A strange knocking interrupted him.
“What the…? What is that?”
“I hope you don’t mind,” said Mr. Sweet, rising to his feet, his bull-like presence cowing the Prime Minister in his chair. “But I took the liberty of inviting a guest.”
“What are you babbling on about, man? A guest?”
“An expert on disasters of this sort,” Sweet continued, walking over to the window. “I’m certain that you’ll be enthralled by what he has to say.”
“Where the deuce is that knocking coming from?” said Lord Cecil.
“From the window, Prime Minister,” said Sweet, towards the glass; yet beyond there seemed to be nothing but the blackness of the night and the impenetrable wall of fog.
“But we are on the third floor! What is this madness?” Cecil demanded, going over to the window to see for himself.
“How clever of you to guess,” said Sweet cryptically.
The Prime Minister peered out into the darkness and then recoiled in shock, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
There was a figure on the other side of the glass. A boy of perhaps five or six years old. A boy with wings.
Lord Cecil staggered back in disbelief, all colour draining from his cheeks.
Silently the boy lifted his hand and tapped again upon the glass. His face was rounded with the fat of youth, but his blue-black eyes were old and brimming with savage intelligence. The eyes of something monstrously evil, Cecil thought.
“We mustn’t keep our visitor waiting,” said Sweet as he threw the window up with a theatrical flourish. A wave of fog poured over the sill and began to spill across the carpet.
The Prime Minister backed away towards the fireplace. Desperately he grabbed a poker and brandished it in front of him.
“Help!” he shouted. “Help me!”
“It’s rather too late for that,” said Mr. Sweet. “Please allow me to introduce you to the Nightmare Child.”
On cue, the peculiar boy flew into the room and landed silently.
Cecil wanted to slash out at the creature with the poker, to stove its small head in and then run for his life, but he found that fear rooted him to the spot. Useless, the poker dropped from his hand. All that the Prime Minister could do was stare.
The Nightmare Child was small and plump. Beautiful blond curls covered his head. He was dressed, of all things, in a sailor suit, as though some proud mother had prepared him for a photographer. But the Prime Minister instinctively knew that this creature had no mother; it had been spawned. To Lord Cecil’s horror, the small boy smiled at him.
“Come and play with me,” said the Nightmare Child.
“Dear God, help me,” Cecil whispered.
Ben wasn’t sure how long he had been unconscious but he knew that his head was hammering. He struggled to sit upright, and found that the fog was holding him down, wrapping him in its folds like an Egyptian mummy. All around him, the chaotic screams and shouts had subsided, only to be replaced by a groaning that was somehow worse. The moaning of lost souls and the shuffling of their feet in the gloom.
Gritting his teeth, Ben wrenched himself free of the fog’s grip. Clambering to his feet, he found a wall to guide him and blundered along it. Fingers of mist tugged at him as he fled, pulling at his coat, his face, his hair, until Ben was wet with fearful sweat. After an agonizing minute that felt like a year, Ben found a door. To his relief, it swung open at his push and he almost fell inside, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The tailor’s shop that he was standing in had fallen prey to looters, most of its rolls of fabric long gone, the till empty, the furniture overturned. Ben wasted no time in dragging a broken table over to the door to wedge it shut and slamming closed the wooden shutters over the broken window, blocking out the dim glow of the street lamps.
He had lost most of his Watcher kit when his bag had been stolen, but Ben still had a stump of candle in his pocket and a lucifer to light it with. The match flared as the wick began to burn and Ben slumped down, feeling safe at last as he admired his makeshift barricade.
As if in response, the fog began to force its way under the front door. Tendrils of mist, like blind maggots, eased themselves through the gap between wood and stone. As Ben watched, more of those cold wet fingers began to tease themselves around the window shutters. Another long digit pushed itself through the keyhole.
Looking around, Ben considered his options. He thought for a moment about ripping up some of the remaining tailor’s cloth to plug the gaps, but he knew instinctively that it wouldn’t be enough. There was no way that he would be able to stop the room from filling with the living fog.
