Battle of the Sun (2 page)

THE DARK HOUSE

T
here never was such a house. Jack passed through an ill-lit hall into a long wide room lined with books.

He had never seen so many books, each in its leather binding, most of them with their titles in Latin or a different alphabet, which he guessed must be Greek. Jack had learned some Latin at school, like the other boys, and he could read and write English, but he knew nothing of Greek, though his mother had said he would have to learn his letters for the printing press.

The books sat on wide stone shelves. The long stone-mullioned windows had no curtains, and the stone walls of the room had no tapestries or hangings. In the centre of the room was a circular stone table that looked part like an altar in church, and part like a sundial in the garden.

‘A clever observation,’ said the man, and Jack was startled, because the man had read his mind.

There were a few chairs in the room, and each chair was carved out of a massy single stone, the seat scooped out in a curve as though a giant had taken a spoon to a block of snow.

The floor was stone, the fireplace was stone, though no fire burned there, and although it was midsummer the room was cold. No sun fell through the long windows, which was strange, because outside the light was radiant. It was as though the sun himself avoided the Dark House.

Without speaking, the man led Jack back into the hall and up the wide stone staircase, broad and austere. Up they went, past closed rooms and along empty passages, the walls bare, the air itself bare. Jack felt like he was breathing emptiness.

At the end of a long corridor was an opening without doors. The man stood inside and let Jack go in first. This room was a dormitory. There were seven stone beds in a line, and six of them had been occupied that morning, for on each of the six stone beds was a straw-stuffed mattress, a straw-stuffed pillow, and a pair of coarse grey horse blankets. The window in the room gave on to the courtyard, and down below Jack could see the servants in their grey livery. He was interested to see that they had brought out a small coach and were backing two grey geldings into the traces.

‘Yes, I have an appointment,’ said the man, ‘but there are others who will watch over you until my return. You will sleep here.’

‘I don’t want to sleep here,’ said Jack.

‘Then you shall not sleep at all,’ said the man. ‘When you are tired enough, you shall sleep here.’

‘What do you want of me?’ said Jack. ‘You have many servants.’

‘I am in want of a servant of a very particular kind,’ said the man, ‘and you are that particular kind.’

The man turned and left the room, walking rapidly down the passageway. Jack felt a pull, like metal to a magnet, and he followed the man, although he did not want to.

There’s some magic here
, he thought, and he was afraid. He noticed the man’s split-second pause, and knew that he had read his mind again. Jack’s next thought wasn’t a thought at all, but he determined in his heart that if there was magic here he would find it out, know its power, and make his escape.

In the library the man was standing with a metal key by a metal wall with a metal door. ‘This is where we strive for the Opus,’ he said.

Jack knew that ‘opus’ was Latin for ‘work’, but he didn’t know what he would see on the other side of the door.

As the heavy door swung slowly open, Jack felt a great heat scorch his face. He saw a fire burning under a glass bottle so big that a horse could have used it as a stall. The glass bottle had a wide fat base where the flames heated it, and then it shaped itself into a sphere before narrowing into a funnel. Steam, green, blue and red, issued from the funnel.

The room was all colour, in strange contrast to the grey bare and empty house. The walls were painted deep red and had numbers and signs marked on them. The floor was blue, and on it, painted in gold, were two triangles upside down to each other, forming a star. Jack knew what this was; it was a pentangle. He had seen such signs and symbols before because his mother had once been housekeeper to the great alchemist, John Dee.

‘John Dee . . .’ said the man, reading Jack’s thoughts as Jack became nervous.

‘He is the Queen’s own alchemist!’ said Jack, noticing how the man frowned angrily. Jack looked away. The man was frightening when he was angry.

The room was stacked with jars of all sizes and shapes. Some of the jars held animals preserved in fluid. There was a fox upright, its nose bobbing against the seal. There was a carp with a gold ring in its mouth. Some jars contained volatile liquids that hissed and pressed against the glass as though they would escape. Other jars were filled with coloured stones, others with seaweed, others with earth. There were salts and dyes and vinegars and acids. There were jars cloudy with their own steam, and jars that shone silver like the polished inside of a pearl oyster.

As Jack walked among the shelves he saw a long jar with a leg in it, and a shorter jar with an arm in it, and a square jar with two hands in it, and a jar like a fishbowl with a head in it.

On a pedestal was a head made out of bronze, but lifelike and fine. The smallest boy that Jack had ever seen was sitting beside the head. The boy’s own head was covered in bright red curly hair, and because it stood on end it made him look like he had a perpetual fright. He was nearly nodding asleep, his thin legs locked around the legs of the stool, and he looked as though he had been sitting there for ever.

‘He is waiting for the Head to speak,’ said the man, ‘as surely it will one day if my calculations are right.’

Two other boys were pumping air into the furnace, wielding giant bellows about six feet long. A fourth boy was perched at the top of a wooden ladder, pouring green liquid through an opening in the funnel of the vessel.

‘That vessel is called a retort,’ said the man.

‘It is called a retort, though some call it an alembic,’ said Jack.

‘Very good,’ said the man. ‘Yes, this great jar is the retort or the alembic, and from its mysteries will come such marvels as will change the world for ever.’

Jack was not sure that he wanted the world to change – not even for a day and a night, let alone for ever. He loved to wake up in the mornings, early, and find the sun crossing the floor of his little room, and go down to the river as the day was beginning, and catch a fish, or run, just because he was happy, then begin his jobs with the horses and their soft breath and strong animal smell. Every day was different enough to be interesting and the same enough to be safe. He did not see why the world had to change, unless it was to make a small opening to let in the small black body of a small black spaniel.

‘To open the world – even to let in a dog – is to change it for ever,’ said the man. ‘You do not understand that, but you will, if you are what I believe you are.’

