The Twelve Dragons of Albion Read online

  The Twelve Dragons of Albion

  The Second Book of the King’s Watch

  by Mark Hayden

  A Conrad Clarke Novel

  For Chrissy, Micro-niece

  Copyright © Paw Press 2017

  www.pawpress.co.uk

  Front Cover © Lawston Design 2017

  www.lawstondesign.com

  Images © Shutterstock

  Table of Contents

  Prologue — Meet the Ancestor

  1 — Peculier by Name…

  2 — …Invisible by Nature

  3 — A Magickal Education

  4 — Of Moles and Men

  5 — Ecce Dwarf

  6 — Enter the Dragon

  7 — The Sword in the Well

  8 — Meet the Gang

  9 — Master of the Earth

  10 — All Work and no Play

  11 — What are they not telling me?

  12 — On the Scent

  13 — Gnome from Gnome

  14 — Cream Cakes and Red Wine

  15 — Master of the Art

  16 — Croeso I Gymru

  17 — The Pennaeth of MADOC

  18 — The Nesting Instinct

  19 — Brotherhoods and Other Family

  20 — A Time to Dig, A Time to Die

  21 — Overture and Beginners

  22 — The Body Confident Lady Sings

  23 — An Amouse Bouche

  24 — A Tasting Menu

  25 — A Palate Cleanser

  26 — Desserts

  27 — Eat, Drink and be Merry

  Author’s Note

  The Eleventh Hour — Extract

  Thanks…

  Prologue — Meet the Ancestor

  How do you tell the difference between a Ghost and a Spectre?

  Give up?

  I’ll tell you: Spectres are much better looking. Well, that’s what my eleven times great grandfather said, and he should know – he’s the Spectre haunting my house.

  It had been a hell of a weekend, featuring Witches, Gods, Spirits, concussion grenades, talking trees and moles the size of border collies. And that was just the Sunday. After a trip to HMP Cairndale to see my girlfriend, I wanted very much to get back down to the village of Clerkswell in Gloucestershire and drink several pints of Inkwell Bitter – it’s good stuff, you know, made with water from the original Clerk’s Well at the bottom of our garden. When I say our garden, it’s really my garden, because I own it.

  Oh, to be in England in January. It was black, wet, cold and generally miserable as I piloted my Volvo estate through the pool of light from the last street lamp and into the darkness of Elvenham Lane. I swung the car through the gates of Elvenham House, past the ancient yew tree and coasted to a halt.

  ‘I’m back,’ I said to the dragon. It’s a fearsome beast, is our dragon, carved into a block of limestone that’s set into the bricks of our Gothic tower, and which family legend says you must salute when you return from a journey. We all do it, even Rachael.

  If you’re wondering about the Gothic tower, it’s only a little one, three storeys, but it does have pointy windows and doors that look like they were salvaged from a castle. They weren’t. Like the rest of Elvenham House, it’s all Victorian red brick and bourgeois additions. Maybe the dragon is older. It looks older, but I’m no architectural historian.

  I got out of the car and massaged the knots in my spine. When I turned back to the house, there was a man standing on the front step.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I snapped.

  The apparition flinched with shock. ‘You can see me?’ By now, my weak and tardy magickal Sight had told me that this was nothing normal.

  ‘Of course I can bloody well see you. Isn’t that what you wanted?’

  ‘I…’ said the apparition. Then it vanished.

  Someone with a real Gift would have done something startling at this point. Someone like my soon-to-be colleague Vicky Robson, for example, would have whipped out her enhanced iPad – her sPad, as I call it – and explored the Sympathetic Echo for traces. Good for them. I got my bags out of the car and limped round to the side entrance. The front doors are only opened for weddings and funerals these days.

  Our part-time housekeeper, Mrs Gower, had gone in this morning and put the heating on, but only high enough to stop ice forming on the windows, so I put the kettle on the Aga, whacked up the thermostat, hefted the bags upstairs and made myself a pot of tea. While I waited for the tea to brew (I aim for five minutes), I huddled close to the Aga and grudgingly gave the apparition some head-space.

