The Battle of the Sun

by Jeanette Winterson

  In the barge, the Keeper inspected the condition of the wharves and jetties, and of the silt pans and eel stocks, the ebb and flow, the rise and fall – indeed, everything to do with a river that needed doing and that could be done.

  The Keeper slept in a hammock slung from side to side of his poop, and he cooked on a brazier fuelled with driftwood that his boy collected at low tide.

  When Jack and Silver arrived, with Crispis and Max keeping up the rear, the Keeper was sitting in his window with two lighted candles, and a telescope, consulting the last passage of the dawn stars.

  He seemed pleased to see Jack, for he remembered that his mother had been searching for him.

  ‘Pray say what is that strange element you have with you?’ asked the Keeper, looking at Crispis, who did look quite odd with his coal-black face and yellow body.

  ‘He has been eating sunflower seeds,’ said Jack, which was hardly an explanation, unless you knew what kind of sunflower seeds.

  But the Keeper just nodded. ‘Most dangerous. Seeds are quite untrustworthy, for they contain in themselves their whole nature, and might, as in this case here, root and grow, and quite occupy the person. Better to eat fish.’

  Then the Keeper looked at Silver, dressed as a boy, her cap pulled low.

  ‘This is my friend, Silver, and my dog Max,’ said Jack.

  ‘And does your mother know that you are out so early?’ asked the Keeper.

  ‘My mother is in difficulties,’ said Jack. ‘As am I. We need your advice on the tides, and then we shall return to Mother Midnight, and see what help or divination she can offer us.’

  The Keeper shook his head. ‘Mother Midnight has vanished. As of yesterday night. I went there myself for my rheumatism – she gives me an ointment of myrtle and dog grease in return for fish for herself and her cat. I am one of the few members of the grown male race who can speak to her and be answered. For as you know, she is a witch, and one of those witches who do not consort with men. Surely she is a lady of strange ways but undeniable powers. I was quite put out to find her gone, yes, gone. I cannot understand it, as she has lived there for at least one hundred years.’

  Jack and Silver exchanged glances. ‘Did you see any other person?’ asked Jack.

  ‘But one,’ replied the Keeper. ‘Extraordinary, a thing, a female, who seemed as if she had been cut in half, straight down the middle, as you would split and serve a salmon.’

  ‘Did you speak with this woman?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I did not. She was hurrying to a boat where a second creature, almost as bizarre, was calling to her in a rough fashion. There was a large crate in the boat. It was not a craft I recognise, and I recognise most. It was a dull golden colour, quite distinctive.’

  Crispis was gazing out of the poop-window. ‘That boat . . .’ he said, in his usual elliptical way.

  Jack and Silver and the Keeper went to the window. Sure enough, passing beneath the bridge were Wedge and Mistress Split. The Keeper opened the window.

  ‘YOU THERE!’ he shouted.

  ‘YAH!’ yelled Wedge. ‘YAH HAH HAH!’ and rowed on.

  But at that moment, Max put his paws up at the window and let out three short sharp barks. Mistress Split spun round her head as though it were on a swivel, and saw the dog.

  ‘BOOJIE! BOOJIE! BOOJIE!’ she cried, and she dropped her one oar into the water, and stood up on her one leg, waving her one arm as though she had found her heart’s desire.

  Which she had.

  Max was not so sure, and jumped down and hid under the table.

  Then, as Wedge was trying to pull her back down, and she was shrieking like a fishwife about the pain of love and loss, the boat keeled to the left, then it keeled to the right, then half the river slopped into it one side and slopped out the other side, and Wedge was waving his oar like a drowning man, which was perhaps a good thing, as the boat suddenly tipped over and the two of them were in the river.

  ‘Bless my best breeches!’ said the Keeper of the Tides.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Silver, whose previous adventures and strange life meant that very little perturbed her.

  ‘I am bound by the high calling of my Office to SAVE THEM,’ cried the Keeper. ‘They are Thames mariners.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Crispis, heartily hoping they would both drown.

  ‘Jack! Help me lower the net, come on, come on!’

  And Jack, because he was the gentlest, kindest boy on earth, as well as one of the most powerful, though he did not know it, began to lower the net.

