Chantress Fury (11 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WESTMINSTER

I traveled by well-armed boat from the Tower to Whitehall, making good time. My plan to visit Sybil, however, was forestalled by the guards who greeted me at Whitehall. The King wanted to see me right away.

I hurried to the State Rooms, only to discover that the King was nowhere to be found.

“He did ask us to summon you a little while ago,” one of his secretaries said worriedly. “He wanted to speak with you. But then he and Lord Walbrook hurried off, and we haven’t seen them since.”

“Where did they go?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“To see one of the river walls in Westminster, I think. But to tell the truth, I’m not sure exactly where.” Grimacing, the secretary ran a hand through his thinning hair. “We’ve been at sixes and sevens ever since the removal orders went out.”

“What removal orders?”

The secretary looked surprised. “The King has requisitioned all rooms overlooking the Thames, my lady, so that they can be used for defense. Hadn’t you heard? We announced it an hour ago.”

“I’ve been rather busy,” I said.

“Of course, of course.” He gave me a wan smile. “Well, the river-facing rooms here at the palace are being evacuated as we speak, and the cannons are being moved in. But it’s a job working out where to put everyone, with so many rooms out of bounds. And the King’s papers have to be shifted too, and all his correspondence. And then there are all the people coming in from other parts of the city. Everyone along the riverside has been ordered to move out, and some of them are coming here. So I’m afraid everything’s rather chaotic right now—”

“Never mind.” Westminster lay just southwest of Whitehall, an easy walk from here. “I’ll find the King myself.”

A little while later, I located the King by the river’s edge in Westminster, huddled in the drenching rain with Nat and Sir Samuel. The King’s shoulders were hunched, and Sir Samuel cut a mournful figure, his lace cuffs sopping wet at the ends of his overcoat sleeves. Nat’s back was to me, but when he turned, I saw iron-dark circles under his eyes.

“Chantress!” The King greeted me warmly, but it was only when we touched iron to skin that his shoulders went down a notch. “I was beginning to think we’d never see you.”

I explained that I’d been at the Tower, and why.

When I finished, he said, “So you think Melisande is the one causing all this trouble?”

“She certainly knows something about it,” I said. “Whether she’s behind it is another matter. We’ll get the truth out of her, I promise you. But that’s all there is to tell for now.”

He looked disappointed, and so did Nat and Sir Samuel, but there was nothing I could do about that. “What’s been happening here?” I asked. “Have there been more attacks?”

“Yes.” The lines in the King’s face deepened as he spoke. “Late this morning a sea serpent attacked boats downriver from here, near Tilbury. And there’s been a terrible attack at the Royal Navy at Portsmouth.”

“The dispatch came in this morning,” Sir Samuel said morosely. “Yesterday evening a sea serpent destroyed four ships of the line. Some three hundred men drowned.”

Three hundred men? Sorrow and anger engulfed me. I started to wish I’d pushed Melisande harder.

“That’s the worst of it for now,” the King said, “but there are reports coming in from all over the country of mermaids singing, and monsters being sighted from shore, and fishermen’s boats vanishing.”

“Which makes it all the worse that we’ve gone and ruined the wall that protects Westminster itself.” Nat pointed upriver. Through the driving rain, I saw a point a few dozen yards ahead where Westminster’s embankment all but disappeared.

Dispassionately Nat explained what had happened. “Most of the river walls are sturdy enough, but when we tried to reinforce this one with iron, the mortar crumbled, and we were left with this enormous gap. Now there’s nothing to stop the river from flooding the whole district at the next high tide.”

I saw what he meant. Long ago, all of Westminster had been an island—and a low-lying, marshy island at that. Since then, it had been developed and protected from the river by a series of embankments. Nothing, however, could make it high ground. Once the river rose above the gap, there was nothing to stop it from inundating all of Westminster—including Parliament and the law courts and the hallowed precincts of Westminster Abbey.

“We need to mend the gap before the next high tide,” Nat said. “But that’s only hours from now. And that isn’t really enough time to get the job done, even if the weather were perfect. And in rain like this, I don’t see how it can be mended properly at all.”

“That’s why I called you here,” the King said to me. “The wall. Can you help?”

If I did, it would delay my return to the Tower. But there was no telling exactly when Melisande would revive—and a great many lives were at stake here. I looked down at the long gap and listened to the rain and the river. “I think I could hold back the Thames for you,” I said at last. “Just by a few yards, but that should be enough. I can divert the rain, too. And once the new wall is up, I can make the mortar set fast.”

The King immediately looked happier, and so did Sir Samuel.

Nat, however, gave me a troubled glance. “Didn’t you say yester­day that the river wouldn’t obey you?”

“Only when I try to use it against the creatures that are attacking us. It wants to protect them somehow. Other than that, my magic is as strong as ever.”

“Strong enough for my men to trust their lives to it?” Nat asked soberly.

It was hard to be questioned like this, but I knew he was asking in all good faith, for the sake of the men in his command. I would do as much for my own men.

