History Keepers: Nightship to China Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 The Sensational Secret Service

  2 Summer Slaughter

  3 Monster from the Deep

  4 The Last Waltz

  5 Family in Ruins

  6 The Doom Bell

  7 The Sign of the Octopus

  8 Return to the Thames

  9 The Lazuli Serpent

  10 Into the Bear Pit

  11 Charlie Alone

  12 Nightship to China

  13 Canton Time

  14 Through the Ocean Door

  15 The Golden Pagoda

  16 The Tightrope

  17 The Dragon Bazooka

  18 A Night on the Town

  19 South by Southeast

  20 The Staircase under the Sea

  21 The End of Seas

  22 Water Torture

  23 The Flagship

  24 The Empire Cracks

  25 Commander Goethe

  26 Mirror to the Past

  27 Chinese Fireworks

  28 The Land of the Pharaohs

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Damian Dibben

  Praise for the HISTORY KEEPERS series

  Copyright

  About the Book

  When shocking news reaches the History Keepers’ headquarters, Jake Djones is sent head-first into a new adventure. The time-travelling agents voyage from Shakespeare’s England to Imperial China in pursuit of their most villainous foe yet, Xi Xiang, whose aim is to destroy trade links between east and west and throw the world into war.

  Jake, Nathan and Topaz must join forces with international agents in a race against the clock to stop him. And at the heart of the battle lies the key to a long-lost family member – will Jake find his brother after all this time?

  THE PAST IS IN DANGER – ONLY JAKE DJONES CAN SAVE IT!

  For my brother Justin

  . . . and all the brothers and sisters of the Lowrys & Ansteys – warm, witty and wise.

  1 THE SENSATIONAL SECRET SERVICE

  THE DAY THAT death came to the Mont St Michel had begun as the most festive the castle had ever seen. It was a hot June afternoon and a wedding was due to take place between two agents of the History Keepers’ Secret Service.

  The sky was cloudless, the sea like glass, the Mount festooned with scented flowers. On a lawn at the edge of the Atlantic, neat rows of chairs had been set out for the ceremony, and the guests – almost a hundred of them from different corners of history – were now busy assembling, here in 1820, chatting in many languages.

  Miriam Djones urgently threaded her way through the crowd. She wore a giant puffball gown and a towering headpiece of exotic fruits and palm leaves. ‘Have you seen Jake? Jake, anyone?’ She received nothing but shakes of heads and shrugs. ‘He’s supposed to be an usher,’ she sighed irritably.

  ‘Someone’s making a hullaballoo in the fencing chamber,’ a deep-voiced man volunteered. ‘Perhaps it’s him?’ He was dressed as a crusader knight and sipping a champagne cocktail.

  Miriam smiled curtly, turned on her heel and swept towards an outbuilding where agents practised combat and sword technique. As she approached, she heard music booming out at full volume – Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. It was certainly Jake in there: he had been listening to this feverish piece of opera over and over for weeks. She flushed with irritation and, holding onto her hat, flew inside.

  The music was ear-shattering; it came from an old phonograph and was amplified through speakers (of course, these inventions had been imported from a later time than 1820, but the commander, a keen musician herself, allowed restricted use of them). On the far side of the room, a fifteen-year-old boy, dressed only in breeches and a loose shirt, was practising sword-fighting with a mechanical warrior.

  His opponent had a solid metal body and eight robotic arms, each lunging, thrusting and slicing at lightning speed. The boy was riposting at the same frantic pace, making it appear as if he had eight arms himself! The whole operation was being witnessed by a dog, a chunky mastiff, whose eyes followed every movement his master made.

  ‘Jake!’ Miriam shouted over the racket of the Valkyries. She flew over to the phonograph and swung the needle off the record with a piercing screech. Silence at last. ‘Jake!’ The dog’s ears went back.

  The boy finally turned round. ‘Mum, I didn’t see you there.’

  Miriam did a double-take. Jake was growing at such a rate, he seemed more adult every time she looked. He had turned fifteen three months ago and had shot up several inches even since then.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked as the machine carried on slicing and lunging behind him.

