Dark Stars (The Thief Taker Book 3)

by C. S. Quinn

  Frances swallowed, remembering that a similar thing had happened recently.

  ‘Many thought me her murderer,’ continued Buckingham. ‘Jealous or jilted.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘I was too heartbroken to stop the things being said of me,’ he concluded. ‘I went to sea. Only came back for the new King.’

  ‘Why were you banished?’ asked Frances.

  ‘I was trying to discover more about Thorne,’ said Buckingham. He frowned. ‘I was obsessed with finding the why. There were some documents belonging to Thorne in the old King’s library. The papers you found. Mostly they only provoked more questions.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’ Frances was intrigued despite herself.

  ‘Something about birth charts,’ said Buckingham. ‘Thorne had left a false birthday as a message of some kind. I discovered the hour of the King’s birth and was banished, so I returned to sea,’ he continued. ‘But then someone began repeating Thorne’s wicked work. And I mean to discover him.’

  Frances sipped wine and stared at the knife. ‘It’s your way of making amends,’ she said after a moment, ‘to the girl who died.’

  Buckingham nodded. ‘But to find the killer, I must get close to the King again.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  ‘You’ve heard of the Dutch pilot Janus?’

  Frances nodded.

  ‘Janus is English. English and perhaps in the King’s court.’

  Frances gasped. ‘Surely not? A traitor so close?’

  Buckingham nodded slowly.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  Buckingham smiled his best charming smile. ‘Someone must get close to the King to find this traitor out. I had thought it should be me. But now I’ve met you . . .’

  Frances shook her head. ‘I won’t do it. I won’t spy on the men at court.’

  ‘You will,’ he said. ‘You must learn to play courtly games if you wish to succeed under a Stuart monarchy.’

  His dark eyes flashed, and Frances felt the doors of another cage begin to close around her. Then something deep in her soul recoiled, and anger flashed. From the time she’d arrived in court, Frances had been nothing but a pawn, clamoured after by the King, manipulated by Lady Castlemaine. Now Buckingham thought to use her too.

  She remembered Sally Oakley’s letters. Her bravery was inspiring.

  Frances’s little jaw set firm. Lady Castlemaine was right. No one would help her. She must help herself.

  Frances looked into Buckingham’s dark eyes.

  ‘I will help you,’ she lied. ‘Look for my letter. You must come in secret to my rooms in Whitehall. I will spy for you and tell you what I discover.’

  Chapter 54

  Under the low branches of the Upside-down Tree, Charlie, Lily and Bitey breathed sighs of relief.

  The magnificent tree took up a long section of the Serpentine River bank. The weeping beech was ancient and enormous, the tree’s supple branches falling downwards in a large curtain, screening off a dark interior large enough for a house. Soft moonlight fell in dappled patches through the branches.

  ‘Look at that,’ breathed Lily.

  The bark of the tree was carved with writing. It covered every spare inch from the ground to the branches.

  ‘They’re wishes,’ said Charlie. ‘This was a wishing tree for common folk. They came here to ask for wisdom.’

  Lily’s eyes trailed the winding writing. ‘It’s all about the war,’ she said sadly. ‘People ask wisdom for their brothers and sons, to keep them safe.’

  ‘We should search for the building we saw from the camera obscura,’ decided Charlie, ‘before it gets light. We might still find the Cipher.’ He turned to Bitey. ‘You should get back to safety.’

  Bitey visibly sagged with relief. ‘I’ve been a help then,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Come find me in the Bucket of Blood,’ promised Charlie. ‘You’ll not want for a drink for the next week. Take the torch,’ he added.

  ‘You’ll need it,’ said Bitey.

  Charlie shook his head.

  ‘Best you use it. Be careful of gamekeepers,’ he added.

  ‘Always have been.’ Bitey vanished through the thick branches of the Upside-down Tree.

  Charlie and Lily moved deeper into the trees of Hyde Woods as Bitey retreated. The bright moon lit their way as they tracked towards the building they’d identified from Thorne’s camera obscura.

  ‘It can’t be much further,’ said Charlie, charting their path through the dense trees. ‘The foliage turns thicker here, the same as we saw around the building.’

