Winter's Tale

by Mark Helprin

  “He’s been through a lot.”

  “They’ve all been,” Mootfowl said. “The last I heard, he was at The Sun. Don’t be too long. We’re going to throw the bridge in a few hours, and if it takes, if it takes . . . I imagine you’ll want to be around.”

  PRINTING HOUSE Square was crowded with dazed survivors looking for the people they loved. For fear of creating too great a contrast with those who were lost and alone, families whose members found one another suppressed their joy, which made it all the stronger. The Marrattas met Asbury, Christiana, and Jessica Penn just inside the doors of The Sun. They sat down together by a bank of palms illuminated by a number of spotlights in the ceiling. The Sun’s steam engines beat and hissed in a muscular rhythm to provide power for the presses and the light. But across Printing House Square, The Ghost was as black as pitch. Its employees stared at its triumphant rival, and their faces, illuminated alternately by flamelight and by the light of The Sun itself, were sad, moonlike, sallow, and held in hands that had nothing to do.

  When Peter Lake reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw the Marrattas across the lobby, and went toward them. Just before he reached the bank of palms, he clutched his side in response to a sudden pain that nearly toppled him, and stood quietly, hoping for it to pass. They were talking. Hardesty and Asbury were speaking about the vault where Hardesty had left the salver. With the salver’s several pounds of gold, the huge and powerful horse, the launch, and the many skills and strengths that the Gunwillow’s, the Marrattas, and Mrs. Gamely possessed, they could make a new beginning in the city, whatever its shape, when the fires died down and the morning came.

  Peter Lake emerged from the palms. Just as he did, Cecil Mature scurried into the lobby of The Sun, breathless after pushing his way through the crowds. When he saw Peter Lake, his hardly visible eyes filled with tears. Peter Lake, too, felt a surge of brotherly affection for Cecil, and when he spoke his voice broke with emotion. “Have you got the tools to blow a vault?” he asked.

  Cecil nearly collapsed with happiness at the sudden and perfect resumption of their old ways. “I can get them,” he answered, overjoyed.

  “We’ve got braces and hammers at The Sun,” Peter Lake said, “but the metal in these machines is soft. What I’ll need from you are diamond bits of all sizes, nitro, variable chucks, and safecracker’s probes. I’ll bring the rest.”

  “I can get ’em easy!” Cecil yelled as he left. “Wait here.”

  Peter Lake turned to Asbury. “Tell me about the horse that you were talking about. Is he really huge, so that you almost need a ladder to get up on him? Is he as white as snow, and more beautiful than any equestrian statue? Does he fight as you wouldn’t think a horse could ever fight, with his forelegs twirling and his head swinging back and forth like a mace? And does he have a tendency to take extremely long strides, which, if he has his way, become flight? I don’t mean retreat. I mean flying.”

  “Yes, it’s all true,” Christiana answered.

  “You have my horse,” Peter Lake said in such a way that Christiana lowered her eyes for having lost him once again. But Peter Lake then turned to Virginia. “Where’s your little girl?” he asked. “She’s dead,” Virginia answered. “You saw yourself.”

  “But where is she now?”

  “We buried her on the Isle of the Dead,” Hardesty said.

  Peter Lake closed his eyes and thought. Then, shaking his head in the affirmative, as if he had just convinced himself of something, he opened his eyes, and he said, “Dig her up.”

  “What are you saying?” Hardesty replied, suddenly angry.

  “What am I saying? I’m saying that you should go to the Isle of the Dead, and dig her up. Disinter her, if that’s what you want to call it. Remove her from the grave.”

  “But why?” Hardesty asked, not knowing what to think.

  “Because she’s going to live,” Peter Lake said quietly. “And that I know because of Beverly.” He held up his hand. “Just do as I say. I’ll take the horse, since he’s mine anyway, but I’ll open the vault and retrieve the salver for you in return.”

  “You spoke of Beverly,” Hardesty said to Peter Lake. “Do you mean Beverly Penn?”

  “Yes,” Peter Lake answered, “Beverly Penn.”

  “Then I know who you are, from the pictures in the archives. You’re the man who stood next to her in all the photographs, and was never identified. How is it that in all this time you haven’t aged?”

