The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell

  “At the café,” Holly turns to me, “you said that Hugo Lamb’s lot, the Anchorites, are immortal ‘with terms and conditions.’ Are you and they the same?”

  “No. We live in this spiral of resurrections involuntarily. We don’t know how, or why us. We never sought it. Our first selves died in one of the usual ways, we saw the Dusk as Arkady just described, then forty-nine days later we came back.”

  “From then on,” Arkady unthreads and rethreads his ponytail, “we’re stuck on repeat. Our second body grew, matured, died; bam, we’re back in the Dusk; then, whoosh, forty-nine days later, we’re waking up back on earth—in a body of the opposite gender, just to well and truly screw your head up.”

  Swearing won’t make you more credible, I subreprimand him. “What matters,” I tell Holly, “is that no one pays for our atemporality. Its cost we alone pay. Our phylum, if you will, is herbivorous.”

  From the street below we hear the screech of brakes.

  “So,” asks Holly, “the Anchorites are all carnivores?”

  “Every last one.” Arkady runs his finger round his bowl.

  Holly rubs her temples. “Are we talking … vampires?”

  Arkady groans. “Oh, the V-word! Here it comes again.”

  “Carnivores are only metaphorically vampiric,” I tell Holly. “They look as normal, or as abnormal, as any other subset of the population—plumbers, bankers, diabetics. More’s the pity they don’t all look like David Lynch villains. Our work would be easier by far.” I breathe in the bitter green-tea steam and anticipate Holly’s next question. “They feed on souls, Ms. Sykes. Carnivores decant souls, which means abducting people, ideally children,” I hold her freshly unsettled gaze as she thinks about Jacko, “which means killing them, I’m afraid.”

  “Which is not nice,” says Arkady. “So Marinus, me, and a few other unthanked individuals—Atemporals for the most part, with some mortal collaborators—make it our business to … take them down. Individual Carnivores rarely give us that much bother—they tend to think they’re the only ones, and operate as carelessly as shoplifters who refuse to believe in store detectives. The problems begin—our War started—when they hunt in a pack.”

  “Which is why we’re here, Ms. Sykes,” I sip my tea, “because of one particular pack. ‘The Anchorites of the Chapel of the Dusk of the Blind Cathar of the Thomasite Order of Sidelhorn Pass.”

  “Too long for business cards.” Arkady interlaces his fingers, inverts his hands, and lifts his arms. “Just ‘Anchorites,’ to friends.”

  “The Sidelhorn’s a mountain,” says Holly. “In Switzerland.”

  “Quite a climb it is, too,” I remark. “Sidelhorn also lends its name to a pass in northern Italy, a road that was old even when Roman legions used it. A Thomasite monastery served as a hostelry on the pass, on the Swiss Valais side, from the ninth century to the last year of the eighteenth. There, in the 1210s, a figure known as the Blind Cathar ontologized into being a conduit into the Dusk.”

  Holly scans this blast of history. “The Dusk that lies between …”

  “Life and death,” says Arkady. “Good, you’re listening.”

  Holly asks, “What’s a Cathar?”

  “The Cathars were twelfth- and thirteenth-century heretics,” I say, “in Languedoc. They preached that the world was created not by God but the devil, that matter was evil, that Jesus, as a man, was therefore not the Son of God. The papacy did not approve. In 1198 Pope Innocent III proposed a landgrab that became known as the Albigensian Crusade. The King of France was otherwise engaged, but he gave barons from the north of France his blessing to ride south, kill Cathars, confiscate their lands, and subdue a disloyal region for the French Crown. Heresy is fissiparous, however. What was smashed, splintered. Our Blind Cathar had settled at a Thomasite monastery in distant Valais by, we guess, 1205, 1206. Why he chose the Sidelhorn, we do not know. His name, we do not know. His impetuses for delving into matter, noumena, logos, mind, the soul, the Dusk, we do not know. He appears in only one historical source. Mecthild of Magdeburg’s history of the Episcopal Inquisition dates from the 1270s and describes how, in 1215, the Inquisition sentenced the ‘Blind Cathar’ of Sidelhorn monastery to death for witchcraft. The night before his execution, he was locked in a cell in the monastery. By dawn,” I think of Oscar Gomez, “he had vanished. Mecthild arrived at the conclusion that the heretic’s liege lord Satan had looked after his own.”

