Hyacinth and the Secrets Beneath

by Jacob Sager Weinstein

  “Why would she want me dead?”

  “You desstroy a Royal Mail offiss. You break out of a magical holding fassility, freeing dozhenss of highly dangerouss beingss in the procsess. Then King Charless’ss Fire Hook dissappearss, and when my men arrive at the sscene, they disscover you, and you attempt to flee. You musst admit, it’ss all a bit susspisciouss.”

  “But the hook was already gone when I got there.”

  “Indeed. My men do not move with great sspeed. The Monument wass opened for the firsst time sseveral hourss ago; it hass taken uss thiss long to resspond. I believe that whoever took the Fire Hook wass long gone by the time we arrived. When my ssupervissor ordered me to kill you, I pointed thiss out to her, and szhe grudgingly permitted me to bring you in alive.”

  “Oh. Well. Then, thank you.” Embarrassed, I lowered my eyes, and for the first time, I noticed the words written on the folder he was holding: Hayward, Hyacinth. “Is that my police file?”

  “Your medical recordss. I ssee you have not been vaccsinated againsst ssmallpoxx.” He pulled a needle out of the folder.

  “And why does that—ow!” I had forgotten how much faster he could move than the other Saltpetre Men—he had the needle in my arm before I could finish the question. And before I could say anything else, he pulled out a spray bottle and spritzed me in the face with something disgusting. “Eww! What was that?”

  “Conssentrated sspore of the ground beetle, which iss the only creatzhure that eatss fleass. There iss no vaccsine for the bubonic plague. The mosst one can do iss frighten away the fleass that carry it.”

  “Wait, the plague? Where are we?”

  Instead of answering, he pulled an ancient-looking key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Then he went through it. I didn’t know what else to do, so I followed him.

  He led me into a roughly dug room, just tall enough for us to stand upright under a dirt ceiling held up by a scattering of wood planks. He shined his flashlight all around, and everywhere it touched, the light picked out splintered shapes that gleamed white, then vanished into blackness as the beam passed on.

  “Those white things,” I said. “Are they…”

  “Boness,” he answered. “When the Black Death sstruck London, the corpssess piled up sso fasst that the living could not bury the dead. Insstead, they szhoveled them into plague pitss like thiss one, buried asz deep asz they could dig.”

  “But that was hundreds of years ago. Surely I wouldn’t still need a vaccine.”

  “We are twenty feet below the ground. There iss no ssunszhine and little oxzygen. Your kind cannot lasst long in thesze conditionss—but other thingss can ssurvive for ssenturiess. Come, I have ssomething to sshow you, and it iss besst if we finissh while there iss sstill oxzygen for you.”

  He glided ahead. I tried to follow and stumbled over a mound of something, sending hard white balls rolling in all directions: skulls.

  As I hurried after him, I wondered why he was walking so much more smoothly than I was. Then I looked down at his feet. They were gliding through the piles of dirt and bone, seamlessly merging in and out of the wavy ground. I remembered how awkwardly he had walked on a linoleum floor, and I couldn’t help thinking of a movie I had seen about penguins. On land, they waddled awkwardly. Underwater, they were astonishingly agile.

  Watching Inspector Sands move through the dirt, I knew I was seeing him in his element.

  He led me past endless piles of skulls. “You ssee here the remainss of a thoussand or sso of your kind. Thesze are the fruitss of a ssingle day of the Black Death. A ssingle day’ss harvesst, in only one of numerouss pitss. But thiss pit iss sspeczial.”

  He knelt down and began picking through a pile of bones. “Thiss pit iss the firsst. Thosze buried here were the firsst oness to fall ill. And that iss becausse they were the oness who created the plague.”

  “Somebody created it? Who would do that?”

  Inspector Sands found what he was looking for: a golden necklace inside an ancient rib cage. He picked it up and held it up to his flashlight so that I could see the charm hanging from it.

  It was the zombie bunny rabbit. The upside-down Sherlock Holmes. The ancient rune of the urn.

  “These people—they belonged to the Inheritors of Order? Lady Roslyn’s ancestors? But why?”

