Part Three 2 page

"No. Of course not. He was one of the worst. Church bells rang across occupied Europe when he died. You don't want to be like him, Nathaniel, take it from me. Besides"—I plumped up a dusty pillow—"you haven't got what it takes."

Oh, he bristled at that. "Why?"

"You're not nasty enough by a long way. Here's your supper."

A knock at the door heralded the arrival of a black-coated servant and an elderly maid, bearing assorted domed platters and chilled wine. The boy spoke courteously enough to them, asking a few questions about the layout of the streets nearby and tipping them for their trouble. For the duration of their visit, I was a mouse curled cozily between the pillows; I remained in this guise while my master scoffed his food. At last he clattered his fork down, took a last swig from his glass and stood up.

"Right," he said. "No time for talk. It's a quarter past eleven. We've got to go."

The hotel was on Kremencova, a short street on the edge of Prague Old Town, not far from the great river. We exited and wandered north along the lamp-lit roads, making our way slowly, steadily, in the direction of the ghetto.

Despite the ravages of war, despite the dissolution into which the city fell after its Emperor was killed and its power transferred to London, Prague still maintained something of its old mystique and grandeur. Even I, Bartimaeus, indifferent as I normally am to the various human hellholes where I've been imprisoned, recognized its beauty: the pastel-colored houses, with their high, steep terra-cotta roofs, congregating thickly around the spires and bell towers of the endless churches, synagogues, and theaters; the great gray river winding past, spanned by a dozen bridges, each created to a different style by its own workforce of sweating djinn;[3] above it all, the castle of the Emperors, brooding wistfully on its hill.

[3] I was involved in constructing the Stone Bridge, the noblest of all, back in 1357. Nine of us performed the task, as required, in a single night, fixing the foundations with the usual sacrifice: the entombment of a djinni. We drew straws for the "honor" as dawn broke. Poor Humphrey is presumably there still, bored rigid, though we gave him a pack of cards with which to pass the time.

The boy was silent as we went. Unsurprising, this—he had seldom left London in his life before.

I guessed him to be gazing about in dumbstruck admiration.

"What an appalling place," he said. "Devereaux's slum-clearance measures would come in useful here."

I looked at him. "Do I take it the golden city does not meet with your approval?"

"Well... it's just so messy, isn't it?"

True, as you worm your way deeper into the Old Town, the streets become narrower and more labyrinthine, connected by a capillary system of snickelways and side courts, where the gable overhangs become so extreme that daylight barely hits the cobblestones below. Tourists probably find this warren charming; for me, with my slightly more soiled outlook, it perfectly embodies the hopeless muddle of all human endeavor. And for Nathaniel, the young British magician used to the broad, brutal Whitehall thoroughfares, it was all a bit too messy, a bit too out of control.

"Great magicians lived here," I reminded him.

"That was then," he said, sourly. "This is now."

We passed the Stone Bridge, with its ramshackle old tower on the eastern side; bats were swirling about its protruding rafters, and flickering candlelight shone in the topmost windows. Even at this late hour, plenty of traffic was abroad: one or two old-fashioned cars, with high, narrow bonnets and cumbersome retracting roofs, passing slowly across the bridge; many men and women on horseback, too; others leading oxen, or driving two-wheeled carts full of vegetables or beer kegs.

Most of the men wore soft black caps in the French style, fashions evidently having changed since my time here so many years before.

The boy made a disparaging face. "That reminds me. I'd better get this charade over with." He was carrying a small leather rucksack; into this he now delved, pulling out a large floppy cap. Further rummaging revealed a curled and rather crumpled feather. He held this up so it caught the lantern light.

"What color would you call that?" he said.

I considered. "I don't know. Red, I suppose."

"What kind of red? I want a description."

"Erm, brick red? Fiery red? Tomato red? Sunburn red? Could be any or all."

"Not blood-red, then?" He cursed. "I was so short of time—that was all I could get. Well, it'll have to do." He pushed the feather through the fabric of the cap and placed the ensemble on his head.

