Bartimaeus: The Golem’s Eye (23 page)

“I’m only acting on information received, sir,” Nathaniel said, respectfully. “Prague seems the appropriate place to begin.” His neutral tone and posture concealed the fact that he agreed wholeheartedly with everything the Secretary had said.

“Mm. Well, you know best.” The Second Secretary’s voice made it clear he thought Nathaniel didn’t. “Now … see this packet? That contains your fake passport for the trip. You’ll be traveling as Derek Smithers, a young apprentice working for “Watt’s Wine Company of Marylebone. Your pack contains documents confirming that, should Czech customs get fussy.”

“Derek … Smithers, sir?” Nathaniel did not look too enthused.

“Yes. Only name we could get. Poor lad died of dropsy last month, at about your age; we’ve since appropriated his identity for government service. Now, you’re officially going to Prague with a view to importing some of their excellent beer. I’ve put a list of brewers in your packet for you to memorize on the flight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. Above all, you’ve got to be low-key on this mission, Mandrake. Don’t draw attention to yourself in any way. If you have to use magic, do it quietly and do it quickly. I hear you might be using a demon. If so,
keep it under control.”

“Of course, sir.”

“The Czechs are not to know that you’re a magician. Part of our current treaty with them is that we promise not to conduct any magical activities in their territories. And vice versa.”

Nathaniel frowned. “But sir, I heard that Czech infiltrators have been active in Britain recently. Surely they’re breaking the treaty.”

The Secretary flashed an irritated side-glance at Nathaniel and tapped his fingers on the map. “That is so. They are quite untrustworthy. Who knows, they may even be behind this ‘golem incident’of yours, too.”

“In that case—”

“I know what you’re about to say, Mandrake. Of course, there’s nothing we’d like better than to march our armies into Wenceslas Square tomorrow and show the Czechs what’s what, but we can’t do that right now.”

“Why not, sir?”

“Because of the American rebels. We’re unfortunately a trifle stretched just at this moment. Won’t last long. We’ll mop up the Yankees and then turn our attention back to Europe. But just at this point, we don’t want anything causing ructions. Got that?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Besides,
we’re
breaking the truce in a dozen ways as well. That’s diplomacy for you. In truth, the Czechs have been getting above themselves for the last ten years. Mr. Devereaux’s campaigns in Italy and central Europe were inconclusive, and the Prague Council has begun to probe our Empire for weaknesses. They’re nipping at us the way a flea does a dog. Never mind. All will come right in time….” The Second Secretary wore an expression in which hardness and complacency were equally mingled. He turned his attention to the map again. “Now then, Mandrake,” he said, briskly, “you’ll be wanting a contact in Prague, I suppose. Someone to help you get your bearings.”

Nathaniel nodded. “Do you have someone there, sir?”

“We do. One of our top agents…. His name is Harlequin.”

“Harlequin …” In his mind’s eye, Nathaniel saw a slender, masked figure, stealing with a dancing step among the shadows, carrying an air of carnival and menace in its wake….

“Indeed. That is his agent’s title. His real name I cannot tell you; possibly it is unknown even to himself. If you’re visualizing a slender, masked gentleman, colorfully costumed, and spry of foot, then think again. Our Harlequin is a plump, elderly man of funereal temperament. Also, he is given to wearing black.” The Secretary made a face of refined distaste. “Prague does that to you, if you stay there too long. It is a melancholy city. Several of our agents have been driven to suicide over the years. Harlequin seems sound enough so far, but he is a trifle morbid in his sensibilities.”

Nathaniel swept his hair out of his eyes. “I’m sure I can handle that, sir. How will I meet him?”

“At midnight this evening, leave your hotel and make your way to the cemetery in the ghetto—that is here, by the way Mandrake … see? Just along from the Old Town Square. You are to wear a soft cap, with a blood-red feather in it, and stroll among the tombstones. Harlequin will find you. You will recognize him by the distinctive candle that he carries.”

“A distinctive candle.”

“That’s right.”