‘What am I?’ said Jack.

But the man did not answer. His servant was at the door.

‘I will return very soon. The others will tell you what we do here – Robert! William!’

The two boys whom Jack had sighted in the courtyard, the ones who had helped him to his feet, came running over from where they had been sorting materials at the back of the laboratory. Robert was a good-looking, dark-haired boy of about twelve or thirteen. William was blond and light with a watchful darting face like a monkey.

‘You will tell Jack of our Work here,’ said the man, and the two boys nodded, looking curiously at Jack.

‘If you won’t tell me what I am,’ said Jack, ‘will you tell me who you are?’

The man bowed a short sharp bow, and smiled his smile that was not a smile. ‘I am the Magus. That is all you need to know.’

The Magus left the room, and in a second Jack heard the jilting sound of the carriage wheels and the iron clatter of the horses’ hooves across the cobbles in the courtyard.

The boys heard it too, and the others stopped their work to gather around Jack. Robert seemed to be the leader, with William as his Second. Robert introduced Jack to the other boys.

There was Peter, who was small and round and red in the face from his bellows work. He looked like a heated pudding. There was Anselm, who was thin and thoughtful. He smiled at Jack shyly. There was Roderick, who had worked the bellows with Peter, and who had a cheerful face and black hair poking out from under a red cap. And there was the tiny child with red curly hair, creeping in last and hiding behind Robert’s legs.

Robert spoke. ‘Are you an orphan, Jack?’

‘I have no father, but I have a mother.’

‘She abandoned you, did she?’

‘No!’

‘Then what are you doing here, Jack? This is an orphan place. All of us that you see here come without mother or father. That is what enables us to do the Work.’

‘What kind of work is it that you must do without mother or father?’

Robert signalled to Peter, who went across the room and dragged a lead bucket over to Jack. The bucket was filled with small pieces of lead – lead nails, lead shot, short lengths of lead piping, lead caps for gutters. The bucket and its contents were so heavy that the boy could hardly move it.

The tiny child piped up, ‘We have to turn all this into gold.’

‘Lead into gold?’ said Jack, who was pretending to know less than he did know.

‘Yes, and every bit of it. If we could do it, it would be easy, but we can’t do it, and so it is impossible.’

‘What’s your name?’ said Jack to the child, and the child answered, ‘Crispis.’

‘That means “curly hair” in Latin,’ said Anselm. ‘I hope you can read Latin well, Jack. You’ll be beaten if you can’t.’

‘Why do I have to read Latin?’ asked Jack.

‘The magic books are all in Latin,’ said Roderick.

‘Is it spells you are casting?’ asked Jack.

‘If you call the Magus a magician he will beat you for that too,’ said Robert. ‘He is a Master, he is the Magus.’

‘He’s going to turn all the city of London into gold!’ said Crispis.

‘But he can’t,’ said Anselm. ‘He can’t even turn a horseshoe into gold – see!’

Anselm pointed to the corner of the room, where there was a heap of horseshoes.

Jack started to walk around, trying to understand everything. At the back of the laboratory was a smaller glass alembic swirling with vapour. As Jack looked at it closely, the vapour cleared and a pair of eyes darted a malevolent look at him. Jack stepped back, frightened.

‘What’s in there?’ he asked.

‘That’s the Eyebat,’ said William. ‘Don’t like it, do you?’ And Jack thought that it was William he didn’t like. William started tapping on the glass.

‘Stop that!’ said Robert.

‘Why should I?’ demanded William. ‘Two nasty mean little eyes that fly about, and nothing else.’ William’s own eyes were mean and nasty, Jack thought, but he said nothing.

‘The Magus is trying to make an homunculus – do you know what that is?’ asked Peter, his round red face sweating. Jack shook his head.

‘Look at all the bottles! The arms and legs! He wants to join them up and make a little man – an homunculus, which will do his bidding,’ said Anselm.

‘But he can’t!’ shouted Crispis. ‘Ha ha!’

The boys all looked round in fear and Crispis clapped his hand over his mouth. The leg in the test tube gave a violent kick.

‘A long time ago the Magus made a Creature in a bottle,’ said Robert. ‘He had a special assistant at that time, before any of us were here, and the assistant gave him powers he has never had since.’

‘What happened to the assistant?’ asked Jack, not liking the sound of this, as it might be a warning to himself.

‘He disappeared,’ said Roderick.

‘No one knows,’ said Peter.

‘He grew up,’ said Anselm.

‘He was killed! Murdered! Dead!’ shouted Crispis. William went over to the elf-sized child and picked him up and hung him by his jacket on a hook.

‘You don’t know, none of you knows anything!’ shouted William.

‘That’s enough!’ said Robert.

The boys stood, tense and silent. To break the moment Jack went over to the Eyebat’s jar and tapped the glass. The horrible eyes flew forward and glared at him.

‘Please stop it!’ said Peter. ‘And never open the lid!’

Jack didn’t think he ever would take the lid off. He didn’t like the thought of those nasty eyes flying around the room like a bat that wasn’t blind. He went and sat by the bucket of lead, playing with the shot through his fingers.

‘Why don’t we escape?’ said Jack. ‘We could escape now and go to where my mother lives.’

Robert looked sad. ‘This is the Dark House and there is no escape.’

There was a terrible noise like an avalanche. It was an avalanche. Half a forest of wood suddenly fell down a chute into the room. The boys jumped up.

‘To the fires!’ said Robert. And as the boys turned towards their work with the timber to stoke the fires, Jack went over and lifted Crispis down from the hook. Then he went to help the others.

‘Get to work, Crispis!’ snapped William.

Crispis tried to pick up a big bit of wood and fell over, pinned underneath and squirming like a kitten.

‘Leave him be!’ said William. ‘Every boy must perform his own tasks. That is the Rule.’