Bessie Blount was one of the many mistresses of Henry VIII, and a maid to his first wife Catherine, according to Dr Southey. She bore the king a son, and that made her something special, because Henry wasn't good at having sons. If things had worked out differently she might have mothered a whole bastard line of English kings.
The cup that bore her name was a reward from the king himself for proving that he could produce a male heir, and one of the last gifts he gave her. Henry soon moved on to Anne Boleyn. The cup was recovered by the Horseshoe Men a generation later, and had been in the Grey Museum ever since—or at least until a week ago.
Dr Southey explained all this to me in florid detail as we flew by helicopter from Hastings to the Cotswolds. He also shared his theory that the cup was to blame for the deaths of both Blount and her nearly-royal son, but I didn't catch why. I was a little distracted by the view.
I had never flown in a helicopter before. I couldn't believe this was my life now.
We swept across beautiful rolling green hills and dense dark woodlands, and over villages of black-beamed, thatch-roof cottages in the valleys. It looked stunning. It looked like an unlikely site for a crisis.
"There's Winchcombe," said Dr Southey. He pointed to an idyllic town that might have been lifted off the illustration from a souvenir fudge tin. "And over there, Belas Knap." He gestured to the left, but I couldn't see anything but trees.
"Not too close," said Grace. "Harper advised us not to land within five hundred feet of the barrow."
We passed low over the woods, and I saw three vehicles parked in a field up ahead with a handful of people gathered around them, all dressed in navy blue Horseshoe uniforms. As the helicopter set down a safe distance away, one of the Horseshoe men headed over to meet us; a short woman with olive skin, dark eyes, and a tangle of wild black hair. She wore binoculars around her neck, and she had two silver chevrons on the sleeve of her jacket. As she drew closer I realised she couldn't be much older than sixteen.
"Grace, Adam; good of you to come so quickly," she said. She spoke with clipped, confident authority. "You must be Ben Frazer. I'm glad they were able to find you. I'm Operator Harper Kahn, but you should call me Harper."
I was taken aback. Harper was younger than me, but precocious and assured in a way that I envied.
"What's an 'Operator'?" I asked.
"Officer rank," said Grace. "Unique to Horseshoe Division, but similar to an army captain, with different...requirements. Operator Kahn oversees activities here in the South-West, out of Crossways."
The Admiral said that Horseshoe Division hired young, but I was astonished to find someone Harper's age had been given so much authority when I still couldn't decide what I wanted to do with my life.
"The West Country was some of the last territory to come into line with the Accords," Grace explained. "The whole country is a bit of a patchwork—London has the least magic, by condition of the Accords, while places like this are still saturated in the stuff, if you know what to look for. It takes someone special to keep an eye on the place. What's the situation, Harper?"
"Nasty, I'm afraid. The first team we tried to send in suffered for it, and we're all feeling the effects." Harper led us towards the cars, where one agent sat in the open back of a Range Rover with a mug of tea gripped in her hands, while another lay flat out on a stretcher with an oxygen mask over his face. They both looked pale, and the woman's eyes were ringed with red. They were both teenagers.
"How far has it spread?" asked Southey.
"Take a look for yourself."
Harper produced a pair of glasses from her pocket and handed them to Southey. The lenses were made of thick pink glass. They looked like a toy.
Southey put on the glasses and looked around.
"Oh my," he said. His gaze travelled down to his shoes. "Oh-my-oh-my." He carefully moved his feet as if he had caught himself treading on something, but there was only grass underneath him.
"Try it with these," said Harper. She unhooked the binoculars from around her neck and handed them over. Southey held them up to the glasses and looked downhill towards Winchcombe.
"Oh dear," he said. He handed the glasses to Grace. "Five miles?"
"Five when we got the call two hours ago," said Harper. "Closer to fifteen now. The church organist down at St Peter's was rehearsing for Sunday mass. She looked out of the windows and saw all of this crawling across the houses. She ran out onto the street and couldn't see anything, so she went back in, and there it all was again. No-one else could see it, so she thought she was going mad. Fortunately, the local vicar has some experience of this sort of thing, and he put in a call to me."
