The Feast of Ravens

by Andrew Beasley

  What had happened to his father was definitely a miracle – Claw Carter had slit him open and there’d been no doubt that the wound was fatal. However, whose miracle was it? Ben remembered placing his right hand on his father’s chest and the wound closing up beneath his fingers, but Josiah the angel had been beside him and his hand had lain on top of Ben’s.

  Didn’t it make more sense that Josiah was the healer? Wasn’t it more likely to be the angel than the street urchin? And yet all the Watchers, Mother Shepherd especially, were convinced that it was Ben.

  He scanned the grubby faces around him, longing to find his brother and the comfort of his presence. It shouldn’t take this long to get to the docks and back…unless something had gone badly wrong.

  Come on, Nathaniel. You should have been back ages ago. All you had to do was go and find some more rope.

  The night was descending and it was a dangerous thing to be a Watcher alone in the darkness.

  Ben was on the point of heading back out across the city to search for his brother when he saw Mother Shepherd beckoning him. There was no greater honour than to be invited to sit down and eat with the leader of the Watchers, and yet Ben felt the heaviness in his feet. Mother Shepherd had such faith in him; Ben just hoped that he wouldn’t let her down.

  “Benjamin, my dear boy,” she said as he drew near. She was an old woman, but in spite of the game that the years had played on her skin and hair, her sight was still sharp and her mind was young and vital. The light from the fire lit up her face, illuminating a myriad of lines, but when her eyes met Ben’s, all those years seemed to drop away.

  “Have you seen Nathaniel?” Ben asked hopefully.

  “He’s a little late returning from his solo scavenging mission, but I don’t think we need to get too worried yet. He wasn’t going anywhere dangerous,” she said gently. “Your father is following his route, just to be on the safe side. Here,” she went on, “I’ve saved you a seat.”

  Gratefully, Ben positioned himself close to the flames, rubbing some heat back into his cold knees. Mother Shepherd took her own shawl and wrapped it round his shoulders. “This should keep out the chill,” she said. Ben received it without protest. Mother Shepherd would warm the world if she could.

  Jago Moon was there too, slurping noisily at a dish of steaming tea. He grinned at Ben, his blind white eyes rolling as ceaselessly as the sea. Sitting silently beside Mr. Moon was Ghost. See no evil, speak no evil, thought Ben; Moon blind, Ghost mute.

  Ghost remained an enigma amongst the Watchers. Ben had found that everyone here had a tale to tell, but Ghost’s story could only be guessed at. He was a year or two older than Ben, strong in body and spirit. His head was shaven and his skin was the deep black-brown of mahogany. But the rest of his life was a mystery – Ghost had never spoken a word.

  Molly Marbank was there too. She was a tiny young girl, hardly more than six, one of the many orphans who the Watchers had rescued from the streets. She had been as thin as a stick when Josiah found her; now there was more meat on her bones and a brightness to her eyes. Josiah, the mighty angel, was seated patiently beside her, watching with confusion as the little girl wrapped a length of wool around his outstretched fingers.

  “No, silly,” laughed Molly, “you’re doing it all wrong. Let me show you.”

  It was an incredible sight, Ben thought – an angel playing cat’s cradle.

  “Wipe that look off your face,” said Moon, cuffing his lips on his sleeve. “I can hear your silly smile from here.” Ben didn’t stop grinning though, and he recognized the affection in Moon’s voice. They sat together, dipping hunks of bread into bowls of hearty stew; a happy communion of slurping and burping.

  “So,” said Ben, as they settled down contently. “How’s the work going on the Liberator?”

  “Good, good,” said Mother Shepherd. She smiled broadly and placed her hand on his. “It was such a wonderful idea of yours.”

  Ben beamed from the compliment. He saw himself as more of a “doer” than a “thinker”, and the Liberator would certainly allow the Watchers to do some really good “doing”.

  His father was in charge of the team that was building it, and Ben had never felt more proud of his pa. In the past, before they joined the Watchers, there had been a distance between them that neither of them knew how to bridge, but the Liberator project was bringing them closer than ever before.