You can keep this for a lark, Ben thought and headed quickly for the stairs. He needed to get up onto the roof and fast.
It was a narrow four-storey building and Ben took the stairs three at a time. The attic room, when he arrived, was damp and cold, but still nicer than any room Ben had ever lived in, he noticed wistfully. Like most top-floor bedrooms, half of the ceiling sloped down, following the line of the roof, and a small window jutted out at right angles. On the other side of the glass there was nothing but white.
“Here we go again,” said Ben as he pushed the window open. The fog tumbled in and Ben scrambled out.
The window ledge was slick with the oily residue of the mist and his feet struggled to find a hold in spite of his skyboots. Ben grasped the window frame and clung to it tightly. There was no sense of height in the sea of vapour, but Ben knew very well that one slip would still mean goodnight, Benjamin.
Having regained his balance, Ben began to haul himself up onto the roof. He put his hand on something wet and grimaced. He’d used to be a mudlark, shoving his hand into goodness knows what on a daily basis, but this still felt grim, as if the slates had been licked by some foul tongue.
Easy does it, he urged himself, as he repositioned his hand to get a better grip. Very carefully he started to shift his weight from his legs to his arms and ease himself higher. If he could make it as far as the chimney, hopefully he’d be above the fog and have something decent to hang on to while he tried to see if there were any other Watchers around to help him.
I’ve got the hang of this, thought Ben confidently. Piece of—
But he never got to finish that thought, because the finial he was levering himself up on cracked and came away in his hand. For a second, Ben’s balance held, and then a tentacle of fog reached up and grabbed, yanking him backwards into the billowing white.
Ben had the sensation of being enveloped by clouds and he was struck by the thought that this might be what Heaven was like. Only in Heaven he supposed there was no chance of getting your brainpan smashed on the pavement – which was exactly what was about to happen to him.
As death opened wide its arms to greet him, Ben saw Nathaniel in his mind and heard the stomach-turning laughter of the child in the sailor suit.
This was not how it was meant to end.
Suddenly, the vapour around Ben stirred as a huge pair of wings cut swathes through the air. Ben felt the rush of their downdraught and then sharp pain, his arms threatening to pop from their sockets, as Josiah yanked him upwards.
“That’s two I owe you,” said Ben with relief. “But how did you ever find me?”
“Have you never heard of guardian angels?” said Josiah as they finally broke free from the suffocating blanket of mist, leaving a mass of squirming white tendrils reaching for their ankles.
The Watcher spy was careful not to be seen. There were places in the Under that he could go without rousing any suspicions, but the cells were not one of them.
He had big feet and he planted them carefully. Caution was his only friend; he wouldn’t have survived very long in the enemy camp without it. When the other Legion boys had gone above ground to play their part in the pandemonium, he had allowed himself to straggle at the back of the party. They would assume that he had got lost. They would not think that he had doubled back into the Under to
see the prisoner.
There had been laughing and cheering in his barracks when Claw Carter told them who they had in chains. Anything that hurt the Watchers was always greeted with delight, especially if it had the added bonus of bringing pain to Ben Kingdom.
The spy had met Ben. He liked Ben. Ben was the Hand of Heaven, he had no doubt about it. That was why the spy stayed in the Under regardless of the danger – because he believed in Ben. That was also why he was sneaking along the corridor with a stolen parcel of bread and cheese.
The Under was virtually deserted, although he knew that wouldn’t be the case for long. Soon some of the Legionnaires would begin to return from their malicious labours. He hurried on.
He found the cell without too much difficulty. It was the one with the Feathered Man standing guard outside. The spy had anticipated this too and tossed it a bone, which it fell upon ravenously.
“Mr. Sweet sent me,” he lied. “You understand?”
He had bought himself about sixty seconds, he guessed. While the creature was distracted, the spy approached the door and opened the slit which allowed prisoners to be observed. He spotted the poor lad, curled up in the corner on the straw.