"How was the organist able to see this?" asked Grace. Whatever she could see through the glasses had put a note of worry in her voice.
"A combination of factors. The church is 15th century and built on an old druidic site, so we think the stones must resonate with old magic. The stained glass in the windows allowed the organist to see things she wouldn't normally be able to see. It also helped that she has some sensitivity. Very low-level stuff. She's a retired midwife, and her mother was a midwife as well."
"Ah," said the doctor. That seemed to explain everything to his satisfaction, though it meant nothing to me.
Grace took off the spectacles and handed them back to Harper. "You didn't make these out of the church window, did you?" she asked.
"I'm not sensitive like that, and neither is the doctor, so it wouldn't work if I had," said Harper. "These glasses should work for anyone. They're made from something called sun glass. Our predecessors used to call them sun glasses, but it sounds a bit silly to call them that now, so we call them the rose-tinted spectacles. Much less silly, I think you'll agree."
"Can I see?" I asked.
Harper looked at me curiously. "What do you see now?" she asked.
"Oh, very good question," said the doctor.
"Nothing," I said. "I mean, I see the fields and the hills and the trees, but I don't see anything unusual."
"You're supposed to be the magic-proof boy, aren't you?" said Harper. I appreciated that she didn't call me bulletproof. "Maybe your immunity doesn't extend to illusion or perception?"
Harper handed me the spectacles and I put them on. The frames were light and frail, and looped uncomfortably over my ears, and the thick lenses felt heavy on my face.
I looked around, and I saw flowers. Everywhere I turned, I saw flowers. They spread across the fields and wrapped themselves around the trees. They covered the farmhouses and the streets. They reached all the way to the town, a carpet of green vines like a lacework, embroidered with beautiful blooms in a dozen shades of pink and purple. The sight was staggering, and slightly terrifying. I looked down and saw that the flowers reached to my feet, and like Dr Southey I moved my feet to look for more flowers beneath them. They were there, whole and untrampled.
I took off the spectacles and handed them back.
I could still see the flowers laid out all around me, only now I could see their true colours, and they were as bright as any flowers I had ever seen in nature—rose reds and daffodil yellows; striking violets and shining lily whites—and they sparkled like jewels in the sun.
"Is this right?" I asked. "I can still see them."
"That's not right, no," said Harper.
"Ah, but that makes sense," said Dr Southey. "There are two magical effects in conflict. The flowers are not real, so you can see through them, but the flowers do not want to be seen, which means you can see them. Do you see?
"Not even slightly," said Harper. She spoke for me as well.
"The flowers are both invisible and illusory, so you can choose whether to see the illusion or see through it. Oh, that's fascinating."
"The question is, are you immune to the spell's other effects?" asked Harper. "We sent two agents in earlier. They both got sick. One said it felt as if he was drowning in honey. The other said she had the worst hay fever she's ever known. Eyes streaming, mouth itching, hardly able to breathe."
"You sent the agents in where?" I asked.
"Belas Knap." Harper pointed past me, and I turned to look.
The barrow stood five-hundred feet away, a manmade mound at the woodland's edge ringed by a low drystone wall. It was an ancient burial mound; a prehistoric graveyard. I had seen one like it before, on holiday in Scotland, but this one was longer and larger. The mound was covered in flowers, much thicker than anywhere else I had seen, and yet I could still see the whole shape of the barrow beneath them.
"The guidebooks tell us that Belas Knap means beautiful hill or beacon hill," said Harper. "Really, it's the final resting place of King Belas, an ancient ruler of the Stone Kingdom. Take a closer look, Mr Frazer. Miss De Souza, Doctor Southey, you should stay where you are."
I followed Harper until we were about twenty feet from the drystone wall. She covered her mouth with a handkerchief.
"I think this is close enough for me," she said. "How are you feeling, Mr Frazer? Any hay fever?"
I took a few deep breaths. I had never had hay fever, but I was always a little allergic to cats, so I had some idea what to expect. I wasn't feeling anything.