  ‘No, everything is not all right,’ his mother began. ‘Your aunt is getting married in five minutes’ time, you’re an usher – and you’re not even dressed—Jake, watch out!’ she shrieked as a blade went spearing towards his back. He dodged it breezily. ‘I hate that machine, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.’ She pushed a lever to switch it off. One by one, its various arms fell still. ‘Wedding, now.’ She clicked her fingers and bustled out.

  Jake’s clothes were laid out on a wooden horse. Rose Djones, a lifelong lover of all things Indian, had chosen a Mughal empire theme for the nuptials, and the ushers had been given traditional Indian uniforms to wear: knee-length jackets and silk turbans. Jake hurriedly put his on.

  His aunt was marrying Jupitus Cole. It had come as a total surprise to everyone when they made the announcement: for decades they had apparently hated each other – he being fussy and austere, she hot-headed and fun-loving. But on their last mission together – a trip to ancient Rome in which Jake had been involved – things suddenly changed. And now here they were.

  ‘Come on, Felson,’ Jake called to his dog, who bounded straight to his side.

  As he approached the lawn, he took in the sea of people, all dressed in clothes of far-off times and places. The sight of many History Keepers together always gave him a thrill, but he had never seen a collection as large and diverse as this. There were guests from colonial America, from Inca Peru, from China, and indeed from Mughal India (the extended family of Dr Chatterju, head of inventions). Jake saw a stout woman in Elizabethan dress smoking a cheroot as she talked to a slim musketeer. Next to them, two young French aristocrats in powdered wigs showed off their pocket watches to a pair of blushing bridesmaids from Persia.

  Jake had been called up to the History Keepers’ Secret Service almost a year and a half ago. Back then, he had learned, quite out of the blue, that his parents had been covertly working for the service for decades – and that they had recently gone missing in sixteenth-century Venice! He had joined the mission to find them, and ultimately to stop Prince Zeldt in his attempts to destroy the Renaissance.

  They had been successful on both counts, but soon more danger was afoot: Zeldt’s sister, Agata, the so-called ‘most evil woman in history’, had launched her own diabolical stratagem. Jake and his friends had been dispatched to AD 27 – the height of the Roman empire – to locate and stop her. In the end, largely through the sheer grit and courage of Jake and his young fellow agents, her plan had been foiled.

  Most extraordinary of all, Jake had discovered that his beloved brother Philip, assumed dead in an accident at the age of fifteen, had also been a History Keeper . . . and that there was a chance – just a tiny one – that he was still alive, somewhere in the past.

  Jake now knew many people on the island of Mont St Michel, but his real allies were those his own age, and it was towards three of these – two boys and a girl, all supposedly showing gues
ts to their seats, but actually busy chatting – that he made his way.

  One of the boys was tall and broad with a winning smile. He’d accessorized his Mughal outfit by tucking a great curving scimitar into his belt and fixing a huge ruby to the front of his turban. The other was shorter, wiser perhaps, and had a brightly coloured parrot – Mr Drake – sitting on his shoulder.

  The girl, who was dressed identically to the boys, had long tresses of honey-blonde hair and indigo eyes that were warm and mysterious in equal measure.

  These three were Jake’s best friends – really the best friends he had ever had: Nathan Wylder, Charlie Chieverley and Topaz St Honoré.

  ‘What I’m trying to ascertain,’ Nathan was saying in his distinct Charleston drawl, ‘is whether these spectacles make me look more intelligent . . . or just blind . . .’ To ensure that Charlie and Topaz gave him the right answer, he made his eyes smoulder behind the lenses.

  ‘I’d verge more towards blind,’ Charlie replied.

  ‘Cross-eyed, at the very least,’ Topaz added.

  ‘You’re both being absurd,’ Nathan huffed. ‘Jake, what do you think of my new look? Better with or without?’ He demonstrated by taking the glasses off and then putting them on again, this time lowering them halfway down his nose like a university professor.

