The secretary looked surprised. “The King has requisitioned all rooms overlooking the Thames, my lady, so that they can be used for defense. Hadn’t you heard? We announced it an hour ago.”
“I’ve been rather busy,” I said.
“Of course, of course.” He gave me a wan smile. “Well, the river-facing rooms here at the palace are being evacuated as we speak, and the cannons are being moved in. But it’s a job working out where to put everyone, with so many rooms out of bounds. And the King’s papers have to be shifted too, and all his correspondence. And then there are all the people coming in from other parts of the city. Everyone along the riverside has been ordered to move out, and some of them are coming here. So I’m afraid everything’s rather chaotic right now—”
“Never mind.” Westminster lay just southwest of Whitehall, an easy walk from here. “I’ll find the King myself.”
A little while later, I located the King by the river’s edge in Westminster, huddled in the drenching rain with Nat and Sir Samuel. The King’s shoulders were hunched, and Sir Samuel cut a mournful figure, his lace cuffs sopping wet at the ends of his overcoat sleeves. Nat’s back was to me, but when he turned, I saw iron-dark circles under his eyes.
“Chantress!” The King greeted me warmly, but it was only when we touched iron to skin that his shoulders went down a notch. “I was beginning to think we’d never see you.”
I explained that I’d been at the Tower, and why.
When I finished, he said, “So you think Melisande is the one causing all this trouble?”
“She certainly knows something about it,” I said. “Whether she’s behind it is another matter. We’ll get the truth out of her, I promise you. But that’s all there is to tell for now.”
He looked disappointed, and so did Nat and Sir Samuel, but there was nothing I could do about that. “What’s been happening here?” I asked. “Have there been more attacks?”
“Yes.” The lines in the King’s face deepened as he spoke. “Late this morning a sea serpent attacked boats downriver from here, near Tilbury. And there’s been a terrible attack at the Royal Navy at Portsmouth.”
“The dispatch came in this morning,” Sir Samuel said morosely. “Yesterday evening a sea serpent destroyed four ships of the line. Some three hundred men drowned.”
Three hundred men? Sorrow and anger engulfed me. I started to wish I’d pushed Melisande harder.
“That’s the worst of it for now,” the King said, “but there are reports coming in from all over the country of mermaids singing, and monsters being sighted from shore, and fishermen’s boats vanishing.”
“Which makes it all the worse that we’ve gone and ruined the wall that protects Westminster itself.” Nat pointed upriver. Through the driving rain, I saw a point a few dozen yards ahead where Westminster’s embankment all but disappeared.
Dispassionately Nat explained what had happened. “Most of the river walls are sturdy enough, but when we tried to reinforce this one with iron, the mortar crumbled, and we were left with this enormous gap. Now there’s nothing to stop the river from flooding the whole district at the next high tide.”
I saw what he meant. Long ago, all of Westminster had been an island—and a low-lying, marshy island at that. Since then, it had been developed and protected from the river by a series of embankments. Nothing, however, could make it high ground. Once the river rose above the gap, there was nothing to stop it from inundating all of Westminster—including Parliament and the law courts and the hallowed precincts of Westminster Abbey.
“We need to mend the gap before the next high tide,” Nat said. “But that’s only hours from now. And that isn’t really enough time to get the job done, even if the weather were perfect. And in rain like this, I don’t see how it can be mended properly at all.”
“That’s why I called you here,” the King said to me. “The wall. Can you help?”
If I did, it would delay my return to the Tower. But there was no telling exactly when Melisande would revive—and a great many lives were at stake here. I looked down at the long gap and listened to the rain and the river. “I think I could hold back the Thames for you,” I said at last. “Just by a few yards, but that should be enough. I can divert the rain, too. And once the new wall