“What—is it particularly long or wonky, or what?”

“He did not furnish me with that information.”

Nathaniel made a face. “Pardon me, but it all seems a bit … melodramatic, doesn’t it, sir? All these cemeteries and candles and blood-red feathers. Couldn’t he just give me a ring in my hotel room when I’ve had a shower, and meet me in a café downstairs?”

The Secretary smiled bleakly. He passed the packet across to Nathaniel and made his way behind the farthest table to a plush leather chair, in which he sat with a small sigh. He swiveled it to face the windows, where watery clouds could be seen hanging low over London. It was raining far off to the west: smudged marks in the sky angled down into unseen folds of the city. The Secretary gazed out for a time without speaking.

“Behold the modern city,” he said at last, “built to the finest modern templates. Look at the proud buildings of Whitehall: none of them more than a hundred and fifty years old! Of course there are tatty, unreconstructed areas still—that is inevitable, with so many commoners about—but the heart of London, where we work and live, is entirely forward-looking. A city of the future. A city worthy of a great empire. Your Ms. Whitwell’s apartment, Mandrake—a fine building; it exemplifies the modern trend. There should be many more like that. Mr. Devereaux plans to bulldoze much of Covent Garden next year, rebuild all those little timber-framed houses as glorious visions of concrete and glass….”

The chair swiveled back toward the room; he gestured at the maps. “Prague now—that’s different, Mandrake. By all accounts it is a peculiarly
gloomy
sort of spot, far too nostalgic for the glories of its vanished past. Bit of a morbid fixation on things that are dead and gone: the magicians, the alchemists, the great Czech Empire. Well, any doctor could tell you that’s an unhealthy sort of outlook—if Prague were a human, we’d lock her in a sanatorium. Now, I daresay we could shake Prague out of her daydreams if we chose, Mandrake, but we
don’t
choose. No. Far better to have her mind muddled and mysterious, rather than clear-cut and farsighted like London’s. And people such as Harlequin, who keep an eye on things there for us, have to think in the same way as the Czechs do. Or they wouldn’t be any good to us, would they? Harlequin is a better spy than most, Mandrake. Hence his colorful instructions. I suggest you follow them to the letter.”

“Yes sir, I’ll certainly do my best.”

23

I
could tell it was Prague as soon as I materialized. The shabby ostentation of the gold chandelier hanging from the hotel-room ceiling; the ornate and grimy moldings around the uppermost edges of the walls; the dusty folds of the drapery above the small four-poster bed; the melancholy tingle in the air—all pointed only one way. As did the expression of foul distemper upon my master’s face. Even as he mumbled out the last syllables of the summoning, he was looking around the room as if he half-expected it to rise up and bite him.

“Pleasant journey?” I inquired.

He completed a few protective bonds and stepped from the circle, signaling me to do the same. “Hardly. There were still some magical traces on me when I went through customs. They collared me and took me to a drafty backroom where I had to talk pretty fast—I said my wine warehouse was right next to a government compound and occasional deviant spells permeated the walls. In the end, they bought it and let me go.” He scowled. “I can’t understand it! I changed all my clothes before leaving home to prevent any traces sticking to me!”

“Underpants, too?”

He paused. “Oh—I was in a hurry. I forgot them.”

“That’ll be it, then. You’d be surprised what builds up down there.”

“And look at this room,” the boy continued. “This is meant to be their top hotel! I swear it hasn’t been redecorated this century. Look at the cobwebs on those drapes! Appalling. And can you tell what color that carpet’s supposed to be? Because
I
can’t.” He kicked out at the bed irritably; a cloud of dust ballooned outward. “And what’s this stupid four-poster thing, anyway? Why can’t they just have a nice clean futon or something, like at home?”