  “The plague wass a magical weapon. A cursse, you might call it. It wass ssuppossed to be carefully targeted againsst the enemiess of the Inheritorss. But your kind can never control thesze thingss asz well asz you exzpect.”

  I stared at the charm. It was smudged, but other than that, it could have been the same one Lady Roslyn wore. “I guess Little Ben’s dad is on the right side,” I said.

  Inspector Sands shook his head. “There iss no right sside. There are only right actionss. I szhall take you one level up.”

  He held out his hand, and I took it. Then he touched the ceiling with his other hand. “I advizhe you to hold your breath,” he said.

  After my recent experience, when a Saltpetre Man told me to hold my breath, I was going to listen. I held my breath.

  Inspector Sands jumped up, straight through the rock ceiling. I had a moment to close my eyes, and then I was yanked along with him.

  It turns out that being pulled through solid rock is even weirder than being pulled through dirt. It was like every inch of my body was being rubbed endlessly by one of Aunt Mel’s loofahs. I was sorry she wasn’t there with me—she was really into exfoliation.

  Fortunately, this trip was much shorter. In a few seconds, we emerged out of the rock into a small tunnel, low enough that Inspector Sands had to stoop down. “Two hundred fifty yearss after the Black Death, a man named Guy Fawkess and hiss friendss dug thiss passage. Their plan wass to tunnel under the Housse of Lordss and plant enough gunpowder to desstroy the building, murdering the hundredss of people insside, including the king and all the arisstocraczy of the natzion. Asz it happened, they found an eassier way to get under the Housse of Lordss, and they abandoned thiss tunnel…but not before carving thiss.”

  He shined his light against the wall, and I could see a shape carved in the stone:

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The ssymbol of the Egalitarianss.”

  I refused to believe him. If one side created the Black Plague, and the other had tried to murder the entire Parliament, who was I supposed to root for?

  Then I realized what the shape was. It was a tall hat. I thought of the collection of hats Little Ben had found in his dad’s files, and the conclusion it had led him to: if everybody had tall hats, everybody would have equal access to magical inspiration.

  Tall hats as a symbol of magical equality. It made a disturbing amount of sense. “So everybody is evil? Great. I’m glad they gave you a position of authority. You must be a real inspirational leader.”

  Instead of answering, Inspector Sands held up a finger and whispered, “Lissten.”

  In the silence, I could hear a faint rustling noise. Rats? Fleas?

  Inspector Sands pointed his flashlight at a distant wall, where I could see something moist glistening. He led me closer to it, and I saw that it was simply a stream of water, trickling down from a crack on the ceiling and vanishing into the dirt below.

  “Thiss iss new. There wass no sstream here yessterday. That drop of water you sset loosse hass been caussing havoc all along the ssecret riverss. Thiss tunnel here, the plague pit below—they call to the Tyburn, and the sspark you created hass given the Tyburn the power to ansswer. If we cannot recover that losst drop, thiss trickle on the wall will become a torrent, and the dirt will waszh away, and the plague pit will be open to the air. And the plague that hass sstayed buried for ssenturiess will sspill out.”

  “And it will be my fault,” I said. I felt so awful that I couldn’t say anything else.

  “No,” Inspector Sands said. “That iss my point…Do you know how the Great Fire sstarted?”

  “Oaroboarus told me the Inheritors of Order started it.”
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  “Yess. They did not intend to sstart the Fire—they ssimply wanted to generate the power to kill their enemiess. Do you know what the Fire did? It killed only ten humanss—but millionss of ratss and fleass, and that brought an end to the Black Death, and that ssaved hundredss of thoussandss of livess. Sssssso. They tried to do ssomething evil, which caussed an entirely different catasstrophe, which ssomehow ended up ssaving livess. How do you judgze them?”

  “They were trying to kill people,” I said. “They don’t get credit for anything good that came out of it.”

  “Jusst sso. And you don’t get the blame for conssequencess you could not foressee. You were merely trying to wassh your handss. What makess you good or evil are the actionss you mean to take, not the causse you claim to believe in, or the chain of eventss you accssidentally sset in motion.”