  “It’s going to be an incredible weapon when it’s finished,” said Ben with a whistle.

  “Is that what you think we need then?” growled Moon. “A weapon? Think we can’t handle ourselves?”

  “Don’t jump on him,” Mother Shepherd intervened. “Give Ben a moment to explain.”

  Ben fished for the words. “Well, we’re at war, aren’t we? Don’t you need weapons to win a war?”

  “And what do you think the Watchers’ greatest weapon is?” asked Mother Shepherd.

  Ben hesitated while the others looked on, waiting for his reply. It was so often like this; everyone expecting him to live up to his new status as the Hand of Heaven.

  “Weapon…” Ben repeated, playing for time. Although the Watchers were a fighting force, their credo was one of self-defence – despite the fact that they all knew one day that would have to change. The Legion were intent on wiping the Watchers out – that was not a problem that could be turned away with kind words and a cup of tea.

  Ben wracked his brain… Did Mother Shepherd want him to say “The Liberator”? Ben had seen his father working on it earlier, using his skilled hands to smooth the wood, directing others to fashion the pipes. It was certainly going to be a thing of beauty. But no, Ben decided, Mother Shepherd was looking for a different answer.

  Quarterstaffs? Crossbows? Surprise?

  “Courage,” said Ben, when the expectant silence grew too heavy for him to bear. Then, hedging his bets, he added, “And swords.”

  Mother Shepherd laughed then, though not unkindly. “I do love you, Ben,” she said. “But no. Our most powerful weapon is forgiveness.”

  Ben looked bewildered. “How are we going to destroy the Legion with that?”

  “We want to defeat them, Ben, not destroy them. There is a difference.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “The Legion won’t rest until every one of us is dead; it is their desire to destroy us.”

  “So we do them, before they do us,” said Ben. “Isn’t that the plan?”

  “No, Ben,” Mother Shepherd explained, “we want to stop the Legion, not kill Legionnaires.”

  “So what do you suggest when I come up against Claw Carter again? Harsh language?” Ben could feel his frustration slipping over into anger.

  “Most of the Legionnaires are not evil, Ben. They are bitter and angry and full of resentment, but they are not inherently evil.”

  “I must remember that the next time they’re trying to kill me,” snapped Ben.

  Mother Shepherd continued in her same patient tone. “Forgiveness is powerful, Ben, never underestimate it. Forgiveness can change a person from the inside out; set their whole life down a different path.” She smiled at him gently. “You know the Watcher Creed.” She began to recite:

  “Love makes us wise.

  Tears make us strong.

  Patience makes us steadfast.

  Justice makes us humble.

  Forgiveness will bring us victory.”

  Ben listened in silence; he had heard this all before. Nice sentiments, but kind words won’t butter no parsnips, as the saying went.

  Mother Shepherd looked at him; an intent and penetrating gaze. “You know that I forgive you, don’t you, Benjamin?”

  “What have I done now?” said Ben.

  Mother Shepherd didn’t rise to the bait. “I will always forgive you, Ben. No matter what.”

  Ben got up, irritated and confused, not wanting to hear any more of this. I’m doing my best. Isn’t that ever enough?

  “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m going to turn
in now, if that’s all right with you.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer and sloped away with his hands deep in his pockets. As always, he felt a coin there. The Coin. He had tricked everybody into thinking that he had thrown it into the Thames. Mother Shepherd couldn’t know that he still had it, could she? He touched the silver and felt a familiar shiver run through him. The Coin was his guilty little secret, the one part of him that he had managed to keep private.

  When it first came into his possession – no, he corrected himself, when he stole it from his father – he had assumed that it was a valuable piece of Roman silver; a coin of archaeological interest and worth a bob or two. However, he had come to learn that it was infinitely more valuable from that.

  The thirty Judas Coins were imbued with temptation, each one of them having the power to strip a man down to his most brutal desires. But the last one, the thirtieth, the Coin which Ben held now, was something more than that.

  In the battle that had been raging for two thousand years between the Legion and the Watchers, this last Coin could prove to be the tipping point.

  More potent. More powerful.

