ECLIPSE OF THE HEART

Jack was still lying like a stone under the altar. He heard the scrape of the tinderbox as the Magus lit the candles, and he could smell a strong incense.

‘The quicksilver . . .’ said the Magus, ‘the Aqua Mercurius.’

‘The barrel is prepared for the sacrifice,’ said Abel Darkwater, ‘and I shall open its mouth.’

Jack could hear him prising the top from the barrel. Then the Abbess came in, with news of the sacrifice, and soon afterwards, to his horror, Jack saw Silver’s feet being dragged towards the altar.

‘Let me go!’ she shouted.

‘This is not him,’ said the Magus angrily. ‘Where is the Radiant Boy?’

The Abbess smiled. ‘I promised you a sacrifice, yet I did not say what kind.’

‘We had a pact!’ said the Magus.

‘I want nothing from you,’ said the Abbess. ‘If I help you it is because I am helping myself.’

Abel Darkwater walked up to Silver. And he walked round and round her as though she were a fish in a bowl.

‘The Golden Maiden! The Girl with the Golden Face! Silver! You have many names, but one end, and it is now! We are well met here, for we shall never need meet again – not through continents of history or geographies of time. Do you remember me, Silver?’

‘How could she forget Abel Darkwater and his alembics?’ said the Abbess.

‘I have not forgotten Abel Darkwater,’ said Silver, ‘and I haven’t forgotten you either, Maria Prophetessa, for that is your true name.’

The Abbess inclined her head and said nothing.

‘You have betrayed me!’ cried the Magus. ‘You are in league together, you and this conjuring idiot, Darkwater, and you have both betrayed me!’

‘Childish!’ said the Abbess. ‘Betrayal assumes allegiance, and I have no allegiance to you. You have your sacrifice, and that is necessary for your Work. To destroy the Radiant Boy is a different matter, and no matter of mine.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Abel Darkwater, ‘and this Maiden was ever my price, as well you know.’

‘And I have no price, for I cannot be bought,’ said the Abbess, in her low and pleasant voice, ‘but you mistake me, Magus, if you imagine I have no interests. On this occasion, as far as the girl is concerned, my interests happen to be the same as those of Darkwater. That is all.’

Abel Darkwater picked up Silver against his strong boar-like chest. He seemed to bare his tusks at the Magus. ‘You shall get your City of Gold,’ he said, ‘but when this Maiden is gone I shall soon be Master of Time!’

‘The Timekeeper is mine,’ yelled Silver, ‘now and for ever!’

‘Such spirit,’ said the Abbess mildly. ‘In a strange way I shall be sorry to lose you so much sooner than expected, Silver.’

‘And I shall not be sorry!’ shouted Abel Darkwater. ‘Into the barrel with her!’ And he tossed Silver into the air like a fish that is caught.

The chapel was darkening. The Magus strode over to the Abbess, his face close against hers. ‘Again, I tell you, we had a pact, you serpent of the Nile! Where is the Boy?’

‘He is here,’ said Jack.

Jack came out from under the altar. He stood unafraid and still, and there was an authority about him, and a power, that made everyone hesitate.

The chapel was darkening. The moon was halfway across the sun.

It was a good try, and Jack nearly succeeded. The truth is, he was powerful, but he was untaught, and knew nothing of the magic arts, or what he should do. He simply trusted the power he felt in him, but the Magus was ancient and wily.

‘How so, Jack Snap?’ he said. ‘How so?’

But that was the Dragon’s voice. Jack felt a sudden confusion, and he faltered. Who was the Magus? Where was the Dragon? Were they the same? Were they separate? And had not the Dragon told him that any fear or anger or uncertainty would weight the power back to the Magus?

Jack was uncertain. He shifted his gaze. The Magus felt the moment and used it to spring at Jack with claws and teeth, no longer in human form, but some monstrous beast unknown.

In the darkening chapel they fought. The candlesticks on the altar were turned over, the cloth ripped to the floor. Jack saw that as the Magus fought him, his own body was shining like gold, but like living gold, and he lit the darkening chapel as though the sun that was eclipsed outside was bottled inside him.

