Rhian had no idea where she was or in which direction the canal was to be found, but the wolf knew. She had a hunter’s map in her head like a satellite navigation system. It was not long before she picked up Frankie’s scent. When she arrived at the landing, the narrow boat was gone. The scent trail vanished at the bank, so Frankie must have boarded.
Rhian urged the wolf to run south down the towpath, assuming that the ferryman would be heading back to Mildred. After a few moments the wolf’s sensitive hearing picked up the sound of Frankie’s voice. She sounded as if she was having a right old strop.
“Stop this ship immediately, you hear. You’re supposed to wait for Rhian, you numbskull.”
The wolf bounded forward and the part that was Rhian gave a metaphysical grin. The ferryman would be regretting starting the voyage precipitously. The wolf gave a burst of speed, catching the narrow boat and pacing it. Frankie failed to notice, busy as she was hitting the unresponsive ferryman with her parasol. The wolf howled.
“There she is. Put into the bank you cretin,” Frankie said.
A shot cracked out, then another. The soldier had found them, but he had discharged all the bullets from his pistol, so his head was down while he reloaded. The wolf accelerated and leapt for the boat. She didn’t have a decent run up and misjudged the distance in her haste, hitting the side of the covered cargo space. For a moment she scrabbled on the edge of the roof, sliding backwards towards the water. Frankie took a firm two-handed grip on the fur around her neck and pulled with all her weight. It was just enough to tip the balance and they fell into the open rear counter.
The ferryman smelled like a decaying corpse to the wolf. She looked under his hood with her monochromatic night vision to see a head like a dried mummified skull.
“I am getting,” Randolph said sourly, “a sense of déjà vu about these meetings. The same people sit around the same table having the same discussion. Everyone explains how clever they’ve been, but we are no further forward. Or am I missing something?”
“That’s not entirely fair,” Jameson said. “We now have a good idea what exactly created this crisis.”
He counted off on his fingers.
“Shternberg somehow got wind of the forbidden sections of Budge’s copy of the Book of the Dead. He had the bright idea of using the magic spells to disturb maat to precipitate financial crashes in which he could clean up. He bribed or coerced Pilkington’s assistant to provide copies. He gave one to a bunch of academics for modern computer-based analysis, academics which he had already bought with a generous grant. The bloody project worked only too well but with unforeseen results. That’s what one would expect of a load of bloody amateurs playing around. They bored a hole deep into the Otherworld to the Sith, who by now probably control the system. They may still do odd favours for Shternberg, like the Fethers murder, to keep him onside until his usefulness is exhausted.”
“Excellent,” Randolph said. “And when we have a full-blown apocalypse in London with millions dying it, will be just chocolate soldier to know why it happened. It would be rather more convenient to stop the disaster before we get to that stage, don’t you think?”
“We do have a counterspell worked out from the Book of the Dead that should negate the source, the magic engine powering the portals—once we find it,” Miss Arnoux said.
“Once we find it,” Randolph repeated sarcastically, “once we bloody find it. That, of course, is the rub. And are we close to finding it?”
There was a silence while Randolph searched each face in turn.
“I’ve half the Met working on it,” Jameson said. “But Shternberg covered his tracks well. The man himself has gone to ground somewhere. Our accountants have taken his company apart but can find no trace of a likely address. We are still questioning the staff, but I’m not hopeful that will produce any information of value.”
Randolph stood up.
“We need to find where the missing Whitechapel academics have their damned computer systems and shut them down before they create a stable portal to Sith-land. They must be somewhere in East London. Find the bastards!”
“Yes, sir,” Jameson said.
“Why don’t you store me next to the skin? I could vibrate to give you silent instructions, one buzz for left, two for right, and a screaming orgasm for stop now,” said the third phone.
Rhian ignored it, experience teaching her that arguing with a daemonically possessed mobile was about as productive as a debate with a satnav. Mildred trundled sedately down the Mile End Road towards the city of London.
“I suppose most of these phone placements are likely to be in the Square Mile, within the old London walls or very close by?” Rhian asked.
