It was five minutes to the hour. Jack’s mother rose from her chair by the window and, taking the little leather bag, wrapped her cloak around her shoulders and quietly slipped out of the house and down on to the river.
The night was misty and cool. A swan white as a ghost glided by, silent as a ghost, and like a ghost, without visible means of movement.
Jack’s mother shivered in the air and hurried on. She knew where she was going.
As she made her way to London Bridge, it seemed as though the whole city was whispering to her. The wooden and plaster houses echoed and reverberated any noise, and the noise of the Thames and its water-wheels and conduits was like a giant whisper that jumped from house to house.
TSHSH, TSHSH, TSHSH. Jack’s mother listened, and behind the whispering she heard a horse’s hooves, far off, and the sound of a pail being emptied from an upper room.
At the bridge her old friend the Keeper of the Tides was leaning out of his poop-window that overlooked the river.
It was late, and he had to open the bridge gate to let her cross.
‘What news,’ he called to her, ‘that you are out so late?’
‘My Jack is missing!’ she said.
‘This is a strange time!’ he answered. ‘The river rises too high, the moon sinks too low. Something is going to happen!’
‘So I fear,’ said Anne, ‘but I must hurry on.’
She crossed London Bridge, and disappeared into a maze of narrow alleys around Southwark. There, all noise ended. She was in a silence as thick as cloth.
She walked, hearing nothing but her own footsteps, until she came to a small door with the sign of a pentangle above it on the lintel. She knocked three times.
After a few moments the door opened, and there in the shadows of the doorway stood an old woman with eyes like diamonds. There was a black cat draped across her shoulders, and the cat had eyes like red rubies.
What a figure the woman was – so small she could have lived in a box. So thin that she could have escaped from a hole in a box. Her mouth was as empty as an empty box, and her eyes were as full of secrets as a box that says DO NOT OPEN. She was not a human, not a fish, not a cat, not a dog, not a monster, not a devil, not a born thing, not anything. She was all manner of things. She was Mother Midnight.
Mother Midnight’s house was not like a house – it was like a den round the foot of a tree. Past the door there was a narrow passage that led to a room whose ceiling was so low that Jack’s mother had to stoop until she could sit down.
There were no windows, and the walls were hung with sacking to keep the wind out. A fire roared in the chimney – a fire of such a size that it lit the room without any further light, and heated the room like an oven. And yet there was not a stick of wood to be seen, and the fire had a red look to it, like the eyes of the cat. A kettle and a cauldron hung to the side of the fire.
In the centre of the room was an oak tree of vast girth, whose lower branches seemed to form the roof or ceiling of Mother Midnight’s den. The roots of the tree were in the ground and the tree was alive. Planks of wood had been fitted round the tree to form a table, and there were several chairs carved from fallen oak around this table. On the table was a shallow copper bowl filled with green water.
There was nothing else in the room but a straw mattress and a broom.
Jack’s mother wasted no time. She told of what had happened that day, and how Jack had not come home these twelve hours gone, and of her fears that Jack had been kidnapped.
Mother Midnight sat down, and passed her hands over the copper bowl. She seemed to fall into a kind of trance as the green water clouded over and swirled and steamed with strange colours and mists.
Then, like a vision in the water, was Jack’s face. His mother cried out, putting her hand to her mouth. She could see the stone bed and the stone window and the moon like a pale stone outside. And there was her beloved boy.
‘He is not harmed,’ said Mother Midnight.
‘Who has taken him?’
‘That I cannot tell you, for I am forbidden by a power stronger than mine own.’
‘Then the danger is great!’
‘His spirit is strong and clear,’ said Mother Midnight. ‘I can feel him strong and clear.’
‘Where is he?’
‘You must search for him and find him yourself.’
‘I have the magnet.’
Jack’s mother took the magnet out of its leather bag, and she had a glove belonging to Jack. She passed them over to Mother Midnight, who sat muttering over them and turning them in her old scarred hands.
‘Now it is charged,’ she said. ‘Now the magnet will be drawn to the boy as if to metal.’
‘Is it witchcraft that has him?’ asked Jack’s mother.
‘It is a dark power,’ said Mother Midnight, ‘and more you shall not know until more you shall know.’
The fire hissed and spat like a cat. The water in the bowl settled and became still and green once more.
Jack’s mother stood up, stooping under the ceiling of mud and branches, and leaving money on the table, she left without speaking. The magnet had a heat to it now, and she felt it pulling her towards Lambeth.
She didn’t notice a very small black dog following her.