Circle of Stones

by Catherine Fisher

  From the kitchen Mrs. Hall’s voice droned. She must be talking to Sylvia. I crept up the stairs & slid into Forrest’s workroom & closed the door without a sound. Careful on the creaking boards, I slipped off my shoes & padded past the great model of the Circus. For a moment, just a fierce, hot moment, I was tempted to smash it all to splinters, but that would be nothing. I would do something much worse than that. I would see that debt torn up in front of my eyes & pay back Forrest’s patronizing kindness & his foppish friend who had dared to look down on me.

  His desk was littered with papers. Plans, diagrams, notes for a new manuscript. Books of geometry & alchemy. Tools & string & pens & ink.

  I found the master designs for the Circus. Lighting the lamp, I glanced up at the skylight & saw that the short afternoon was already waning. It would be dark soon—I had little time. Choosing a pen, I sat down & pulled the plans toward me.

  I made a copy. But not a perfect one.

  The changes would be tiny, & no one would notice them. Measurements a few inches out, columns a little too far to the left. Door-cases misaligned. Small things. Maybe not even Forrest would notice them until they were done, but they would be there, & if they were built, they would destroy the harmony & perfection of the Circus.

  I nodded grimly as my pen dipped in the ink. Proportion was everything. That was the magic, & I would skew it. And always, for ever after, the eye of the onlooker would not be pleased but wander restlessly around the circle of houses, unable to find out what was wrong. What was lopsided, what was out of place.

  I would leave my own mark on the world. Like a dark angel, I would bring discord into paradise. And let Forrest & Compton & Alleyn & all of them go hang themselves!

  I worked for an hour. When at last I sat up & gazed around, the night had come.

  The room was dark beyond the pool of light on the desk.

  The last thing I did was redraw one of the metopes. Instead of the tree standing tall, I drew it fallen, shattered by lightning.

  • • •

  Later, in my own garret I lay on the bed & listened to the sounds of the house, Forrest coming in, his shout, Sylvia’s call of welcome. Outside my window jackdaws karked & laughed. I remembered the birds trapped in that unfinished room, how they had flung themselves so foolishly at the windows, how they had broken their own necks out of panic & fear & mindlessness.

  All at once I felt a terrible dread that I had done the same.

  Or fallen, from some great height.

  Bladud

  To build a masterpiece, a man must first learn about the earth. He must discover the secrets of how to enclose space, because this controls the behavior of people. Birds are free, they live in the limitless air, but men are ruled by walls and corridors and streets and roads. If these are in harmony, so will the people be.

  The architect is a magician, and a king.

  So I traveled and studied. I saw Troy and Jerusalem and Avalon.

  I bowed before Apollo.

  I measured the temple of Solomon.

  I sailed beyond the North Wind.

  And always I searched for the perfect shape, the knowledge and power of its proportions.

  Because I was determined to build the greatest building in all Logria.

  A building that would be known forever.

  A ripple in the pool of time.

  Sulis

  The kettle boiled and rattled and clicked itself off. Josh lifted it and poured the steaming water into a teapot. He stirred it and put it on the tray with the sugar and the two striped mugs and carried everything carefully into the room. “Your kitchen is crazy.”

  Sulis nodded. “That’s Hannah. She’s into herbs and crushing her own spices and growing dodgy things in pots. Simon just eats it. He says you should never ask what it is.” She watched him sit on the window seat. “In my last place all we had was takeout, so it makes for a change.”

  They had come downstairs to make the tea because for a moment up there it had all been too much. Now, taking the mug and wriggling her knees up on the sofa, she realized that though telling the story was an immense ordeal for her, it was not for him. For Josh it was just someone else’s life, with that slightly unreal not-really-my-problem feel to it. It would never matter as much to him. There would be minutes and hours, even today, when he would forget all about it.

  He said, “We ought to go out. It’s easier to talk walking around. Play mini golf. Feed the ducks.”

  She nodded. For a moment the warm silence of the house lay between them. Behind him, through the window, she saw the rhythmic perfection of the opposite facade.

  She said, “Caitlin always had a thing about birds. She would run around the playground with her arms out, pretending to be an eagle, or an airplane. I think she believed that if you flap your wings hard enough you can fly.”

  “She couldn’t have . . .”

  “We were kids. Try to remember when you were a kid. It’s all different . . . the way you think.” She sipped her tea and then put the mug down. It clicked on the glass table.

  “The man came up toward us, and she was scared. She backed away, and she said, If you come close, I’ll jump. It stopped him. He said, Don’t. I won’t hurt you. It was raining, and I was crying and everything was blurred and awful. And then there was this gust of wind. She . . . she sort of wobbled.”

  “Why didn’t you run?”

  “Past him? That was the only way down.”

  “But . . .”

  “We couldn’t run, Josh. We were frozen.” She had her arms around herself; she knew she was rocking, and held herself still. “Caitlin had hold of me and she was too close to the edge and suddenly I knew that if she fell she’d take me with her. I was terrified. I yelled at her. But she had hold of my hand and she wouldn’t let me go, she just wouldn’t.” She couldn’t keep still; she jumped up and started pacing through the room, to the door and back.