"Nothing so far," I said.
"Over there is the false door," said Harper. She pointed to the north end of the barrow. I walked over to take a closer look, while she stayed at a distance.
The false door was made of two columns and a lintel, flanked by two sloping drystone wings, and blocked with thick sheets of rock.
"There are four real entrances to the barrow chambers," shouted Harper. "The false door is said to be ceremonial, which is almost true. It's not a false door so much as it's a door to somewhere else."
"What does that mean? It's a door to the Stone Kingdom?"
"Right."
"Really?" I was impressed with myself for following the thread correctly. "And what is the Stone Kingdom?"
"Oh! You are new. The Stone Kingdom is one of..." She hesitated and stifled a yawn. "Excuse me. It's one of the twelve courts. Dr Southey can...he can explain."
The door was almost buried with flowers. Up close, they looked translucent, like painted glass. I could focus on them, or I could focus on the world beneath them. My eyes were adjusting to the magic. I squinted and looked closer, and I realised that I could also see through the sheets of rock blocking the door, into the darkness beyond.
The rocks were not really there.
I took a deep, slow breath to steady my nerves.
"I still feel fine," I said. "I'm not feeling the effects at all." I looked over at Harper. She put her hand to her nose, sneezed, and took an unsteady step backwards.
"Harper? Operator Kahn?"
Harper sneezed again, shivered, and lowered herself onto the grass. I raced back towards her. Her eyes were red and filled with tears, and she was breathing hard.
"Take...me...back," she said.
I put my arms around her and pulled her to her feet. She was small and light, but she leaned on me with all her weight as we walked back to the others. We were half way there when they noticed us, and one of the Horseshoe agents ran over to scoop Harper into his arms. He looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. He didn't even flinch at Harper's weight.
He sat Harper down on the step of the helicopter, and she took a few seconds to get her voice and her breath back. The big guy retreated to a respectful distance.
"That didn't...affect you...at all?" she asked. I shook my head. I'd wondered if maybe I just wasn't feeling the effects yet, but seeing how hard it hit Harper convinced me that it really hadn't touched me at all.
"All right," said Harper. "That's good. Mr Frazer, we're going to send you in."
"Excuse me?"
"We're going to send you into Belas Knap. The cup...The cup is..." Harper coughed and sneezed again. Her nose ran, and she struggled so hard for breath that she couldn't get any more words out. She waved to Dr Southey. The doctor obligingly took over.
"The cup is inside the barrow," said Dr Southey. "We need someone to retrieve it."
"Destroy it," said Harper, forcing the words out.
"Must we really?" asked the doctor.
Harper nodded. "Whatever...it takes...to end the spell."
"Are you saying these flowers came out of an old cup?" I asked.
"I'm afraid so," said Dr Southey. "The French called it la tasse de mille fleurs—the cup of a thousand flowers—which is a much more evocative name than Bessie Blount's Cup. The cup draws on earth magic to spread its poison."
Harper seemed to get stronger by the second. I was impressed by her resilience.
"These flowers could make the entire county of Gloucester uninhabitable," she said. "They might make the whole country uninhabitable, at least to humans."
"It seems this thief of yours is a terrorist," said Southey. I was fast learning that the doctor had a gift for tactlessness.
"He isn't my—I don't even know him," I said. "He saved my life, that's all."
But I knew him well enough to know that there was no way he was a terrorist. Or I thought I did. Or I hoped I did.
Except, I didn't know him at all.
Harper looked me over with a cool detachment that belied her years.
"Well, whatever his intentions, you're our best hope to stop it," she said. "You have to go in there and destroy the cup, Mr Frazer."
I panicked.
"But I don't know how. I don't know anything about magic. What if there's someone else in there? Why can't you send in agents wearing breathing gear or lucky charms or something?"
This was everything I didn't want. This was a job for the army, not for someone like me.
