No sooner had the Magus departed than John Dee urged the Queen to take a cohort of her servants and friends, and some fighting men, and all the food and drink she could muster, and hurry to the house of Roger Rover.
‘It is the safest place in your kingdom, and you must be safe, Great Queen, until the Magus is defeated.’
At once the household began to pack its wares, and carts streamed along the Strand, packed with cheeses and wines, and cakes, and bags of flour and churns of butter. Cows, oxen, poultry were driven through the streets, and many a time the soldiers had to fight off desperate men and women whose pockets were lined with gold, and whose stomachs were empty of food.
The great caravan of the Queen clattered into the courtyards of the house on the Strand, and the Queen herself was soon in the best bedroom looking out on to the river.
‘What protects us here?’ the Queen asked John Dee.
‘The sunflowers,’ he answered, ‘for they are emblem of the sun, and the sun is emblem of the true gold that is the treasure of the soul, and not of the common gold that spoils the hearts of men.’
‘Well said, Sir!’ cried Roger Rover, who was in attendance. The Queen laughed.
‘But I think that you, Roger, have always had an eye for a certain amount of gold?’
Roger Rover blushed. He had made his fortune as a pirate, and he had made himself respectable by giving a large part of that fortune to the Queen herself.
‘There is a balance to be struck,’ said John Dee, intervening diplomatically, ‘between too much and not enough.’
The Queen was cracking walnuts between her finger and thumb. She was old, but she was strong.
‘I wish to meet this fellow,’ said the Queen, ‘the one you call the Radiant Boy.’
And that is how Jack found himself, dusty and not very clean, kneeling before Queen Elizabeth the First of England.
Truth to tell, she was not very clean herself, for she had not changed her dress for a month. Her brocade was dusty and dabbed with powder to keep the smells down. Over the sweat and the age of her were smells of rose petals and camphor, like an ancient clothes cupboard.
But her jewels shone. And her eyes shone. She was sitting bolt upright by the fire. Her yellow hawk eyes pierced him as he entered, and as he knelt she gave him her hand, crabbed, and veined, and weary and powerful. A hand that had only to raise itself for a head to fall.
‘Jack,’ she said, and her voice was like a treasure chest, rich and full and sure. ‘My advisor John Dee tells me that you have the power to defeat the Magus – but perhaps you do not know how to use that power. I will tell you something. Come close.’
Jack did not dare look up, but he shuffled closer, trying not to breathe in too much of the powdery atmosphere of her. Her voice was low. ‘Jack, when I became Queen, as a young woman, I too had power that I hardly knew how to use. And I had to put aside all my doubts, and whatever I might have wanted for myself also.’ (And here she paused, and a note of sadness crept in, but in a second it was gone.) ‘You must learn what it is to be powerful, Jack, and not be afraid to use it.’
She sat upright again. ‘Save my kingdom and ask what you will – lands, houses, honours.’
Jack finally raised his head and looked at the old Queen.
‘I will give you all I am made of: my heart, my hopes, my self. If that is enough, I will succeed.’
‘The Thames! The Thames!’ cried a voice. ‘See the Thames!’
Everyone ran to the windows and looked out at the river.
The river’s flow was slowing down. The sunset on the water made the water look gold, but that was because it was gold.
A fisherman stood up in his little craft. He took an oar and banged it on the surface of the water. The oar split and broke in two.
The man got out of the boat, and to the great marvel of all those watching, he began to walk across the water.
Others sitting in their milk-boats and poultry-boats, their wherries and sloops, likewise stood up and began to walk upwards, downwards, sideways, anyway they pleased, back to the shores now lined with people.
Jack turned away from the window. Silver was nearby but could not reach the windows for the press of people.
‘Silver!’ said Jack. ‘The Magus has turned the river into gold.’
Jack and Silver left the house on the Strand without saying a word more, and pushed their way through the thronging crowds.
‘Give us meat! Give us drink! Meat! Drink!’