“Yah, that’s where the people were, before modern London expanded in the last few hundred years. On the other hand, we might be heading for Southwark on the south bank or Aldwych.”
“Why Aldwych?”
“It’s the third of the three cities that made up London, well, four if you count Southwark. When the Anglo-Saxons started to build towns again after the collapse of Roman civilization, they tended to seek greenfield sites. They were bothered by the thought of ghosts hanging round the old Roman ruins. So they built Lundenwic a little way upstream. They didn’t move back into London until the Viking raids, Vikings being infinitely more scary than ghosts. They repaired the Roman walls and rebuilt London Bridge to create Lundenburgh. The “wic” bit signified a trading post but a “burgh” is a fortification.”
“Fascinating,” Rhian said utterly insincerely.
“Sorry, honey, I do tend to lecture.”
The mobile was blissfully silent for a while, and the Mile End Road became the Whitechapel Road and eventually Aldgate. Here the eastern gate had once pierced the defensive wall.
“Turn left off the main road and go down Jewry Street when you get to Houndsditch, cuties,” the phone said.
The road system around Aldgate Tube Station had been turned into a complicated one-way network. A large ‘no entry’ sign indicated that they would have to leave the main road and take a loop to the north. Frankie sailed up to the sign, driveling happily on about the history of the area. Rhian had learned to let Frankie’s stream of consciousness pass over her. When Frankie was nervous she talked about inconsequentials. To Frankie, that meant not hairstyles or the latest doings of TV celebs, but London historical trivia.
Odd phrases drifted over Rhan’s head as she eyed the rapidly approaching sign: Jewish immigration, Oliver Cromwell, the Jewish Cemetery, and so on. By the time that Mildred had passed the point of no return in its lunge up a one-way street the wrong way, there seemed little point in Rhian yelling. Distracting Frankie probably wouldn’t help.
A red double-decker bus passed them on the right, the driver goggling at the women as if Mildred was being driven by Martians. Frankie was engrossed in describing some battle between Mosley’s blackshirts and Jewish ex-servicemen after the war. None of which made any sense to Rhian, as she thought that Mosley was something to do with motor racing.
A black cab appeared right in front of them. Rhian gripped her seatbelt hard and put one foot up against Mildred’s metal dashboard to absorb the impact. The taxi driver hauled desperately on the steering wheel. He dodged to the right, narrowly missing a builder’s truck. He shook his fist as he passed within centimeters of an outraged Frankie.
“Sodding hell,” said the phone daemon.
“Did you see that?” Frankie asked, indignantly.
“Yes,” Rhian replied, her voice so high up the tonal register that she squeaked.
“He was on the wrong side. Bloody taxi drivers think they own the road. Stick a light on their roof and they think the normal rules don’t apply.”
They cleared the one-way system back onto a normal road and Frankie turned into Jewry Street. She stayed on the road when it became Crutched Friars.
“Stop at St. Olaves,” the phone said.
St. Olaves was a blocky church on the corner of Ha
rt Street and Seething Lane. A very Italian-looking tower made it quite unlike a normal English church. Frankie parked on the double yellow no-parking lines outside Seething Gardens. They got out, retrieving their rucksacks from the boot.
“Go into the church and find the pulpit,” said the mobile phone.
The entrance to the churchyard was through a Romanesque arch, which, on close inspection, was not at all in a classical style but more medieval macabre. Three grinning skulls decorated the panel under the archway, with two more on blocks at the corners. A plaque underneath recorded a date, the eleventh of April, 1658. Frankie paused to examine it.
“St. Ghastly Grim,” she said.
“What?”
“I just remembered. That’s what Charles Dickens called this graveyard in one of his books.”
“How come you are such a mine of useless information about obscure details of London history?” Rhian asked, half convinced that Frankie made most of it up just to annoy her.
“If you practice witchcraft in London, the past has a nasty habit of intruding on the present. It doesn’t hurt to be forewarned with a little knowledge.”