  They passed more dark trees, alert to the sound of gamekeepers. Then in the middle distance a stumpy shape loomed.

  ‘It’s a broken Roman pillar,’ said Lily, touching the top of the squat shape with her fingertips.

  ‘There’s more,’ said Charlie. ‘I think they once marked a path.’

  He pointed to a parade of white stone stumps, lining what might have once been a wide road. The severed Roman columns were overgrown and disguised with moss, with none having survived to higher than a few feet. But the route they delineated was not as inaccessible as it would have been, Charlie thought, if no one ever came here.

  ‘This way,’ he said, following the path the columns had once made into the trees.

  After a few yards they came to a halt. The pillars ended in a squat stone building, ancient and covered in creepers. The thick stone construction was reminiscent of an old church. But there was no steeple, and the thick wooden door was topped by a stone triangle. It looked completely abandoned.

  They hesitated, taking it in.

  ‘It must have been beautiful,’ said Lily, looking at the overgrown building. ‘What do you think it was? A temple?’

  ‘I think a Roman temple,’ agreed Charlie, ‘long deserted. It’s not far from the catacombs, where the dead were buried.’ His eyes roved around the lumps of carved stone. ‘I think it was probably a temple to Saturn,’ he said, ‘the God of Death.’

  ‘The Temple of Death,’ breathed Lily. ‘The Cipher.’ The excitement in her eyes was shadowed with wariness.

  ‘It feels wrong,’ she said. ‘If the Cipher is imprisoned here, where are the guards? And the locks?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie, feeling uneasy. ‘They would have to bring him food,’ he said. ‘Water for washing. The way here has been trodden recently,’ he said, pointing to the ground at their feet. ‘And the door is new. The original would have long rotted away.’

  They moved closer. There seemed to be no lock or bolt. Only a simple latch.

  ‘Should we open it?’ asked Lily. Reflexively, she took out a knife.

  Charlie hesitated. He had a feeling that something very bad was on the other side.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Lily as he moved to open the door. ‘It could be a trap.’

  But as Charlie pushed the latch down, the door opened with surprising ease.

  Chapter 55

  Charlie opened the door to the strange old temple. Outside, the trees of Hyde Woods rustled in the breeze. Inside was gloomy, with a low ceiling and thick white walls. The floor was a faded mosaic, the tiles missing in places, and four thick square pillars supported the ceiling. To the sides were stone shelves. Some were filled with the same macabre arrangements of skulls and bones they’d seen in the catacombs. But others had been cleared and were stuffed full of scrolls. Rolls of paper that Charlie guessed ran to thousands. It was like a ghoulish library of the underworld.

  Charlie could see tiny symbols and letters scratched in chalk all over the walls in impossibly neat squares. He felt a thrill of nervous excitement.

  ‘Look,’ he whispered. ‘Codebreaking.’

  Shafts of moonlight dropped down from patches of missing ceiling, and at first glance the stone chamber seemed empty. Then Charlie saw a shape, sitting almost motionless towards the back of the room. He froze. Lily took a tighter hold of her knife.

  It was a woman, her body sat perfectly st
ill on a small wooden stall. Her hands were sewing in the automated way women have as they get older. She looked incredibly ordinary, like a washerwoman or a pie seller. Her body had the comfortable bulk of old age and was clad in well-worn green wool. She had thick greying hair gathered beneath a white linen cap, soft rounded features and a double chin with a prominent wart.

  Beside him, Charlie felt Lily relax slightly.

  ‘She must be a servant or a cook,’ she whispered.

  The immediate area surrounding the woman had been decorated like a neat cottage. There was a functional table and stool, with a wooden plate and plain cutlery laid out in readiness for a meal.

  ‘Do you think the Cipher is hiding somewhere?’ Lily whispered to Charlie. Her eyes were roving the dark space, testing for hiding places.

  Charlie walked closer to the woman. Her pale green eyes followed him as he drew nearer. But this was the only acknowledgement her face gave of an intruder. She watched him calmly as he approached. Her fingers pulled and dived at her sewing.