They rolled and held, and were like creatures welded together; first the Magus had Jack with a claw at his throat, and then by a twist Jack had the Magus locked at the jaw.

But Abel Darkwater had plans of his own. No matter how Silver kicked and struggled she could not free herself. He carried Silver to the barrel of mercury. She was about to cry out, but as she saw Jack in mortal combat, she knew that for his sake she had to hold all her courage in her mouth, for if she distracted him now, even for a second, he would be killed by the hideous clawed beast that was the Magus.

The Abbess stood by. She watched everything. She said nothing.

Abel Darkwater lowered Silver feet-first into the barrel. As the mercury touched her feet, she felt its terrible cold that numbed her legs as she was dipped and dropped deeper and deeper. She was too cold to shiver, and it was as though she had become the cold moon, and the sun had gone out of her. She closed her eyes. The quicksilver covered her. Abel Darkwater closed the barrel.

Without a backward glance he quitted the chapel into the darkening noon, leapt on his horse, that shied at the loss of light, and galloped away.

As the last of the light left the chapel, in the fullness of the eclipse, there was a fearful cracking noise. Jack had the Magus pinned under him, and with his golden strength he saw the half-animal, half-human form begin to diminish and fade. He was utterly concentrated now, and wanted only that this moment should be his, and the Magus defeated for ever.

And then the Abbess said, in her low and pleasant voice, ‘Another has sacrificed herself in your place.’

Jack let go.

And his grip on the Magus loosened. And he stood up alone, in the dark, and he was dimmed, and he was lost, and he was nowhere, and he was no one, and he was nothing, scrap, whittle, ounce, speck, atom, dream. The battle was lost, and he had lost, and, and . . .

And the Magus was gone in his phoenix form through the open window.

Jack felt in his own body the emptiness of the universe.

Darkness

Silence

Despair

Jack went over to the barrel, which was freezing cold and covered in icicles. He stood in front of it, hanging his head like a broken beast.

‘It is called the Dissolutio,’ said the Abbess mildly. ‘It is a part of the alchemical process of transformation. Silver, like quicksilver, has dissolved into a million parts. There are millions of Silvers in the barrel, and none at all. Farewell, Jack.’

And the Abbess left the dark chapel.

Jack shouldered the barrel – and it was easy for him to do because of his strength, and he went outside and looked at the sun, and now the eclipse was passing, as the moon sped on, and the sun was beginning to light the earth again.

Heavy in his body like lead, with a heart that was dead as a stone that must feel nothing lest it break, Jack walked, upright and steady, out of the Priory, and down Bishopsgate Street towards the river. His shoulder and arm were frosted and frozen with the frozen frostedness of the barrel.

No one stopped him or challenged him. All the people were dazed by the eclipse, and the strange apparition of the strange boy and his barrel seemed part of the wonders they had seen. And as Jack reached the river, he understood why everyone was amazed, for he reached the river long before he reached the river; the waters had risen and broken their banks, as the Book of the Phoenix had foretold.

Sturgeon and carp gasped in the shallow waters at Leadenhall, and small craft flung out of the Thames by its rising, perched like miniature arks on miniature Ararats, marooned and becalmed as the waters began to recede.

Jack found the rowboat, and rowed slowly and sadly downriver back to London Bridge. The Keeper of the Tides was leaning out of his poop, and he hailed Jack.

‘What ho, Jack? What ho?’

But Jack only shook his head and rowed on. He had lost Silver and he had lost Crispis. He had lost his mother. He had lost his fight. He felt that he had lost himself.

At length he reached the water-gate of The Level on the Strand. By now the cold of the barrel had turned the whole boat to white ice. Jack didn’t care; he shouldered the barrel once more and took it straight upstairs to Roger Rover’s chamber, where he found his old master, and the great alchemist, John Dee.

‘I have failed,’ he said simply, and two tears fell down his face and on to the floor. He stared at them; they were tiny drops of solid gold.

John Dee bent down and picked them up and put them on the table. ‘You are the Radiant Boy,’ he said.

‘And what of it?’ said Jack. ‘I have failed.’

John Dee shook his head. ‘The Battle of the Sun is not done, my good Jack; it has begun.’