Since our battle with the sea monster, I’d avoided meeting his eyes, but now I looked straight at him, commander to commander. “I believe the water will listen to me. If I have any doubts, I’ll warn you. I don’t want to put any lives at risk.”

As his eyes searched mine, my pulse kicked up. But I couldn’t look away. He had to understand that I was telling him the truth.

“All right,” Nat said. “We’ll try it.”

While the King and Sir Samuel went back to Whitehall, I stayed by the wall in Westminster with Nat and a small army of bricklayers and ironworkers. After talking a bit with the chief bricklayer, Nat came over to me. “How do you want to start?”

“I’ll sing the water away first,” I said. “It’s the kind of song-spell that will need constant replenishing, but I’ll keep it up as long as I can. I expect I could do it for several hours, if need be.”

Nat still looked worried. “If anything goes wrong, we’ll need to get the men out of there fast. Can we work out a warning signal, just in case?”

He wasn’t doubting me, I told myself. He was just being sensible. We settled on the waving of hands overhead, and then I gave myself over to the task at hand.

I listened hard, but to my relief I couldn’t hear even the faintest echo of the furious song I’d heard yesterday, only the usual strains of Wild Magic. When I sang to the river and the rain, coaxing them away from the wall, they were as docile as lambs. Within minutes, the entire face of the wall was dry, down to the pilings.

“All right, men,” Nat said. “Let’s get to work.”

The men looked at the river, openmouthed, and then at me. No one moved.

It was a lot to ask of them, to trust me with their lives.

I moved to the far end of the wall, where a rope ladder dangled over the edge. Still singing, I stepped onto it.

Alarmed, Nat came after me. “Lucy, no. There’s no need for this.”

I couldn’t spare the breath to answer him, not even when I saw him following me. Everything in me was bent on keeping the water back—and on placing each foot carefully on the rungs, until at last I stood at the foot of the wall.

I looked up at the men, and they looked down at me.

“Can’t leave a lady on her own like that, can we?” one of them called out. Within moments, there were ladders being lowered all along the line, and the men followed me down.

For the next three hours they laid bricks as fast as they were able, using pulleys and scaffolding and teamwork to speed the job. It must have been an amazing sight, but I hardly took in any of it. All my attention was trained on the watery wave that I was holding back with my music. Even at the start, it had towered over our heads. As the tide came in, it grew still higher—and not only higher but stronger.

It took all my skill to keep the wave back. Chantress singing didn’t tire the voice as normal singing would, but it required enormous strength and patience to keep it going for so long. As I listened carefully to the liquid nuances of the river’s songs, I became all but deaf to every other sound. The slap of bricks, the squeal of pulleys, the banging of hods—none of it made a dent in my concentration. And so I didn’t notice that the work was done, until Nat came up and gestured to me to turn around.

The men were back on land now, leaving behind the new wall, perfectly mended and riveted with iron spikes. Which meant I needed to rise to a new challenge, that of singing the wall dry while still holding back the river. Turning so I could see both the wave and the wall, I slowly began to weave the two songs together.

The drying couldn’t be done too fast; otherwise the wall would crack. That was the trick of it, listening to get the pacing just right. I didn’t rush. Standing in the riverbed, I took my time and let the mortar grow white, grow dry. And then, just as I was all but done, I heard what I’d most dreaded—the faint echo of fury coming from the water.

I waved frantically at Nat. The water was turning on me, and my wave was about to crash down on top of us.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE DROWNED LAND

Nat understood my warning signal right away, but despite the alarm in his eyes, he didn’t rush to the ladder.

What was he waiting for? For me to get out first? Of all the misplaced notions of gallantry! It was my song; I should be last out. He wouldn’t budge, however, and I couldn’t argue while I was singing. So I ran to a ladder—there were several still up—and started to climb.

To my relief, he did as well, and he quickly reached the top. I made slower progress, hampered by skirts and the demands of singing and an ankle that was still giving me twinges. As I grabbed the last rung of the ladder, the water broke loose.

Above the roar of the wave, I heard Nat call out to me. “Lucy!”

His hands reached down, seized me, and hauled me bodily up to solid land. Drenched by the spray, I held fast to him, gasping for breath. Then I looked up into his eyes, and the world dropped away. The wall, the wave, my narrow escape—I forgot them all as we stood there, aware of nothing but each other.

A terrible shouting came from the men. “Watch out!”

As Nat and I sprang apart, I glanced over my shoulder. Three slimy gray snakes were rising from the waters. They lashed at the air, eyeless and as thick around as trees. There were four of them now. No, five . . . six . . .

Half-hypnotized, I stared at the sinuous, bubbled flesh. Snakes? No. They were tentacles. Which meant . . .

With a horrible slurp, the fleshy head surfaced, all gaping mouth and teeth.

“Giant squid!” someone screamed.

“Kraken!”

The tentacles reached for the wall.

