The Jade Boy Read online

  As the old buildings fell, the strong east wind scooped glowing ash into a cloud of smouldering destruction, whirling it up into the air until it fell upon roofs and wooden gutters like raindrops from hell.

  “Stay close, lads. I want to find Ann as much as you two, but I don’t hold with heroics.” Gabriel jumped heavily from the wagon and started to direct his players as they unloaded.

  Moments later, Charles called him over to a patch of scrubby grass where street maps of the city were laid out on the ground. The men knelt to examine them.

  Gabriel had told Jem and Tolly that the king planned to create firebreaks in the heart of London to prevent the flames from spreading. This would mean tearing down houses and perhaps whole streets so that the fire could not jump from house to house. Old wooden buildings burned easily but they were also easy to pull down, so it was work that anyone could help with – man or boy.

  Jem and Tolly leapt from the wagon. Cleo chattered angrily and scrabbled onto Tolly’s shoulder, but he lifted her off and placed her firmly back on the seat. She stared at the boys furiously for a moment and then turned her back.

  “I shouldn’t have brought her. Mr Jericho was right,” Tolly sighed. “Everything happened so fast I didn’t think clearly.”

  “Well, she’s here now,” said Jem. “And if she stays under cover she’ll be fine.”

  He looked up at the looming cathedral and shuddered. “Do you really think Ann’s in there, Tolly?”

  The dark boy was silent as he stared at the building. He nodded slowly.

  “She’s definitely in there. I know it. The connection is stronger than ever. She’s…she’s very frightened… and she’s not alone.”

  Tolly’s face hardened. “I’m going in. I’ll pretend to be carrying valuables inside like the people over there – and I’ll just walk straight in through the main door.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, don’t! At least not yet. I need to be completely focused to follow her trail. Look, I’m sorry, Jem, but if you come too I’ll pick up your thoughts and everything will be muddled. When I can track Ann I’ll come straight back and lead us both to her.”

  He smiled and added more gently, “I can’t beat Cazalon alone, can I?”

  Jem shook his head. “But you can’t go on your own, Tolly. What if something happens to you? How will I know? Listen, this makes no sense. We have to go together. Remember the prophecy?”

  “Jem, trust me, please. This is our best chance to find her, but I have to be alone in there. My mind must be as clear as possible. Remember, I can pick up the feelings of anyone I care about. If you were there too I’d only be confused…” Tolly’s expression clouded for a moment. “Jem… you’ve been thinking about something else too, haven’t you? For days now… I’m right, aren’t I? Your feelings are so jumbled and strong that sometimes I…”

  Jem knew immediately what Tolly was hinting at – his father. He scowled as Tolly continued, “I’m sorry, but what I need right now to help me pinpoint Ann’s location is clarity. Your mind is like a soup and it… it gets in the way.”

  Jem bit his lip. He knew that Tolly was only speaking the truth, but he still wanted to go with him.

  “Please. I need some time alone, just a short time,” Tolly said.

  After a moment Jem nodded curtly. “All right then. But as soon as you find a trace of her, let me know. Promise?”

  Tolly gripped Jem’s arm and squeezed it tightly. “I promise.”

  He grabbed a scrap of material from the cart and gathered up some stones. He wrapped them into a small bundle and then winked at Jem. “My valuables.”

  Jem watched his friend lope across the parched grass and tumbled gravestones to join the queue snaking up the steps of the cathedral. Within a minute Tolly disappeared through the door.

  Jem kicked a pebble in frustration. He felt useless.

  “Here, lads!” Gabriel’s voice carried, even above the rumbling sound of the fire.

  Over on the far side of the churchyard the players and the king’s men were forming a bucket chain to carry water up from the Thames. Jem knew that part of the plan was to soak the wooden scaffolding around the cathedral so that it wouldn’t burn so easily.

  Jericho’s voice came again. “We need more hands.”

  Jem took a deep breath and pushed the mass of sweaty black curls back from his forehead. If he couldn’t fight Cazalon – yet – at least he could fight the fire.