  The man – or facsimile of a man – was weirdly familiar, but I couldn’t work out why until I glanced at a family snapshot pinned to the noticeboard. The figure under the dragon had been like a younger, thinner, more handsome and better dressed version of Dad.

  I nearly dropped the mug when I heard a cough behind me. I whirled round and there it was again.

  ‘Sorry,’ it said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  It was like listening to Granddad Enderby. Underneath the Girton College vowels, Mother has the same accent: deepest, darkest rural Lincolnshire.

  ‘Do I know you?’ I said.

  ‘Sort-of, but not so well as I know you. I’m Thomas Clarke, your eleven times great grandfather and your brother.’

  ‘I’m not sure which part of that statement is more alarming,’ I said. It’s a measure of how quickly I’ve become embedded in the magickal world that I assumed there was some sort of truth in what he’d told me. ‘Forgive my manners, Mr Clarke. Would you like a cup of tea? There’s plenty.’

  ‘Thank’ee, but no,’ he grinned. ‘I’m not corporeal at all, really, just enough to talk.’

  I took out my cigarettes and sat down at the ancient battle-scarred kitchen table.

  ‘I wish you’d stop smoking,’ said the apparition. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and call him Thomas.

  ‘Not for a while,’ I said, ‘though it’s kind of you to take an interest in my long-term future.’ I drank some tea. ‘So, Thomas, are you a Ghost or a Spirit?’ I had no real idea what either of these truly was, but I didn’t want to sound too ignorant in front of my 11xgreat grandfather.

  ‘Neither. I’m a Spectre. Ghosts are involuntary: they gets no choice in what happens to ’em after they die. I chose to stick around, but I’m not a Spirit ’cos I can’t go no more than three furlongs from the well.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looked down at the flags, and his dark suit got a little paler until I could see the outline of the kitchen sink appearing through him. He looked up and became more solid again. ‘It’s where I died. Near four hundred years gone, now. I can just go far enough to visit the churchyard. My Alice is waiting there for me.’

  That puts my own patience into perspective – I only have to wait until the spring for Mina to get out of prison. Fingers crossed. ‘Has Alice been awake…?’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Alice is asleep. Deep asleep. Most of the time, I am, too, but I felt you coming back tonight. Something must have happened to you while you was away ’cos you couldn’t see me afore, but you can now.’

  It was my turn to remember: the cold fingers of the First Sister brushing my wrist, the healing of my hand, the boost in power. ‘I was touched by the Goddess.’

  ‘That’ll do it,’ said Thomas. ‘You must have done her good service to have had your Gift enhanced.’

  ‘It wasn’t enhanced by much.’

  ‘Take what you can get, my boy. The Gods are very sparing in their favours. Tell me, do you know which aspect of the Goddess was with you?’

  I have an idea about that, one which I’m not ready to share with Thomas yet, so I gave him my
best shrug. I’ve been practising my shrugs a lot since I met up with Alain du Pont. The results are about as convincingly French as Somerset Brie, but it did the job.

  ‘I’ve been watching you on and off since the day you were born, up there in the old nursery,’ said Thomas. A wistful, remotely paternal look came over him, and his eyes drifted to the ceiling. This was a good sign, because Thomas had obviously been some sort of Mage, and one of the reasons I’ve struggled to make progress in the magickal world is the damned Chymist’s Code.

  This “code” has a rule that you don’t give away any sort of magickal knowledge, no matter how trivial, unless you’re either paid for it or you have no choice. Perhaps family ties might afford an exception in this case – there was clearly some sort of personal attachment here.

  He was fading again as he reminisced. It seemed that whenever he concentrated on something other than talking to me, his ability to manifest was compromised. Before I could interrupt his reverie, he snapped back to the present. ‘I couldn’t believe it when you were born,’ he said. ‘As it was written, it came to pass. A little miracle.’