“Quickly,” the spy hissed, pushing his parcel through the gap, “I have brought food.”
In a daze, the prisoner struggled onto his feet and stumbled over to the door. He picked up the cheese and held it before his face with an expression of sheer confusion, as if he had never seen this strange yellow substance before and had no idea what he should do with it.
“Eat,” the spy mimed, holding his fingers to his mouth.
Tentatively the prisoner took a tiny nibble.
“Good,” the spy encouraged. “Eat it all, yes. I will come back with some more when I can.”
The spy knew his time was ticking away. He pushed his hand through the slit in the door and squeezed the prisoner’s shoulder. “Stay strong, Nathaniel Kingdom, the Watchers will not leave you here. Have faith in your brother. Trust Ben.”
The Feathered Man finished his bone. The spy ran.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” Mr. Sweet’s deep tones rolled out across the chamber of the House of Commons. His words rested on top of the other voices and submerged them, like oil on water. “Gentlemen, calm please.”
All eyes fell on him.
“What news do you have of the Prime Minister?” someone shouted from the backbenches.
“It is with regret that I must inform the House that Lord Cecil has suffered a most grievous bout of brain fever.”
There were cries of alarm from all sides.
“But,” said Mr. Sweet, raising his hand, “when I last spoke with the Prime Minister, even in his frail condition his concerns were all for this House and for the people of our great nation. He asked me if I would be his messenger and bring his plan to resolve this terrible crisis before you today.”
“Hear, hear,” came the cry.
“Furthermore, he asked me if I would do him the great favour of carrying the burden of office and stand as Prime Minister until he has recovered.”
“And what did you say?”
“With a heavy heart,” Mr. Sweet continued, “I felt that I had no choice but to consent to his wishes. Trusting, of course, that I have the support of this House.”
An uncomfortable hush descended. Then one man rose to his feet and cleared his throat as if he was about to speak. Sweet locked him full in his gaze. There was a moment of unspoken warfare between the two men. One second later the minister dropped his head and sank back onto the bench.
The awkward silence stretched as Sweet scanned the chamber, looking for any other challengers who needed to be defeated. No eyes dared to meet his own.
“Aye,” came a voice from the backbenches, quickly taken up across the House. “Aye!”
“And what of Lord Cecil now? Can you tell us any more about his condition?” asked one MP.
“Only that he needs rest and plenty of it,” said Mr. Sweet. “Lord Cecil is even now receiving the most advanced treatment for his condition that medical science has to offer. Trust me,” he said. “I’ve arranged it myself.”
“Blimey,” said the porter. “It’s like Piccadilly Circus in here today.”
“Tell me about it,” said the driver of the cab. “I’ve got three more in the back, and there’ll likely be a dozen more before the day is out if we keep going at this rate.”
“It’s this fog,” said the porter, a strong man with arms like a bag of walnuts. “It’s enough to send anyone potty, if you ask me.”
“So who’ve you got in here, then?” asked the doctor, who’d come out to meet the cab. He was a young man who was earnestly growing a pointy beard in an attempt to be taken more seriously by his peers.
“Search me,” said the driver, “I just pick ’em up. There’s not one of them who knows who they are; they’re all as nutty as a fruit cake. One of ’em swears he’s the Prime Minister!”
They all laughed at that and the porter carefully drew back the bolts on the cab door. “I’d stand back if I were you, doc,” he warned. “You know they bite sometimes.”
“I don’t think I need to worry about that,” said the doctor, although he did surreptitiously position himself so he was behind the porter. “As I have tried to explain before, these poor wretches are not animals to be put down, but are patients and must be treated appropriately. This isn’t the Dark Ages, you know. I have in my possession Messrs Davis and Kidder’s patent electric-medical machine.” His voice grew more excited. “Imported from the United States of America, no less! I assure you that once they have experienced my reviving and refreshing application of electricity, these individuals will feel right as rain again.”
