Battle of the Sun (21 page)

‘Max! Get that ball,’ shouted Jack, and the brave dog dodged and tackled between the feet and hooves and claws, and steam and broken iron, and was gone.

As was the Magus.

But now the whole length of the solid gold river was cracking. It was as if a sulphur spring had burst beneath.

Clouds of thick steam rose up. The solid gold was breaking and splitting into little landmasses that were driven with tidal fury down the river that had been pent up. Horses, monsters, griffons, harpies, soldiers, mobsters, fighting boys found themselves on flat rafts of gold, swept away from London and out towards the sea. Eddying and swirling like a tortured serpent, the river returned from its stilled state, and hurtled between the breaking, splintering gold islands, where clung precariously all the old enemies, now crying piteously for their lives.

Jack saw the Magus on a block of gold, using his cloak like a sail, and rafting towards London Bridge.

Jack grabbed a pikestaff from a soldier, and aimed it like a jumping pole to fling himself across the boiling, breaking river, now on to a fragment of gold, now on to an upturned boat, but gaining on the Magus as the tide roared.

‘Jack Snap!’ cried a familiar voice. It was the Dragon. ‘You cannot kill him without his heart!’ And the Dragon tossed the Cinnabar Egg to Jack, who caught it lightly, bowing once from his speeding river-run boat, as he and the Magus alone surfed the tidal Thames.

The Keeper of the Tides saw the black figure of the Magus skimming towards him through the chaos of the seething river, and he saw Jack, in fantastic leaps and bounds, not far behind. As the Magus approached, the Keeper of the Tides dropped the net and caught the Magus, spinning him up as a clever spider does a fat black fly.

Now Jack was underneath and, as the Magus struggled in the net, Jack grabbed the net, and such was his strength that the net broke, and the two of them went down into the river. Down, down, down, down, down.

Under the water they were, and the Magus turned into a fish with huge blank eyes, but Jack did not let him go, and the Magus turned into a giant crab, with claws that could wrench a man’s arm from its socket, but Jack did not let him go, and the Magus turned into an eel and wrapped himself around Jack’s body, but Jack held and held and held, and finally the Magus turned back into himself, and the two of them grappled under the water, until Jack had the Magus’s head held back, as he had done with the Sunken King.

And Jack took out the Cinnabar Egg, and holding it above the water line, he cracked it in one hand.

‘My heart!’ cried the Magus. ‘My safe-kept heart.’

And the Magus began to disappear.

‘Jack,’ he said, bubbles of water coming from his mouth like dreams, ‘you were stronger, after all. Ah, Jack, what worlds we could have had . . . what hearts.’

And as Jack held the Magus, he felt something like forked lightning enter him, and he fainted.

What shapes are they up ahead? What sounds?

The river was still under the Bridge. The Keeper of the Tides looked and looked but nothing came to the surface.

Then he heard shouting from the riverbanks, like all of London was shouting from the riverbanks, and he saw that the hard hateful roofs of gold were nothing more than higgledy-piggledy tiles and thatch, and the walls that had gleamed and glistened were plaster and wood again, and the streets that had been paved with gold and shone like mirrors at midday were back to their usual filth and mud.

And across the bank, water flowed into the cisterns, and men and women dunked their heads, and baptised their babies, and dipped their thirsty cattle in the troughs, and the troughs were wood and not gold, and the cattle were warm steaming flesh and not gold, and the ovens were baking real bread, and the alehouses were serving real ale, and all that was chaos and dirt and teeming life was life again and not worth a gold tooth if you sold it, but richer than the universe.

And men and women were hugging each other, and sharing trotters and cabbage, and the city gates were open, and country people crowded in bringing gifts of eggs and cakes, and the soldiers, high on their horses, picked fruit high on the tree, and bent down to give it to the children.

And the fish in the river were fish.

And the birds in the trees were birds.

And the bees were not golden bees, and the flowers were not golden flowers, and the air smelt of herrings and honey-hay, of malt and yeast and pigs, and of the sweet moving day.