  But Wedge was not a man to be rescued. He kicked and reached, and reached and kicked, and made his half-mad way to the half-sunk boat, and by diving underneath, and pushing like a porpoise, he managed to right it. Then he was off, rowing with one arm and one oar in crazy circles downriver, and luckily for him the tide was on his side, and away he went, darkening, darkening now into the gloom of the river.

  But Mistress Split was floundering.

  ‘To the net! To the net!’ cried the Keeper. ‘Swim to the net, good lady!’

  And at last, with a spluttering and a spitting and a flailing and a sinking and a soaking, head under, head up, one minute drowned and one minute saved, Mistress Split flopped into the net like a mors marina, the death-fish feared by sailors the world over. There she was, on her back, coughing up her one lung.

  ‘Haul! Haul!’ cried the Keeper, and had it not been for Jack’s great strength, far surpassing the strength of ten men, Mistress Split would have met her fate at the bottom of the river. As it was, she found herself beached and broken like an old boat, lying on the deck of the poop.

  ‘Now, mistress, now now!’ fussed the Keeper, and gave her rum.

  Yet she lay there, her eye glassy.

  Like a saint, Max slunk out from under the table, and if ever a dog had a halo over his ears, it was this dog. He licked the cold and river-soaked face of the Creature.

  ‘Boojie!’ she whispered, and spewed up two pints of river water, containing a grey pearl and a small herring.

  Hot rum followed by burnt toast seemed to revive her. And she sat in her own puddle on the floor, alternately cooing over Max, and expostulating on the bitterness of fate, that half drowns a woman before she can be reunited with her love.

  The Keeper of the Tides drew Jack to one side.

  ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘you seem to know this, this, er, lady. Tell me true, is she, er, cut in two?’

  ‘She is,’ answered Jack, ‘and the other one on the boat, Wedge, he is her other half. They were made in the same bottle.’

  ‘You mean that she is not a Freak of Nature?’

  ‘No, for she was made and not born.’

  ‘And who was it, that by some black art, accomplished this task?’

  ‘His name is the Magus. An alchemist. Formerly of Dark House Lane. I am seeking him. It is his strong desire and purpose to turn the whole city of London into solid gold.’

  ‘Gold!’ exclaimed the Keeper of the Tides. ‘Why, my boy, look at this!’ And he pulled out the small golden fish that he had fished out of the Thames.

  ‘What day was this?’ asked Jack.

  ‘August the fourteenth!’ replied the Keeper, and Jack realised it had been the day of his birthday and the day of his kidnapping.

  ‘It was the day that I became the Radiant Boy,’ he said softly, more to himself than to anyone else.

  The Keeper of the Tides looked grave. ‘Is this Magus of whom you speak a short gentleman, powerfully built and bristled, something of a boar about him, yes, a boar, and with round eyes like two orbs?’

  ‘No,’ said Silver, who had overheard, ‘that’s another one of them. Another alchemist, I mean. I mean, you have quite a lot of them in Elizabethan times, on account of not having any science yet – chemistry in particular . . .’

  The Keeper of the Tides looked blank. ‘Chemistry?’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve got alchemistry, and later, you just get chemistry – when the magic’s gone.’

/>   ‘I don’t want the magic to go,’ said Crispis.

  ‘Well, it hasn’t done you much good, has it?’ said Silver.

  ‘You’ve eaten the Dragon’s sunflower and turned yellow and black.’

  ‘My sunflower rescued you,’ said Crispis, and then he paused, ‘but it didn’t rescue me,’ and then he looked sad.

  The Keeper of the Tides held up his hands. ‘Tell me the name of the short boar of a man who came to me yesternight seeking report of today’s tides.’

  ‘Abel Darkwater,’ said Silver.

  ‘Are you acquainted with him?’ asked the Keeper of the Tides.

  ‘He once shut me in a giant alembic and tried to boil me alive, and before that, I had to escape from his house, so yes, I suppose I am acquainted with him,’ said Silver.

  ‘You did not tell me that part of the story,’ said Jack,

  ‘about the boiling!’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ said Silver.

  ‘But if you know where he lives . . .’

  ‘He doesn’t live there yet,’ said Silver. ‘His house, the one I went to, isn’t built until 1720, and it is only 1601 at present.’

