Oscar and the Magi: A Plan is Hatched
“I’m afraid,” said Maggs, “We weren’t actually looking for you…”
“It was in Maggs’ notes,” explained Oscar, “She had all the notes about the Black Chamber and Cowper. We thought she might have found out away to beat the Wild Ride and the secret might be here.”
“Cowper?” Skelton was confused, “Why would he have known anything about the Wild Ride?”
“But I must have been trying to discover a way to stop them,” protested Maggs, “I mean, that’s why they attacked me, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” Skelton was struggling with Hopkins’ boots, “You were researching the Great Work, trying to find a way to complete it, so the Darklings tried to stop you…”
“Complete the Great Work?”
“Of course, that was your plan, all those years ago - you and your Knights Errant: complete the Great Work and make the power of the Magi unassailable. Naturally the Darklings weren’t so keen on that.”
“Then why was I making notes about Cowper?”
“Well, Cowper tried to destroy the Great Work, didn’t he? Perhaps he discovered something about how it worked, something that would help…” he suddenly stopped and stared away into space, “Stars and spirits…”
“Rufus?” Maggs prompted him.
“Undo the Great Work!” Skelton dropped the boots in his excitement, “We don’t stand a chance against Cuddy and the rest of the Magi now, but if we could finish Cowper’s work…”
“…if we could undo the Great Work,” continued Maggs, “It would remove their power competeley…”
“…and we could stop Cuddy in his tracks!” Skelton bent down and started trying to pull on a boot while hopping ungainly round the room, “It’s perfect!”
“Perfect…” Maggs shook her head, “There’s only one niggling niggler: it can’t be done. The secret of the Great Work died with Lord Newton: Cowper failed and was locked in here for the rest of his life.”
“Precisely,” Skelton was struggling to push his foot into the high boot, “Those notes that you were following: you must have discovered that Cowper had left some clue in here.”
“Of course!” Maggs was smiling again, “Oscar, check the door round the corner…”
“Any thing with Cowper’s name on!” shouted Skelton after him, “Anything that looks like a notebook. In fact, just bring anything…”
Oscar ran out of the cell and down the corridor, past the entrance and through the door at the other end. On the other side was a small, bare room, obviously meant simply for guards or for waiting visitors, which had nothing in it except an old table, a couple of battered looking chairs and a small bookcase hanging on the wall.
He pulled the chair out from under the table and climbed up onto it so he could see the bookshelf properly. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it hadn’t been a whole row of thick books with big shiny letters and pictures of explosions and guns on the front. These were following by more thick books with spaceships and knights on them. It wasn’t quite the reading he might have expected of a Magi, but then, perhaps, they tried to keep books of magic out of the Black Chamber.
But there, at the end, were a small bundle of papers and notebooks. He grabbed them all and dropped them down on the table, then jumped down and started going through them. Some of them were evidently letters, there were a couple of address books where tiny notes filled up all the space between the names, there was even an apparently rather monotonous diary. And there was a black notebook bulging with loose papers, tied up with ribbon with a scrap of paper pasted to the front: “Thos. Cowper. Commonplace Book.”
He ran back to the cell to discover his Uncle Rufus standing in the middle of the room, with the Erl King’s coat, the colour of dried blood, wreathing round him, the tails twitching and swaying in a breeze that only they could feel. The coat made an odd shape in the middle, as if his godfather had suddenly put on a lot of weight, and Oscar suddenly realised that he could see Ridley’s blonde curls sticking out of the collar of the coat. The rest of her must be buttoned up inside. Skelton saw him staring.
“The coat can carry her, and it should help stop the bleeding, once we get outside… what have you got there?”
“It says it belonged to a Thos Cowper, is that the same person?”
“Thomas,” said Maggs, “The ‘Thos’ stands for Thomas: it’s him - let’s have a look.”
Oscar handed her the book and she undid the ribbon as she crossed to the table under the window. The sun must have been coming up outside because a dim, silvery glow was starting to filter through.
Maggs emptied all the loose papers onto the desk, spreading them out. The she started leafing through the notebook. Skelton started unfolding bits of paper, laying them out flat. Oscar picked one up. The handwriting was cramped and small and… not handwriting at all.
“Symbols…” he said
“Cipher…” said Skelton
“It’s all in code…” Maggs threw the notebook down, “We don’t have time for this: Ridley said she called reinforcements - they’re bound to check in here when they can’t find her…”
The notebook had fallen open on the table, the broken spine flopping back to reveal the first page. There was something written on it in plain English. Oscar bent over to have a look:
“Thos. Cowper Fecit 1811.
The terrible work the King hath wrought,
Shall by the King’s own hand be brought to naught.”
“That must be where you got it from, Maggs,” he said, pointing to the verse.
“Oh yes…” Maggs looked puzzled, “But I always thought it must be something about the Wild Ride…”
“But it wasn’t,” Skelton finished her thought, “And yet it was so important that you remembered it even after what I did to you…”
“So,” asked Oscar, “if it wasn’t about the Darklings, what is it about?”
“That,” said Skelton, “Is a very good question… well, if Cowper wrote it then it must have been about his researches, about the Great Work…”
“He certainly thought of the Great Work as a Great Terror…” said Maggs, “But why would that be the King’s fault?”
“Of course!” Skelton clapped his hands, “It is the King’s work - it was done in his name: his seal is on the Charter in the Temple!”
“I’ve seen that!” said Oscar.
“So we need the King’s own hand to break it?” Maggs was incredulous, “What do we have to do, catnap the Prince of Wales?”
“Hm… seems unlikely, doesn’t it?” Skelton stared at the rhyme, “Unless…”
“What?”
“The King’s Seal and signature are on the Charter in the Temple…”
Maggs was staring at him open-mouthed.
“I don’t understand,” Oscar was bewildered.
“The work of the King’s own hand… his own handwriting?” Rufus was thinking out loud.
“It’s something to do with the Charter… we need to get into the Charter Room” the light was beginning to dawn on Maggs, “That’s going to be interesting…”
Skelton suddenly looked around him.
“What happened to the cat? The one that was with you in the Temple when you caught me? What happened to him?”
“He was with us when we came here,” Oscar suddenly realised that he hadn’t seen the little black cat the whole time they had been in the Black Chamber.
“Of course,” said Skelton, “He wouldn’t come in here - too dangerous for him… Come on, we’ve got to find him…” he picked up the Erl King’s white mask and started strapping it on.
“The cat? Why?”
“Aha: you’ll see…” and he ran from the room, with Oscar and Maggs hot on his heels.