The First House

by Robert Allwood

  ‘My daughters, good morning,’ he said.

  Sarah felt the thrill of blurting out his real name, William. The punishment would be severe. Perhaps a whole week without supper, she thought.

  ‘Good morning father,’ Sarah said in unison with Sophia. Behind them, her mother coughed for attention and was offered a chair. Footmen then served them hot tea with lemon; their polished shoes squelched and stamped in the wet sand. While she drank, Sarah felt an increase in the unease after she had taken her first steps off the jollyboat. Her mother could sense it too, but how she knew, she could not say. Their shared mental fog was spherical (she was certain); a heavy morass that floated invisible above their heads. It brought shivers and aches, but these too were hard to describe, as though the entire island was weighing down on their heads and she had stumbled upon a grand conspiracy.

  The ache, and the frustration of not knowing, became unbearable on the second night at the camp. Sarah woke carefully, without disturbing her sister and left behind a warm bunk. Outside, the clouds had cleared, revealing an orchestra of stars that played only for her. In the middle of the camp, there was one lamp that still struggled against the dark. Her mother was awake in her tent. Lady Eleanor Saville was a shrewd woman. A born sceptic who understood the world and its material temptations, and whose relationship with her father was cordial at best. Her idea of compassion was always followed by swift ecumenical discipline. She was the stick and the carrot, the judge and the jury. Sarah had felt her mother’s cane rap her knuckles bloody enough to develop a tick whenever she asked a question, or set out to cause mischief. That cane was never too far away. Just outside, on bare feet, Sarah tiptoed and poked her head inside the tent. Behind a silk screen, illuminated by a single orange flicker, Eleanor jotted away with white ink onto a journal with black pages, a hymn on her lips. Her mother’s clothes were soaked from the hem up, but Sarah let the question die in her mind.

  ‘What is it?’ Eleanor asked, without turning her head and no break in writing her notes.

  Sarah felt her legs stiffen; her cheek twitched. It was bold for her to be here, but she needed answers, they forced her to speak.

  ‘You have the aches too. You’ve felt it,’ she said.

  Eleanor stopped mid–scratch; the quill hovered. She looked at Sarah, at first with curiosity, then with worry. Her hands folded, and for a moment, it looked like her mother had become trapped within herself.

  ‘Come. Sit with me child.’

  Sarah climbed onto her mother’s lap, poised in view of her vellum diary and scrolls. Her mother pointed to a sign scrawled on battered paper. One she had sketched in sanguine. It was a red cherry arrowhead at the tip; the body a bloody hollow circle.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ Eleanor asked. Sarah shook her head, no. ‘It signifies a planet. One of the heavenly bodies above us. It’s the sign of an astrological House.’

  The word astrology meant nothing to Sarah. ‘The planets have houses? Do they live in them?’ she asked.

  ‘No. More like the families of old. Like the House of Saville, that’s you and me.’

  ‘Why is it making these aches?’

  ‘The sea–folk, the people who live on this island, believe that this energy will guide them into the future. It’s their religion. What you feel, what we both feel, is the energy of Mars as it spirals down from the planet itself.’ Eleanor pointed to the symbol. ‘It’s a heavy weight we feel. A concentration of the will of a god. The god of war, in this case. Mars or Aries, depends on perspective.’ Her mother bit her lip, and jotted down what she had spoken.

  ‘What does father believe?’ said Sarah.

  ‘He’s only concerned with the adventure,’ she said deadpan, as though this excuse covered her father’s distance in recent weeks. ‘He needed fresh stories to bring back to his London club; it justifies his membership, since he has become grey around the temples, slow in his step, and cannot jaunt across the world anymore.’

  ‘Will we meet them? The sea–folk?’

  ‘Tomorrow I promise. Run back to bed now. I must prepare my charms.’

  Sarah slid off her mother’s lap, left the tent, jogged over to her own, slinked into her bunk and closed her eyes.

  ‘Where did you go?’ whispered Sophia.

  ‘Went to see mother. She was still awake.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That we meet the island people tomorrow.’