"What's this in aid of?" I asked. "I hope you're not trying to be dashing, because you look like an idiot."

"This is strictly business, I assure you. It's not my idea. Come on, it's almost midnight."

We turned away from the river now, heading into the heart of the Old Town, where the ghetto guarded Prague's deepest secrets.[4] The houses became smaller and more ramshackle, crowded in upon each other so tightly that some were doubtless held up only by the proximity of their neighbors.

Our moods shifted in opposite directions as we went. My essence felt energized by the magic seeping from the old stones, by the memories of my exploits of the past. Nathaniel, conversely, seemed to become ever gloomier, muttering and grumbling under his outsize hat like a cantankerous old man.

[4] In Rudolf's time, when the Holy Roman Empire was at its height and six afrits patrolled the newly fashioned walls of Prague, the Jewish community here supplied the Emperor with most of his money and much of his magic. Forcibly restricted to the crowded alleys of the ghetto, and at once distrusted and relied on by the rest of Prague society, the Jewish magicians grew powerful for a time. Since pogroms and slander against their people were commonplace, their magic was largely defensive in outlook—as exemplified by the great magician Loew, who created the first golem to protect the Jews against attack by human and djinni alike.

"Any chance," I said, "of telling me exactly what we're doing?"

He looked at his watch. "Ten to midnight. I have to be in the old cemetery when the clocks start chiming." He tutted again. "Another cemetery! Can you believe it? How many are there in this place?

Well, a spy will meet me there. He will know me by this cap; I will know him by his—and I quote—'unusual candle.' " He held up a hand. "Don't ask—I haven't got a clue. He may, perhaps, be able to point us in the direction of someone who knows something of golem lore."

"You think some Czech magician is causing the trouble in London?" I said. "That's not necessarily so, you know."

He nodded, or at least his head did something abrupt under his enormous cap. "Quite. An insider must have stolen the clay eye from the Lovelace collection: there's a traitor working somewhere. But the knowledge to use it must have come from Prague. No one in London's ever done it before. Perhaps our spy can help us." He sighed. "I doubt it, though. Anyone who calls himself Harlequin is obviously pretty far gone already."

"No more deluded than the rest of you, with your silly fake names, Mr. Mandrake. And what am I to do, while you meet this gentleman?"

"Keep hidden and keep watch. We're in enemy territory, and I'm not going to trust Harlequin or anyone else. All right, this must be the cemetery. You'd better change."

We had arrived at a cobbled yard, surrounded on all sides by buildings with small, black windows. Before us was a flight of steps, leading up to an open metal gate, set in a tumbledown railing. Beyond rose a dark and toothy mass—the uppermost headstones of Prague's old cemetery.

This graveyard was little more than fifty meters square, by far the smallest in the city. Yet it had been used for many centuries, over and over, and this contributed to its distinctive flavor. In fact, the sheer weight of burials in this restricted space had led to bodies being interred one on top of another, time and again, until the surface of the cemetery had risen six feet higher than the surrounding yard.

The headstones were packed in likewise, with large ones overhanging small, small half-buried in the ground. With its higgledy-piggledy disregard for clarity and order, the cemetery was exactly the kind of place calculated to unsettle Nathaniel's tidy mind.[5]

[5] Actually, it made me shiver a little, too, but for different reasons. Earth was very strong here—its power extended upward into the air, leaching my energies away. Djinn were not welcome; it was a private place, working to a different magic.

"Well, get on with it, then," he said. "I'm waiting."

"Oh, that's what you're doing, is it? I couldn't tell under that hat."

"Turn yourself into a loathsome snake or plague rat, or whatever foul creature of the night you desire. I'm going in. Get ready to protect me if necessary."

"Nothing will give me greater pleasure."