  ‘Not even my mother thinks I’m a miracle, Thomas,’ I said. ‘Especially not my mother.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, with a rather cheesy grin. ‘Mary loves you very, very dearly, Conrad. She’s just never been good with showing emotions. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel them as much as you or me.’

  As the hit of caffeine started to work, all sorts of very, very alarming possibilities opened up. I put down my mug and crushed out my cigarette. ‘Just how closely have you been watching us, you immaterial voyeur.’

  ‘Steady on, old chap. Your family is my family, too, and no, I don’t hang around the bedrooms. Or the drawing room that night that you and Amelia…’

  ‘…Stop right there, Mr Spectre. No more with the sordid details. Now, what exactly did you mean by saying my birth was a miracle? There wasn’t a star overhead, or wise men, and though I’m told the midwife was married to a farmer, she didn’t bring any sheep with her.’

  ‘You’re not the Messiah, you’re a very naughty boy,’ said Thomas with relish. ‘I did enjoy that film.’ He held up his hand. ‘Seriously, it goes back to what I said about being both your ancestor and your brother.’

  ‘Take it slowly, Thomas. My head is starting to hurt, and I’d planned to go to the pub tonight.’

  ‘It’s out of my range, I’m afraid, or I’d join you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that would cement my reputation perfectly, having a conversation with an empty chair.’

  It was his turn to shrug. He did it quite well, considering that he hasn’t had shoulder joints for four hundred years.

  ‘I was born in Lincolnshire,’ he said, ‘but my family came from Clerkswell. My father was a younger son, and he had inherited Elvenham Grange, though he never lived here. When I got married, I decided to move in and become a farmer. There have been Clarkes here ever since.’

  ‘That explains the ancestor part,’ I said. Something about the phrase move here and become a farmer tickled a memory, but Thomas moved on before I could catch it.

  ‘It helps explain the brother part, as well,’ he said. ‘Mary – your mother – is from Lincolnshire, too and she’s a direct maternal descendant of my own mother’s sister. As you modern people say, we have the same Y chromosome and the same mitochondrial DNA. I’ve watched a lot of TV with your family, and read the Sunday papers, Bro.’

  ‘No one gets to call me Bro, Thomas. No one except Rachael.’ I limped over to the Aga and poured some more tea. I shivered with fatigue, pain and just a little discomfort at having shared my home with a spectral ancestor since the day I was born. Questions? Of course I had questions. Lots of them – huge questions about the true nature of the soul, about free will, divine providence and destiny. What did I actually ask him?

  ‘Tell me, Thomas, how come you’ve got a beautifully historic Lincolnshire accent but a suit from Saville Row?’

  If he’d been expecting something more profound, he was too polite to show it. ‘That’s another difference,’ he said. ‘Ghosts have no real choice over their manifestations – hence the gory locks and severed heads. We Spectres can look how we want, with practice. I was never this handsome in the flesh. The accent’s harder. In the body, I didn’t know I had an accent, so I can’t learn to change it without sounding like a broken computer.’

  I let the fresh tea warm me enough to loosen my coat. The moment’s relaxation took me back to another of Thomas’s cryptic utterances. ‘You said I was born As it was written. What did you mean by that?’

  He perked up, and the sheen on his suit got a little brighter. ‘You were what I’ve been waiting for. It was in the Agreement that I could join my Alice When Thomas Clarke shall be born again by his own mother and father. I felt it the second you gave your first cry – a wave of magick spread out from the Well like the wind through the reeds. Thomas is born, it said.’

  I really didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Why are you still here? Why is Alice still waiting? What’s this Agreement thingy?’

  Thomas went suddenly and alarmingly transparent. ‘I don’t know. I used a lot of my Lux before Victoria was crowned, and I’ve had to let some things go. It scares me, Conrad. I know that my purpose was to keep the Clarkes in Elvenham until you came along, but I can’t remember why, or what happens next.’ As he spoke, he’d faded completely, and his last words had come out of thin air.

  I finished my tea and looked at the clock. There was still plenty of time to get to the pub before they stopped serving food. The mystery of Spectre Thomas could wait.