“Cheer up! At least you’ve got your own facilities.” I investigated a forbidding-looking side door: it swung open with a theatrical squeak to reveal a dingily tiled bathroom, lit by a single bulb. A monstrous three-legged bath lurked in one corner; it was the kind brides are bumped off in, or where pet crocodiles grow to vast size, fed on unusual meats.
¹
A similarly imposing toilet waited opposite, its chain hanging from the ceiling like a gallows rope.
²
Cobwebs and mold fought keenly for dominion of the far reaches of the ceiling. A complex series of metal pipes wound around each other across the wall, connecting bath and toilet and looking for all the world like the spilled intestines of a—

I shut the door. “On second thought, I wouldn’t bother looking in there. Just a bathroom. Nothing special. How’s the view?”

He glowered at me. “Check it out.”

I parted the heavy scarlet curtains and looked out on a charming vista of a large municipal graveyard. Lines of neat headstones stretched away into the night, shepherded by rows of gloomy ash and larch. At intervals, yellow lanterns hanging from trees gave off mournful light. A few hunched and solitary individuals could be seen wandering the gravel paths between the stones; the wind carried their sighs up to the window.

I drew the curtains smartly. “Yes.… Not exactly uplifting, I admit.”

“Uplifting? This is the dreariest place I’ve ever been!”

“Well, what do you expect? You’re British. Of course they’ll put you in a lousy room with a view of a graveyard.”

The boy was sitting at a heavy desk, inspecting some papers from a small brown packet. He spoke absently “I should get the best room for exactly that reason.”

“Are you kidding? After what Gladstone did to Prague? They don’t forget, you know.”

He looked up at this. “That was warfare. We won, fair and square. With minimum loss of civilian life.”

I was Ptolemy at this point, standing by the curtains, arms folded, glowering at him in my turn. “You reckon?” I sneered. “Tell that to the people of the suburbs. There are still wastelands out there, where the houses burned.”

“Oh, you’d know, would you?”

“Of course I’d know! I was there, wasn’t I? Fighting for the Czechs, I might add. Whereas everything
you’ve
learned was concocted by Gladstone’s Ministry of Propaganda after the war. Don’t lecture me about it,
boy.”

He looked, for a moment, as if he might erupt into one of his old furies. Then a switch seemed to go off inside him, and he instead became all cold and careless. He turned back to his papers, blank-faced, as if what I had said was of no account and even bored him. I would have preferred the anger, somehow.

“In London,” he said, almost to himself, “the cemeteries are outside the city boundaries. Much more hygienic that way. We have special funeral trains to take the bodies out.

That’s the modern method. This place is living in the past.” I said nothing. He didn’t deserve the benefit of my wisdom.

For perhaps an hour, the boy studied his papers by the light of a low candle, making small notes in the margins. He ignored me; I ignored him, except to subtly send a breeze across the room to make the candle gutter over his work in an irritating manner. At half-past ten, he rang down to reception and, in perfect Czech, ordered a dish of grilled lamb and a carafe of wine to be delivered to his room. Then he put down his pen and turned to me, smoothing his hair back with his hand.

“Got it!” I said, from the depths of the four-poster, where I was taking my ease, “I know who you remind me of now. It’s been bugging me since you summoned me last week. Lovelace! You fiddle with your hair just like he did. Can’t leave it alone.”

“I want to talk about the golems of Prague,” he said.

“It’s a vanity thing—must be. All that oil.”

“You’ve seen golems in action. What kind of magician uses them?”

“I reckon it shows insecurity as well. A constant need to preen.”

“Was it always Czech magicians who created them? Could a British one do it?”

“Gladstone
never
fiddled—with his hair or anything else. He was always very still.”

The boy blinked; he showed interest for the first time. “You knew Gladstone?”

“Knew’s
putting it a trifle strongly. I saw him from afar. He was usually present during battle, leaning on his Staff, watching his troops cause carnage; here in Prague, across Europe…. Like I say, he was very still; he observed everything, said little; then, when it counted, every movement was decisive and considered. Nothing like your prattling mages of today”

“Really?”
You could tell the boy was fascinated. No prizes for guessing who he modeled himself on. “So,” he said, “you kind of admired him, in your poisonous, demonic sort of way?”

“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.

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.

“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.