I chose to be a long-eared bat this time, leather-winged, tufted of head. It's a flexible guise, I find—fast-moving, quiet, and very much in keeping with the tone of midnight graveyards. I flittered off into the clotted wilderness of jumbled stones. As an initial precaution, I made a sweep of the seven planes: they were clear enough, though so steeped in magic that each one vibrated gently with the memories of past deeds. I noticed no traps or sensors, though a few protective hexes on buildings nearby implied that magicians of a sort still dwelled here.[6] There was no one about; at this late hour, the graveyard's tangle of narrow paths was empty, swathed in black shadow. Rusty lamps nailed to the railings emitted half-hearted light. I found an overhanging headstone and hung elegantly from it, tucked inside my wings. I surveyed the main path into the cemetery.

[6] They were weak defenses. An armless imp could have pried his way through. As a center of magic, Prague was a century into a steep decline.

Nathaniel stepped through the gate, his shoes crunching gently on the path. Even as he did so, the dozen clocks of the churches of Prague began to chime, marking the beginning of the secret, midnight hour.[7] The boy gave an audible sigh, shook his head disgustedly, and began to stroll tentatively along the path, one hand outstretched, feeling his way between the stones. An owl hooted close by, possibly as a harbinger of violent death, possibly commenting on the ridiculous scale of my master's hat. The blood-red feather waved to and fro behind his head, glimmering faintly in the meager light.

[7] For complex reasons possibly connected with astronomy and the angle of Earth's orbit, it is at the twin points of midnight and noon that the seven planes draw closest together, allowing sensitive humans glimpses of activity that would normally be invisible to them. At these times, therefore, there is the most talk of ghosts, specters, black dogs, doppelgängers, and other revenants—which are generally imps or foliots doing errands in one guise or another. Because night particularly stimulates human imagination (such as it is), people pay less attention to apparitions at noon, but they're still present: flickering figures glimpsed in heat haze; passersby who on inspection lack a shadow; pale faces in the midst of crowds, which, when you look directly, are nowhere to be seen.

Nathaniel paced. The bat hung motionless. Time passed as slowly as it always does when you're hanging out in cemeteries. Once only was there movement in the street below the railing: a strange four-legged, two-armed creature with a kind of double head came shuffling out of the night. My master caught sight of it and halted in doubt. It passed beneath a lantern, to be revealed as a courting couple, heads resting together, arms entwined. They kissed assiduously, giggled a bit, moved off along the road. My master watched them go with an odd expression on his face. I think he was trying to look contemptuous.

From then on, his pacing, never particularly energetic, became distinctly half-hearted. He scuffed along, kicking unseen pebbles, and wrapping his long black coat about him in a hunched, uncaring sort of way. His mind did not seem to be on the job. Deciding he needed a pep talk, I fluttered over and hovered by a headstone.

"Perk it up," I said, "you're looking a bit lackluster. You'll put this Harlequin bloke off if you're not careful. Imagine you're on a romantic assignation with some pretty, young girl magician."

I couldn't swear to it—it was dark and all—but I think he might have blushed. Interesting....

Perhaps this was fertile ground to furrow, in due time.

"This is hopeless," he whispered. "It's nearly half-past twelve. If he was going to show, we'd have seen something by now. I think... are you listening to me?"

"No." The bat's keen ears had picked up a scrabbling noise from way off across the graveyard. I rose a little higher, peered out into the dark. "This might be him. Feather at the ready, Romeo."

I banked and swooped low among the stones, taking a circular course to avoid direct collision with whatever it was that was coming our way.

For his part, the boy adopted a more upright pose; with his hat at a rakish angle, hands casually behind his back, he dawdled along the path as if in deep, profound thought. He gave no sign that he noticed the increasingly persistent scuffling sounds, or the strange pale light that now approached him from among the gravestones.

Nathaniel

From the corner of his eye, Nathaniel saw the bat flitter away toward an age-old yew tree, which had somehow managed to survive centuries of burials in one corner of the cemetery. A particularly desiccated branch offered a good view of the path. The bat alighted under it and hung still.

Nathaniel took a deep breath, adjusted his hat, and strolled forward as nonchalantly as he could.

All the while, his eyes were fixed on something moving in the depths of the cemetery. Despite the profound skepticism he felt for the whole farrago, the dankness and solitude of this lonely place had infected his spirits. Against his wishes, he found his heart thudding painfully against his chest.