The Queen’s soldiers were riding through the crowds, trying to keep order, but the numbers of desperate people were swelling the streets. They poured out from their houses and hovels like rats, and they ran to the gates of the city, desperate to escape.
From his Dark Tower the Magus watched and waited.
Jack and Silver skirted the angry crowds and ran to London Bridge, where they saw the strangest sight: the bridge was entirely twined about with sunflowers. It looked as though it were a living thing that had grown like a garden out of the water. Guards patrolled the bridge and would let no one pass, but Jack and Silver slid underneath the wooden piers, and climbed up the sturdy tendrils of a sunflower until they came within sight of the poop-house.
‘Hey!’ cried Jack. ‘Let us in!’
The Keeper of the Tides opened the windows, and pulled Jack and Silver inside. To their great surprise there was Mother Midnight, Mistress Split, and, joy, Max!
Oh, it was a licking and a running and a leaping and a jumping and a tummy in the air and a tail wagging and a barking, racing, braking, spinning, energy dog of delight.
Jack had to lie flat on the floor with the dog stretched over him like a rug, and the dog’s nose on his nose, the dog’s front paws in his hands.
‘That dog loves you,’ said Mistress Split gloomily. ‘Nobody loves me.’
‘Come, come, mistress,’ said the Keeper of the Tides, ‘I am sure someone loves you.’
‘No,’ said Mistress Split firmly. ‘I am not loved. I know that because I never loved a thing myself until I found that Boojie dog, and then I found it in my heart, my half-heart, to love, and though everything about me is half, my love for that dog is whole.’
Silver felt quite sorry for Mistress Split.
‘And because of that,’ Mistress Split continued, ‘I know that there is such a thing called love, and so I say with certainty that I am not loved.’
And she went and sat in the corner, in the very far corner, with her back to everyone, and with her head in her hands, and she was crying.
Mother Midnight was drinking a flagon of something evil-smelling.
‘It is my potion of Strength,’ she said. ‘Silver, you do not need it, for you are of another time. Jack may not drink it, for he must find what he needs in his own heart or not find it at all, but myself and this honourable gentleman must have it – here, sir, drink.’
And with great reluctance, the Keeper of the Tides drank the dreadful brew, while Mother Midnight explained that the Magus had fastened a sunflower seed to the bridge so that the bridge would not be turned to gold.
‘He will come here,’ she said. ‘He has left this place alive for some reason. We are safe here.’
‘There is no food or water left in the city,’ said Jack. ‘And the Magus has challenged the Queen.’
‘God spare her!’ cried the Keeper of the Tides. ‘And God spare me too, for she pays my wages!’
The sun was setting, flashing on the golden river, and burnishing the golden roofs and spires of the city.
‘How beautiful it looks,’ said Silver.
‘But it is not real,’ said Jack, and then his face cleared, as if he had understood something. ‘The Dragon said to me that when I showed fear or hesitation, I fell into the Magus’s power, and he could read my thoughts. If I showed no fear, and if I did not hesitate, then, the Dragon said, I would see everything as it really is – when I jumped in the filthy moat to save the Sunken King I found that the moat was not filthy at all, but like crystal, and clear. The black boiling stink was no more real than this gold is real.’
‘Then it is time,’ said Silver.
‘Time?’ said Jack.
‘Summon the Knight. Call the Magus.’
‘But how do you know it is time?’
‘Because you have understood.’
‘Yes,’ said Jack slowly. ‘The Queen is right, I must claim my own power. And now I can.’
‘Listen,’ said Silver.
And the bells were ringing – across London, from every church, from every tower, the bells were ringing, deep, urgent, as though the stars themselves were clanging through the universe.
And the Knight heard, and the Dragon heard, and Wedge heard, and John Dee heard, and the Queen in her sleep woke up, and the bells rang out across the metallic city, and what hands rang those bells no one knew, but John Dee knew what they meant, and the Magus knew what they meant, and the Magus took his black horse with the golden mane, and rode slowly towards the River Thames.