And the Queen, in her gilded chair, looking out on to the river, clapped her gnarled and ringed hands.

And the fiddlers played, and the singers sang, and there was dancing everywhere. And people found that life was better than gold, and that love was worth more than riches. And what had been lost was found.

‘Where’s Jack?’ said Silver.

S
ilver went down to the river, and took a boat, and before she could untie the anchor, Max had jumped in the prow. But Silver had no skill with boats, and the Thames was still boiling in its fury. As she eddied and tossed and made no headway, a fat weight flung itself in beside her and took an oar in its powerful arm; its powerful one arm. It was Mistress Split.

‘Row,’ she commanded.

Under Mistress Split’s direction, and Silver pulling mightily with her two arms, and Mistress Split skilfully rowing her side and managing the unruly tide, Max barking encouragement, the boat passed under London Bridge.

The Keeper of the Tides was leaning out. ‘They went down,’ he cried, ‘and Jack did not come up!’

Silver was full of foreboding, and Max’s tail had begun to droop.

‘Row!’ commanded Mistress Split, and on they rowed, past the crumbling edges of London, and towards the marshes.

And that is where they found him.

Jack was floating on his back with his eyes wide open, watching the clouds. He had no sense of where he was, or who he was, only that he was floating, and that his whole body was tingling like a jellyfish. He did not know it, but he was slightly luminous.

He thought the clouds were cities, and he thought he was dreaming.

A boat pulled alongside him, and one muscled sturdy arm yanked him over the edge.

‘You’ve woken me up,’ he said regretfully.

‘We’re going home,’ said Silver.

W
hat a party!

The whole city of London came to Roger Rover’s house on the Strand.

There were ox roasts and pigs on spits and chickens broiling in stock, and vats of soup, and cauldrons of eels and cheeses the size of cartwheels rolling through the courtyards, and apples piled into pyramids greater than anything built in Egypt. There were tiny cakes to pop in your mouth and cakes so vast that they had to be sliced with a sword, and there were jellies with jewels shining inside them, and sugared rabbits, and sweet almonds.

The dancing had begun, the clodhoppers and the nobles all together. A lady in silk and furs danced with a cabinetmaker wearing patched breeches. The girls who carried fish in baskets on their heads, and whose hair smelled of herrings, bowed before perfumed lords, and were welcomed that day as equals.

And equals they were, not because gold had made them each as rich as the other, but because gold had made them each as hungry and thirsty as the other. The golden fish on golden plates were hateful. The golden water in golden goblets was a torture none could endure.

And those who had hidden fortunes in fields, and went back secretly, guiltily, to dig them up before the party was done, found nothing but mouldy sacking and worms.

The gold was gone.

Jack walked unsteadily from the boat, Silver holding his arm, and Max running beside him. Roger Rover, keen-eyed, saw them coming up through the water-gate, and went down himself to help the boy whose clothes were soaked through.

‘Put him by the fire,’ commanded Sir Roger, and as the servants began to help him undress, they saw that his body was covered in small cuts and wounds.

There was a knock at the door, and in came Mother Midnight, who had shown her own bravery many times that day. She was carrying a pot of ointment.

‘Smear Jack in this,’ she said.

It was Silver who rubbed the ointment into his shoulders and chest and on his legs and feet, and as she worked, intent on what she did, she didn’t see that each wound worked, healed and closed, and was healthy and whole again.

‘Now drink him this,’ said Mother Midnight.

Jack drank the steaming foaming brew that Mother Midnight poured from her flask. His weariness left him. He stood up. ‘I must find my mother,’ he said.

Jack went to the hall where his mother was. Her hair was still made of gold and her body was still made of stone. Jack began to tremble. He had done everything in his power, and he had defeated the Magus, but he had lost his mother.

John Dee was behind him. Jack turned on him. ‘You told me that if I defeated the Magus, my mother would be returned to me. But she is stone!’