  “I’d like to know that myself,” Peter Lake said. “It’s been perplexing me for quite a while. But now Cecil Mature is back. If you’ll tell me the location of the vault and the number of the box, we’ll go get the salver, and leave it in place of the horse. Where is the horse?”

  “Mr. Cecil Wooley,” Cecil corrected, even though he was breathless from hauling a heavy leather sack full of diamond bits and titanium probes. “Remember?”

  “I do remember,” Peter Lake replied. “Mr. Wooley, would you like to crack one last vault?” Cecil beamed, and bashfully swung his right foot to and fro as he stared down at the ground.

  Hardesty told Peter Lake the number of the box and the location of the vault. “I know that one,” Peter Lake said, “from back then, when it was the ne plus ultra of vaults. With modern tools and techniques, it shouldn’t be that difficult.”

  “Do you want the combination of the box, and a key for a padlock that holds down the lid?” Hardesty asked, pulling out his key ring, and then, realizing that he had insulted Peter Lake, putting it back in his pocket.

  Christiana told Peter Lake where to find the white horse—in a courtyard on Bank Street. He could see that she didn’t want to part with him. “I’m not going to keep him either,” he said. “He’s going home.”

  During these exchanges, Mrs. Gamely had been sulking unnoticed on a bench. Peter Lake approached her. “Sarah,” he said. “I’m deeply sorry for having been so rude to you a little while ago. I didn’t really remember. Will you forgive me?”

  “Oh yes,” she answered. “You’re Peter Lake, aren’t you.”

  He nodded his head.

  He and Mr. Cecil Wooley, as Cecil preferred to be called (since he thought that, unlike the heavy-set syllables of “Mature,” “Wooley” sounded very thin and graceful), left to crack the vault.

  AFTER THEY leaned through the transoms and had the mechanics pass them the other tools they needed, they left The Sun for the bank that Hardesty had chosen years before because it had looked noble, responsible, and burglarproof.

  If by will, imagination, and desire, one can cross from one time to another, Peter Lake and Cecil Mature did so on their half-mile walk. They existed in the present only with a great deal of sufferance anyway, and they suspected that they were soon to rise and actually fly out of it. Hanging on to the modern age by only a thread, they could almost hear the choirs of voices, the tremulous sounds that would shake the ground, and the tones that would come from beyond the swirling smoke. They sensed very strongly the imminent marriage of chaos and order which seemed to be on its way to the turbulent city surrounded by calm blue bays.

  They saw images projected from afar into the billowing eruptive smoke, and Peter Lake quickly surmised that the record of all things, though rushing away into uncharted infinity, could still throw back a strong and indelible reflection. They saw, briefly unfolding, the flowering of the city they had once known—the horses straining at their wagons, the snow dumpers hard at work, the firemen and their urnlike engines, the ice-hung maze of telephone wires, the old silks and diamond lapels, innocent and fleeting expressions born to light an unknowing face for the rest of time. They heard hoofbeats, the mourning whistles of many-stacked ferries, the clatter of harness, peddlers’ calls, and wooden wheels on the cobbles. And Peter Lake knew that these things were nothing in themselves but the means by which to remember those he had loved, and to remind him that the power of the love he had known was repeated a million times a million times over, from one soul to another—all worthy
, all holy, none ever lost. He glided through the illusions that flashed bravely on the smoke, and he was touched very deeply by the will of things to live in the light.

  The bank was a looming old stone building. Every window and door was covered with Spanish ironwork that looked as delicate as lace. But the bars, far from being frilly tendrils, were hardened steel as thick as Craig Binky’s head.

  “Now there’s a bank to be admired,” said Peter Lake, pointing to the motto engraved in four-foot letters across the architrave: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”

  “We never did a job like this, not even close,” Cecil said apprehensively.

  “I did,” he was answered. “Quite close. Some of the private vaults I opened were probably almost as big as the one that’s in here. All you need are the right tools, patience, and a little practice. It’s only metal.”

  “How are we going to get in? The front door?”

  “We could use the front door, since there aren’t any cops around, and it’s dark. But banks always concentrate their strengths in the places that the public sees. We’ll save fifteen minutes if we go through a second-story window in the back.”