"The poison isn't in the air," said Harper. "Respirators won't work. The only item I know of that I'm confident would protect us is Arabian cobweb silk, and we don't have any. We've put in a request to Paris, but even if they agree to send it, it won't get here in time. We need to send someone in now.
"The good news is, we never send anyone in alone. In fact, that's why we waited for you to get here."
Harper waved to the agent who had helped her a moment ago, and he came over to join us. I realised at once why he seemed familiar; he was the agent from the beach, the big guy who took a dagger to his chest.
He was tall, wide and daunting, but not as tall or as wide as I'd built him up to be in my memory, and he didn't look any the worse for his injuries. If anything, he looked better than before. Handsome, in a sort of passively-angry way. His skin was smooth and dark, not grey and craggy—yet I was sure he was the same guy. It was in his eyes.
If he was in any pain from the wound to his chest, he didn't show it.
"Mr Frazer, this is Private Hari Sharma. Private Sharma, this is Ben Frazer."
Hari nodded, but he did not smile. I know he had seen me on the seafront, but he showed no flicker of recognition now.
"Private Sharma has a certain sympathy to earth magic," said Harper. "We're confident that you can get to the epicentre of this, Mr Frazer. We're hopeful that Private Sharma can get there with you. Private Sharma, your job is to destroy the cup, and to keep Mr Frazer safe. Mr Frazer, your job is to aid and monitor Private Sharma. If you meet any opposition, or if either of you experience any ill effects, you are to return at once." She handed Hari the rose-tinted spectacles. "Do you understand?
"Yes ma'am," said Hari. I thought I heard a tremor of hesitation in his voice, which was unexpected in such a brick of a guy. A frown pulled at the edges of his mouth, and I realised that for all his size, he was about the same age as me, and almost as raw. We were both boys conscripted into a weird war; the only difference was that he probably signed up to be a soldier.
"Mr Frazer, if Private Sharma so much as sniffles, you are to drag him out of there. Is that clear?"
I stared up at the big lunk. There was no way I could drag someone Hari's size anywhere that he didn't want to go.
My eyes travelled past Hari to the agent sitting in the back of the Range Rover, and the other agent on the stretcher, and to the agents tending to them, and the agents surveying the area. One agent held a handheld electronic device, and the other held a crystal. A third agent was on the radio, perhaps coordinating an evacuation, or checking in with Paris about that 'Arabian cobweb silk'. They were all teens or in their twenties. But they were all soldiers.
I wasn't one of them. I didn't know them, and I didn't trust them—especially if they were blaming Éven for something that probably wasn't his fault. Walking into a magic-infested hole in the ground sounded like the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
"I can't," I said. "I can't do it. I'm not part of Horseshoe. I don't have any training. I don't know how any of this works."
Harper nodded. She kept her composure, but I saw a flicker of frustration cross her face.
"Of course," she said, her voice still measured and calm. "I sympathise, Mr Frazer. You didn't ask for this, and it isn't fair to impose on you. You can do as you see fit. But let me say this; we don't have a lot of options here. If these flowers continue to spread, we will have to evacuate the south-west of England. Left unchecked, these flowers will cause people to suffocate and die."
"Operator Kahn, I will go in alone if necessary," said Private Sharma. "We might be better off that way, ma'am." Though he clearly hated the assignment, Hari was an obedient soldier.
I didn't miss his little dig at me.
"Your enthusiasm is noted, Private Sharma, but that is not protocol. If we send you in alone and you succumb, we would have no way to bring you back, and we would lose a valuable agent." Harper turned back to me. "I hate to say it, Mr Frazer, but you may be our only hope."
Harper Kahn was younger than me, but I knew she was smarter, and I could tell she was braver.
If my father was here, he wouldn't hesitate.
If Danny was here, he'd know what to do.
I wasn't a soldier, but I didn't want to be a coward either.
I glanced from Harper to Hari, and I caught his look of disgust. He had saved my life on the beach. If it weren't for him, Lady Selkie would have skewered me.
Sure, he was a suck-up and a jerk, but didn't I owe him?
I swallowed my fears and nodded.
"All right," I said. "I'll do it."
* * *