The Battle of the Sun

  ‘This is a set-back,’ said John Dee.

  ‘What has happened?’ asked Jack.

  ‘We have reduced Silver from infinity to seven. But if even one of these seven escapes us, we shall never return Silver to herself.’

  ‘Why would they want to escape?’ said Jack.

  ‘Quickly!’ cried John Dee, as one of the Silvers tried to climb up the chimney. Jack grabbed her from behind, and as he did so, she squashed down into a ball about the size of the jack in a game of bowls.

  ‘Put her in the alembic!’ said John Dee, who had seized a second Silver halfway out of the window.

  The other five Silvers were darting about the room. One had got her head through the keyhole when Jack caught her, and another was rolling out under the gap at the bottom of the door. John Dee stamped on her, and she squealed and turned into a ball.

  ‘It is the nature of mercury to behave thus,’ said John Dee, ‘but it is very inconvenient. Whatever happens we must keep the three Silvers in this room.’

  At that moment Roger Rover opened the door from the outside, and the three Silvers knocked him flat as they raced past him.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Roger Rover, faintly from the floor.

  ‘What’s this?’ wondered the Keeper of the Tides, as he scrambled round a pillar supporting the bridge to see just what it was the Magus had attached there. ‘How very unlikely! It is a sunflower!’

  ‘What’s this?’ said Wedge, who had been sleeping and waking and waking and sleeping by the Egg he had buried in the earth as instructed by Mother Midnight. ‘WHAT IS THIS?’

  Truth to tell, it was a stem and two leaves.

  ‘Power and Glory, Glory and Power!’ shouted Wedge to anyone who was listening, which was no one, as he was alone. ‘I shall be rich, famous, infamous, Master of the Universe! The Egg is growing!’

  The three Silvers were running riot around the house. They knocked over suits of armour, they slid down the banister rails, they swung on the tapestries, they bounced on the beds, and all the time that they were doing these things they shouted, ‘Whee! Ha ha!’

  It seemed like there was no stopping them as they skidded, slidded, hidded, first upstairs then down, appearing and disappearing so that even Jack who was nimble and fast could hardly keep up.

  As he raced past Roger Rover’s armoury, he spied a net furled up against the wall, and he suddenly had a good idea. He took the net, got it ready, and hid at the bottom of the stairs.

  Soon he heard the ‘WHEE! HA HA!’ of the three Silvers, and they came tumbling down the stairs like puppies. Quick as a dart, Jack flung his net and caught one of them, squealing and yelping. He squashed her into a ball, and hurried back to put her in the alembic.

  ‘Got one!’ he shouted as he came through the door. ‘Two left, Master Dee!’

  John Dee was in the room with Roger Rover and the Abbess. When Jack saw her, his eyes darkened and he was full of rage.

  ‘Why is she here? She is in league with the Magus!’

  ‘No,’ said the Abbess, ‘I am not in league with the Magus, nor Abel Darkwater. I help or I hinder according to my own course. That is all.’

  ‘You did this to Silver,’ said Jack, holding up the ball.

  ‘Abel Darkwater dissolved Silver in the barrel of mercury,’ said the Abbess. ‘It seemed to be a solution – so to speak – but it appears that Silver is not so easy to dissolve. I admire her persistence. And I am here on business – to see John Dee.’

  Jack looked from one to another. Who could he trust? Roger Rover? John Dee?

  John Dee held up his hands in a calming gesture. ‘Jack, put that Silver in the alembic. Concentrate on your task. Two of her are left, you say? That is good, and that is bad.’

  ‘Why bad?’ said Jack.

  ‘Because of those two, only one Silver is the Silver we want. The other Silver will be her shadow.’

  ‘I’ll go and find her – them,’ said Jack, and then he looked straight at the Abbess. ‘I will not fail, and then you shall answer to her yourself.’

  ‘If you want to be sure of finding the right Silver, you had better use the King’s ring,’ said the Abbess in her mild and disconcerting manner.

  ‘How do you know about that?’ said Jack, his hand going to the sapphire on his finger.

  ‘You are Adam Kadmon,’ said the Abbess. ‘Jack you may be, but Adam Kadmon is your true name.’

