Silver had never driven a horse and cart in her life, but she took the reins, and the horse seemed to know how to go forward, and forward they went, out through the courtyard and into Dark House Lane and down towards the River Thames.
Stables, kennels, breweries, carpenters’ shops, pudding dens, places where they stitched jerkins, made tallow candles, forged horses’ hooves, inns, taverns, bakers, cookshops, men and women with fish baskets on their heads, men and women alike smoking short clay pipes, dogs running in and out of cartwheels, a parrot on a perch shouting at passers-by, a woman selling bolts of cloth from a handcart, a tinker with pots and pans hung round his thin body, a fiddler playing a melody, a sheep in the middle of the pitted lane, the smell of cooking, a pork smell, like roasting, and a smell like iron being heated so that it glowed. A little boy with bare feet, a girl carrying a baby, a donkey with a man on its back – a man so tall that his feet tripped along the ground as the donkey plodded on. Two soldiers, ragged and frightening, waved their fists at Silver, but she was brave, and urged the horse and cart on.
Then she came towards the river.
The River Thames, wide like in a dream – jammed with craft and bodies, like in a nightmare.
Black boats that were the charcoal burners. Boats tarred and blistering in the sun. Boats smothered in pitch to keep the water out. Boats sanded and oiled and curtained and secret to keep out prying eyes. Rich boats like these, and poor boats like the others. Boats that carried barrels of beer, and boats half sunk under the weight of cattle, mooing and lowing at the slopping water.
There were naval boats, proud in blue and gold, and merchant boats with their Guild insignia embossed into the prow. There were scavenger boats trawling their nets to drag up what others had lost, and gaily painted boats carrying visitors to and fro. There was a boat full of cats – so full of cats that the boat itself looked to be made out of fur. These were ships’ cats coming ashore or going to sail, a mewling, rioting, spitting, sunning, tails-in-the-air-legs-akimbo of a boat, so noisy that a sloop packed with priests had their fingers in their ears, and the drunken party-goers sailing nearby nearly fell overboard for laughing.
And this was London. And this was the life of London. And this was the life of London rolled out like a carpet and played like a tune, and smelling to high heaven of fish and meat and animals and dung and sweat and beer and the hot scorching acrid smells of leather tanners and blacksmiths, and the steam and hiss of water and flesh as the cattle were branded on the stumpy piers.
London, thought Silver. 1601.
And then there was a figure running beside her, strong and fast and covered in thick, damp, dirty, chalky dust. In his arms he carried the smallest possible child, also covered in dust, but this child, no mistaking it, was bright yellow, except for his halo of curly hair, which was now jet black. The child looked exactly like a sunflower.
‘Crispis!’ panted Jack, flinging the child up into the cart, and hopping up himself. ‘Turn right here, Mistress Silver, if you don’t want to end up in the river!’
As Jack took over the reins of the cart, and they swung off along the river towards the Strand, Jack had a feeling of being watched.
He looked up into the sky. Hovering, swooping, dipping, diving, shearing the clouds and grazing the spires, free at last and exulting and malevolent, two eyes glared down. It was the Eyebat.
Instinctively Jack looked out on to the teeming river, and sure enough, he saw what he saw.
Quite on its own, in the hugger-mugger of craft, was a golden boat. It was a dark gold, not a shining gold, but gold it was, and quite different to the other vessels plying their way.
Jack recognised Wedge, and Mistress Split, each rowing a single oar, with their single arm. Standing in the prow, wrapped in black, was the Magus.
‘He’s here,’ said Jack.
‘Of course he’s here,’ answered Silver, narrowing her eyes across the waterline. ‘This is the doing that you have to do,’ and then she realised that she was sounding as peculiar and enigmatic as the Dragon or the Knight.
She looked again. A second boat was approaching that of the Magus. And the person rowing it . . . no, it couldn’t be him. Silver stared and stared. It couldn’t be . . .
‘What can you see?’ asked Jack. But Silver shook her head and didn’t answer. She was looking at someone from another time . . .
The bells were ringing twelve noon.
‘I think we should visit Mother Midnight,’ said Jack.