  ‘Who are they? Why are they here?’

  ‘I don’t know Sophia. We’ll find out, won’t we?’

  ✽✽✽

  Inside a circle of wet branches lined around a bare hill, that overlooked a seaside village, a group of native men and women of the island sat patient. They stared at Sarah with veiled eyes, and the youngest of them, instead of a curiosity, or an invitation to play, lolled their heads with lethargy. Weathered cloaks hung around each of their necks like a noose and spread to cover their bodies. Their pale bodies were covered in patchwork clothes; as though they were shipwrecked, and had spent some years without means to repair them. Across their worn belts hung fisherman’s knives and black nets, still wet from the mornings catch. Sarah winced. Her headache, the ache, had compounded while she had watched the welcoming ritual consisting of passing a branch from the leader of the group to her father. Sarah’s own journal sat buried in her lap. Its pages muddied from bracken she had collected while in the forest path behind them; tiny, neat writing filled the blank spaces around the ephemera. Ten guards from the ship (and five left behind in the camp; her father had insisted on divisions of five) had joined them with either rifles, or pistols and swords hung around their belts. The sergeant caught her eye, and gave her a wink, to which Sarah stuck her tongue out. The rest were young men, and two women, all sharp–eyed and intent on their duty. The group in front of them were people of ancient beginnings; they spoke of moss and bark, seed and branch, of fish and tide. Each time visitors had arrived the mist had swallowed the isle up; an act of their god. When asked ‘which god?’ an islander scrawled an arrow into the dirt with a pristine finger, and then circled it. Sarah copied it into her notebook, and the stared wide–eyed at her mother, who did not respond. Her father had sat, on a plain cushion, inside the circle that welcomed the Saville family to the island and talked. They had conversed for so long Sarah began to feel restless, her anxiety scrawled slapdash in her journal with a thin stick of charcoal. Sophia, however, clung to Eleanor’s skirt, afraid. To her, the strangeness of the place, and the odd customs and dialect they spoke (a sonorous form of English, with rolling vowels), frightened her sister. Her mother was silent throughout her sister’s observations and whispers. As Sarah studied her mother’s face, sometimes cracks of pain broke through, to which she drank from a canteen. A glass orb hung around her neck, which she touched with her nails, gently tapping. After a shout from the village below, a low horn resonated through the hillside. Sarah’s father studied them with amazement etched on his face; William turned a spyglass down to a squat building nestled among trees and pointed. The islanders spoke to him of what it was, and what was inside. They were welcome to see their temple, as long as the guards remained close by, but did not pass the threshold. Her mother began t0 protest at the invitation, but let it be and waved her words away. She invented the need to calm Sophia and retired back to the camp with a few of the guards in tow.

  Closer Sarah, her father, and seven guards walked to the temple, following a couple of the islanders and their leader. It was a short hike through a shaded forest choked by thick undergrowth; the leaves numerous and wide enough blot the sun. As they approached this temple, Sarah could see on top of its oblong base was a thatched roof and pillars of whale bone as supports. No birds settled on the building. It had odd sections that slipped from view, walls that squeezed the ground with no shadow. The heart of the forest around them had hushed; each branch miserable in the quiet. From inside the temple grew an oak that split the reception in half: it was youn
g, supple and twisted in its trunk. The few islanders that had followed them here knelt before it and stayed. Their mouths moved in slick succession over each word of prayer. Sarah grasped her father’s leg tight with both hands. There was fear here. It was an acid in the air, a diffusion that stained the moment and boiled courage.

  ‘I’m scared father,' she said.

