Chapter 3
The Map

“What was that you were saying about the gutter?” the girl asked sweetly, yet with a steely glint in her eyes that made Ben sweat.

The knife point pressed slightly deeper.

“Now then miss, let’s just try and calm down. We both had a bit of difficulty today. I spoke a bit in haste and maybe I was wrong. No need to make it worse.”

“Well, I suppose cutting your throat would not help things much,” she mused.

“No, least ways not for me!” Ben replied sincerely.

The girl nodded and withdrew the knife. It disappeared inside a sleeve in a moment, as quickly as it has appeared.

Rubbing his throat, Ben studied the girl. She was looking around the graveyard and he now also examined it, taking in the details for the first time. The churchyard was bounded on the west, north and east sides by a tall brick wall, which was crumbling and leaning inwards slightly in some places. One five foot section of the wall to the west had collapsed completely, and he could see into the alleyway beyond. The church itself and the path they had entered by lay to the south of them, just off Threadneedle Street. From there they could hear the bustle of hackney carriages, coaches and carts and even the eternal babble of London’s immense population. But here, in the graveyard and in stark contrast, they were quite alone.

“Got anything to eat?” the thief asked scratching her nose absently. Her tone was now friendly and quite different to that of a few moments before.

Unthinkingly he pulled an apple and some bread out of his satchel, where he had placed them when entering the bookshop. These were snatched away by a pair of grubby hands, and the bread thrust into her mouth. He watched her eat for a few moments and then, thinking about it for the first time since he left the Exchange, he drew out the scroll and held it - still rolled up - in his right hand while he pondered what it was.

The girl looked him up and down as she ate.

“That’s posh clothes wot you are wearing there gov. Your old man well off is he?” She asked in a muffled voice around mouthfuls of bread. Ben frowned for a moment and then, without taking his eyes off the scroll, shook his head.

“My parents are dead,” he said simply.

“Oh,” she said, “mine too. Least way’s me ma is. The old man shoved off when I was young. That’s what she said anyway. Might not have known who he was of course.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he replied automatically.

Now it was the girl’s turn to frown.

“Why you so sorry then; there weren’t your parents were they?”

A moment later her face cleared again and she bit into the apple and chomped it.

“So wot did they die of?” she asked as juice ran down her chin, leaving a clean line through the grime.

He was silent for a long time as a distant memory stirred and his hand went unbidden to his pendant and he touched it. In his mind he could smell smoke, he saw a red and yellow light, felt heat and heard a crackling, roaring sound. Then he recalled a scream, and being lowered from a window to land with a bump that winded him. ‘Mother’, he had shouted and, ‘father....’ before he had passed out. He blinked and shook his head.

“Six month’s ago there was a fire...,” was all he said. Then after a moment he spoke again.

“My uncle is a lawyer at the court and he took me in...after they died, but most of the time I am at the school in Westminster. He is kind enough - I suppose - but I don’t see much of him.”

He looked at the thief, suddenly surprised at what he was telling her. This conversation was the longest he had with any one in six months.

“What about you then? What did your mother die from?”

“The plague last year,” she answered, and tossed the apple core away.

Ben took a step backwards without thinking and the girl stopped eating and looked him over.

“Don’t worry posh boy, I aint got it.”

“Sorry, I never saw the plague much in Westminster when it started up, and Father took me back to our house out in Surrey when it started spreading, and then...after the fire I was at my uncle’s. I only came back to the school during the summer. But I heard things...was it bad?”

The girl thought back. She saw her mother weaken and grow ill. She grew terrible sores and boils, wasted away and then died in front of her daughter. Her last words were ‘I’m sorry love.’ After that she just screamed in agony until she died.

The next day the plague ‘searchers’ came: men wearing black and carrying white rods as badges of rank. They entered the house and having confirmed Freya’s mothers had died of plague had summoned the ‘bearers’- these men carried red wands. They came in with long metal hooks which they use to heave her, without ceremony or respect, out of bed so she fell heavily on the floor and was dragged outside. Once there she was dumped into a cart drawn up outside and taken away.

The watchmen had then forced the distraught Freya back into her house and had nailed the door shut. She had screamed to be let out but no one answered. No one dared take the risk in case she had the plague. There was no room for good Samaritans in London that year. In the end she had broken through the boards on the windows out the back and escaped into the dark alleyways.

Freya heard later her mother had been tipped, with scores of other corpses, into large plague pits dug just outside the city walls – but which one she never did know.

The girl looked at the boy like he was an idiot.

“Of course it was bad, you daft sod.”

“Sorry,” he said again.

“There you go again saying yer sorry. Why should you be sorry? You were in your palace in Surrey when it happened.”

He just shook his head.

“It was not a palace, just a house...”

