Is everything prepared?’ asked the Magus.
‘Everything is in order,’ replied Abel Darkwater. ‘We ‘ have only to wait for the sacrifice.’
‘I bring news of that,’ said a low, pleasant female voice.
‘My horsemen have done their work.’
And from under the altar, peeping out, Jack saw the skirts of the Abbess.
While Silver was untying Mother Midnight, Crispis heard horses nearby, and ran to hide himself. There was nowhere to hide at all, except in a field of sunflowers growing on a patch of ground. The men on the horses saw him dive into the patch, and gave chase, but when they came to the sunflowers, it was impossible to tell which was the child and which were the flowers, so, imagining he had given them the slip, the men rode off. Crispis stood very still and upright because he knew that something awful was about to happen, and it did.
Silver and Mother Midnight hurried round the backs of the sheds, where they had no choice but to cross the open spaces of the Spital Field. Silver would have run for it, but Mother Midnight was old, and she was carrying her cat, so as it was they limped slowly along, and Silver hoped that they looked like any other of the London flotsam and jetsam that walked hither and yon – a beggar woman and her boy.
But as they crossed the Spital Field towards the archery butts, where men were practising, the horsemen saw the two of them, three if you count the cat, and galloped up, tall on their horses. Roughly, one pulled Mother Midnight up into the saddle behind him, and the other caught Silver, and sat her in front of him, wedged against the pommel, and wriggling like an eel, but it was no use.
‘This must be the boy we are looking for!’ said one of the men.
And at that, the horses galloped forward, and in no time at all, Silver found herself tossed to the ground.
‘You may release the old woman,’ said a voice. It was a woman’s voice, and Silver would recognise it anywhere – through the curve of the universe, and all of time.
But no, surely it wasn’t possible? Silver looked at the Abbess, who was jewelled and beautiful and perhaps forty years old, but not forty Elizabethan years old, for her skin was strong and clear. She was not a young woman, but she was youthful. Echoing back into Silver’s head were the words of Mistress Split, hopping through the Priory tunnels: ‘Old is as time does, what is time to her?’
‘This is not the boy,’ said the Abbess. The horsemen looked at one another. ‘There was another, very small, but he escaped us. We shall seek him.’
The Abbess shook her head, watching Silver all the while.
‘The other will be nearby. And this one will do very well for my purposes. She is, is she not, blood most dear?’
As the Abbess said these words from the Book of the Phoenix, she pulled off Silver’s cap, and her girlish hair fell down in its unruly curls. The woman and the girl looked at each other, and it was a long look, with centuries in it.
‘Silver . . .’ said the Abbess. ‘Is it really four hundred years and more since our last meeting?’
And without another word, the Abbess signalled to her men, who clipped Silver to a chain in the wall outside the ruined chapel.
Then the Abbess went inside, and through the open window Silver could hear the voices of the Magus and Abel Darkwater.
She waited. Nothing happened.
Nothing happened. She waited.
Then, with a shiver and a shadow, Silver looked up and saw that the edge of the moon was beginning to pass across the sun.