  As he sprinted across the churchyard, Jem didn’t notice the tiny black and white form of Cleopatra leaping from the wagon to follow her beloved master into St Paul’s.

  Slopping, stinking buckets were passed from person to person, but not even the cool water soaking into their shirts could guard them from the heat of the flames that burned ever closer and with increasing ferocity as the hours passed.

  “Zounds, man, but this is hot work!” said Charles. He was standing just down the chain from Jem.

  The king stopped for a moment, stretched his back and bent down to dampen his face and neck with water from a passing bucket.

  “Not the finest perfume, eh, lad?” he laughed as he pulled off his linen shirt and ripped the mask from his face.

  Jem felt as if his heart had stopped beating for a moment.

  The king was not wearing his usual long wig, so when he removed his shirt and pulled away the hanging ribbons of the mask, the back of his neck was exposed for all to see.

  It was stained by a livid red birthmark… exactly the same as the one Jem had always taken such pains to conceal.

  For a moment Jem was frozen to the spot. He simply stared at the king, who was now deep in conversation with Jericho.

  It was as if the entire world had shifted on its axis. Jem didn’t know what to think or do. His mind felt so crowded that it might explode, but at the same time, it was completely empty, as if everything he had ever known had suddenly drained away.

  Then slowly, from somewhere deep inside, it began to feel as if a small golden ball of light was beginning to expand and shine through every fibre of his being.

  The strange conversation he’d witnessed between his mother and the king a day earlier now made perfect sense.

  He remembered the king’s words, “A fine boy he is, too.” Despite the danger and the horror of the night around him, Jem smiled.

  Charles II, King of England was his father – and they had met just before his thirteenth birthday, exactly as Ann had predicted.

  Charles threw down his shirt, looked around and caught sight of Jem’s shining face. He winked.

  Jem grinned and bowed his head, and then, fizzing with a feeling of confidence and completeness that he had never known before, he stripped off his own shirt and removed the band from around his neck.

  “Here, lad, I’ll take those for you. It’s sweaty work, ain’t it?”

  “Thanks,” said Jem, gratefully handing the shirt and the neck band to the man standing just behind him.

  Immediately he felt cooler and less constricted. Every sinew of his body tingled with purpose and energy. He’d play his part here to fight the flames and as soon as Tolly came back for him the pair of them would rescue Ann.

  Jem leaned over to grasp the straps of another huge overflowing bucket coming up the line, completely unaware that he had just fulfilled the last of Cazalon’s rites of binding.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  As the great bell of St Paul’s tolled midnight, Jem began to feel odd.

  It wasn’t just the heat and the relentless work that were affecting him, it was as if everything around him – the sounds, the sights, the smells – were distorted.

  The cathedral seemed to be moving. Its outline quivered in the smoke and appeared to throb like a beating heart. As Jem looked up at the tower he thought he could see the stone carvings along the parapet stretching down to touch him.

  Despite the heat, he shivered and stepped back from the chain, bending double for a moment to clear his head. When he loo
ked up again, St Paul’s seemed to have crept a little closer, like an old woman who had lifted her skirts and tiptoed silently across the floor while he wasn’t looking.

  The sounds around him were changing, too. The constant roaring and splitting that had filled his ears for the last few hours now came in waves like the sea on a beach – sometimes the noise was deafening, then it would fade to nothing, gathering its strength to come rushing in again with such incredible force that it actually hurt. He took another step back.

  The churchyard began to spin, the scene before him becoming a confusing whirl of black, orange and red, punctuated by giant shadows and wavering human forms.

  Jem staggered over to a little patch of grass at the entrance to the churchyard intending to rest for a moment. As he tumbled to the ground his mind lurched into a tangle of strange images and words.

  Tolly rode on a lion.

  The duchess was a serpent.

  The king was a tree.

  Ann shone like the moon.

  The cathedral was a forest.