  ‘Jack,’ said John Dee gently, ‘there is much you do not yet understand about your alchemical nature. All will be shown to you in good time. But now hurry – the quicksilver is unstable, and we must not lose time.’

  Jack set off again through the empty house that he knew so well – though peculiar and silent now that the servants were gone. He was worried about Silver, worried about Crispis, worried about his mother, and suddenly he was going past her in the hall, hunting for the Silvers, and there was Sir Boris, standing guard.

  ‘The day is close at hand,’ said Sir Boris, suddenly.

  ‘What day?’ said Jack.

  ‘When you shall summon me for the second time.’

  Before Jack could ask any questions of the enigmatic knight, he heard a crashing nearby, and ran off at full pelt, just in time to see the two Silvers disappearing into the armoury.

  Jack was after them in no time, but the armoury was full of armour, which was not strange, but what was strange was that the shiny polished suits were like tall mirrors, and in each one the two Silvers multiplied again as they dodged him. As he ran at one with his arms out, he crashed into a breastplate and a helmet; as he ran at another, an empty eerie knight toppled down on him. If it had not been for his great strength, he would have been crushed.

  ‘Silver!’ called Jack suddenly. ‘Silver, please come back.’

  He felt that he was being heard, so he tried again.

  ‘Silver, it’s Jack and I’ve come to find you. Here’s my hand, here I am.’

  There was a shuffle, and the two Silvers came forward, holding hands.

  ‘Which one of us do you want, Jack? Which one?’

  ‘The one that is true,’ answered Jack, boldly.

  ‘Tell us which of us that is,’ said the two Silvers.

  Jack had no idea, and then he heard the voice – the low pleasant voice (the King’s ring . . .), and he took the ring from his finger and held it out at arm’s length. ‘The one who can wear the King’s ring.’

  ‘The sapphire,’ said the Silvers in unison. ‘The stone that is not stone, the stone that is a spirit.’

  And as Jack stood holding out the ring, it began to give off a pure white light that flooded the whole armoury so bright that Jack had to shield his eyes with his other arm.

  He felt someone take the ring.

  ‘Jack . . .’ said Silver.

  And there she was, smiling at him with her green eyes, her red hair standing on end like a startled fox.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Jack, grabbing the other shrinking Silver just in time. She was rolling away like a marble. He put her in his pocket.

  ‘What was it like in the barrel of mercury?’ he said, as they walked back towards Roger Rover’s study.

  ‘It was like everything,’ said Silver, puzzled, ‘all places, all times, all possibilities. I felt like there were millions of me . . .’

  ‘There were,’ said Jack. ‘I saw them – millions.’

  ‘What happened in the chapel?’ asked Silver.

  ‘First, I’d better warn you –’ said Jack, but Silver was already opening the study door, and there was the Abbess, and out on the table before her, with its sea-stained bag, was the clock. The Timekeeper.

  ‘Silver . . .’ said the Abbess, ‘you have returned to us. I am pleased.’

  ‘You are?’ said Silver.

  ‘I shall always be pleased to see you,’ said the Abbess, and Silver, in spite of everything that had happened, in spite of everything that was going to happen, knew that the Abbess was telling the truth. The most dangerous thing about the

&nb
sp; Abbess was that she always told the truth. Silver remembered that from the future.

  The Abbess turned to John Dee. ‘I said I am here on business, and I am. If you wish to defeat the Magus you will need my help, and the price of my help is this clock. In any case, it belongs to me.’

  ‘Don’t give it to her!’ said Silver.

  John Dee was looking troubled. ‘The Magus must be defeated.’

  ‘That task is mine!’ said Jack. ‘You told me so yourself.’

  ‘You have failed twice,’ said the Abbess. ‘You freely gave him your power . . .’ (Jack hung his head), ‘and at the second, when you could have taken his power for ever, there in the chapel, you hesitated.’

  ‘Jack!’ said Silver, realising now that the Magus was not defeated.

  ‘I wanted to save Silver!’ cried Jack to the Abbess.