  Charlie sized her up. He guessed her to be around forty, and despite her simple clothing, her hands and face showed no obvious signs that she worked for a living. The chubby hands looked soft. Charlie noted they were dusted with something white, like flour.

  Not a servant, Charlie decided. A wife? A sister?

  But surely a relative of the Cipher’s would be better dressed and cared for.

  ‘We’re looking for the Cipher,’ tried Charlie.

  The woman’s pale eyes hovered over him. He saw something then, beneath the homely features. There was a cleverness. But something missing too. Some facet of human emotion. The way she regarded them was almost bird-like.

  ‘He isn’t here,’ she said simply. Then her eyes dropped back to her work.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Charlie moved closer to her.

  The woman’s concentration was on the knotted threads. ‘He won’t be back,’ she said, pulling and tying. ‘Not until the snows come.’

  Charlie and Lily looked at each other. Charlie’s mind was working, taking in the room. He looked back at the chalk symbols and letters scratched on the walls. Then his eyes drifted back to the woman’s pale fingers pulling at threads. Where her forearms emerged from the wool dress, the skin was blue with cold. Her sewing was dusted white, like her fingertips, he noticed, as though frost was forming. She reminded him of Thorne’s camera obscura. A distant view into another world.

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’ pressed Lily.

  ‘He won’t be back,’ the woman repeated in identical monotone. ‘Not until the snows come.’

  ‘You’ve said that,’ said Lily, growing frustrated. ‘But it isn’t what I asked.’

  The woman didn’t look up. Her hands moved steadily.

  ‘He won’t be back—’ she began.

  But Charlie interrupted her. ‘It’s you,’ he said slowly, looking at the woman. ‘You’re the Cipher.’

  Chapter 56

  Janus slid carefully down the mudbank and towards the little cluster of fires. It was dark by the river, and the secret route had taken him to a little inlet where the Thames flowed inwards. Janus’s heart quickened. This was smuggler territory, behind the Marshalsea prison. The most dangerous place in London.

  Janus made the secret whistle, high and clear.

  ‘Who goes there?’ growled a voice. ‘Speak, before I dash out your brains.’

  ‘Surely,’ said Janus, stepping into the firelight, ‘you remember me?’

  The dark face managed a half smile. His features could be seen more clearly now. The guard was an ex-slave. Enormous and finely muscled with jet-black skin. He wore a mixture of seafaring clothes, most too small for him, with a torn officer’s jacket stretched tightly across his broad back and failing to meet at the front.

  ‘I remember,’ he said.

  ‘I saved your life,’ Janus reminded him. ‘They would have cast you from the ship in a barrel with the other slaves.’

  The guard shrugged non-committally. ‘Perhaps you did,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps you saved your own skin.’ He jerked a thumb towards the group. ‘They’ll not bring you more Marshalsea women,’ he said. ‘They know you pilot for the Dutch.’

  ‘I’m not here for a prisoner,’ said Janus. ‘Let me by.’

  The guard stood aside, his expression unreadable.

  Janus walked carefully over the mud. Three men sat by the fire, passing around a bottle of rum and cleaning their weapons. The nearest, a bandana tied around his head, stood quickly as Janus approached.

  ‘Well, well,’ he grinned, ‘what have we here?’

  ‘I need information,’ said Janus, not bothering with pleasantries.

  ‘What do you know of Charlie Tuesday’s brother?’

  ‘Rowan Tuesday?’ The smuggler looked surprised at the question. ‘He sold false black powder for a while, then fled to sea, owing money.’ The smuggler wiped his nose and looked thoughtfully at Janus. ‘Some say Rowan Tuesday joined the Dutch.’

  ‘What does the thief taker know of his brother’s whereabouts?’ asked Janus.

  ‘Likely he knows Rowan is a traitor,’ said the smuggler, leaning closer so his scarred face drew level with Janus’s. ‘A traitor, same as you,’ he accused.

  ‘You’re a smuggler,’ said Janus. ‘You have no loyalty to the Crown.’