John Dee shook his head sadly. ‘Jack, I do not understand. The Magus is defeated, and his enchantments should fall with him. That is the rule. But, for your mother, I fear that the bond between you was what he hated, the love of a mother for her son, the love of a son for his mother . . .’

‘Or father . . .’ said Jack, thinking of William, who had run away and not been seen. ‘The Magus never loved his own son William.’

‘Love or its lack is at the bottom of most things, Jack, as you will discover, though it be covered by a thousand other stories and ten thousand powers.’

‘But that does not free my mother,’ said Jack, very sad.

John Dee put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘The Magus bound her with all the hatred that was in his heart – a frozen lake a hundred miles deep in ice is not colder or harder than his heart.’

‘But he is defeated!’ said Jack stubbornly.

‘This dark magic lives after him,’ said John Dee. ‘Perhaps in time . . .’

Jack shook his head. ‘I love her now, not in time.’

Silver came forward. She touched Jack gently on his arm.

‘Jack, a long time in the future I have to do something that I have already done – I mean, I came here after I had done it in my world but long before I have done it in your world, but while I was doing what I had to do, a friend of mine got trapped somewhere terrible, and there was nothing that could save him, except . . .’ and she whispered something to Jack.

Jack went to his mother and he put his arms around her, and he said, ‘The dark magic that holds you fast cannot stand against the love I bear for you.’

Then he bowed his head and stood back.

Nothing happened.

And Jack thought of the Dark House and the stone beds and stone walls, and how nothing in that place felt alive, shunned by the sun, and how it was a dead place, fixed, and hard and heartless, like the City of Gold, and the power of the Magus.

And then Jack thought of the faithful heart of his little dog, and the courage of his friends, and how his mother had risked her life for him, and how a small sad child who nobody loved had loved him enough to rescue him with a sunflower, and how a girl from another time had come because, because . . .

‘Because love is as strong as death.’

Jack said it out loud and he said it again, ‘Because love is as strong as death.’

And he said it again, ‘Because love is as strong as death.’

And the hall lit up as though the sun himself had come to lodge there, and the light was so bright that no one could see, and what no one saw in the white of the light was Anne, Jack’s mother, stepping forward on stone feet that softened to skin and bone.

But Jack knew, and blinded by the light, he moved forward with the good instinct of an animal, and he found her, the dear lineaments of her face, the touch of her.

That which was lost is found.

‘Mother,’ said Jack.

But before anything else could happen, twenty-five courtiers came to find Jack to bring him to the Queen.

‘The Queen?’ said Jack’s mother. ‘Here? I haven’t cleaned the place for weeks!’

The Queen was sitting in the middle of the courtyard watching the dancing and merriment. Her Barbary parrot sat by her in his cage, preening himself.

As Jack entered the courtyard with his mother, Roger Rover gave the signal, and the trumpeters played a triumphal burst of honour, and every person, without exception, high and low, bowed down, and the Queen herself stretched out her hands in greeting.

‘The Queen herself!’ said Jack’s mother. ‘And that is my son!’

Jack went forward and knelt, but the Queen told him to rise and look at her face to face. ‘I shall make you a Duke,’ she said, ‘and you shall have lands and honours for evermore.’ ‘Great and glorious Queen,’ replied Jack, ‘many others deserve honour for this day – many helped me. John Dee –’

‘Fiddlesticks!’ cried the parrot, and the Queen laughed, and John Dee was cross to be mocked at by a parrot, but it was a royal parrot, and he had to bow his head.

Jack asked that Mother Midnight and the Keeper of the Tides be given pensions, and that Robert, Anselm, Roderick and Peter be taken into the Queen’s service.

‘And what else?’ asked the Queen.

‘Can Max have a jewelled collar?’ said Jack, and with great merriment the Queen took the jewelled collar from her own throat and bade the dog come forward.

‘Kneel!’ commanded the Queen, which Max could not manage, but he sat very still, and the Queen fastened the jewelled collar on him and touched his soft shoulder with her sword. ‘Rise, Sir Max!’ she said.

Max was so astonished that he did not even bark, but wagged his tail so fast that he began to spin around in circles.