What was it that he saw before him? A pale corpse light drifting nearer, a greenish milky white in color, staining the stones it passed with an unhealthy radiance. Behind it came a moving shadow, hunched and shambling, weaving ever nearer through the stones.

Nathaniel narrowed his eyes: on none of the three observable planes could he see any demonic activity. This thing, presumably, was human.

At last, the crunch of gravel indicated that the shadow had stepped out upon the path. It did not stop, but came smoothly onward, a ragged cloak or cape drifting drearily behind. As it drew close, Nathaniel noticed a pair of unpleasantly white hands protruding from the front of the cape, holding something that let off the feeble witch light. He tried hard to make out a face, too, but this was concealed by a heavy black hood that curved down like an eagle's talon. Nothing else of the figure could be seen. He turned his attention to the object held in the pale hands, the thing that shed the strange, white glow. It was a candle, firmly wedged into...

"Euuch!" he said, in Czech. "That's disgusting."

The figure stopped short. A high, thin voice sounded indignantly from under the cowl. " 'Ere, what d'you mean?" It coughed hastily; a deeper, slower, altogether more eerie voice emerged at once:

"That is to say—What... do you mean?"

Nathaniel curled his lip. "That horrible thing you're carrying. It's foul."

"Beware! It is an item of power."

"It's unhygienic, that's what it is. Where did you get it?"

"I cut it down from a gallows myself, by the light of a gibbous moon."

"I bet it isn't even pickled. Yes! Look—there's bits falling off it!"

"No, there aren't. That's drips of candlewax."

"Well, maybe, but it's still wrong to be carrying it around with you. I suggest you toss it behind those gravestones, then wash your hands."

"Do you realize," said the figure, who now had one fist wedged irritably against his hip, "that you are referring to an object that has the power to send my enemies into a stupor and can detect watchful magic at fifty paces? This is a valuable item. I'm not binning it."

Nathaniel shook his head. "You ought to be locked up. That kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated in London, I can tell you."

The figure gave a sudden start. "London? What's that to me?"

"Well, you're Harlequin, aren't you? The agent."

A long pause. "Might be."

"Of course you are. Who else would be wandering through the graveyard at this time of night? I don't need to see that icky candle thing to know it's you, do I? Besides, you're speaking Czech with a British accent. Enough of this! I need some information fast."

The figure held up its free hand. "One moment! I don't yet know who you are."

"I'm John Mandrake, on government service. As you well know."

"That's not good enough. I must have proof."

Nathaniel rolled his eyes. "See that?" He pointed upward. "Blood-red feather."

The figure considered it. "That looks brick-red to me."

"It's blood-red. Or it will be in a minute if you don't stop this nonsense and get down to business."

"Well... all right, then. But first..." The figure adopted an eerie stance. "I must check that no watchers are among us. Stand back!" It held up the object in its hand, spoke a word. Instantly, the pale fire flared outward, becoming a luminous hoop of light that hovered in the air between them. On another command, and with a sudden rushing, the hoop expanded, rippling out in all directions across the graveyard. Nathaniel glimpsed the bat drop like a stone from its perch upon the tree, just before the band of light passed by. What happened to the bat he did not see; the hoop continued out beyond the edge of the graveyard and swiftly faded into nothing.

The figure nodded. "It is safe to talk."

Nathaniel pointed to the candle, which had resumed its previous dimensions. "I know that trick.

That's an Illuminated Circlet, triggered by an imp. You don't need a dead man's extremities to pull that off. This gothic stuff is all jiggery-pokery, suitable for gawping commoners. It won't work on me, Harlequin."

"Perhaps..." A gaunt hand disappeared inside the cowl and scratched something ruminatively.

"Even so, I think you're being overly fastidious, Mandrake. You're ignoring the fundamental basis of our magic. It isn't so clean and pure as you make out. Blood, ritual, sacrifice, death... they are at the heart of every incantation we utter. We all rely on 'gothic stuff,' when all's said and done."

