Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (51 page)

It was no good. They were all going to die, just as Mrs. Underwood had died, and

again he was about to fail. How badly Nathaniel wanted to help them! But desire alone

was not enough. More than anything else he had wanted to save Mrs. Underwood, bring

her from the flames. He would have given his life for hers, if he could. But he had not saved her. He had been carried away and she had gone forever. His love had counted for nothing.

For a moment, his past loss and the urgency of his present desire mingled and

welled within him.

Tears ran down his cheeks.

Patience, Nathaniel.

Patience...

He breathed in slowly. His sorrow receded. And across a great gulf came the

remembered peace of his master's garden—he saw again the rhododendron bushes, their

leaves glinting dark green in the sun. He saw the apple trees shedding their white

blossom; a cat lying on a red-brick wall. He felt the lichen under his fingers; saw the moss on the statue; he felt himself protected again from the wider world. He imagined

Ms. Lutyens sitting quietly, sketching by his side. A feeling of peace stole over him.

His mind cleared, his memory blossomed.

The necessary words came to him, as he had learned them sitting on the stone seat

a year or more ago.

He opened his eyes and spoke them, his voice loud and clear and strong. At the

end of the fifteenth syllable, he split the summoning horn in two across his knee.

As the ivory cracked and the words rang out, Ramuthra stopped dead. The

shimmering ripples in the air that defined its outlines quivered, first gently and then with greater force. The rift in the center of the room opened a little. Then, with astonishing suddenness, the outlines of the demon crumpled and shrank, were drawn back into the rift and vanished.

The rift closed up: a scar healing at blinding speed.

With it gone, the hall seemed cavernous and empty. One chandelier and several

small wall lights came on again, casting a weak radiance here and there. Outside, the late afternoon sky was gray, darkening to deep blue. The wind could be heard rushing through the trees in the wood.

There was absolute silence in the hall. The crowd of magicians and one or two

bruised and battered imps remained quite still. Only one thing moved: a boy limping

forward across the center of the room, with the Amulet of Samarkand dangling from his

fingers. The jade stone at its center gleamed faintly in the half light.

In utter silence, Nathaniel crossed to where Rupert Devereaux sprawled half

buried under the Foreign Minister, and placed the Amulet carefully in his hands.

43

Bartimaeus

Typical of the kid, that was. Having carried out the most important act of his

grubby little life, you'd expect him to sink to the ground in exhaustion and relief. But did he? No. This was his big chance, and he seized it in the most theatrical fashion possible.

With all eyes on him, he hobbled across the ruined auditorium like a wounded bird, frail as you like, straight for the center of power.

What was he going to do? No one knew; no one dared to guess (I saw the Prime

Minister flinch when the boy held out his hand). And then, in the climactic moment of

this little charade, all was revealed: the legendary Amulet of Samarkand—held up high so all could see—handed back to the bosom of the Government. The kid even remembered

to bow his head deferentially as he did so.

Sensation in the hall!

What a performance, eh? In fact, almost more than his ability to bully djinn, this

instinctive pandering to the crowd suggested to me that the boy was probably destined for worldly success.[1]

Certainly, his actions here had the desired effect: in moments, he was the center of

an admiring throng.

[1] If magicians rely on theatrical effects to overawe the people, they also use

much the same techniques to impress and outmaneuver each other.

Unnoticed in all this fuss, I abandoned Ptolemy's form and took on the semblance

of a minor imp, which presently (when the crowd drew back) hovered over to the boy's

side in a humble sort of way. I had no desire for my true capabilities to be noticed.

Someone might have drawn a connection with the swashbuckling djinni who had lately

escaped from the government prison.

Nathaniel's shoulder was the ideal vantage point for me to observe the aftermath

of the attempted coup, since for a few hours at least the boy was the center of attention.

Wherever the Prime Minister and his senior colleagues went, my master went too,

answering urgent questions and stuffing his face with the reviving sweetmeats that

underlings brought him.

When a systematic headcount was made, the list of missing was found to include

four ministers (all fortunately from fairly junior posts) and a single under-secretary.[2] In addition, several magicians had suffered major facial and bodily distortions, or been

otherwise inconvenienced.

[2] Amanda Cathcart, Simon Lovelace, and six servants had also vanished into the

rift or the mouth of Ramuthra, but under the circumstances, the magicians did not

consider these significant losses.

The general relief quickly turned to anger. With Ramuthra gone, the magicians

were able to set their slaves against the magical barriers on the doors and walls and

quickly burst out into the house. A thorough search was made of Heddleham Hall, but

apart from assorted servants, the dead body of the old man and an angry boy locked in a lavatory, no one was discovered. Unsurprisingly, the fish-faced magician Rufus Lime had gone; nor was there any sign of the tall, black-bearded man who had manned the

gatehouse. Both seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Nathaniel also directed the investigators to the kitchen, where a compressed group

of under-cooks was found trembling in a pantry. They reported that about half an hour

previously,[3] the head chef had given a great cry, burst into blue flame, and swelled to a great and terrifying size before vanishing in a gust of brimstone. Upon inspection, a meat cleaver was found deeply embedded in the stonework of the fireplace, the last memento

of Faquarl's bondage.[4]

[3] That is, at exactly the moment Lovelace perished.

[4] So, once again, our paths had crossed without a definitive confrontation. A

pity really; I was looking forward to giving Faquarl a good hiding. I just hadn't quite had time to get round to it.

With the main conspirators dead or vanished, the magicians set to interrogating

the servants of the Hall. However, they proved ignorant of the conspiracy. They reported that during the previous few weeks Simon Lovelace had organized the extensive

refurbishment of the auditorium, keeping it out of bounds for long periods. Unseen

workers, accompanied by many oddly colored lights and sounds, had constructed the

glass floor and inserted the new carpet,[5] supervised by a certain well-dressed gentleman with a round face and reddish beard.