  They went around the corner and climbed to a wide ledge which formed the sill of a window that was itself behind thick iron bars. “In the old days,” Peter Lake said, “we’d have had to cut or blow these bars, or use a jackscrew as big as a telephone pole. But now, thanks to diligent metallurgists, we’ve got these wonderful little creatures.” He reached into his bag and pulled out two silver jacks, each about the size of a loaf of bread. They were comprised of a gearbox in the center, and something that looked like a combination of a threaded shaft and a ratchet post. Peter Lake fixed them between a set of bars, and then attached folding cranks which he and Cecil Mature began to turn. After a minute of furious circling, hardly any change was visible.

  He explained that hundreds of wafer-thin alloy gears were packed in so densely as to give a mechanical advantage of two thousand. Though it would take a lot of turning, it would work, he said, and pointed to little cracks where the bars met the stone. There were even battery-powered models, he informed his partner, but what was the point? What could you do while the thing was working, sit on the ledge and eat your lunch, or read Field and Stream? The idea was to work with the machine.

  Soon the bars began to sing like old Irishwomen who tend sheep in the fog. Ten minutes later they had spread far enough apart for Peter Lake to reverse the jacks, pull them out, and step through. However, Cecil became wedged firmly between them, and was only able to get inside after Peter Lake plastered him with graphite and pulled at him. The exertion reopened Peter Lake’s wound, and he bent double with pain.

  “I’m all right,” he declared. “Let’s move on.”

  Now they were on familiar ground, working together with the old tools on an old-fashioned break-tape window alarm. They drilled a dozen tiny holes through the tape, and connected them together with copper probes and wires. Then, knowing that the current would not be interrupted, they carefully cut a hole through the glass, and pulled it out with a double suction cup, placing it neatly between the window and the bars. They were careful about the alarms not because they feared the police (who had their hands full), but rather as a matter of pride. They anchored a block and tackle to the bars, maneuvered themselves and their tools through the opening in the glass, stood in the stirrups of their tackle, and slowly lowered themselves to the floor thirty feet below.

  When they touched down, they touched lightly and without a sound. Peter Lake looked into the turbulent darkness high above him. “Shhh!” he whispered to Cecil, who thought the police were nearby. “Do you hear it?”

  “What?” Cecil whispered back.

  “The music.”

  “What music?”

  “Piano music, a very soft and beautiful piano. Listen.”

  Cecil closed his eyes, held his breath, and concentrated deeply. But he could hear nothing. Peter Lake said, “Ah . . . beautiful! How tranquil.”

  Cecil took another breath, and tried again. “I like music,” he said a minute later, after he had exhaled. “But I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It’s very faint. It’s circling up there, near the top of the dome, like a little cloud.”

  They slid across a little prairie of madly waxed marble, their way dimly lit by the red glare of the fires, and went down some wide stairs that led to the sepulcher in which the vault had been set. A ceremonial gate of bronze-colored steel bars proved easy enough to pass simply by punching in the lock with a hardened awl and a sledgehammer. Once they were beyond the gate, they switched on their headlamps and approached the vault.

  The door was ten feet in diameter, with hinge pins twice as thick as a fire hydrant. The stainless-steel wheels and rods that were scattered over its front made it look like the interior of a submarine. But Peter Lake was not discouraged, and immediately lapsed into an analytical monologue the beguiling likes of which Cecil had often heard from Mootfowl as he felt his way through something difficult and unknown. “These wheels, here,” Peter Lake said, touching half the capstans as he spoke, “are just to impress the safe deposit customers. They’re stuck on to make the thing look like it’s impossible to move. They turn, see? But they have nothing to do with the problem.

  “These two—” he patted two spoked steel thistles each a yard in diameter—“they turn the four bolts. That’s it. If we could rotate these, the bolts would crawl from the strikes like woodchucks backing out of their holes. Each bolt is as thick as a small log with roughly the diameter of a dinner plate, in solid vanadium steel.

  “In the old days, you could manipulate the locks, even the time locks. You’d have to drill to get to the workings, but you could do it. Now the mechanisms have been retrofitted so that they’re controlled by those little silicon things, tea biscuits that are smarter than we are. If you want to outwit them, you’ve got to be able to deal with individual electrons. Maybe Mootfowl can do that, but it’s not my style.