  “Don’t worry,” says Arkady. “We don’t do Satan.”

  “The history lesson’s almost over,” I promise. “Earth spun on its axis, despite the Inquisition’s insistence to the contrary, until the year 1799.” I rest my fingertips on the iron teapot. “A stroke of Napoleon’s pen merged the proud Swiss cantons into a single Helvetican Republic. Not all the Swiss approved of being a client state of France, however, and when promises of religious freedom were reneged upon, many began burning churches and turning on their Paris-appointed masters. Napoleon’s enemies fanned the flames, and in early April a company of Austrian artillery came over the Sidelhorn Pass from Piedmont. Two hundred kegs of gunpowder were stored in the monastery’s cowshed and, by carelessness or sabotage, exploded. Much of the monastery was destroyed, and a rock-fall swept away a bridge crossing the chasm below. Which is only a footnote in the Revolutionary Wars, but that explosion, in our War, equates to the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Shock waves from it ricocheted up to the Chapel of the Dusk, you see, and the Blind Cathar’s long slumber ended.”

  The mantelpiece clock measures out eight delicate chimes.

  “The Thomasite Order was by then a ghost of its pre-Reformation self, and lacked the money, means, and the will to rebuild its Alpine redoubt. The Helvetican government in Zürich, however, voted to repair the Sidelhorn bridge and position a barracks to guard the strategically vital pass. One Baptiste Pfenninger, an engineer from Martigny, was dispatched to the site to oversee the work, and on a night in late summer, as Pfenninger lay in his room at the barracks trying to sleep, he heard a voice calling his name. The voice sounded both miles away and inches away. His door was bolted on the inside, but Pfenninger saw a strip of air swaying at the foot of his bed. The engineer touched it. He found that the strip of air parted, like a curtain, and through it he saw a round floor and a person-high candle of the type one still finds before Catholic or Orthodox altars. Beyond were slabs of stone, climbing up into darkness. Baptiste Pfenninger was a pragmatic man, not drunk, and of sound mind. His room was on the second floor of a two-story building. Yet he passed through the impossible curtain in the air, known, by the way, as the Aperture, and climbed up the impossible steps. How are you holding up so far, Ms. Sykes?”

  Holly’s thumb sits in her clavicle. “I don’t know.”

  Arkady is stroking his zits, content to let me talk.

  “Baptiste Pfenninger became the first visitor to the Chapel of the Dusk. He found a portrait, or an icon of the Blind Cathar. It had no eyes, yet as Pfenninger stood there, and gazed at it, or was gazed at by it, he saw a dot appear in the icon’s forehead and grow into the black pupil of a lidless eye and …”

  “I saw that! Where’s it from?”

  I look at Arkady, who shrugs slightly in reply. “It’s what the icon of the Blind Cathar does, shortly before it decants a soul.”

  Holly addresses me with a fresh urgency. “Listen. The weekend Jacko went missing. That dot-to-eye on a forehead thing. I—I—I had a—a daymare in an underpass, near Rochester. I left it out of The Radio People, it just read like a bad description of an acid trip. But it happened.”

  Arkady subasks me, What if Xi Lo was cording images to her during the First Mission?

  Why keep that from us? I hunt for a better idea. What if Jacko and Holly were already corded, as two psychosoteric siblings?

  Arkady’s biting his thumb knuckle, a habit from his last life. Possibly. The cord’s remnants may have led Esther to Holly as you fled the Chapel. Like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.<
br />
  “ ’Scuse me,” Holly’s saying, “but I am still here. What’s Jacko got to do with this medieval monk and a Napoleonic engineer?”

  The candle flame in its stained-glass jar is tall and still.

  “The Blind Cathar and the engineer talked,” I say, “and agreed upon a covenant, a pact of mutual assistance. We can’t be sure—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. This monk had been in his Chapel of the Dusk for, what, six hundred years? Now he’s inviting up visitors and making deals. What’s he been eating since the Middle Ages?”

  “Naturally, the Blind Cathar had transubstantiated,” I explain.

  Holly leans back. “Is transwhateveritis even a word?”

  “The Blind Cathar’s body had died,” says Arkady, “but his mind and soul—which, for the purposes of our chat, are the same—had entered into the fabric of the Chapel. The Blind Cathar interfaced with Pfenninger via the icon.”

  Holly considers this. “So the builder became the building?”