  His mother was a monkey.

  Cazalon was standing over him.

  Jem jerked upright and was immediately violently sick. Cazalon was standing over him. He was leaning on his staff and watching Jem. His thin lips twitched as a sneer spread across his face.

  The count’s eyes glittered in the light thrown by the torches around the cathedral. He was swathed in a long, black cloak that covered his entire body from his neck to the ground. Only his head was bare and his snakelike blue plait almost reached the dust of the graveyard. His face was caked with white chalk and his eyes were lined in thick black paint. When he blinked, Jem saw that the count had drawn another eye on the skin of his heavy lids.

  Cazalon smiled. “I believe that congratulations are in order, Jeremy. It is now the eve of your thirteenth birthday and I have prepared a very special… celebration for you.”

  Cazalon began to laugh. The horrible dry noise that came from the man’s mouth gradually built to a howl that burrowed into Jem’s head and coiled itself so tightly and painfully around his mind that he couldn’t think or move.

  Cazalon stopped and stared intently at the boy.

  “And now I would like you to get up and follow me like a dog. Do you think you can do that? I think you’ll find that you have little choice in the matter.”

  From the depths of his cloak the count produced a bundle of grey linen. He flicked a red-gloved hand and as the material unfurled Jem saw that it was a shirt. His shirt.

  Cazalon stared at the boy for moment before speaking slowly and distinctly. “It’s sweaty work, ain’t it?”

  Jem’s blood froze.

  Cazalon continued, “Although it is customary to offer a gift on the occasion of a birthday, I have taken the liberty of reversing that charming ritual. I must thank you, Jeremy, for freely giving me the most splendid present of all – your soul. Come.”

  The man turned in the dust, and resting on his staff, stalked towards a narrow alleyway leading away from the churchyard. As he moved, his cloak was caught by the wind and flapped around him like the wings of a huge black bird.

  Unable to stop himself, Jem jerked to his feet and stumbled after him.

  Cazalon wove through a maze of dark, smoke-filled passages and stopped outside a tall, ancient house. He stepped through the open door and Jem followed. No matter how hard he tried, Jem couldn’t free himself from the count’s control. He tried to swallow his terror. His body was bending to Cazalon’s will, but his thoughts and feelings were still under his own control.

  Cazalon limped through the deserted hallway to a small chamber at the back of the house. He stooped and threw aside a tattered rug. In the thin orange firelight from a small window high on the wall, Jem saw a trapdoor set in the floor.

  The count bent to pull open the trapdoor, revealing a flight of stone steps that spiralled down into darkness.

  He clicked his fingers and an orb of sickly green light appeared in the air above him. The orb revolved slowly, hovered and then swooped down the steps, casting just enough light to show the way. At the same time, the crystal bird’s head at the end of Cazalon’s twisted staff began to glow.

  Cazalon stepped down onto the stairs and moments later Jem followed.

  He couldn’t stop. It felt as if someone was riding in his head, controlling every movement of his body.

  At first the air was thick with the smell of burning, but as they went deeper, it was overpowered by the stench of damp and rot.

  The stone staircase seemed to spiral down an impossibly long way. Jem felt dizzy again as he followed the black hem of Cazalon’s cloak, which slipped around and around the stony turns just ahead of him as they descended. Jem had to clasp the cold, moist walls to steady himself… but still he couldn’t stop.

  At last they reached the bottom of the spiral staircase and entered a domed chamber that branched off into several arched passageways. In the dull, green light, Jem noticed that there were symbols scratched into the stone above the arches and the walls were carved with strange figures. A grinning demon spewed leaves and flowers from its mouth, a woman held a flaming wheel above her head, a mermaid rode upon a dragon and, most unsettling of all, a man with the head of a huge bird soared across the ceiling carrying a figure between his taloned feet.

  Cazalon turned to look at Jem. He smiled and moistened his lips, and Jem shivered at the sight of his pointed black tongue. The count gestured at the walls with the glowing staff.