As Nat seized the iron-tipped spear he’d brought with him, I saw other men reaching for their weapons. The creature must have seen this too, or perhaps it simply sensed the iron embedded in the wall. It reeled in its tentacles and plunged underwater.

“Hold on,” Nat called out to his men. “Wait till the creature comes up.”

A few of them let loose their spears anyway. The wooden shafts twisted as they hit the water. I heard the sound of the water steering the spears away from the monster—and beneath it, scattered notes from the furious song.

“The water’s protecting it,” I said to Nat. “Just as it protected the others.”

“It’ll have to surface again if it wants to attack us.” Nat scanned the waters, spear at the ready. “And when it does, we’ll get it.”

But he was wrong. At the foot of the wall, the currents of the river were shifting. Small waves appeared, then larger ones. I leaned out over the new bricks, listening. What was happening down there?

And then I had it: “The kraken’s pulling on the pilings!”

Nat paled. We hadn’t put iron down there, only on the brick part of the wall. “How do we stop it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure we can. Tell the men to warn the neighborhood. Get everyone out.”

Nat shouted out the command, and within a minute, the rainy waterfront was all but empty. Only a couple of the younger masons remained, determined to show their courage.

“Let’s see if we can save the wall,” Nat told them. Together they probed the water with their spears, but the river twisted the staves and wrenched them away.

“Nails,” Nat called out. “And the leftover spikes!” We hurled them in, but the water must have carried them off, because the kraken kept pulling at the pilings.

While Nat and his men cast around for other things to try, I sang to the water, pleading with it to turn against the kraken. But I wasn’t surprised when the water ignored me. I put my hands against the wall and felt it tremble.

“It’s about to go down!” I shouted to the others.

As they turned back to look at me, the wall cracked.

“Run,” I screamed.

The masons were already sprinting inland, but Nat waited for me, pacing himself to my stride. Through the deserted, rain-soaked streets of Westminster we ran, past the abbey and its great Tudor chapel, and the ancient Gothic arches of the old palace. But we still hadn’t quite reached the embanked wall around the precincts of Whitehall when we heard a terrible groan and crash behind us.

Had the kraken succeeded?

I couldn’t help it. I glanced back through the sheets of rain, only to see the river streaming down the street behind us. And was that a gray tentacle?

Nat yanked me forward. “
Run.
”

Breath burning in my lungs, I raced up the street with him, my ankle jolting in pain. The dank smell of the sea was everywhere.

By the time we reached the embankment, the gates were shut tight. Shouting for help, Nat and I scrabbled at the rough wall, trying to find footholds before the waters closed in.

Spying us, the King’s guards threw down some ropes. When we grabbed them, the guards hauled us up and over to safety, just as the tidal river raced in behind us.

Standing with the guards and the masons who had reached Whitehall before us, we watched the Thames take Westminster. The first waves rippled out, swirling around corners, filling every path and inlet, until the abbey and the palace and all the ancient buildings were nothing more than islands in the midst of churning waters.

Here and there, in the stormy gloom, lights burned in windows. Did they mark people left behind? Or were they untended candles and lamps that might catch fire, compounding disaster on disaster?

I saw no sign of the kraken.

I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Nat answered, “It’ll be out in the deeper reaches of the river, I expect, looking for more walls to pull down. We’ll need to warn the riverbank patrols to watch out for it. Maybe they’ll land a blow where we failed.” He turned to have a word with one of the King’s guards, who went running back into the palace.

We failed.
It was not a thought I wanted to dwell on. But the evidence was pooled out in front of me.

As I stared at the churning expanse of water, I heard the furious song again, faint and horrifying. Only this time, as I listened, the song swelled, stronger than ever, and I heard an eerie counter­point beneath the angry music:

Come, Chantress. Come into the water . . .

Who was singing? Wise women? The Mothers that Melisande had claimed were coming? Whatever the source, it was menacing. I backed away.

Nat must have seen the distress in my face, though he didn’t understand its cause. “Remember, the tide will go out soon,” he said. “In just a few hours, we’ll be able to start rescuing people and putting up new defenses.”

I tried to nod, but the song was still there, calling to me, no matter how hard I tried to block it out.

“Never mind that now. You’re shivering.” Nat drew me toward a door. “Let’s get you indoors.”

Once I was inside the thick walls of Whitehall, the music dimmed until it thinned out altogether. I came back to myself, and the first thing I noticed was that Nat was still there, only inches from me. I raised my head, and when I met his warm hazel eyes, it was as if we were standing by the wall in Westminster again, lost to the world. . . .

“Lucy.” There was a tender edge to his voice that made my heart turn over. “I—”

“Chantress!” The cry came from the far end of the passageway.

I whirled around. A palace guard trotted toward me, iron pike in hand. “You’re needed at the Tower,” he called out. “Your prisoner has escaped.”

The world rushed back with a vengeance.

There was no time now to talk with Nat, no time to find out what he had been about to say to me. I said a distressed good-bye to him and rushed off to the Tower.