  ‘And you wanted to save your mother. You are too softhearted, and too easily distracted for great power. He will defeat you in the Battle of the Sun.’

  John Dee wrung his hands. Roger Rover watched keenly.

  ‘You are clever,’ said Silver to the Abbess. ‘I remember what you said to me on the Star Road.’

  ‘What? Where? When?’ said Roger Rover, bewildered.

  ‘Silver is remembering the future,’ said the Abbess. ‘We met there. We will meet there again.’ And her eyes, sure and glittering like green emeralds, seemed to cut through time itself.

  ‘Madam,’ said John Dee, coughing, ‘perhaps we might speak for a moment in private on these matters, and in particular, the matter of the Magus?’

  ‘There is an antechamber . . .’ said Roger Rover, and he stood up to show the Abbess and John Dee the way through the hidden door in the panelling. As she swept past Jack, she pick-pocketed the silver ball of mercury.

  But she was not the only thief. The second the others turned away, Silver darted over to the table where lay the pieces of the clock called the Timekeeper. She picked up a jewelled hand and put it in her pocket, warning Jack to say and do nothing.

  Jack wasn’t going to say or do anything. He was feeling miserable and useless. What the Abbess had said about him was true.

  Roger Rover returned. ‘We shall all be better for something to eat and drink,’ he said, trying to be cheerful, ‘and as we have no servants, I suggest we go down to the kitchen while we can.’

  ‘What do you mean, while we can?’ said Silver.

  ‘There is going to be a food shortage,’ said Roger Rover.

  In the kitchen, eating roast boar and apple sauce, lettuces and black bread, Roger Rover explained about the groom and the golden pig.

  ‘Worth a King’s fortune,’ he said, ‘but what’s that worth to a man who is starving?’

  He poured them water. ‘And what can money buy for a man who is dying of thirst, except water?’

  ‘So what does the Magus want?’ said Silver.

  ‘Power,’ said Jack.

  ‘Jack is right,’ said Sir Roger. ‘The city is in chaos. Men and women have left their homes, neglected their animals, there is no baking done, no milling, no planting, no sowing. And as if food was not short enough – what they have is turning to gold. The Magus will soon control the city, for he is the only one who can turn what is not gold into gold, and, we believe, return what is gold to its former state. He has used men’s own greed and turned it against them.’

  ‘And how shall he be defeated?’ said Jack. ‘I do not know how to defeat him.’

  ‘Perhaps John Dee knows . . .’ said Roger Rover.

  ‘John Dee will give the Abbess the clock,’ said Silver, but to herself she thought, not all of the clock, and without the hand it can never tell the time, and she felt the jewelled hand in her pocket.

  And no doubt that is what would have happened, but as is the way with life, something else unforeseen and unexpected happened first.

  ABEL DARKWATER

  The ship bobbed at anchor at Deptford. It was a rich ship, a ready ship, paid for in easy gold. In Paris, Abel Darkwater had already bought a magnificent house with a laboratory in the basement. In London, he had bought the land to the east of the Priory in the Spital Field. One day, he would build a house there.

  He was wealthy. He was his own master now, no John Dee to call him in the middle of the night with some high-minded philosophy about the Soul. Abel Darkwater had more important things to fashion than his Soul; he wanted to be Lord of the Mysteries of the Universe, and to do that, he had to control time itself. And to control time itself, he needed that strange clock called the Timekeeper.

  So while others were busying themselves with gold, he had one thing left to find, and he knew exactly where he would find it.

  It was easy. The house of Roger Rover was deserted. The groom was in his pay. Together they made their way through the courtyards and up the stairs to the study.

  And – such luck, such destiny! There it was, lying on the table for the taking!

  Abel Darkwater took it.

  Silver felt the jewelled hand of the Timekeeper jump in her pocket. Without saying anything to Roger Rover or Jack, she leapt from the table and ran back upstairs just in time to crash into Abel Darkwater on his way down.

  He pushed her out of the way.

  ‘HELP!’ shouted Silver. ‘THIEVES!’

  The door from the antechamber opened and John Dee and the Abbess came out. The Abbess strode to the window, and in a flash, in an instant, John Dee and Silver saw the Abbess rear into a dark serpent, and slide through the window, down the wall and across the courtyard.