  She looked up, a hope that William would pat her on the head or console her that the island people were doing nothing wrong. He stayed still and quiet. She could feel one of his hands on her back, the fingers shook. His jaw locked tight and the wonder had left him. William saw the hedonism of people whose minds had surrendered to nature, and had not steeled himself for it. The wind that had followed them from the hillside had stopped; they had passed a threshold into the core of the place and it stank of rot and loam. Animals pinned by wooden pegs adorned the walls, their skeletons left to hang; the meat left to deliquesce. Some islanders nodded at the trophies and boasted amongst themselves. One, a woman dressed in a grey dress, wagged a finger at her father to follow further into the sanctum, deeper still. From the rear of the temple was an open cave, that shrank into a tunnel; meek torches lit a path. As the group of three walked in silence down slick flagstones and through mouldy doors, eventually they came upon a natural shaft opening up to the sky. Before them lay a circular plinth, lit by what sun filtered through the shaft. In the centre was a statue of man whose skin and weapons glittered, and below, between his legs, it was a flower, stem the shade of brick, petals copper–blue. William had stopped, short of breath, as he admired the altar’s size and presence. Sarah’s headache had numbed to the point where she forgot she was ever in pain.

  While the woman traded stories with William, Sarah ignore the statue, and reached out to the flower as though it was a long–lost toy. Even with her mother’s extensive garden, she had never seen such a specimen. She felt its waxy leaves, and squeezed one in each hand testing their strength. She felt its lines and cuts, the pocks and marks that ran down the stem. Each told her a story, each an occasion of the plant’s life. With a spasm, the peony shuddered. Hidden energy thrummed in each petal. It called her to pluck one; it almost begged her to do so. It was only one petal out of so many, so why not? As she did so, red sap bled and ran down her hand. It stained her skin pink where it touched and made Sarah pause in horror. A wiry arm flung her off the plinth with an angry rasp. The woman in the grey dress stood there, her grip tight, her voice in accusation. Sarah watched her father take action. He wrestled the woman away and onto the floor in one heavy push of his hand. There was a wet crack. The woman cried out once, and then lay motionless, her head split open against a stone on the floor. Her blood pooled beneath, red as the sap on Sarah’s fingers, and snaked between the flagstones. As Sarah gasped, she could only think of the word sacrifice. William turned to her with a fist raised and fury in his eyes. He slapped the petal out of Sarah’s hand and slung her over his shoulders. They left in a rush, each step compounding the guilt shared between them. The temple had become eerie. No bodies stirred in its halls and chambers, no islanders at worship. A sick sedation had seeped into the wood and stone and bones of the place; like the fear when they entered, it curdled the mood, bled shame, and only added to their heresy. William shuddered from the effort of carrying Sarah, his skin was milk white, his shirt ruined from the sweat that had built. When finally, they escaped, jogging outside and to the guards, who had their rifles aimed in a circle, ready to defend their Lord. There was no one there to assault them. It was the worst stillness in the forest; a heavy beat of emptiness; a remorseful nothing. Beyond the vision of the guards and William, one–by–one the islanders walked under the shade, vanished between trunks, and disappeared without looking back, their faces vengeful.

  After the adrenaline had passed, William collapsed onto his knees his lips in repentance. His fingers still shook. The shine had left his eyes; his cheeks had sunk and his back stooped with effort. Each step spent more of his spirit until he conceded for a stretcher to carry him the rest of the way. Her mother glared at Sarah once they were at the camp after the fitful march back through the forest. She would not stop until Sarah had been broken and sobbed; her worry streaked across her face in raw strips. By late afternoon Lord Saville was at rest, his turn cured, his heartbeat calm. Once the news and gossip had settled, the camp was collapsed by order of the sergeant, and the guards busied themselves in ferrying people and equipment to the ship and back in tireless repetition. The Captain of the Lion’s Tail received message to be ready for immediate departure, much to his concern. Her mother’s tent was the last to be emptied of its contents, only its frame and bedding left to dismantle, and in the skeleton of poles and flapping canvas, she knelt beside Sarah, her face clear, lips pulled back.

  ‘Tell me the truth child, from the moment you entered that damned place.’

  Sarah looked down at her mother’s hands. One held a glass orb, linked to her neck with a golden thread. Inside was a twist of bluebell and foxglove. The other hand held the cane. Sarah felt a compulsion to tell her mother what happened: to remember, to imbibe the truth. Her eyes locked on the cane.

  ‘There was a temple in the forest.’

  ‘What was in it? Were there any statues? Any worship? A god? The symbol I showed you?’ Eleanor demanded.