  The Keeper of the Tides was baffled. Before anyone could try and explain, Mistress Split gave another great cough and lurched up a piece of lead piping.

  ‘I can hear all that you tell,’ she said, ‘and I can tell you something, as you have rescued me. The Magus and Abel Darkwater are to meet this very dawn by the old Priory outside of the city wall, down Hog Lane, through the Bishops Gate. There is a piece of land called the Spital Field . . .’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Silver.

  ‘No call for amusement or to interrupt me!’ said Mistress Split crossly.

  ‘I mean funny queer, not funny ha-ha,’ said Silver. ‘It’s just that, where Abel Darkwater will live, when he lives there, when his house is built, is in Spitalfields – that’s where I stayed. Spital is an old word for hospital, isn’t it?’

  ‘There used to be a hospital in the old Priory of St Mary – known to all as St Mary Spital,’ said Jack, ‘but that was years ago, and now the Priory is abandoned and the chapel ruined – the Abbess fled to France.’

  ‘Bless me, you seem to know much about the old religion, Jack,’ said the Keeper of the Tides mildly.

  ‘My family has some sympathy with the old religion,’ said Jack, looking worried, for in the reign of Elizabeth, only traitors were Catholics now, and the penalty was death.

  ‘Roger Rover is Catholic,’ said Silver, ‘my family has always been Catholic.’

  ‘Silver! Be quiet!’ said Jack.

  But the Keeper of the Tides shook his head, smiling, ‘There are many who must hide their faith,’ he said. ‘Your mother is my friend, Jack, and you have nothing to fear, and neither, I am sure does, a gentleman, a favourite of the Queen, such as be Sir Roger Rover.’

  Jack relaxed. Silver was sorry for blurting things out, and took his hand.

  ‘All the waste and filth of London finds its way east!’ said Mistress Split doomfully. ‘The old Priory is a place for dark magic, as is well known – and the Abbess whom you claim to be in France, well I claim otherwise!’

  Before Mistress Split could be questioned on these remarks, the Keeper of the Tides jumped up from where he had been chalking calculations on a piece of slate, and consulting his tables.

  ‘This is the matter of the tides! The eclipse of the sun by the moon is very strange and the nearness of the moon to the Earth will indeed cause the Thames to rise, this very day. I did not check the figures when I spoke to the man called Darkwater, but now I see that it will be a very considerable rising.’

  ‘Then that will allow the Magus to complete his work,’ said Jack. ‘The planets will align, as he foretold, and the waters will rise, just as it says in the Book of the Phoenix, and he will succeed in turning the city into gold!’

  ‘What are we to do?’ cried the Keeper. ‘How are we to prevent this dreadful event?’

  ‘Never stop the Magus, can’t be done!’ said Mistress Split, split between gloom and satisfaction.

  ‘Mistress Split,’ said Jack. ‘What has happened to Mother Midnight? Has the Magus taken her?’

  ‘Wedge, it was,’ answered Mistress Split. ‘Kidnapping, it was. Making her hatch the Egg, he is.’

  ‘What, hatch it herself?’ asked Silver.

  ‘I daresay you are as stupid as Jackster,’ said Mistress Split. ‘By her arts she can find the creature that can hatch the Egg, and release the magical animal that hides inside, and that animal, what’ere it be, so secret to the Magus, will belong to Wedge.’

  ‘But not to you,’ said Jack. ‘Wedge has abandoned you. Help us and we will reward you and protect you.’

  Mistress Split looked cunning. ‘If I take you to where the Magus and Abel Darkwater wait and work, what shall you give me?’

  ‘Riches,’ said Jack, not knowing where he would get them from.

  Mistress Split shook her head. ‘Give me the Boojie dog! Mine own for ever!’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘He is my dog. I love him.’

  ‘Love?’ shouted Mistress Split. ‘LOVE? I am the one who loves him, and if love it is that owns the dog, then he is mine mine mine!’ and she wrapped the poor dog in her bosom. He only yelped once.

  ‘It is an unhappy bargain, I say it is,’ said the Keeper of the Tides, ‘yet, you must make it, I fear. You have so little time left!’