  “Sulis, look . . .”

  “NO. I need to finish. I was screaming and sobbing and I panicked and I tore myself away and then he was saying to her, You can fly, little one. It’s all right. It’s safe. And she turned. I saw his hand. It was on her back. She spread her arms. And then . . . Then she just went over the edge.”

  Josh stared. “He pushed her?”

  “I saw her fall. Down and down. I saw her land.”

  Someone laughed in the street. A car door slammed and the engine started. They listened to it drive away.

  Finally he said, “Did she . . . ?”

  “She was dead.” Sulis sat. She felt totally calm now, in control. “I turned around, but the man was gone. I probably fainted, because I don’t remember anything else. I woke up all cold and stiff, huddled in the straw in the folly room—it was the next morning. I was all alone. I went down the steps and outside and she lay there all crumpled. I looked at her and then I knew it hadn’t all been some nightmare. It was the last time I saw her, but I’m glad I did because it wasn’t horrible. She was so pale. Beautiful, like a broken china doll. There was hardly any blood. Then people were shouting and running toward me and it was all chaotic. The police took me away.”

  “But he . . .”

  She looked up. “They never caught him, Josh. That’s what this is all about. I’m the only one who knows what he looks like, and they never caught him.”

  • • •

  In the park, they walked against the wind. The tourist bus cruised slowly below the Royal Crescent, all the camera lenses on one side of the bus. She watched it warily. They paid for the golf clubs and spent a crazy hour knocking the ball through the small tunnels and twists of the course, its artificial turf luridly green against the red flags and the blue autumn sky. Then, kicking great drifts of fallen leaves, she told him about the investigation and the newspapers and the countrywide hunt for the killer.

  “I was supposed to be pr
otected, but that one terrible photograph went around the world. That was when the threats started. A window was broken at our house. Stuff came through the mail—I don’t know, they never told me what. But we moved. And we just kept on moving.”

  Coming to the lake, Josh stared out at the mallards and coots.

  “Your mum?”

  “She died a year later. Heart attack. She was only forty.”

  Her voice was as bleak as the gray water. “They said it had nothing to do with what happened, but I don’t know . . . She was never the same after. Since then I’ve had about ten sets of foster parents. And three times I’ve thought—maybe—I saw him. But nothing like this. He’s really found me this time.” She turned, urgent. “I know he has.”

  “Then you should tell the police,” he said.

  “NO!”

  “Sulis . . .”

  “Do you think I haven’t tried that! It’s useless. They just think . . . Last time they made it totally clear they thought I was imagining things.” She flushed as she remembered the infuriating inspector who’d come to Alison’s office, looking at his watch and making doodles instead of notes. “They think I’m a hysterical schoolgirl. They don’t think I’m in any danger. They don’t get it. He’s out there, and only I know what he looks like. Who he is.”

  The mallards were crowding now, the males in their glossy winter colors. She took out the bread and seed, and threw a handful, watching how the bigger ducks snapped it up.

  “That one.” Josh pointed.

  A small coot dived for seed that showered him. Sulis tossed out more, concentrating on sharing it evenly. She liked to see the urgency of the birds, their jabbing swift grabbing of food. Birds were uncomplicated. Free spirits. Feeding them was doing something good, with no mixed-up feelings. She felt happy for a second, as if telling the old story had freed her too, for a while.

  Josh was quiet, as if he was trying to digest it all. They walked around the Crescent and then down into town, through the market to the art gallery, where they wandered aimlessly around an exhibition of plans and drawings.

  One of them was by Jonathan Forrest. It looked like the plan of the Circus, so she stared at it a while, but it was complex, all lines and angles, and it made her restless, as if her eyes were led constantly by the movement of the shape.

  “I should be getting back,” she said on the sidewalk.

  Josh shuffled his feet in the gutter. “Sulis, listen. We need to figure this out. We need to find out if this man is really him.”

  “You mean you don’t believe me.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that. I asked Tom about the weirdo. Turns out he’s just a local tramp. He’s been here years—they all know him and he’s harmless. He was here long before you came. So you see, it can’t be him. And the man on the bus might have been anyone.”

  She stared at him. He said, “Don’t be so scared.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “You are scared. It seems to me you’ve been scared ever since that day. If you don’t stop running, you’ll be looking over your shoulder all your life.” He jumped up out of the way of a car, and she saw how he got soaked from the spray and didn’t even notice it.

  She was too interested to be angry. “Is that what you really think?”

  He pulled her back into the entrance of the gallery. “We’ll make sure. We’ll set a trap.”

  “A what?”

  “A trap. We’ll catch him on camera. CCTV. I get a few hours in the office most days. I can set something up. Leave it to me.”

  “At the baths?”

  “Where else?”

  The idea chilled her. All right, it terrified her. He was right about that. She stared at him through the sudden rain and the passing cars and the crowds of shoppers. “NO,” she said.

  “What?”

  She turned and walked away, but he ran after her. “Sulis! Why not?”

  “I don’t want to. And don’t you dare, Josh! I mean that. Don’t you dare set anything up without telling me.”