  ‘Do you need glasses?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Of course I don’t need them. My visual acuity is second to none. On a clear night I can see across the English Channel, not to mention the rings around Saturn. I don’t need them, no. But do they add a certain je ne sais quoi?’

  As Jake was mulling it over, Charlie chipped in mischievously, ‘He wants to know because he’s trying to impress some mystery girl from the mainland.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Topaz added. ‘Having spent his life breaking hearts, someone finally seems to be returning the favour.’

  Nathan went as red as the ruby on his turban and protested, ‘Those are outrageous and unfounded allegations – I have no idea what’s got into everyone today. The nuptials are obviously making you all giddy.’ He was so flustered he got the hilt of his scimitar caught in his jacket. As he tried to right it, the ruby popped off his turban, which unfurled about his shoulders. He grunted, snatched it all up again and disappeared into the throng.

  ‘I definitely think spectacles make you look more intelligent . . .’ Jake couldn’t resist saying to his friend’s disappearing back.

  ‘And we’re so looking forward to meeting her,’ Topaz called after him.

  The three young agents fell about laughing. ‘There is nothing more satisfying in the whole wide world,’ Topaz said, ‘than pulling Nathan’s leg when he’s serious about something.’ She and Nathan had been raised together on the island by his parents, Truman and Betty Wylder, so she knew him as well as a sister could know a brother.

  Just as they were about to take up their ushering duties, a voice called out, ‘Would one of you youngsters do me a favour?’

  It was Galliana Goethe, Commander of the Secret Service. She always cut an elegant figure, tall and slender, with long silver hair swept sharply back from her face. She was accompanied by Madame Tieng, head of the Chinese bureau. Tieng and a handful of other agents had been staying on the island for over a year now, having sought refuge after their own bureau had been ransacked.

  ‘My daughter has vanished again,’ Madame Tieng sighed. She looked like a bird of paradise in her silk robes, wafting a fan against her pale face.

  ‘The ceremony is about to begin’ – Galliana smiled – ‘so would one of you find her immediately?’

  ‘Jake or Charlie can go,’ Topaz jumped in quickly. ‘If I ask “Miss Yuting” to do anything, she’ll make a point of doing the opposite.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Charlie said. ‘The cake’s arriving and I need to check it’s all in order.’ The crowd was parting, cooing with delight, as two men brought out a vast iced confection. It was a replica of the Mont St Michel itself, topped with figurines of the bride and groom.

  ‘Jake, then? Would you . . .?’ Galliana asked.

  It was his turn to blush. ‘Of – of course,’ he stammered.

  As Jake, with Felson at his side, stepped into the heart of the fortress, in search of Madame Tieng’s daughter, his stomach flipped. Even though Miss Yuting had been here for ages, Jake still didn’t know what to make of her; he felt nervous around her.

  On an island full of eccentrics, she was one of the oddest mixtures of all: opinionated, reckless, shockingly beautiful. She was almost exactly his age (they had celebrated their fifteenth birthdays in the same week), but she seemed to possess decades of worldliness in her tiny frame. With ideas above her station, she had asked people to call her by her formal name – Miss Yuting – but had recently given Jake permission to use her nickname: Yoyo. He was the first to be granted the privilege.

  Yoyo was as accomplished as she was striking. It went without saying that she was a brilliant fighter, but she was also a master mathematician and an exceptional code-breaker; she could speak as many languages as Charlie, draw like Michelangelo and play a dozen musical instruments, including the harp and the Scottish bagpipes. She was good at everything; everything except making friends.

  She had insulted Topaz within two minutes of her arrival. Topaz had gone to greet her, upon which Yoyo had handed her her cloak and asked her to run her a bath, assuming that she was her maid. She hadn’t got on any better with the others – belittling Nathan’s dress sense and Charlie’s skill in the kitchen. No, it was only to Jake that she showed any warmth, and he had no idea why.

  After scouring the whole building, he eventually found her on the roof. At the top of the tower he saw her silhouette outside the casement window.

  ‘Miss Yuting?’ he called.

  The small figure rippled in the heat, then a voice called out: ‘Didn’t I tell you to call me Yoyo?’