Rhian felt a little ashamed as well as resentful, which did not improve her mood. She marched into the graveyard with Frankie on her heels. It was silent and peaceful like a garden, not at all a ghastly grim. A songbird called, but Rhian couldn’t see it.
“Chip, chip, chip, chooee, chooee, chooee.”
A child’s voice lifted in harmony.
“London Bridge is falling down,
“Falling down, falling down.
“London Bridge is falling down,
“My fair lady.”
Rhian shivered, feeling suddenly cold. Her grandmother would have said that someone had walked on her grave. A large black bird hopped onto the path. It looked at her with intelligent black eyes and clacked its beak.
“Isn’t that a raven from the Tower?” Rhian asked.
“Good grief, I believe you are right. There will be hell to pay if one of the seven ravens has gone AWOL.”
“Nevermore,” said the raven.
The two women exchanged a silent glance.
“Probably one of the Beefeaters taught it that to spook the tourists,” Rhian suggested, hesitantly.
“Quite,” Frankie replied. “Let’s go in.”
Large, mostly clear gothic windows allowed plenty of light into the small church. The women were quite alone. Rhian was not a religious person but she always had this sense of awe in one of London’s historic churches. The atmosphere made her want to whisper and tread lightly. A table by the door displayed postcards and a leaflet with a short history of the church. Rhian slipped a pound into the honesty box and picked up a leaflet.
“The church is mostly new,” Rhian said in surprise, reading the leaflet. “Although it goes right back, the current church was rebuilt in 1950 after it was gutted by bombing in the Blitz.”
“Is that so,” Frankie said. “Old Adolf really had it in for London’s churches and cemeteries.”
“It says here that the Reverend Augustus Powell Miller oversaw the restoration. Listen to this quote from him, Frankie.”
Rhian read out loud.
“In the quiet and silence of this sanctuary we can know that we are compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses and that the past mingles with the present and can inspire us for whatever tasks the future has for us.”
“Let’s hope that’s prophetic,” Frankie replied.
“The church is famous for its nine bells,” Rhian read out. “Noteworthy people buried here include Anthony Bacon, elder brother of Francis . . .”
“Who was a spy in Sir Francis Walsingham’s espionage network,” Frankie said.
“How did you know that?” Rhian asked, crossly.
“Walsingham created The Commission. The Commission in question came from Queen Elizabeth the first.”
“Other residents include Mary Ramsay, who brought the Black Death to London, and Mother Goose, who was buried on the fourteenth of September, 1586,” Rhian said. “Mother Goose?”
“An archetype,” Frankie replied. “She is also buried in Boston and several other places.”
“Now here is someone really famous buried in the church,” Rhian said.
“Samuel Pepys?” Frankie asked.
“How did you know,” Rhian said, now quite nettled.
“Because I’m a rich seam of useless information. The old naval office where Pepys worked was just outside where Seething Gardens are now. Some people still call it Pepys Gardens. This would have been his parish church. I was also tipped off by this memorial.”
Frankie pointed a bust on the wall of a woman dressed in a classical style. Rhian went over to examine it. The writing was in Latin but the name was clear enough: Elizabeth Pepys.
“Is there any mention of the Great Fire of London in your potted history, Rhian?”
“Um,” Rhian flicked through the pages. “Not much, the fire got within one hundred meters of the church but was turned back by a sudden gust of wind.”
“How convenient,” Frankie said drily. “I am getting a bad feeling about this, Rhian. We know that the mobile will need to be fixed in an Otherworld location created by major human trauma. The dramatic event most associated with Samuel Pepys is the Great Fire.”
“Are you bimbos going to talk all day?” asked the phone daemon.
Rhian jumped; she had quite forgot she was holding it.
“Where do we go?” Frankie asked.
Rhian thought she sounded tired.
“Go through the pulpit,” the daemon said.
“The wooden pulpit is an original carved by the celebrated sculptor Grinling Gibbons,” said Rhian, consulting her leaflet.