  Jack was silent. Then he went and knelt by Max and whispered to him, and none could hear what he said, but the dog could hear, and understood, his intelligent head cocked to one side.

  Jack stood up. ‘Mistress Split, do you swear that you will take us to the place where we should go, without treachery or betrayal, and that it is the true place where I shall find the Magus?’

  ‘I do solemnly swear,’ said Mistress Split.

  ‘Then I accept the bargain,’ said Jack, and sadly, but firmly, he led Max to his new keeper, who hopped all round the poop-house with delight.

  ‘Now, mistress,’ said the Keeper of the Tides, ‘wringing wet though you are, a bargain has been made and you must do your part. I give you leave to take my small rowboat, and pray you return it to me when you are able.’

  It was an unlikely troupe and a strange sight that left the poop-house on London Bridge and packed themselves into the rowboat beneath. But soon, with Jack pulling strongly on the oars, they were moving rapidly along the Thames to a mooring place as directed by Mistress Split, sitting triumphantly in the prow with the dog on a lead-rope in her lap.

  ‘We have come outside the city walls,’ she said, ‘and now you must follow me to the old Priory.’

  THE PLOT THICKENS

  Mistress Split hopped from the boat, and while Jack was mooring it securely, she took out one of the many keys that hung at her belt, and opened a little iron door in a wall. This door led deep underground, and soon Jack and Silver and Crispis and Max were holding on to each other as they followed the hop-hopping sound of Mistress Split and her dim, ill-burning flare.

  There were rats everywhere, and horrible dripping noises, and once, Mistress Split held up her flare and gave a dark laugh; there chained to the wall, long left without hope, was a skeleton.

  ‘This passage is secret,’ she said, ‘and was made by the monks fleeing Good King Henry in the Year of Our Lord 1539.’

  ‘That must have been the dissolution of the monasteries,’ said Silver, to herself, pleased that history could sometimes be useful.

  ‘Many were the secrets in the keeping of the Priory, and the Abbess,’ said Mistress Split. ‘For you should know that the Abbess is an ally of the Magus.’

  ‘I thought she had fled to France,’ said Silver.

  ‘They that flee flee for a purpose and they that return return for a purpose,’ said Mistress Split enigmatically.

  ‘She must be very old,’ said Silver, ‘this Abbess. The Priory has been dissolved for about sixty years . . .’

  ‘Sh
e is neither old nor not old,’ said Mistress Split, hopping along. ‘Old is as time does. But what is time to her? You are as stupid as you seem.’

  Silver didn’t mind being thought stupid; it meant that her enemies wouldn’t be watching out for her to be clever.

  ‘Ho,’ called Jack from the rear. ‘Ho there!’

  Looking round, Silver saw that water was entering the tunnels.

  ‘’Tis the rise of the tide,’ muttered Mistress Split. ‘Out, out,’ and, lifting her skirts, she hopped through the water beginning to flow around her foot, and with surprising strength in her single arm, pulled herself up a wormy ladder on the wall, and popped out in a dark alley, close by the Priory of St Mary Spital.

  The rest followed her, and stood in a circle like conspirators. ‘I had thought to bring you nearer,’ she said, ‘inside the very walls, but the water has prevented us. Yet . . .’ and she pointed at the high wall. ‘The Magus will be found in the ruins of the chapel – the old papal chapel. Now you must manage alone, for I have brought you as I said.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Jack.

  ‘To find Wedge,’ answered Mistress Split. Then she went to Jack, and took the lead-rope from his hand, and turned away. Max looked back once, and whined once, and then he vanished round the corner with Mistress Split.

  ‘Silver,’ said Jack, ‘take Crispis with you and follow her if you are able. I shall find the Magus.’

  ‘We should stick together,’ said Silver, but Jack shook his head.

  ‘The task is mine as you told me, and right it is that it should be so. Today he will be defeated.’

  Silver nodded. ‘But why do you want me to go after Mistress Split?’

  ‘Mother Midnight will be with Wedge,’ said Jack, ‘and for my own mother’s sake, Mother Midnight must be saved.’

  Jack leapt over the ruined Priory wall and was gone.

  ‘Come on, Crispis!’ said Silver. ‘Let’s run after Mistress Split – there she goes, up ahead . . .’