"Here in Prague, maybe," Nathaniel said.

"Never forget, London's power was built on Prague's. So then..." Harlequin's voice turned suddenly businesslike. "The imp that reached me said you were here on a top secret mission. What is it, and what information do you want from me?"

Nathaniel spoke quickly and with some relief, outlining the main events of the previous few days.

The man under the hood heard him out in silence.

"A golem abroad in London?" he said, when Nathaniel drew to a halt. "Wonders will never cease. There's your gothic stuff coming home to roost, whether you like it or not. Interesting..."

"Interesting and intelligible?" Nathaniel asked, hopefully.

"I don't know about that. But I may have some details for you—quick! Duck down!" With the speed of a snake, he threw himself to the ground; without hesitation, Nathaniel did likewise. He lay with his face pressed against the graveyard soil, listening to the sound of jackboots echoing on the cobblestones outside. A faint scent of cigarette smoke drifted on the wind. The sounds faded. After another minute or so, the agent got slowly to his feet. "Patrol," he said. "Fortunately, their sense of smell is deadened by those fags they smoke; we're all right for now."

"You were saying..." Nathaniel prompted.

"Yes. First, the issue of the golem's eye. Several of these objects are kept in magical repositories belonging to the Czech government. The Prague Council prevents any access to them. As far as I know, they have not been used for magical purposes, but they are of high symbolic value, since the golems were instrumental in causing great damage to Gladstone's army back in his first European campaign. Several years ago, one of the eyes was stolen, and the culprit never found. I speculate—and it is only speculation, mark you—that this missing eye is the one later found in the collection of your friend Simon Lovelace."

"Pardon me," Nathaniel said, stiffly, "but he was not my friend."

"Well, he's nobody's friend now, is he? Because he failed. If he'd won, you'd all have been hanging on his every word and inviting him to dinner." The agent gave a long, melancholy sniff of disparagement from somewhere within the hood. "Hang on to this a minute, I need a drink."

"Euuch! It's all cold and clammy. Hurry up!"

"Coming." Harlequin's hands were rummaging within his cloak in a complex sort of way. A moment later, they emerged, holding a dark green bottle with a cork stopper. He pulled out the cork and tilted the bottle into the depths of his cowl. A gulping noise ensued, followed by the smell of strong liquor.

"That's better." Unseen lips smacked, cork returned to bottle, and bottle returned to pocket.

"I'll take that back. You didn't damage it, did you? It is a bit fragile. Now," Harlequin went on,

"perhaps Lovelace intended to use the eye himself; if so, his plan was thwarted by his death. Someone else, maybe an associate of his—who knows?—has now stolen it from our government, and appears to have got the thing to work.... This is where it gets difficult."

"They need the formative spell, too," Nathaniel said. "It is written on a parchment and inserted into the golem's mouth before it comes to life. That's the bit that nobody's known for all these years.

No one in London, anyway."

The agent nodded. "The secret may have been lost; equally, it may still be known in Prague, but just remain unused. The Council does not want to enrage London at present; the British are too strong. They prefer to send spies and small groups over to London to work quietly, gathering information. This golem of yours... it's too dramatic a move for the Czechs—they would expect invasion to follow as a direct result. No, I think you are hunting for a maverick, someone working for their own individual ends."

"So where do I look?" Nathaniel asked. He couldn't help yawning as he spoke; he had been awake since the British Museum incident the previous night. It had been a taxing day.

"I must consider..." The agent remained lost in thought for a few moments. "I need time to make inquiries. We will meet again tomorrow night, when I will give you names." He wrapped his cloak about himself with a dramatic sweep. "Meet me—"

Nathaniel interrupted him. "I hope you're not going to say 'in the shadow of the gibbet' or 'at Execution Dock' or anything dreary like that."

The figure drew itself up. "Ridiculous. The very idea."

"Good."

"I was going to suggest the old plague pits on Hybernska Street."

"No."

The agent seemed rather miffed. "All right," he growled.