  ‘Wait here, there’s a good boy,’ Jake said to Felson, climbing out of the window. Remembering that he was wearing a turban, he pulled it off and stuffed it in his pocket; then mussed up his hair, squared his shoulders and stepped across towards her. It was precarious, the tiles steeply raked and loose in places. Distant sounds carried up from below. Everyone was taking their seats now.

  ‘I think the wedding’s about to start,’ Jake offered as he drew near. She had her back to him and was busy fixing a harness around her chest. It was connected, via ropes, to a large pyramidal bamboo frame, which held a sail-like canopy. It was a perplexing sight. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to test this parachute,’ she replied without looking round. ‘I have made it to Leonardo da Vinci’s precise specifications.’ Like her mother, Yoyo spoke English with an almost perfect cut-glass accent. ‘It was successfully tested in 1485, so I am not unduly worried. I’m going to jump off the gantry there.’ She pointed to a thick metal beam that stuck out from the top of the building.

  ‘Really? Is that a good idea?’ Jake found himself asking. He adjusted his voice down a tone. ‘I mean, it looks . . . dangerous.’ This was an understatement: she was going to throw herself off a two-hundred-foot-high building trusting to nothing but a bit of wood and tarpaulin.

  Yoyo looked round at him and smiled. ‘If it wasn’t dangerous, it wouldn’t be worth doing.’ Her face was a shock of beauty: perfect alabaster skin, eyes like emeralds and a mouth of carmine red. She was clothed like a mythic princess in a dress of coral silk, belted at the waist, with a sword and dagger slung from her hips. ‘Wish me luck,’ she said, picking up the sail and stepping onto the narrow beam.

  Jake’s stomach flipped again as he looked down at the sheer drop. He had a sickening premonition of the celebration suddenly turning to tragedy; of the device failing and Yoyo thumping to her death in front of everyone. ‘Miss Yuting, I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ he insisted.

  She held the sail up towards the sky. ‘If you don’t start calling me Yoyo, I’m going to get angry,’ she said, suddenly accelerating a
nd leaping into the void. ‘Victory!’ she shouted as air filled the parachute.

  There were cries from below, and Jake could see a swathe of guests standing up, pointing towards them. He heaved a sigh of relief when he realized that Yoyo’s contraption was, after all, effective. Eddies of warm air carried her away from the castle and back again, and within a few seconds she had landed right next to the wedding party. She un fastened herself from her harness, brushed down her dress and took her seat as if her mode of arrival had been not the slightest bit unusual.

  Jake saw his mother shake her head in astonishment, then look up at him, holding out her hands in disbelief. He hurried back downstairs, Felson scampering at his side. They took a shortcut through the stateroom, along the corridor of the communications wing and down towards the armoury.

  As they hurried through the door, Jake noticed the animal sitting on her haunches in the centre of the room; it was as if she was waiting for him. It was Josephine, Oceane Noire’s ‘pet’ lioness.

  Jake wasn’t fond of the beast; no one on the island was, except her owner. As a cub, Josephine had been sly and devious, but now she was worse – unpredictable and spiteful, as if she viewed everyone as an enemy. Charlie, a great animal lover, had made a huge effort, cooking her special meals and taking her for walks. In return, she’d bitten his hand. Since then, Commander Goethe had insisted that the lioness be kept locked in Oceane’s quarters or on a leash when exercising. Jake had not seen her for weeks, and now she looked more ferocious than ever.

  ‘Where’s your mistress?’ he asked her. ‘Is she at home?’ Oceane had shut herself up in her suite for weeks, avoiding anything to do with the wedding. She had still not forgiven Jupitus for betraying her by taking up with her arch-rival, Rose. Jake advanced cautiously, wondering if he might be able to herd Josephine back to her quarters, but he stopped when she gave a low growl, sitting up and fixing him with her amber eyes.

  He gulped, quickly glancing at the wall of weapons, working out how best to defend himself if she suddenly went for him. But Josephine just twitched her ears, turned and padded across the room. She gave him one last sly look, then pushed the door open with her nose and slipped out.