  “London is ancient, Jeremy. This cavern is over four thousand years old. It was here long before the Romans built their city on the banks of the Thames. Come. I will show you the Roman catacombs.”

  The passageway they followed was low and narrow to start with, but then it broadened and Jem saw that the walls were lined with shelves carved into the stone. He stared into the black depths of one of them and gasped as, just for a second, Cazalon’s orb of light illuminated the crumbling eye sockets of a skull mounted on top of a heap of bones.

  Cazalon laughed.

  “Use your eyes, Jeremy. There are thousands of skulls around you. This is a necropolis. Do you know what that is?”

  Jem swallowed hard and did not answer. He could not stop himself following the man, but he would not speak to him.

  Cazalon feigned sadness. “Ah – such ignorance in the young these days. Permit me to enlighten you – this, Jeremy, is a city of the dead.”

  The light from the green orb intensified, revealing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of shelves in the tunnel stretching before them, each one filled with jumbled, dusty bones.

  Jem’s eyes widened and Cazalon laughed again, moving deeper into the catacombs The tunnels were like a maze. Every so often Cazalon stopped when the passages came to a double, triple or even quadruple fork, scanning the incised symbols that covered the walls.

  At last they turned into a particularly broad passage. At the far end, Jem saw a massive black doorway surrounded by an arch. As they neared the door, Jem had a strange feeling that this place was incredibly powerful.

  A dark sense of foreboding, invisible but thick as treacle, rolled down the corridor to engulf them. He tried to stop his feet but they wouldn’t obey.

  The arch was the height of five men and carved from black marble. Enormous twisted tree trunks were carved into the stone, making it seem as if the door led into a dark forest, but as Jem looked closer he saw that some of the trunks had mouths, eyes and rows of jagged fangs. There were serpents hidden among the branches.

  Jem began to tremble. He was unable to ignore his terror any longer.

  Cazalon must have felt something too. The count turned and stared intently. For a second, Jem felt a flare of pain from the scar on his heel. Cazalon smiled bleakly.

  “I don’t think that such simple magic will be able to save you now, Jeremy.”

  Jem’s jaw dropped as the count continued with a sneer, “Oh, yes. I know all about that pathetic charm. My little ward has told me everything. Pe
rhaps you would like to see her?”

  Cazalon turned, and, using his staff, knocked three times on the soaring carved doors that hung between the marble trees.

  “Behold – the Oak Grove!”

  The doors swung back silently to reveal a huge circular cavern lit by hundreds of candles set into niches around the walls. Three other passages set at equal distances along the curved interior appeared to lead out of the chamber. Seven more of Cazalon’s glowing green orbs hovered overhead at the centre of the space, giving off a steady, sickly light.

  The cavern was domed, like the place Jem had seen earlier. It was dominated by a monstrous carved centaur that galloped across the ceiling, and the walls here were inscribed with a thousand more carvings – some were copies of the ones he’d already seen, others even stranger and more intricate.

  Jem stumbled forward and stared, unable to comprehend where he was or what he was seeing.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Even Cazalon’s voice had taken on a note of awe.

  The man limped forward to a pile of fallen columns near the centre of the great chamber. He stepped up onto a broken stump and raised his arms.

  “We are far beneath St Paul’s, Jeremy. Beneath the ugly cathedral that will soon burn to the ground; beneath its undercroft; beneath its crypt; and beneath its bone-packed tombs.”

  Cazalon stopped to note the effect of his words on the boy. Jem looked up in amazement. Was it true? Were they really under the cathedral? Was Tolly up there somewhere?

  Cazalon continued, “The stones you are standing on now, boy, were sacred to the Romans, who built their great temple here. And they were sacred to the druids of this land, who came before them. They called it the Oak Grove. I believe that name might be familiar to you?”

  The words of the old prophecy rang out in Jem’s mind. When the dark god rises in the oak grove… His mouth went very dry and he was suddenly aware of his heart thumping under his ribs.