"Six o'clock at the hot-dog stand in the Old Town Square. That mundane enough for you?"

"That'll do nicely."

"Until then, then..." With a billow of the cloak and a creak of hidden knees, the figure turned and swept its way up the cemetery path, its corpse light flickering dimly into the distance. Soon the light was gone, and nothing but a fleeting shadow and a muffled curse when it knocked into a gravestone indicated it had ever been.

Nathaniel sat down on a headstone, waiting for Bartimaeus to show. The meeting had been satisfactory, if a little irritating; now he had plenty of time to rest before the following evening. His weary mind drifted. The memory of Jane Farrar came back to him. How pleasant it had been to have her so close.... It had affected him almost like a drug. He frowned—of course it was like a drug.

She'd worked a Charm on him, hadn't she? And he'd nearly fallen for it, completely ignoring his sensor's warning. What a fool he was.

The girl had either wanted to delay him, or learn more about what he knew. Either way, she would be working for her master, Duvall, who evidently did not want Internal Affairs having any sort of success in this matter. When he got back, he would doubtless face more hostility of the same kind.

Duvall, Tallow, Farrar... Even his master, Ms. Whitwell, was not to be relied on, if he didn't produce the goods for her.

Nathaniel rubbed his eyes. He suddenly felt very tired.

"Bless, you look ready to drop." The djinni was sitting on an opposite gravestone, in its familiar boy guise. It was crossing its legs in identical fashion to Nathaniel, and pulling an extravagant yawn.

"You should have been tucked up hours ago."

"Did you hear everything?"

"Most of it. I missed a bit after he let loose that Circlet. It nearly hit me, and I had to take evasive action. Good job those tree roots had dislodged a few gravestones. I was able to drop into an underground cavity while the probe passed over." The boy paused to shake a bit of gray dust out of its hair. "Not that I generally recommend graves as a place to hide. You never know what you might find. But the occupant of this particular one was quite hospitable. Let me cuddle up to him for a few moments." It gave a knowing wink.

Nathaniel shuddered. "How perfectly foul."

"Speaking of which," the djinni said. "That candle the bloke was carrying. Was it really...?"

"Yes. I'm trying not to think about it. Harlequin is more than half-mad, which is no doubt what comes of living in Prague too long." Nathaniel stood and buttoned up his coat. "But he does have his uses. He's hoping to give us some contact names tomorrow night."

"Good," the boy said, busily buttoning its coat in a similar fashion. "Then perhaps we'll have a bit of action. My recipe for informers is either to roast them over a slow flame or hang them by a leg out of a high window. That usually makes a Czech spill the beans."

"There'll be none of that if we can possibly avoid it." Nathaniel began to walk down the path out of the graveyard. "The authorities mustn't know we're here, so we can't draw attention to ourselves.

That means no violence or obvious magic. Got that?"

"Of course." The djinni smiled broadly as it fell in step beside him. "You know me."

Kitty

At 9:25 on the morning of the great raid, Kitty was heading down a backstreet in London's West End. She went quickly, almost jogging; the bus had been held up by traffic on Westminster Bridge, and she was running late. A small rucksack bounced on her back; her hair streamed behind her as she went.

At precisely 9:30, disheveled and a little out of breath, Kitty arrived at the Stage Door of the Coliseum Theatre, pushed gently, and found it unlocked. She took a quick look behind her at the rubbish-strewn street, saw nothing, slipped inside.

A drab and dirty corridor was filled with buckets and obscure wooden constructions presumably destined for the stage. A little light filtered through a grubby window; there was a strong smell of paint in the stale air.

Ahead was another door. Obeying her memorized instructions, Kitty soundlessly crossed to it and passed through into a second room, this one filled with quiet racks of costumes. The staleness of the air increased. Someone's bygone lunch—pieces of sandwich and potato chips, and half-filled cups of coffee—lay scattered on a table. Kitty entered a third room and found a sudden change: beneath her feet was a thick carpet and the walls were papered. The air now smelled distantly of smoke and polish. She was near the front of the theater, in the public corridors.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 535