  The final missing component of the Crown of Corruption, the wearer of which, the Legion believed, would be able to bend all men to their will.

  Ben stalked over to the edge of the roof. He clutched the Coin in his fist and his emotions became cloudy as it exerted its dark pull. He took his left hand from his pocket and examined the Legion mark that was branded on his palm. He hated to see it; a symbol of evil which he had allowed to be burned into his flesh. Just another of his stupid mistakes; a constant reminder of why Mother Shepherd and all the other Watchers must be wrong about him. Would their great leader really be a boy like him?

  It reminded him of something else too – the promise from the Legion that he could lead them to victory instead.

  His head began to spin with conflicting emotions. Behind him, the others were laughing and he felt a sudden flash of anger. They’d better not be laughing at me. If the Watchers were going to laugh at him, why shouldn’t he go back to the Legion? They didn’t muck around with nonsense about forgiveness. The Legion knew how to fight. They wanted him to be the Hand of Hell. The Legion—

  Something on the horizon caught Ben’s attention then, and as his focus shifted he felt disorientated, almost sick from the turmoil in his mind. He released the Coin inside his pocket, as if it were a hot coal, breaking his connection with its dark influence. He was left feeling drained and somehow hollowed out, as if everything that was good in him had been sucked dry.

  Taking a second to regain his senses, Ben tried to make sense of what he was witnessing.

  “Quickly!” He motioned to the others. “You need to see this!”

  Hearing the urgency in his tone, they ran over and joined him in gazing across the city; Ben, Lucy, Ghost, Jago Moon, Mother Shepherd, Molly Marbank and Josiah, the wool still threaded through his fingers.

  “I don’t understand,” said Lucy. Ben had never heard anything except strength in her voice and so the tremor in her words sent a shiver down his spine.

  As they watched, a mist was rising over to the west, dense and unearthly. From its pulsating dome, long white tentacles of fog emerged and began teasing and worming their way down alleys and side streets. Searching. Tasting…

  Like every Londoner, Ben knew a thing or two about fog. The city was famous across the globe for its “pea-soupers” – the poisonous green clouds of mist and soot that regularly flooded the streets. They weren’t always green either. Ben had seen them sickly yellow with phosphor near the match factories and ugly brown down by the tanneries. Either way, the smog was a curse on the East End, a fog so thick and fetid that it could clog your lungs and choke you dead. But as fearful and terrible as that was, Ben knew that somehow what he was seeing was worse.

  This fog was alive. That was the only way Ben could describe it.

  Natural fog didn’t stop at the rooftops. Natural fog didn’t move like the jellyfish Ben had seen in the Carnival of Curiosities when it came to Hampstead Heath. This fog seemed to have purpose, a plan. It was like some vast sea creature that had been washed ashore by a strange tide. And his brother and father were out there somewhere…

  “Will someone please tell me what you’re all staring at,” demanded Moon, bristling with irritation.

  Mother Shepherd took a step closer to him so that they were standing shoulder to shoulder, and her hand took his.

  “A work of evil,” she said.

  The creature was called the Nightmare Child for good reason.

  Like his cousins, the Feathered Men, he had been an angel – a cherub in fact – until he had been exiled. Now the only thing he shared with the heavenly cherubim was his childlike stature and curls of golden hair. But he was not a child. He was ancient and terrible, and his greatest pleasure was to reveal to mere mortals the deepest fears of their souls.

  The Nightmare Child skipped through the fog.

  That was not his name, of course. But it would do very nicely for now.

  He was having such fun.

  In a low tenement in the Old Nichol, he treated one family to a delightful game of charades. Without using a single word, he showed them his best impersonations of loved ones who had passed away. They enjoyed it so much that they ran shouting down the street to tell their neighbours all about it.

  In one grand house in Knightsbridge he stood very quietly in the corner with his hands over his eyes. When the owner of the property tremulously asked him what he was doing, the Nightmare Child replied, “Playing hide-and-seek. I’m going to count to ten and then come looking for you. One. Two. Three…” There had been no need to get to ten.

  Such fun. Such games.

  And he was just getting started.