  “After a fashion,” Arkady replies. “You could say so.”

  “The bridge and the garrison at the Sidelhorn Pass were finished ahead of winter,” I pick up the thread, “and Baptiste Pfenninger returned to his family in Martigny. But the following spring he went on a fishing trip up to Lake d’Emosson, where, one evening, he took a boat onto the water. The boat was found, the body never was.”

  “I get it,” Holly says. “The same as Hugo Lamb.”

  Rain is softly muttering at 119A’s windows. “Jump forward six years to 1805. A new orphanage opened its doors in the Marais district of Paris. Its founder and director was a sturdy Frenchman called Martin Leclerc, whose father had amassed a colonial fortune in Africa, and who now wished to give sustenance, shelter, and scripture to the capital’s war orphans. 1805 was a bad time to be a foreigner in Paris, and Leclerc’s French had a Germanic slant, but his friends attributed his foreignness to a Prussian mother and a Hamburg education. These same friends, many of whom were the cream of imperial society, did not know that Martin Leclerc’s real name was Baptiste Pfenninger. One imagines the accusations of insanity that would have greeted the idea that Leclerc had set up his orphanage to source and groom Engifted children. That is, children who showed evidence of psychosoteric voltage or an active chakra-eye.”

  Holly looks at Arkady, who narrows his eyes like a pondering interpreter. “Psychic gifts. Like you, aged seven.”

  “Why would a … a Swiss engineer, who faked his own death and is now a French orphanage owner—right?—want psychic children?”

  Arkady says, “The Anchorites fuel their atemporality by feeding on souls, as Marinus said. But not just any old soul will do; only the souls of the Engifted can be decanted. Like organ donation, where only one in a thousand is a compatible match. Around every equinox and solstice, the soul’s owner has to be lured up the Way of Stones into the Chapel. Once there, the hapless visitor stares at the icon of the Blind Cathar, who then decants the visitor’s soul into Black Wine. The body is disposed of through a Chapel window, and the Twelve Anchorites assemble at a ritual known as a Rebirthday where they drink the Black Wine, and for a season—three months or so—no cellular subdivision occurs in their bodies. Which is why Hugo Lamb’s body has remained in its midtwenties state, while his mind and soul are over fifty years old.”

  Holly suspends judgment, for now. “Why’s Pfenninger now in Paris when you get to the ‘Chapel’ via a ruined Swiss monastery?”

  “Any Anchorite can summon the Aperture anywhere.” Arkady lowers his palm over the candle flame. “And open it anywhere, too, from the inside. The Aperture’s why this War’s gone on for 160 years. For all intents and purposes the Anchorites are able to teleport themselves from place to place. It’s both the ultimate getaway car and a method of surprise attack.”

  Holly’s voice cracks as she realizes something: “Miss Constantin?”

  “Immaculée Constantin is Pfenninger’s deputy. We don’t know why the First Anchorite recruited her as the Second, but she was the governess of the girls’ wing of the Marais orphanage. No less a personage than Talleyrand referred to Madame Constantin as ‘a Sword-wielding Seraphim in a Woman’s Form.’ Eighteen decades pass and we find her in Gravesend, grooming Holly Sykes. She made a rare error in your case, however, by spooking you, so that one of my ex-students brought you to my attention. I inoculated you by draining off your psychosoteric voltage and rendering you unfit for Black Wine. Miss Constantin was annoyed, of course, and although she never forgot Holly Sykes or her promising brother Jacko, she moved on.”

  “The arithmetic keeps them busy,” says Arkady. “The Anchorites keep their numbers to twelve, so each individual member must source a decantible guest once every three years. Their prey can’t be drugged, bagged, and dragged up to the Chapel. Anchorites must befriend their prey, like Constantin befriended you. If the prey isn’t conscious and calm during decanting, the Black Wine’s tainted. It’s a delicate vintage.”

  The figures in the painting watch us. The stories they could tell.

  “Am I to understand,” Holly gathers her strength, “that Miss Constantin and the Anchorites abducted Jacko and … drank his soul? Is this what you’re really saying?”

  The clock’s tick is either loud or quiet, depending.

  “The thing about Jacko is …” I close my eyes and subsay Wish me luck to Arkady, “… he was one of us.”

  Maybe it’s thunder somewhere, or maybe a garbage truck.

  “Jacko was my brother.” Holly speaks slowly. “He was seven.”

