Read Chapter 10: The Water Gate

The barge moved with the sluggish patience of a beast that had seen too many summers on the river. Tom lay curled beneath the coil of rope, the iron box pressed cold against his ribs—cold now, though it had warmed twice before, and that variance troubled him more than any steady heat might have.

The captain, a grey-whiskered man named Elias Hooke, stood at the tiller with his eyes on the water ahead. They had passed the great bend at Rotherhithe an hour past, and now the Tower of London rose against the smoke-stained sky like a stone fist. Its walls were black with soot, though the fire had not yet reached this far east. The wind was wrong for it. But Tom had seen how that wind could turn.

"Soldiers," Elias said, his voice low and flat.

Tom pressed himself flatter. "Where?"

"North bank. At the wharf beyond the Tower. They're stopping every vessel what passes."

Tom risked one eye above the rope coil. Six riders in dark leather and steel caps stood at the water's edge, their horses stamping nervously at the smoke that drifted in fitful gusts across the river. One of them wore a red cloak that pooled over the horse's rump like blood spilling. Not Sir Robert himself—Tom would have known that shape, that stillness—but the cloak was the same shade, the same cut. Markham's men.

"Can we put in before they see us?"

"There's no bank between here and the wharf that ain't watched," Elias said. "We go past, or we turn back, and turning back puts us in the teeth of the fire."

Tom touched the box. It was warm. Just barely, but warm.

He pulled his hand away.

The barge drifted closer. Tom could hear the soldiers now—one of them laughing at something, the sound carrying oddly over water. The red-cloaked rider had dismounted and was walking the length of the wharf, peering at each boat as it was waved in. A fishing smack had already been pulled alongside, two men in rough wool standing with their hands raised while a soldier probed their nets with a pike.

"We'll say you're my servant," Elias said without turning. "You keep your mouth shut and your eyes low, and we'll pass."

"You'd lie for me?"

"I'd lie for any man what paid his way with his father's buckle." The captain spat over the side. "Don't make it a habit."

The barge slid toward the wharf. The red-cloaked rider turned as they approached, and Tom saw that his face was young—younger than Markham by a decade or more—and that his eyes moved like a hawk's, quick and hungry.

"Hold there," the rider called. "Where bound?"

"Dartford," Elias said. "Coal and salt, mostly. Some wool in the hold."

"Your crew?"

"Myself and the boy." Elias jerked his thumb toward Tom, who had risen to his feet with a servant's slump—shoulders curved, gaze fixed on the deck boards. "He's simple but he's strong. Good for hauling."

The rider's horse stepped forward, hooves clicking on the wet stones. Tom kept his eyes down. He could feel the box where he'd left it beneath the rope, could feel it as though it were pressing against his spine instead of lying ten feet away. The warmth from it seemed to seep through the deck planks.

The rider was close now. Tom could smell horse and leather and something else—oil, perhaps, or smoke that had soaked into the cloak so thoroughly it had become part of the man.

The hunter leaned forward in his saddle. "You've come up from the Pool. You'd have seen a young man, thin, dark-haired. Carrying a box."

Tom's heart lurched. He kept his face slack, his mouth slightly open. He let a little drool gather at the corner of his lip.

Elias scratched his chin. "Saw a few folk on the banks, sir. Most heading south, some east. Boy that fits that—" He paused, spat again. "There was one, now. Come to think. At the stairs near Billingsgate. Climbed up from a wherry and went off toward the markets. But he weren't carrying nothing I saw."

The rider's eyes narrowed. "Which stair?"

"Third one past the customs house, I think." Elias frowned as though trying to remember. "Or the fourth. Hard to tell with the smoke, begging your pardon."

The red-cloaked man stared at Elias for a long moment. Tom could feel the weight of that stare even without looking at it, could feel the way it moved over the captain's weathered face like a hand searching for a loose stone in a wall.

Then, beneath the rope, something moved.

A rat—fat and bold and desperate, driven from its nest by the shifting cargo—squeezed out from between two coils of hemp and darted across the deck. It ran straight toward the red-cloaked rider's horse.

The horse shied. The rider cursed and hauled on the reins. The rat, panicked, changed course and vanished into a gap between barrels, leaving a trail of disturbed dust.

The red-cloaked rider steadied his mount, his face flushed with anger. He looked at Tom again, and Tom let his mouth hang open a little wider, let his eyes go vague and unfocused.

"Your servant," the rider said. "He's not much for conversation."

"He don't talk much," Elias agreed. "He's good for hauling, like I said. Not much else."

The rider's mouth twitched—contempt, or dismissal, or both. He turned his horse away from the barge.

"Pass," he said.

Elias touched his brow in deference and pushed the tiller. The barge nosed away from the wharf, the current catching it and pulling it downriver. Tom watched the red cloak shrink in the distance, watched the rider remount and lead his men along the bank, still searching, still hunting.

When the wharf was a hundred yards behind them, Tom let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"That rat," he said.

"Saved your skin." Elias's voice was flat. "Or damned it. Can't tell which yet."

"I thought you'd said I was your servant."

"You told me the truth on my boat. I paid you back with a lie. That makes us even." Elias looked at him then, and Tom saw something hard in the old man's eyes that had not been there before. "But I'll not lie for you again. The next time those cloaks come asking, I'll give you to them and claim the reward myself."

Tom said nothing. The iron box had gone cold again.

The barge continued downriver, past the Tower, past the burned wharves and the empty warehouses, past the clusters of refugees huddled on the south bank with their bundles and their blank faces. The fire still raged behind them, a red glow against the lowering sky like the dawn of some terrible unnatural day.

Tom reached beneath the rope and pulled the box into his lap. He turned it over in his hands, feeling its weight—heavier than it should be, the waterman had said. He looked at the phoenix engraved on its lid, wings spread, head thrown back, and tried to imagine what kind of fire could forge such a thing.

The captain's voice came from the tiller. "There's a man upriver of here. An old scholar, lives in a stone tower near the water gate at Woolwich. Knows more about old things than anyone living. If that box of yours is what I think it is, he's the one who could tell you."

Tom looked up. "What do you think it is?"

Elias was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "I think it's the reason the fire started. And I think it's the reason it's still burning."

The box was cold in Tom's hands, but as the captain spoke those words, he could have sworn he felt it shiver.