  “This is the awakening of a new age.” Mr. Sweet’s voice filled the sanctuary at the heart of the Under like a violent storm. “A glorious new age for the Legion!”

  Captain Mickelwhite stood amid the massed ranks of Legionnaires in the dark cathedral and shouted his approval. At Mickelwhite’s side stood John Bedlam, his brother-in-arms. They were quite different in most respects. Mickelwhite had white-blond hair and an aristocratic expression of absolute contempt. Bedlam was a squat little thug from some back alley, with a boxer’s flattened nose. But the Legion united them. With a thousand others, they were bonded by hate, a resentment that knew no barrier of class or creed.

  “London is ours for the taking,” Sweet continued. “We must make full advantage of the fog which is smothering the streets above us.”

  Bedlam nudged Mickelwhite in the ribs, a hungry look in his eyes.

  “Loyal Legionnaires, you have all been blessed with qualities that are rejected in the world above our heads. So-called ‘polite society’ has no place for you if you can pick a pocket, or open a safe, or use your physical strength to make others empty their overstuffed pockets… Talents that we welcome here in the Under!” The crowd erupted again.

  Mickelwhite glanced around him at the inhabitants of the Under – cutpurses and cut-throats; men and women from all walks of life who’d found they were no longer welcome in the city. And the street kids, hundreds of them, like John Bedlam and the others in Mickelwhite’s small brigade – Ruby Johnson, the thief; Jimmy Dips, the scavenger; Hans Schulman, the German immigrant; Munro, the hunchback. Outcasts, runaways and throwaways.

  Yes, thought Mickelwhite bitterly, London had treated them all badly in the past.

  “Today,” Sweet continued, “is the day when you can get your own back. Is there some trinket in the shop window that you have always desired? Take it. It’s yours! Is there someone on the surface who has treated you badly? Find them. Repay them!”

  Mickelwhite could not distinguish his own voice from the swell of raw emotion that surrounded and engulfed him, filling the vast cavernous space of the sanctuary.

  Then, in his deep tenor voice, Mr. Sweet began to quote the Legion Code: the rules that were burned
as deeply into their minds as the brand on their palms.

  “No weakness in our hearts!

  No mercy for our enemies!

  No law to bind us!

  No prison to hold us!

  No grievance to go unavenged!

  No Watcher to be left alive!”

  Then he continued: “And when London is on its knees and begging for mercy, then we will show them the true power of the Legion…”

  Mickelwhite didn’t hear the rest of the rousing speech. Only a few of Mr. Sweet’s promises permeated the roar of his own thoughts. Reign of fear… Death… Victory… The Feast of Ravens…

  In contrast, the personal promise running through Mickelwhite’s mind was clear and razor-sharp. I’ll find you, Ben Kingdom.

  The dawn came early. A white dawn, drowning in fog.

  It had been an uncomfortable night and Ben stretched as he emerged from his tent, trying to roll some of the stiffness from his body. He had hardly slept. It was impossible to rest when the city beneath him was groaning in pain.

  The disturbances had begun a few hours after the fog had started to rise. It was sporadic at first; a shout here, a cry there. Mothers looking for missing children, husbands searching for wives, all lost and confused in the mists. The city was bewildered, scared, staggering blind, falling over itself in the gloom. Then came the sounds of crime, as pickpockets and burglars took advantage of the confusion.

  Jonas had staggered home some time in the small hours, drained and alone. Ben had welcomed him with relief – but there was still no news of Nathaniel.

  So Ben had continued to count every long hour, hoping that his brother would return. They had slept side by side nearly every day of their lives and Ben could never really settle until Nathaniel was beside him, snoring and farting.

  But morning had come and Nathaniel was still out there. Somewhere.

  Ben saw that Jago Moon was already up and about. The old man was stripped to the waist, his broad shoulders and barrel chest apparently oblivious to the cold. As Ben watched, Moon dunked his whole head into a bucket of freezing water, then shook himself dry. Still dripping, Moon settled on a low stool and drew out a disreputable-looking knife, which he began to slowly scrape over his scalp, leaving his head as stubbly as his chin.