And then, in the merriment, terrible sobs were heard, noises of inconsolable wailing, and Jack saw Mistress Split hopping away from the party on her single leg, and he called out, ‘WAIT, WAIT!’

She turned, and Jack ran to fetch her, and she was indeed a curious sight with her half-hat on her half-head, and her single arm wiping her single eye of the many many single tears that ran down her leg to the floor and made a half-pool at her foot.

‘This lady was in the service of the Magus,’ he said.

‘Aye, bred by him in a bottle,’ sighed Mistress Split. ‘A poor start in life for a woman.’

‘And yet she served the great cause,’ said Jack, ‘and fished me out of the Thames too. I would that you give her a small house right on the river, and her own boat that we shall name
Sir Max
, and a licence to breed dogs for your own dear Majesty.’

‘So it shall be!’ said the Queen. ‘Mistress Split-in-Two, you shall breed me spaniels as brave and true as this Max, and he shall be the sire of many a marvellous hound!’

‘But he’s still my dog,’ said Jack quickly.

Mistress Split was so happy that she started to spin around on her one leg nearly as fast as Max wagging his tail, and the two of them fell over and knocked poor John Dee into a trough of apples.

‘Master Dee, you shall be recompensed,’ said the Queen. ‘I shall give you a grand house with a new laboratory for your studies.’

‘And that is what I should wish for myself,’ said Jack, ‘that I should study with John Dee, and learn his arts.’

‘It is you, Jack, who is the master,’ said John Dee, struggling out of the apples. ‘Only you could win the Battle of the Sun.’

‘I told you that!’ said Silver, popping out of the crowd, looking dirty and dishevelled and wet, and then she said to Jack, ‘Jack, you’ve got to do something about the Dragon. He is asking for you.’

‘Is he not dead, then?’ said Jack, and Silver shook her head.

‘Who is this person?’ asked the Queen, staring at Silver.

* * *

Jack and Silver left the crowd and left the Queen and went back down to the river. They took a boat, and at Silver’s direction came a little upstream to where a crowd of people were trying to prise the jewels from the leather wings of the dying Dragon. But when they saw Jack they all ran away.

‘How so, Jack Snap? How so?’ said the Dragon, and his voice was weak and small.

‘Are you all that is left of the Magus?’ said Jack.

‘He had the Egg,’ said the Dragon, ‘and the Egg contained him, and also it contained me, and also it contained the Phoenix, and also the Knight.’

‘Then you are all gone,’ said Jack.

‘The Magus was sometime a long time ago a Knight Templar,’ said the Dragon, ‘and every knight is also the dragon he must fight, and every dragon has within him a phoenix. Good and evil are not as simple as the world wishes them to be.’

‘Why did you help me?’ asked Jack.

‘I want to vanish,’ said the Dragon, ‘and as long as the Magus held me in the Egg, I could only remain.’

‘I would like to help you now,’ said Jack.

The Dragon moved a little. He was heavy and injured.

‘Raise me up, Jack. Raise me up and show me the setting sun.’

And Jack lifted the Dragon as you would a cat, and turned him to face the sun, and the Dragon stood on his scaly feet, unsteady, but he stood, and he plucked a ruby from his leather wings and dropped it delicately into Jack’s hand.

‘Farewell, Jack.’

The Dragon turned his head backwards so that he was looking down the length of his own body, then he opened his mouth and roared out purple fire, and the fire was so scorching that Jack and Silver had to stand back to mind their eyebrows being burned off, and the Dragon flapped his wings and heated the fire more, and the fire that he made could be seen as far away as Wales.

And when he was all fire it seemed as though the sun himself came to lift the Dragon up, and the river burned red again for the last time, and the Dragon was gone.

It was suddenly evening, and the air was soft and sad. The moon came out. Jack held Silver’s hand and they walked without speaking back towards Roger Rover’s house, lit gaily with torches and happiness.

‘I shall have to be going too,’ said Silver.

‘How?’

‘I don’t know.’