  He held out his hand. I took it and held my breath. We went up again, through the rocks.

  And this time, when I could breathe again, my lungs filled with fresh outdoor air, seasoned with a little automobile exhaust. I opened my eyes.

  We were in a parking lot, next to a statue of a man on a horse. I didn’t recognize him, but I recognized the building looming above us. “It’s Parliament. Parliament is built over a plague pit?”

  He nodded. “Throughout London, whenever there iss a bleak and unuszed piecze of land, a legend growss that it iss above a plague pit. But the opposssite iss true: it iss the mosst lively placzes that are above pitss, for the energy of the dead never truly departss.”

  My head was spinning. The Great Fire and the Black Death and Guy Fawkes and my chapped hands all spun around in a giant whirl of good intentions with bad effects, and bad intentions with good effects, and it was all too big for me to grasp. I decided to take Inspector Sands’s advice and just worry about my own actions. “You didn’t have your men drag me here just to discuss morality. You want me to do something. What is it?”

  “I would like you to wear a wire.”

  “A microphone? That seems so…unmagical.”

  “Not a microphone. A wire.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a rolled-up length of copper wire. “When you know where Lady Rossslyn and the drop of water are, placze one end of thiss wire on the ground and ssend a magical chargze through the other. My people will ssensse it. If you asssisst uss in capturing Lady Rossslyn, I think that will prove your innossensse to my ssupervissor.”

  I took the wire and tucked it into what remained of my jeans. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of summoning Saltpetre Men on purpose, but I wanted to keep all my options open. “I need that magical charge you mentioned.”

  “No,” Inspector Sands said. “Nobody will noticze you carrying a ssmall length of copper wire, but carrying a ssufiscziently powerful magical chargze would attract too much magical attention. Whatever Lady Rossslyn iss up to, you may be ssure it will involve powerful magic. It will be up to you to channel it to the wire.”

  Sands took my arm and steered me towards the gate that led out of the parking lot. The armed guard there nodded at him uninterestedly. I guess when you get whatever security clearance you need to guard Parliament, you learn that the government hires monsters.

  Inspector Sands lingered in the shadow of the guard booth, out of sight of the pedestrians outside. He let go of my arm. “I am trussting you,” he said. “Prove me right, or my ssupervissor will deal with you directly. You will not enjhoy that. For now, you are free to go.”

  But go where? Lady Roslyn had been at the Monument a few hours before me. If she had started where the fire began, maybe she was tracing its entire course. And that meant I might be able to jump ahead of her.

  “Where did the Great Fire end?”

  “The Great Fire began in a bakery—and appropriately enough, it ended at Pye Corner.”

  I hailed a cab, and it pulled over. I would like to note that this was my first-ever hailing of a cab on my own. Historically speaking, maybe it wasn’t as significant as my first-ever setting off a chain of magical catastrophes, but it still felt pretty cool.

  Before I got in, I stuck my head in the front window just to be sure it wasn’t Newfangled Troy. It wasn’t. I don’t know if I was disappointed or relieved.

  I was about to climb in when I thought of something. I turned towards Inspector Sands. “How much is cab fare to Pye Corner?”

  “About fifteen poundss.”

  “So that means I would be about…let me see…” I reached into my empty pocket. “About fifteen pounds short.”

  He produced some bills from his pocket. “Now you owe me your life, plusss fifteen poundss.”

  I took the bills and climbed into the cab. Then, before I closed the door, I leaned out and called to Inspector Sands.

  “I haven’t promised anything, you know,” I told him.

  His lips twisted into what was probably a smile. “I notissed,” he said.

  Pye Corner looked like a normal London corner. The only hint that I was in the right place was a small golden statue of a fat little boy mounted in the wall. Under it was a stone inscription: THIS BOY IS IN MEMMORY PUT UP FOR THE LATE FIRE OF LONDON OCCASION’D BY THE SIN OF GLUTTONY.

  Gluttony? Well, that was certainly an easier explanation than warring magical factions.