“Never heard of him,” said Frankie.
The pulpit was decorated by a sculpture described in the leaflet as an angel, but which looked to Rhian more like a head with a set of wings where its ears should be. A large Bible sat on a lectern made in the image of an eagle. The bird’s head jutted out like the dragon prow of a Viking long ship.
Frankie walked into and through the pulpit, disappearing into the grain of the wood. Rhian did likewise.
CHAPTER 26
LONDON BRIDGE IS
FALLING DOWN
The one-room wooden building was a mess, the floor littered with smashed wood and debris. From the smell, it had been used as a toilet. A smashed cross lay against a wall.
“Surely this isn’t a shadow of eighteenth-century London,” Rhian said, looking around.
“Hardly,” Frankie said.
She stood by a wall where she could look out through a split in a plank. The split wasn’t natural. It looked as if it had been made by a sizable axe, or a chainsaw.
“Have a look.”
Rhian joined her, picking her way carefully through humanfeces. She saw a devastated city. The Roman city walls stood, but only stubs of ruins showed where stone buildings had once been. Rectangular wooden huts with thatched roofs were scattered around seemingly haphazardly, although Rhian fancied she could see traces of the Roman road layout.
A group of men, warriors, ran past the church carrying spears and round, colored shields. They wore dyed woolen tunics and trousers, and most protected their heads with conical steel helmets. The leader had mail armor and a sword but otherwise was indistinguishable from his men. He glanced at the church and Rhian froze, scared that he could see right through the wood. He waved a sword to rally his men.
“Faster, whoresons, the Norse come in dragonboats. To the bridge, to the bridge!” the swordsman called.
Frankie grabbed the phone off Rhian and spoke to the daemon. “Listen, creep. No bloody messing around, as this is dangerous. Where do we plant you?”
“Near the entrance to the bridge,” it replied. “Not on the bridge, mind.”
“Right, daemon. Rhian, this is what I want you to do. We are in Lundenburh in the middle of a Dark Age battle. There is no way we can blend into the locals, s
o we will do the opposite. We will stand out so conspicuously that we will be untouchable. You,” Frankie shook the phone, “Will be a raven and sit on my shoulder. Got it?”
The daemon sullenly nodded assent. Frankie closed her eyes, muttered something. Her dirty ragged peasant dress vanished. She was clad in a long-sleeved rust-brown dress that fell to the ground. Over it she had an off-white woolen jumper decorated with red zig-zag patterns on the neck and cuffs. Sophisticated gold and amber jewelry hung from her neck, giving a strange mix of civilized and barbaric. She placed the phone on her shoulder. It clung on, as a raven.
“I suppose I’m a slave girl again,” Rhian said grumpily.
“No, Rhian, you will be the wolf. Stay close to me and act as magical and humanlike as you can. Don’t precipitate violence, but be aggressive and prepared to dish it out as hard as you like. These men respect only strength.”
Frankie walked out of the desecrated church like a queen come to judge her subjects, a raven on her shoulder, a wolf stalking alongside. When the light caught her necklace it fluoresced with inner fire.
Rhian took a moment to become used to the world as seen by the wolf. Lundenburh stank, not of engine emissions, concrete, and chemistry, but of animals, waste, and the stink of unwashed human bodies. The coastal strip around the bridge had wharves and large two-story wooden buildings that must serve as warehouses. The city was not a capital in any sense, but it was still a mercantile center.
The bridge was largely unchanged from the Roman era. Maybe the pattern of the wooden rails was somewhat different, but heads still decorated poles at either end. A large fleet of longships approached from downstream on oars, square sails furled. Armed men poured across the city to line the seawall and the bridge. Dark clouds rolled in from the west and the wind sharpened.
Frankie and Rhian rounded a long building and bumped into a group of warriors arming themselves with bundles of javelins handed out through a hatch. Frankie walked through them, not breaking stride or acknowledging their presence. The men backed away, eyes wide. The wolf growled deep in her throat and showed her teeth. A man turned and ran and they all fled.
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