“I’ll take your word for it, doc,” said the porter. “Come on then, Prime Minister,” he said, taking Lord Cecil’s limp hand. “Let’s get you all tucked up. We’ve got a nice cell lined with cork and India rubber and it’s got your name on it.”
“Welcome to Bethlehem Lunatic Asylum,” said the doctor, clasping the poor man’s trembling hand and gazing into his blank, unfocused eyes. He shook his head sadly. “A terrible case of delusion. He doesn’t look anything like Lord Cecil.”
Mr. Sweet wasn’t very impressed by democracy. You could never achieve something as audacious as stealing the entire British Empire if you started allowing other people to have a say in how things should be done. Luckily his fellow Members of Parliament were idiots to a man.
“What next, Mr. Prime Minister?” wailed a fat oaf on the Opposition bench. “How do you intend to resolve our current problem? The police are in turmoil; half of them are lost and most of the others are out of their minds.”
“I have a simple plan which I guarantee will bring calm and restore order to the capital.” Mr. Sweet paused to stroke his moustache. If there was to be any resistance to his schemes, this would be the trigger. “As of this moment I am declaring a state of martial law. I will put the army on the streets to bring peace by any means.”
There was silence…followed by uproar.
“Bravo!” came the shouts. “Huzzah!”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Sweet. “I knew that I could trust on common sense to prevail. Yes,” he continued, “I shall deploy our soldiers – their presence alone will reassure the common Londoner. This very night I will give them their orders.”
This too was greeted with much applause.
“Until the current spate of lawlessness has subsided, I shall be declaring a curfew between the hours of nine at night and six in the morning. Any individual found on the streets between those hours will be presumed to be a looter or a housebreaker, and the police and the army will have the right to arrest such troublemakers. Curfew breakers are to be sentenced with the harshest measures available, and I will be recommending deportation to Australia for anyone found guilty.” This too was received with many “hurrahs” from both sides of the House.
“Now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I must leav
e you. I have vital matters of state to attend to.”
And with their cheers ringing in his ears, Mr. Sweet made his exit, his mind racing.
It was three days until the Feast of Ravens; the night when the forces of darkness would be at their strongest. The sacrifice was ready, and it was surely only a matter of time before it lured Ben Kingdom to him too.
Three days until Mr. Sweet took the Crown of Corruption for himself and claimed the awesome power of the Judas Coins as his own; the power to bend all men to his will, or so the Legion believed.
Three days until every head bowed to him.
Sweet strode through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster. He quickly arrived at the clock tower, known to the commoners as Big Ben – when every fool knew that was the name of the bell – and continued down into the basement. There Sweet opened the secret entrance to the Under, hidden behind false shelving, and descended the stone spiral staircase it revealed, taking a lantern from the wall to light his way.
For years, the Council of Seven had been in deadlock. Do we dare use the Crown of Corruption? Who is capable of wielding such fearsome power? Sweet gave a derisive laugh. With the Council dead and buried – after he’d taken the precaution of driving them mad and rendering them defenceless first – Mr. Sweet found that he was able to answer both of those questions instantly.
Yes!
I am!
The Legion had gathered the Coins from the furthest corners of the globe, where the Watchers had attempted to scatter them. Had they gone to such effort merely to lock them away behind another door, to leave them to rust? There was no point having a weapon, Sweet thought, if you weren’t prepared to use it. One Coin was still missing, admittedly, but a tiger with one less tooth was still a tiger, and with everything else falling into place, he was not prepared to delay any more.
Eventually he arrived at a door, behind which lay the prize. Because not one member of the Council of Seven trusted any of the others, the door which kept the crown from the light of day was locked with seven locks and opened by seven keys. Mr. Sweet reached into his pocket and pulled out a jailer’s ring, jangling with the full set. His former associates were no longer in a fit state to look after them.
The Feast of Ravens Page 6