“Well it weren’t a slum in Blackfriars were it!” she snapped.

He did not reply. He was reminded that this was not his world, and again he was surprised to still be talking to her, but scruffy and dirty as she was there was a fire there in her eyes that spoke of a world outside the books and chalk of his own.

“So wot is yer name then?” she asked in a calmer voice whilst stuffing the last of the bread in her mouth.

“Benjamin, but most folk call me Ben.”

“Well Ben, thanks for lunch,” she said, and winked at him before wandering off towards the path.

“Wait a moment, what is your name?” he called after her.

She turned and looked at him and appeared to notice for the first time the scroll in his hand. A parchment, brown with age, rolled and held by a gold ring. She stared at it.

“What’s your name, I asked,” Ben repeated.

“Fred,” came the vague reply.

“Fred?”

“Yes, wot about it? She asked defiantly.

“Well, it’s hardly a girl’s name is it?”

The girl winced slightly.

“Well it’s what folk call me because I don’t like my real name.”

“What is your real name?”

She hesitated for a moment and looked about, perhaps to see if anyone was listening. Other than a crow sitting on a gravestone with its head tilted to one side, there was no one. The thief looked at the bird suspiciously for a moment.

“It’s Freya, Freya Miller.”

“What’s wrong with that? I think it’s a nice name.”

Freya now stared at him with a look that suggested that his opinion was irrelevant.

“Well it just sounds a bit strumpy to me.”

“Far from it; now let me see. Freya – Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility,” Ben recited as if from a book.

Freya eyes narrowed.

“Wot of wot?”

“Never mind,” he blushed.

Freya was looking at the scroll now though, and did not reply.

“Wot’s that?” she asked.

“Don’t know. I found it in my bag when we collided. I had planned to take it back but...well.”

“But, you don’t want to be hanged do you? So anyway, what is the gold bit?”

“Just a ring holding the scroll,” he replied, pulling the ring off and passing it to her. She stared at it eagerly, then with astonishment at the boy who so readily handed over a gold ring worth a few weeks food to her. But Ben was more interested in the scroll. As he un-wrapped it, it creaked and cracked with age. He looked about and then found a tombstone that had fallen over, and now lay on the ground, and kneeling down he flattened it out using the other books from his satchel to hold it in place.

It was a map, more over a map of the city of London covering the whole of it from the Tower, to a little left of the Fleet and from the Thames, to the old city walls. Within the walls there were all the recognisable streets laid out: Cheapside, Threadneedle Street, Cornhill and Tower Street and many others. Outside the walls not many roads were shown. This was a map that dated back some few hundred years before Westminster and London had grown together, and before the northern suburbs outside the walls sprang up. Alongside the streets were the famous land marks represented by little buildings: St Paul’s of course and the Tower, Baynard’s Castle as well as the Guild Hall and dozens of churches, but Ben noticed that the Royal Exchange itself was missing. That meant the map dated before - Ben had to think now – before Queen Elizabeth’s time at the latest.

“Cor – that’s pretty. London aint it? Looks old.”

“It is,” he replied his voice edged with an old feeling of wonder he had once known, but had not felt for a long while, “two or three hundred years at least I would say.”

“So is it worth much you think?”

Ben shrugged.

“To the right person maybe...but what is this?”

He had now noticed some writing running around the edge. He rotated the map to find the start of the script, which had a larger illuminated letter ‘H’ depicted as a gate. He studied it for a moment. ‘No,’ he thought, ‘not a gate, but rather a portcullis’. With a sudden shock he realised the shape was identical to that on his pendant and also above Gabriel’s bookshop. Coincidence surely - but Ben was not so sure. He bent closer. What was that tiny shape behind the portcullis? He squinted, and it came into focus. Ah, it seemed to be the image of a man, although the face was distorted in rage and anger. Fascinated, he now began to silently read the writing.

It was mostly in Latin, and a very old version of it, mixed with some Greek words and others he did not know. This combination struck him as odd, but not as odd as what he noticed next. The writing seemed to almost twist and move on the paper, as his eyes rolled over them. It was as if they were sleeping beasts stirred into life by some disturbance. As he read the words, his head throbbed a little, and he rubbed at it.

“You alright?” Freya asked.

“Yes – it’s just hard to read the writing. It’s silly.”

The thief now squinted at the lines that flowed and swirled under Ben’s gaze. All she saw was dull scratchings of unanimated ink. She shrugged in disinterest, for to her reading and writing was alien, and no part of her world, irrelevant to her daily struggle to survive. Likewise, she had never thought about toffs and posh folk like Ben stuck in their dusty rooms, reading stuff by dead people while the poor just tried to find the next loaf of bread. She studied Ben and sniffed slightly, shaking her head as she saw the fascination in his eyes that this scrap of parchment elicited.