  I stood there looking at the people passing by—men and women in business suits, moms and dads pushing baby carriages, tourists enjoying the summer afternoon—and I wondered if any of them knew the danger they were in. If I couldn’t stop Lady Roslyn, the whole city might burn. And even if I did stop her, if I couldn’t get the drop of water to Inspector Sands in time, the walls that held back the plague pit would be washed away.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Little Ben. “Ooh, you had the same guess I did! I figured Lady Roslyn would be headed here.”

  I looked around. “Where’s Oaroboarus?”

  “We thought maybe we’d be a little more inconspicuous if he kept out of sight. Follow me.”

  As we crossed the street, Little Ben asked, “How did you escape the Saltpetre Men?”

  I wasn’t sure how much to tell him. If he was some kind of evil shape-shifter pretending to be a kid, then the less he knew, the better. And if he really was a lost kid, then telling him that his dad’s team had once tried to blow up Parliament probably wouldn’t cheer him up much. I decided to keep it vague. “They brought me to Inspector Sands. I told him I didn’t steal anything, and he let me go.”

  We walked through an iron gate under a stone arch. There, standing guard over Little Ben’s carpetbag, was Oaroboarus, slouched despondently in the shadows. He’d be hard to miss for anybody walking through the arch, but at least he was out of sight of the street. He still had my sleeve clenched in his massive jaws.

  “He wouldn’t let go of it, the whole time,” Little Ben said.

  At the sound of his voice, Oaroboarus looked up and saw me. He bounded towards me so happily that I thought he was about to lick me. Then he got a grip on himself, gave a formal bow, and handed me my sleeve, followed by two cards.

  “Oh, please,” I said. “You were amazingly brave.” I wanted to pat him on the head, but I wondered if maybe he’d think that was undignified. He broke the awkward silence with a grunt. After only a few weeks in the country, I knew that was the sound an Englishman made when he was embarrassed by whatever you were talking about, so I dropped the subject. We all turned to look out at the street through the gate’s iron grating.

  “When do you think Lady Roslyn will show up?” Little Ben asked.

  “I don’t even know that she will,” I said.

  We stood and watched.

  We waited.

  In all the time since Mom had been snatched, this was the first chance I had had to just stand there and think, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. All I wanted to think about was how great it would be to have Mom back, and how I was going to be a perfect daughter and never grump at her ever again. But whenever I tried to imagine that, my imagination would backtrack to the question o
f how I was going to get her back, and I still didn’t have an answer. I mean, I knew I was going to have to defeat Lady Roslyn, and I knew I would need help to do that, but I still didn’t know who I could trust.

  Inspector Sands had said he was on my side, but his men had nearly killed me, and his supervisor apparently wanted me dead.

  Little Ben seemed really friendly and enthusiastic, but I didn’t know who he really was. Heck, even he didn’t know who he was.

  Oaroboarus had proven himself brave and loyal, but he seemed at least as loyal to Little Ben, and if Little Ben turned out to be evil, I wasn’t sure whose side Oaroboarus would take. Also, even if he took my side, the whole refusing-to-let-go-of-my-arm thing proved that he wouldn’t necessarily do the smartest thing in a crisis.

  I looked up to see Little Ben watching me. “Are you thinking about your mom?” he asked. “I think one of the reasons I’ve spent so much time studying my dad’s file is, if I give myself time to just sit there, I get worried about everything.” He gave me such a sympathetic and sincere smile that I immediately felt guilty for suspecting him of being an evil shape-shifter.

  But then, isn’t that exactly what an evil shape-shifter would want me to feel?

  Before I could say anything back to him, Oaroboarus nudged me with a meaty shoulder. I looked through the grate and saw a taxicab driving up to Pye Corner. Weirdly, it was driving backwards, swerving back and forth as it went. It drove halfway up onto the curb and screeched to a stop, and the driver stuck his head out the window.

  I let out a little gasp. The driver was Backwards Head.

  The taxi door opened, and Lady Roslyn climbed out.

  My skin crawled. I hadn’t seen her since she had disappeared with my mom, and I’d been wondering what I’d do when she finally reappeared. I wanted to run up and kick her, and I wanted to run screaming in the other direction, and I wanted to demand an explanation from her and then listen calmly while she made everything make sense.