  1 — Peculier by Name…

  London. I really don’t like the place very much, I certainly don’t know it very well, and I never thought that my career – either in the RAF or out of it – would take me there for the long term. Just goes to show what I know.

  The junior tenant in my Notting Hill flat had been sent away suddenly, and the other tenant’s rent more than covered the mortgage, so I moved into the second bedroom and prepared myself for a long stay in our capital city.

  The weekend’s adventures, my encounter with Spectre Thomas and a trip to the Inkwell meant that I was too knackered to travel on Tuesday, and besides, I needed to do some preparation before I came out of hiding.

  Thomas Clarke hadn’t shown himself, and my Sight isn’t good enough to pick him out unless he’s watching me, so on Wednesday morning, I left a note for him on the kitchen table with a few lines about my plans, then I drove to Cheltenham and caught the early train to Paddington.

  I am about to join a magickal company called the King’s Watch, and it’s based in the Tower of London, hidden from the world by the efforts of the Royal Occulter. My future workplace, Merlyn’s Tower, doesn’t even appear on Google Earth. No wonder the magickal world has stayed hidden for millennia.

  The King’s Watch is led by the Peculier Constable. With Queen Elizabeth II on the throne, why are we called the King’s Watch? Why does the boss have such a daft title? The world of magick has more anachronisms and historical hangovers than any church, Oxford College or Army regiment, and to explain them all would be a major undertaking. Besides, I know almost none of the answers.

  The current holder of the Office – the Peculier Constable herself – is Dame Hannah Rothman. I know very little about her except that she wasn’t born a Mage, that she used to be a detective in the Met, and that she lost her husband and part of her skull defeating something called a Revenant. She also packs a mean magickal punch. Oh yes, and she’s Jewish. Not that I'm sure what it means to be Jewish in a world where Odin can turn up at your house and the Goddess (?) stands protector to a group of pagan nuns in Lancashire. Not the most pressing issue in my inbox.

  To access Merlyn’s Tower you don’t need to go through the public parts of this great fortress, but I did anyway, paying my fee so that I could pay my respects to the resident ravens. These birds are Odin’s creatures in more ways than one,
and although he’s no longer my Patron, a small sign of our alliance hangs round my neck. It’s called a Valknut, three interlocking triangles. Long-term, it might be more trouble than it’s worth, but I wouldn’t be in the world of magick if it weren’t for the Allfather, so there it stays, as does the special Troth ring he gave me. It’s a sort of certificate of honesty that guarantees that A Clarke’s word is Binding. It makes me very careful what I say.

  The front door of Merlyn’s Tower isn’t locked, and there was no one around on the lower levels. At 09:55 I presented myself to the PC’s personal assistant, the larger-than-life Mrs Tennille Haynes. She rushed over to give me a big motherly hug.

  ‘Thank the Lord Jesus, Mr Clarke, for your deliverance. Welcome back. Sit down an’ I’ll make the tea and tell her you’re here.’

  Tennille – from Barbados originally – has no magick herself, but she has the ear of the most powerful Mage I’ve met and her daughter Desirée is apparently a rising star in something called the Invisible College.

  Shortly after ten, we were buzzed in to Hannah’s ornate and spacious office. Tennille led the way with a tray and I followed, stopping at the edge of the rug and snapping a smart salute. For reasons of history and HR, all Hannah’s staff are technically in the Army. She’s a colonel.

  ‘Why do you keep doing that?’ said Hannah, pointing to my raised hand.

  ‘Officers should salute senior officers on all occasions, ma’am, unless unit policy dictates otherwise.’

  She raised her hand in the worst salute I’ve seen outside the cinema, and I lowered my arm. From the corner of my eye, I could see a very amused expression on Tennille’s face.

  Hannah turned to her PA. ‘Draft a memo, will you? New policy: saluting is only required when in uniform.’

  ‘They won’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Tennille with a chuckle. She left us to it, closing the heavy oak doors behind her.