  “His body was seven,” says Arkady. “But his body was the vehicle for the soul of Xi Lo, an Horologist. Xi Lo was much, much older.”

  Holly’s shaking her head, wrestling with this outrage.

  I ask, “Remember when Jacko had meningitis, when he was five?”

  “Of course I do. He damn nearly died.”

  The only way is on. “Ms. Sykes, Jacko did die that day.”

  This is an affront, a trampling, and Holly’s at breaking point. “Er, sorry—but he bloody didn’t die! I was bloody there!”

  There’s no way to make this easier. “Jack Martin Sykes’s soul left his body at two twenty-three A.M. on the sixteenth of October, 1981. By two twenty-four, the soul of Xi Lo, the oldest and best of Horologists, was in possession of your brother’s body. Even as your father was yelling for a medic, Jacko’s body was out of danger. But Jacko’s soul was crossing the Dusk.”

  Ominous silence. “So …” Holly’s nostrils dilate, “… my little brother’s a zombie, you’re saying?”

  “Jacko was Jacko’s body,” says Arkady, “with Jacko’s habits of mind, but with Xi Lo’s soul and memories.”

  She shudders, lost. “Why say such a thing?”

  “Good question,” says Arkady. “Why would we, if it wasn’t true?”

  Holly stands up and her chair topples backwards. “It usually comes down to an attempt to get money.”

  “Horology was founded in 1598,” Arkady says aloofly. “We’ve made a few investments down the years. Your nest eggs are safe.”

  Behave, I suborder Arkady. “Consider Jacko’s oddities,” I ask Holly. “Why would a British boy listen to Chinese radio?”

  “Because … Jacko found it soothing.”

  “Mandarin was Xi Lo’s mother tongue,” I explain.

  “English was Jacko’s mother tongue! My mum was his mum! The Captain Marlow was his home. His family’s us. We loved him. We still do.” Holly’s blinking back tears. “Even today.”

  “And Xi Lo–in–Jack loved you too,” I say gently. “Very much. He even loved Newky, the smelliest dog in Kent. None of that love was a lie. But none of what we’re telling is a lie, either. Xi Lo’s soul was older than your pub. Older than England. Older than Christianity.”

  Holly’s heard enough. She picks up the knocked-over chair. “My plane flies back to Dublin this afternoon, and I’ll be on it. As you spoke, there were … bits I believed, bits I can’t. A lot of it
, I just don’t know. The dreamseeding stuff was incredible. But … it’s taken me so long to stop blaming myself for Jacko, and you’re ripping that scar tissue off.” She puts on her coat. “I lead a quiet life with books and cats in the west of Ireland. Little, local, normal stuff. The Holly Sykes who wrote The Radio People, she might’ve believed in your Atemporals, in your magic monks, but I’m not her anymore. If you are Marinus, good luck with … whatever.” Holly retrieves her handbag, puts the green key on the table, and goes to the door. “Goodbye. I’m off.”

  Shall I suasion her to stay? subasks Arkady.

  If her cooperation is coerced, it’s not cooperation.

  “We understand,” I tell Holly. “Thanks for visiting.”

  Arkady subreminds me, What about Esther?

  Too much, too fast, too soon. Say something nice.

  “Sorry I was rude,” says Arkady. “Growing pains.”

  Holly says, “Tell Batman’s butler goodbye.”

  “I will,” I answer, “and au revoir, Ms. Sykes.”

  Holly has closed the door. By now the Anchorites’ll know she’s here, substates Arkady. Shall we have Ōshima shadow her?

  I’m unconvinced. Pfenninger won’t abort his meticulous plans on a premature strike.

  If they suspect that Esther Little is walled up inside Holly’s head, Arkady’s fingers make a gun, they’ll strike all right, and hard.

  I drink cooled tea, trying to see this morning from the Anchorites’ view. How could they know that Esther’s in Holly?

  They can’t know for sure. Arkady cleans his glasses on the sleeve of his Nehru shirt. But they could guess, and off her to be safe.

  “ ‘Off her’? Too many gangster films, Arkady.” My device trills. The screen reads PRIVATE CALLER and I intuit it’s bad news even before I hear Elijah D’Arnoq: “Thank God, Marinus. It’s me, D’Arnoq. Look, I just found out: Constantin dispatched a cell to abduct and scansion Holly Sykes. It won’t be consensual. Stop them.”