Wolf in Shadow-eARC (51 page)

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, so 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.

“Where are those womanish raven-starvers off to?” asked a voice from within the building in a bellow that would have shamed Brian Blessed.

A man in mail with a helmet richly decorated in gold shot through a door and shook his fist. “Goat dung, come back or I’ll eat your livers and throw your entrails to the dogs!”

He noticed Frankie and pushed his helmet back so he could see more clearly. Frankie was forced to stop as the man was right in front of her.

“Well,” he said, “so it’s to be that sort of battle.”

He was joined by a second bareheaded warrior who pulled a long knife from a sheath hung from his belt. The wolf moved to intercept him. Frankie raised both arms to the sky.

“My Lord Odin.”

Sunlight lanced through a gap in the clouds, illuminating Frankie and reflecting golden light off her amber necklace so it seemed to burn.

The warrior in mail knocked his companion to the ground with a single blow.

“Put the knife away, idiot. Do you not see who she is? She wears Brisingamen, the chain of fire.”

He looked at Frankie quizzically, head to one side.

“What service can I do for you, My Lady? What brings you to this place?”

Frankie chanted slowly, not taking her eyes off the man.

“The ninth hall is
Folkvang
, where bright Freyja decides

“Where her warriors shall sit,

“Some of the slain belong to her,

“Some belong to Odin.”

She paused for breath.

“Odin, my Lord, has granted me my pick of the bravest warriors of the Danes and the Norse who fall in noble battle at this place as my half, to sit beside me and at my command in
Sessrumnir
, great and fair hall. He has granted me Fenrir to smell out cowards,” Frankie gestured at the wolf, “and Muninn to spot the deeds of the valiant. Muninn will watch by the Bridge, missing nothing, guiding the Valkyrie in their harvest,” Frankie said.

The warrior bowed.

“In that case, noble Freyja, Queen of Magic and Battle, I shall escort you to the Bridge myself in the hope that I may win a warrior’s death and a seat at your table.”

And that was how it was. Frankie progressed to through the city with an ever-going escort of warriors and perched the “raven” on a warehouse near Lundenburh Bridge. She and Rhian retired as the Norse longships collided with the bridge. Danish warriors rained missiles into the longships. The Norse had ripped thatched roofs from buildings further downstream and they employed these as shields. The air was filled with the clash of iron on wood and the screams of men.

The Norse swung iron grapples on ropes and threw them at the bridge. Some men fell, but other warriors rushed to take their place. Frankie and the wolf retreated back into the city as the longships backed water. The ropes attached to the bridge stretched taut, shedding water in fine sprays that formed little rainbows. The structure collapsed with a groan of rending wood, hurling many of the Danish warriors into the Thames. Black clouds rolled across the sky, darkening the ground.

Rhian was back in St. Olaves churchyard, as Rhian, on two legs. The soft red pastel light of a North European sunset filled the garden. As the women walked through the arch, a child’s song drifted from the gardens.

“Build it up with iron and steel,

“Iron and steel, iron and steel,

“Build it up with iron and steel,

“My fair lady.”

Rhian half thought she heard a voice croak “nevermore,” but she probably imagined it.

The IED was hidden in a culvert by the road, but he couldn’t explain that to the rest of the squad however hard he tried. They pushed on, ignoring him. He was insubstantial, a ghost or a whisper on the wind. He shouted and pulled at their clothes, pointing to the electronic bomb detector that ticked ominously in his hand. A soft tone sounded, indicating they were now in the blast zone. Jameson woke up covered in sweat, the duvet twisted around his body. He picked up the phone by his bed.

“Jameson, is that you?”

“Kendrics, what time is it?”

Jameson squinted at the phone, trying to read the time through sleep-fuddled eyes.

“Two o’clock in the morning.”

The last clause was unnecessary, as Jameson’s body clock told him that much.

“What the hell do you want, Kendrics?”

“That, ah, data you brought back from Shternberg’s country house.”

“Yes,” Jameson gripped the phone tighter.

“The household accounts.”

“Yes, get on with it, man.”

“Well, it occurred to me that although the records in Shternberg’s office had been well sanitized that there might be some tangential evidence in the accounts. So I looked for something that appeared harmless but was nonetheless suggestive.”

Kendrics paused. He really had the most annoying mannerisms.

“And was there?” Jameson asked, encouragingly, trying to hurry things along without flustering the man. Yelling at him would only slow things down.

“Yes, I noticed a series of receipts from Shternberg’s chauffeur claiming for filling up his car repeatedly from the same petrol station in East London. It caught my eye because it is only a few miles from Whitechapel University but is not in a commercial zone. The area just has private flats and hotels except for a boarded-up listed building isolated on some wasteland.”

“Empty, boarded-up, and isolated, that is interesting,” Jameson said.

“Yes, so I checked ownership. It took time to work through a series of shell companies in the Bahamas, but I believe that ultimately Shternberg owns it.”

“What’s Randolph doing?”

“I, um, haven’t told him as it’s late, so I thought in the morning, you know . . .”

“Ring Randolph now,” Jameson said. “Tell him we’ll need the Gamekeeper on-duty crash team and a witch ready to perform the Egyptian Closing of the Way. Karla and I will meet the team at the petrol station. Now, Kendrics, phone him now. Oh, and Kendrics?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve done bloody well, bloody well indeed.”

Jameson put down the phone.

“So the game’s afoot,” Karla said, walking into his arms as he stood up.

He hadn’t notice her come into his bedroom. She was at her most active at night, but he needed sleep, which he wouldn’t get if she prowled his bedroom.

“Yah, you’ve ten minutes to get ready. Put some clothes on, Karla. You’re distracting me and I need to think.”

She laughed lightly and departed after giving him a kiss.

Jameson pulled on his clothes, wondering where she had picked up the Sherlock Holmes phrase, before deciding that he didn’t want to know.

Rhian also dreamed, but unlike Jameson, her dreams were tranquil. She and James were together, not doing anything special, but together. It was wonderful. She felt a great loss when her mobile beeped gently in her bedroom. It took a few minutes to track it down to where she had dropped it under her rumpled blouse.

“I would have woken you with a kiss like old times, Snow White, but I can’t get in your house without permission. That odious doorknocker has it in for me, but all you have to do is proffer the invitation.”

“And why the hell would I do that, Max?”

“Because I’ve a job for you, little witch, along with your scary friend.”

Rhian had trouble classifying Frankie as scary, but she could see how Max might think so, or at least pretend to. You never knew with Max.