  ‘An oak. They sat around a tree.’

  ‘Why did your father exhaust himself? What happened to him?’

  Her mother now had dropped the cane and orb, and now had both hands wrapped around Sarah’s head. Eleanor gave her a shake to ensure the answer would fall out of her daughter.

  ‘William, father, killed one of the islanders, by accident.' Sarah began to cry.

  Her mother’s hands trembled and then froze. She brought them to her face to wipe away fatigue, her eyes set in the distance. Sarah had never seen a change of mood so mercurial over her. Rage boiled in Eleanor, replaced by quick thought. A memory danced between her eyes, where it ran down her to cheeks and twitched.

  ‘Tell no one of this. Whatever I have seen in my dreams, whatever you have now found, whatever secret you they attacked for, is too dangerous for you to peruse. Sarah Saville, do not return to this island seeking answers even when your father is dust and I am ash scattered on the wind. Promise me child, now.’

  ‘I won’t, I won’t! ‘

  ‘Promise me child!’ Eleanor picked up the cane, and lashed out, rapping Sarah’s knuckles.

  ‘I promise to never return,’ Sarah winced, clutching her hands to her chest.

  Pact sealed, her mother picked up the cane and broke it in two, which she dropped on the ground while spitting out a phrase in Latin. Shouts from around the camp started them both, causing mother and daughter to turn at the commotion. Guards began to fire their weapons into the trees and scrub that circled them, and from the shade, arrows returned back to them with cries of hate. Sarah felt her mother grip her arm, with fingernails dug into the skin, and drag her to the beach. The pair both ran as fast as they could, breath escaping in small gasps. Ahead, in the sea, William and Sophia were already safe and part–way to the ship when the Lion’s Tail discharged its cannons into the forest behind them. Balls of iron sailed overhead and smashed into wood, destroying scores of foliage. The tents now empty, everyone piled into the boats remaining. Two guards screamed as arrows stuck out of them like pinned mannequins. Another guard had already passed, her body held upright by a fellow still pressing on her wound, her face ghost–white, eyes blank. Eleanor threw Sarah at the sergeant who caught her in his rough hands, and hurried herself on board. Without looking back the men pushed the boats out and then began to row in a panic, while the cannons kept on roaring and cries of pain echoed along an apathetic bay.

  Sarah, when the cacophony had stopped, removed her hands from her ears and looked up at her mother, her hair sprayed by the sea, her shawl taken by the wind. She found Eleanor staring back at her, eyes wide, and full of contempt.

  The Fool

  –
London, 1800 –

  Alex had nearly taken most of his orphaned life to realise that London thrives on money and desire as readily as his own heart pumps blood throughout his body. Its roads and streets were as its bones. People and traffic its meat and organs. Homes, business, and public works its skin and hair. It was a resilient and brusque capital. An artificial womb of history and power, culture and want; it had changed the world to suit its own machinations and the world had forever changed so.

  In one of its proud, veiny streets, a large tower sat nestled amongst the squalid apartments of the Redbridge district. This tower was close to the first alleyways that gathered from the mouth of the Darkwater and was built like a roughshod cairn, typical brick replaced by hundreds of sandstone blocks and cut smooth as possible. From the cobblestone street was the entrance, doors always spattered with mud, always heckled by forgotten beggars and drunks. Its grounds were abandoned to grow wild, with thick thorns that scrabbled to escape from between rusted gates. The Tower had no importance that people knew of; no tax collectors or officials visited. The only signs of life were a group of around fifty shady individuals, both young and old, that common people took pains to avoid. Alex likened it to a crooked sentinel that hid in plain sight, and perhaps that was the point.

  Inside, the master’s chambers sat obtuse at the top; they overlooked his streets and denizens as lord over his realm. Below was the vault, where the spoils were kept, locked tight. Below, further from the dormitory, the council room and grand hall squashed on top of each other. Above the hush voices and speculation in the grand hall of the graduation of the initiates, Alex sat on his bunk, dreaming of how to best describe London in its entirety.