  ‘Well now, funny you should mention that,’ said the smuggler. ‘A little bird has told me what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Is that so?’ replied Janus evenly.

  The smuggler nodded slowly. ‘We hear Charlie Tuesday is also looking for the Eye,’ continued the smuggler, ‘and the thief taker knows London,’ he taunted. ‘He might not be noble like you. But Charlie Tuesday is famed for his cleverness.’

  ‘We’ll see how clever he is,’ said Janus, ‘in fear for his brother’s life.’

  ‘You’ll never capture Rowan,’ opined the smuggler. ‘He’s as wily as the thief taker.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Janus with a smile.

  ‘You were foolish to come back here,’ said the smuggler. He was reaching for his knife.

  Janus frowned. ‘You think because I wear a fine coat I am not dangerous?’ he said. ‘I have known horrors you cannot even imagine. The children who you think sleep safely? I’ve seen them bloody and screaming, cast into the dark depths of a cold river.’

  The smuggler’s smile dropped away. ‘Sorcery and such talk,’ he said, his voice shifting uncertainly, ‘holds no terrors for us. We fear only the Almighty.’

  ‘I answer to greater gods,’ said Janus. ‘True magic is but a trick. Looking here,’ he added, holding up a ringed hand, ‘when you should be looking there. And you should have been paying attention to your men.’

  The smuggler turned in shock to see his colleagues standing, their guns aimed towards him.

  Janus smiled apologetically. ‘A smuggler’s loyalty is easily bought,’ he said. ‘You should know that by now.’

  With a cry of fury the smuggler launched himself at Janus. Janus stepped slightly aside, catching him with an outstretched arm. The smuggler’s eyes widened; then he gave a choking gasp of pain.

  ‘Better this way,’ said Janus, holding the knife firm between the smuggler’s ribs. ‘I couldn’t have you telling Charlie Tuesday what you know. Not before he realises what could happen to his brother.’

  Chapter 57

  ‘You’re the Cipher,’ repeated Charlie, staring at the strange woman. He was sure of it now. Something in her expression confirmed it.

  Her pale eyes settled on his face. She stopped sewing.

  ‘I?’ she said. ‘I am but a woman.’

  ‘You have chalk dust on your sewing,’ said Charlie. ‘And the codebreaking’ – he pointed to the letter-strewn wall – ‘stops at around your highest reach.’

  She tilted her head and muttered something quickly in a foreign language.

  ‘Jij bent van de Koning?’

  She was testing him, Charlie realised,
on the assumption that a fellow codebreaker or spy would speak Dutch.

  Charlie translated without thinking: You’re from the King?

  She had the accent of someone who’d only ever read Dutch. Years of decoding, Charlie guessed, had given her a kind of working fluency, but there was no harmony to her speech.

  ‘We are,’ he lied in Dutch.

  He had a sudden strange feeling, as though they’d been lured here. Flies in a spider’s web.

  ‘Where are your guard?’ he asked in English. ‘Why are you not better protected?’

  She smiled, and this time a glimmer of something more like real amusement was in her eyes.

  ‘This’ – she gestured to her rounded body – ‘is all the protection I need. In all the years I’ve been here,’ she continued, ‘you’re the only one who has ever guessed who I am.’

  Lily, who could now understand what was being said, had the tense expression of someone piecing things together fast in her mind.

  ‘No one knows?’ asked Charlie. ‘Not even the men who bring food?’

  ‘They think him a ghost or a spectre,’ said the woman. ‘Able to vanish at will. They leave codes and I deliver them back. Perhaps they think me his companion or servant. No one cares enough about a plain old spinster to ask.’ Her eyes levelled on his face. ‘Except for you,’ she said. She was taking Charlie in now, and her expression was cool.

  ‘And what about you?’ asked Lily. ‘Why don’t you leave?’

  The Cipher’s eyes lifted to Lily, as if seeing her for the first time. She took in Lily’s open-shouldered red dress, the charms at her neck, glossy black hair, caramel skin and beautiful features.

  ‘A gypsy,’ she said in her strangely monotone voice. ‘They used to hang them.’

  Lily’s face darkened.