  But Abel Darkwater had fled.

  THE TRUTH ABOUT GOLD

  The Magus was at the top of the Dark Tower outside of the city walls. He looked over the higgledy-piggledy roofs and spires of London, some gleaming gold, others casting shadows in the sunlight. The gates out of the city were guarded by the Queen’s soldiers. It was as if the city were in the grip of a plague, and none might leave and none might enter.

  Food was scarce. Water scarcer. People were drinking from the Thames and falling ill with fevers. At the food auctions, a loaf of bread cost the weight of a baby’s head in gold. Where country-dwellers had once tried to enter the city by force to take what they could, and where foreign adventurers had come with weapons to steal and plunder, now everyone whispered that the Devil was in the gold and that London was cursed.

  The Magus rejoiced. That night he was to go to Queen Elizabeth herself, and he would offer her unlimited treasure in return for the kingdom – yes, the whole kingdom of England, its lands and dominions. And if she refused, he would continue this siege of gold.

  He wrapped his cloak around him and walked down the stone stairs of the Dark Tower. Wedge was waiting, holding his horse. Without a word, the Magus swung up into the saddle and galloped away. Wedge didn’t care a fig, or even a coconut, about the Magus, for his Egg was growing.

  He hopped back as fast as he could and watered the palm tree, now five feet high.

  ‘I had better find that old witch Mother Midnight!’ he said to himself, ‘and ask her what to do next!’

  But Mother Midnight, after her escape from Wedge and the Abbess, had gone for shelter on London Bridge with the Keeper of the Tides. Soon the two of them – three of them if you count the cat – were joined by Max and Mistress Split, because Mistress Split could no longer abide Wedge and his Egg-work, and she half reasoned to her half-self that if the Keeper of the Tides had rescued her once, he might rescue her again.

  In this unlikely role of protector of strange ladies, one dog and one cat, the Keeper of the Tides spent a lot of time fishing, which the cat enjoyed, and she soon found a perch on the window sill, well away from Max, where she could do as all cats like to do; look out and look in at the same time.

  It was thus, day by day, that the Keeper of the Tides had noticed the sunflower winding its way across the bridge from the seed that the Magus had nailed there.

  It was noticeable too, that the bridge was not at all gold – not any of its house
s, shops, persons or animals was in the least bit gold.

  ‘It means something! Bless my maps and globes!’ said the Keeper of the Tides. ‘But what it is I do not know!’

  * * *

  The Magus rode through Whitechapel towards the Tower of London, where he was to keep his appointment with the Queen.

  John Dee was in close counsel with the Queen. Her Barbary parrot preened itself in its golden cage.

  ‘I will not cede sovereignty of England to a magician!’ said the Queen.

  ‘You are correct, Glorious Queen,’ replied John Dee, ‘yet he is very powerful.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ said the parrot.

  ‘On what account is this Magus so very powerful?’

  ‘Madam, you have seen the city for yourself! He is the only one who has ever discovered the longed-for secret of turning base metal – indeed any material at all – into gold.’

  ‘And truly it is gold?’ said the Queen. ‘Or does he keep us under a spell, an illusion?’

  ‘Truly, it is gold.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ said the parrot. The Queen laughed and fed it a piece of sugar.

  John Dee frowned; he was an important person and not used to being contradicted by parrots. He cleared his throat and continued.

  ‘The Magus has taken the power that was intended for the inner work of the soul and turned it to base use in the world. His power is great because he found a boy, known among alchemists as the Radiant Boy, and one whom we imagined to be a symbol and not a reality. I confess that this boy lodged for some years under my own roof and I was too foolish to recognise him. On his twelfth birthday he came into his power, and was caught by the Magus.’

  ‘Where is this boy?’ asked the Queen.

  ‘He is safely at the house of Sir Roger Rover. That house is protected by a powerful charm and is free from the golden plague. This boy has great power, but he does not know how to use it. It remains to be seen whether or not he can defeat the Magus –’

  But before John Dee could speak further, there was a flurry among the courtiers, and the Magus was announced.