dressed men and women being led by a guide. The archbishop in his ceremonial robes was near the front with a small group of ecclesiastical advisors.

  Church indicated a stern-faced man with a long, greying beard.

  ‘How do you know he’s one of your Watchmen? You don’t keep that close an eye on them,’ Tom said.

  ‘I visited a couple of days ago by our time, during the late seventeenth century in this timeline, when Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor were building a new series of churches to replace the ones lost in the Great Fire of London. I met with the Watchmen and we decided that there would always be a representative at Christchurch, Spitalfields, so I’d always have a contact.’

  ‘So you have got a brain in there. You manage to keep it well hidden.’

  Though Niamh wore the voluminous yet restrictive Victorian dress, her beauty and the faint glimmer of gold glowing through her make-up gave her an exotic appearance that drew many stares. Church watched the bearded clergyman’s eyes fall on her, then move to Tom and Church. Realisation slowly dawned on his face, and he slipped away from the group.

  ‘Is it true?’ he said quietly to Church. ‘You are the one in the information passed down to me by my forebears? I have a drawing, a rough thing, but the likeness is uncanny.’

  ‘I’m Jack Churchill.’

  ‘Francis Cole. Sir, I must shake your hand.’ Cole pumped Church’s hand furiously. ‘You have some new information for me? A mission, perhaps?’