[5] As well as no doubt creating the secret mechanism in an adjacent room, which

pulled back the carpet from the floor and triggered the bars upon the windows. Certain types of foliot are very gifted at construction jobs; I used to have a band of them under me when working on the walls of Prague. They're good workers, provided they don't hear the sound of church bells, in which case they drop tools and crumble into ashes. That was a drag on festival days—I had to employ a bunch of imps with dustpans and brushes to

sweep away the pieces.

This was a new clue. My master eagerly reported sighting such a person leaving

the Hall that very morning, and messengers were immediately sent out with his

description to alert the police in London and the home counties.

When all was done that could be done, Devereaux and his senior ministers

refreshed themselves with champagne, cold meats, and jellied fruits and listened properly to my master's story. And what a story it was. What an outrageous yarn he told. Even I, with my long experience of human duplicity, was flabbergasted by the whoppers that boy came up with. To be frank, he
did
have a lot of things to hide: his own theft of the Amulet, for example, and my little encounter with Sholto Pinn. But a lot of his fibs were quite unnecessary. I had to sit quietly on his shoulder and hear myself referred to as a

"minor imp" (five times), a "sort of foliot" (twice), and even (once) as a

"homunculus."[6] I ask you—how insulting is that?

[6]
Homunculus:
a tiny manikin produced by magic and often trapped in a bottle as a magician's curio. A few have prophetic powers, although it is important to do exactly the
opposite
of what they recommend, since homunculi are always malevolent and seek to do their creators harm.

But that wasn't the half of it. He recounted (with big, mournful eyes) how his dear

master, Arthur Underwood, had long been suspicious of Simon Lovelace, but had never

had proof of any wrongdoing. Until, that was, the fateful day when Underwood had by

chanced perceived the Amulet of Samarkand in Lovelace's possession. Before he could

tell the authorities, Lovelace and his djinn had arrived at the house intent on murder.

Underwood, together with John Mandrake, his faithful apprentice, had put up strong

resistance, while even Mrs. Underwood had pitched in, heroically trying to tackle

Lovelace herself. All in vain. Mr. and Mrs. Underwood had been killed and Nathaniel had fled for his life, with only a minor imp to help him. There were actually tears in his eyes when he recounted all this; it was almost as if he believed the rubbish he was spouting.

That was the bulk of his lie. Having no way of proving Lovelace's guilt, Nathaniel

had then traveled to Heddleham Hall in the hope of somehow preventing his terrible

crime. Now he was only happy he had managed to save the lives of his country's noble

rulers, etc., etc.; honestly, it was enough to make an imp weep.

But they bought it. Didn't doubt a single word. He had another hurried snack, a

swig of champagne, and then my master was whisked away in a ministerial limousine,

back to London and further debriefing.

I went along too, of course. I wasn't letting him out of my sights for anything. He

had a promise to keep.

44

The servant's footsteps receded down the stairs. The boy and I looked around.

"I preferred your old room," I said. "This one smells, and you haven't even moved in yet."

"It doesn't smell."

"It does: of fresh paint and plastic and all things new and fabricated. Which I

suppose is quite appropriate for you—don't you think so, Mr.
Mandrake?"

He didn't answer. He was bounding across to the window to look out at the view.

It was the evening of the day following the great summoning at Heddleham Hall,

and for the first time, my master was being left to his own devices. He had spent much of the previous twenty-four hours in meetings with ministers and police, going over his

story and no doubt adding lies with each retelling. Meanwhile, I'd remained out on the street,[1] shivering with impatience. My frustration had only increased when the boy had spent the first night in a specially provided dormitory on Whitehall, a building heavily guarded in numerous ways. While he snored within, I'd been forced to skulk outside, still unable to engage him in the necessary chat.

[1] Government offices tend to be full of afrits and search spheres, and I feared

they might take exception to my presence.

But now another day had passed and his future had been decided. An official car

had driven him to his new master's home—a modern riverside development on the south

bank of the Thames. Dinner would be served at half past eight; his master would await

him in the dining room at eight-fifteen. This meant that Nathaniel and I had an hour all to ourselves. I intended to make it count.

The room contained the usual: bed, desk, wardrobe (a walk-in one, this—

swanky), bookcase, bedside table, chair. A connecting door led to a tiny private bathroom.

There was a powerful electric light set in the pristine ceiling and a small window in one wall. Outside, the moon shone on the waters of the Thames. The boy was looking out at

the Houses of Parliament almost directly opposite, an odd expression on his face.

"They're a lot nearer now," I said.

"Yes. She'd be very proud." He turned, only to discover that I had adopted

Ptolemy's form and was reclining on his bed. "Get off there! I don't want your horrible—

hey!" He spotted a book tucked into a shelf beside the bed. "Faust's Compendium! My own copy. That's amazing! Underwood forbade me to touch this."

"Just remember—it didn't do Faust any good."

He was flipping the pages. "Brilliant... And my master says I can do minor

conjurings in my room."

"Ah, yes—your nice, sweet, new master." I shook my head sadly. "You're pleased with her, are you?"

He nodded eagerly. "Ms. Whitwell's very powerful. She'll teach me lots. And

she'll treat me with proper respect, too."

"You think so? An honorable magician, is she?" I made a sour face. My old friend Jessica Whitwell, rake-thin Minister for Security, head of the Tower of London, controller of the Mournful Orbs. Yes, she was powerful, all right. And it was no doubt a sign of how highly the authorities thought of Nathaniel that he was being trusted to her tender care.

Certainly, she would be a very different master from Arthur Underwood, and would see

to it that his talent didn't go to waste. What it would do to his temperament was another question. Well—no doubt he was getting exactly what he deserved.