  She was shaking and cold. The old dread had broken out all over her like sweat. She crossed the street and walked quickly over the bridge, not looking back to see if he was there or not. But he said, “Running again, Sulis.”

  She stopped.

  Then deliberately she walked off the bridge into the straight, perfect street called Great Pulteney Street, into its regular golden beauty, as if this was a place to breathe, as if the insistence on order would calm the hammering of her heart.

  Josh didn’t follow. He stood at the corner and said, “I’ll call you tomorrow. Think about it. We could end all this, one way or the other.”

  When she turned around, he was gone.

  She walked home. Through the fleeting clouds the low sun lit roofs and chimneys. A crowd came out of the matinee at the theater, and enfolded her like a warm, chattering tide.

  • • •

  Simon was in the hall with the elderly woman from the lower apartment.

  “Thanks, Joan. I’ll look after it.” Turning, he saw her. “Oh, so you’re back. Want to see the cellars?”

  “What?”

  He held up a key. “Jonathan Forrest’s foundations? I thought I’d check the place out before the drain people get hold of it.”

  She followed him back out onto the sidewalk, then down the steps into the area, the open court below street level which had once been the servants’ entrance. The basement flat was empty, its owner in London most of the time. But Simon turned away from the house, to face the wall under the pavement. There were two small doors in it. Selecting a key, he opened one and they both peered in, curiously. A small dingy cubby-hole, smelling of coal. A few dark lumps glistened in one corner.

  “Well, it’s clear what that was for.” He closed it and slipped the key in the lock of the other door. “God, this is stiff.” Rain ran down his fingers. “Should’ve brought an umbrella. Hold this, Su.”

  It was a flashlight. She took it and watched him struggle with the lock, but really she was listening, because in the street above someone was walking around the Circus. Soft, steady footsteps. Slow, as if they searched for a particular house.

  “Ah. Got it.” The key crunched around. The footsteps stopped. Someone was standing right above her, on the pavement outside the house. If she stepped back she would see him . . .

  “Here we go.” Simon heaved the door open; it was warped, the wood grating on the stones. He stepped in and held out his hand for the flashlight. “Coming?”

  If she just took the step back and looked up, they would be face-to-face. The man would be standing there, in his dark coat, his face marked with those scars and pockmarks. Or might it be someone else . . . just a man with a dog, or Josh, following her home to make sure she was okay?

  She gave Simon the flashlight and he clicked it on. They saw a large cellar room, the walls dull stone. It ran back into darkness.

  “Fabulous. Let’s take a look.” He stepped cautiously over the gritty floor.

  Quickly, she followed.

  The cellar was far larger than she had imagined. The roof had a plain vault and the room was cluttered, the back half of it piled with old mattresses, broken furniture, a trash can full of junk. It smelled of dust and the sweetness of mold.

  Simon groped for a light switch but when the bulb finally lit, it was weak and left the corners in deep shadow.

  “Well. They certainly built the place to stand forever.” He ran his hand down the wall. “Not even that damp. Did I tell you, Su, that they had to level the site before they started? This was a sloping hill; still is, actually, apart from the Circus.”

  She nodded. All she could think was that she was standing underneath the sidewalk, maybe even the road. That being underground was the opposite of being so high in the sky that you started to think you could fly.

&n
bsp; Simon shoved a laden table aside with a grunt and examined the floor. “This is where the trench will go. Pretty small, so there won’t be much to see. Maybe your friend Josh will be a bit disappointed. Why isn’t he studying, anyway? He seems bright enough.”

  She had no idea. She realized she had been so concerned with telling Josh her own story that she still knew next to nothing about him. “Perhaps it’s money.”

  “Well, money is around, if you know where to apply.” Simon had reached the back wall. His voice came, oddly doubled by the vault. “Forrest used good materials. There are hundreds of spiders. Oh . . .”

  He was silent, so she said, “What?”

  “A door. Locked. Come and see.” She edged in beside him. In the back wall of the cellar was a door so old that its blackened wood panels were warped and rotting. Simon tugged at it. “As old as the house, I’d say. I’d love to get this open.”

  He tugged again. Beyond the door, something slid and rattled.

  “Leave it.” Sulis stepped back. For a fleeting moment the door seemed threatening, a solid warning. “Are we under the street?”

  “Farther. Under the grass, I should think. The tree roots probably break into some of the cellars.” He edged back, dirt smudged on his face, and she saw his grin of enthusiasm. “Just think of it, Su, an underground circle of rooms, all hidden. Forrest must have seen prints of the Coliseum at Rome, where there are rooms under the central space. He had this crazy idea about games in an arena, you know, before the stuffed shirts on the town council got to him.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “I’m filthy. Hannah will kill me.”

  “No she won’t.” Sulis moved the flashlight around.

  He laughed uneasily. “No. No she won’t. Stupid . . .”

  “Are we finished?”

  “Oh, yes. I think so.” He turned off the light, and there was only the glow from the flashlight, a narrow beam of the twenty-first century. At once the room beyond it seemed to sink back into an older time; the walls glistened, the ceiling descended to a dark overhang.