  “So we’ve got to bypass the control, get to the four bolts, and destroy them. That means drilling three holes for each bolt, and blasting the bolt itself into the vault, since the back of the door is covered only with quarter-inch-sheet steel that’s easy to buckle. The holes have to be placed just right.”

  He removed a bushel of calipers and rules from the leather bag, and began to etch a Euclidean diagram on the conveniently smooth surface of the burnished steel. He sang while he worked, which delighted Cecil (even though Cecil could not hear the distant piano that Peter Lake was accompanying), for the sound of it was druidic, tantalizing, and vaguely Oriental, and it reminded Cecil of his years as a tattooist. In about an hour, everything was marked out in precise diamond-etched targets. After they drilled anchor holes for tripods that would hold the bits at the proper slope, they set up the bits and braces, and began to drill.

  They used the ultrahigh-speed water-cooled electric drills that Peter Lake had appropriated from dental science and adapted to his needs at The Sun. When the shafts had been opened in practically no time, they poured in nitroglycerine from a dozen glass bottles, sealed the holes with gutta-percha, pushed long copper spark probes through the soft sealant, connected these to an octopuslike distributor, gathered their tools, and ran a wire out of the vault and across the cavernous banking floor.

  As he connected the leads to a blasting box, Peter Lake said, “I hate to blow vaults with nitro, but speed is of the essence here, and these tea biscuits just ask for it. The bolts are going to be propelled into the back of the vault like armor-piercing shells. I hope they don’t hit the plate.” He turned to Cecil. “Do you remember Mootfowl’s nitro prayer?” Cecil nodded. “Then say it, and I’ll push the plunger.”

  Cecil mumbled something about a ball of fire, Peter Lake put his palm on the plunger, clutched his side yet again, and shoved the rod into the piston.

  The bank shook as if there were an earthquake. Above them, a giant chandelier was suddenly lit,
and its several tons of surprised and protesting crystals were swinging back and forth.

  “That’s it. It even turned on the lights. Batteries, all banks have battery circuits, just for people like us. Let’s go.” They ran down into the sepulcher, which was now brightly lit. “Turn the wheels,” Peter Lake commanded. “I can’t. My side hurts too much.” Cecil turned the wheels to remove the remnants of the bolts from the strikes. Then they pulled at the enormous door, which was perfectly balanced on its fire-hydrant hinges, and the vault was open.

  “What’s the number of the box?” Cecil wanted to know.

  “Fourteen ninety-eight,” Peter Lake answered. He was in considerable pain, because he had not been able to resist helping Cecil pull open the door.

  The box was at waist level, on the right side of the chamber. Peter Lake approached it, sank to his knees, and began to work the combination. He watched himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on one wall of the vault, looked in his own eyes, and glanced at Cecil’s rotund form alongside, bobbing up and down with anticipation. He saw a pool of blood forming on the marble tiles beneath him. Despite the pain, he seemed to be getting more and more alert, and more and more powerful.

  “Finished,” he said, moving the bolt lever. The little door swung open, and Cecil pulled out the box. They clipped off the small padlock, lifted the lid, and spread apart the folds of cloth that wrapped the salver.

  Peter Lake held it up before them.

  This was not a still thing. Like a good painting, it moved. And like light, it moved. In the forever lively interaction of the pure and untarnished metals from which it had been fashioned, it glowed in a thousand colors, glinting in whites, blues, silvers, and gold. It seemed to be on fire, and it lighted their faces.

  “It’s alive,” Peter Lake said. “No one’s ever going to melt it down. No one ever could.”

  CHELSEA HAD become a dark and quiet island surrounded by lines of nervous militiamen armed with rifles and fixed bayonets. Because Cecil was short and squat, he superficially resembled a Short Tail, though he did not have either the stubby curled nose or the paddle chin. The militiamen, mainly farmboys from upstate, were not too sure of what a Short Tail looked like close-up, and they weren’t partial to the leather bags full of burglar’s tools, either. But the salver dazzled them, and they let Peter Lake and Cecil pass through their lines.