All the same, there was something about that look that interested her: a curious sense of wonder and awe he was experiencing that she had never felt. It was slightly hypnotic and - surprising herself – she found that she wanted to see a little more of this world that offered thoughts to think about other than just the tedium of getting through the day. So, she asked a question.

“Can you read it to me...aloud?”

He glanced at her, perhaps also a little surprised, but smiled slightly and nodded.

“Very well,” he said, “but it’s not in English. You won’t understand the words.”

“I don’t care. I’d like to hear what it sounds like. You can tell me what it means.”
He nodded again, and taking a deep breath, he began.

“Hostis humani generis...” he began, reading the words without pause or hesitation. As he did so he became aware that the headache had gone, and although the words did still move under his gaze, this time it was rather pleasant and almost like a dance. He was enjoying reading the script, the first perhaps to do so for hundreds of years, and to Freya that joy shone through on his face and the stuffy, superior schoolboy was gone and he looked – well she blushed as she thought it – attractive.

Ben did not notice the look she was giving him for he was lost in the words. As he read, the letters seemed to light up as if on fire and then the paper glowed. His lips tingled as they moved and a powerful warmth, far hotter than this the hottest of summers in a lifetime swept through him. Suddenly he knew what he had to do and pointed at the map of London as he shouted the final word.

“Ostendu!”

Freya, shocked by the outburst, glanced at the path and was relieved to see that no one was there.

“Hush boy, they might still be about!”

Ben however did not respond. He was staring at the map, his eyes wide in amazement. Freya looked at it, and her jaw dropped open.

“Did you do that?” she asked after a moment.

He shrugged, and they both examined the parchment. The map was still visible looking just as it did before, beautiful in its detail and calligraphy. Now though, six of the buildings around the city were prominently displayed, not just outlined or bigger than the others, but they appeared to be standing up out of the map. Freya reached out a hand to touch one and her finger passed through it. When she pulled her hand back in shock, the building was still standing up off the parchment.

“What do you think it means? She asked.

“I don’t know but I want to find out,” he replied, his voice shaky.

A sudden thought apparently occurred to her, and she jumped to her feet.

“Eh? You a witch or something?”

“What?” he asked.

“Cos I aint one for black magic and mumbo jumbo: it’s not right,” she continued backing off now.

“Don’t be stupid,” he replied and suddenly the superior attitude had returned and the glow had gone from the boy’s face which now wore a sneer again.

“Who you calling stupid?” she snarled angrily, and in a flash the dagger was back in her hand, as she advanced on him menacingly.

“Come now children, have you no respect for the dead?”

This new voice came from behind Freya, and looking that way Ben saw that they were no longer alone. Standing at the corner of the church were about a dozen men. The speaker Ben recognised. It was Artemas, the stranger who Gabriel was afraid of: the man who wanted a certain scroll badly. Could it be the same one? It seemed likely. He realised he was not ready to hand it over yet, so quickly he crouched down and, for the moment hidden by another tombstone, he retrieved the scroll and his books and pushed them all in his satchel.

When he stood back up Artemas had apparently not noticed, but his heart seemed to miss a beat as he saw that another man was staring at him. He looked familiar, and then Ben remembered that it was the wild looking preacher from the Exchange. He glanced at the man’s companions, and felt that these would have been the ones who had stood in the crowd around him, outside Gabriel’s store. They, like the preacher, were dressed in fairly plain dress with short hair and a lack of ornament or decoration that contrasted curiously with the cavalier Artemas.

“So boy, will you now tell us where the scroll is?” the preacher said.

“What scroll?” Ben bluffed.

The man licked his lips and pointed at Ben. His hand shook a little.

“You jest with us and waste our time. My sacred mission is urgent, and I cannot wait for your jokes. Come now boy, tell me where it is, and even now your soul can be saved.”

Freya glanced at Ben and rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner.

“Man’s crazy!” she muttered and Ben nodded.

“Where what is? I have no idea what you are talking about!” he lied again.

Freya had moved back a few paces herself and now stood next to the boy.

“So, who are your friends?” she asked glancing across at him. He noticed now she had twisted her arm, so the dagger was still held in her palm, but was out of sight of the men.

“Well that one,” he pointed at Artemas, “I just met but I don’t know what he wants. It must be a mistake.”

Artemas nodded.

“Well, you are right about one thing.”

“Oh yeh? Wot’s that then?” the thief said and she shifted her feet apart ever so slightly, planting them firmly and then leant a little backwards.

“There has been a mistake and you two have made it,” the little man said as he raised his arm. He was holding a pistol, and with a thumb he now pulled back the flintlock hammer to cock it.
It was pointing directly at the girl.