Wyntertide
Page 4
She grasped his podgy fingers and unclenched them. ‘Humidity is building,’ she replied.
A weather forecast, a comment on his clammy skin, or an approaching political storm? Why was she so obscure?
She shut her eyes.
Snorkel could contain himself no longer. ‘I promised Father . . .’
Scry’s eyes flicked open like a camera shutter, as if in sudden contact with Snorkel senior.
‘The dynasty must continue and prosper,’ hissed Snorkel.
‘The people chose your father as Mayor,’ she said calmly. ‘Why would they not choose you?’
‘Straight after his father’s death – he had the sympathy vote,’ Snorkel whinged.
‘There was no vote – his two opponents withdrew,’ she reminded him, adding, ‘He had your political gifts.’
In the marches of the night Snorkel sometimes found himself fretting over Scry’s troubling knowledge of the past. However . . .
‘I don’t pay you to witter. Just tell me – will there be – and will I win?’ He never used that ugly e-word: election.
Scry’s eyes flicked shut again. ‘An old ruler will resume his reign.’
‘Will there be and will I win?’ Snorkel waggled his hands like a spoiled child.
‘I say what I see.’
‘So, there will be one!’
For a further half an hour he pressed, to no avail. Whatever her vision meant would happen, she explained; she could say no more.
The meeting ended as it usually did. ‘I don’t understand what you see in that thing,’ he said, flicking a hand at the sculpture.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to,’ she replied curtly.
Snorkel returned home a tortured soul. He had taken extensive precautions to keep democracy at bay, but this had been an inauspicious year. With the deaths of Deirdre Banter and the Slickstone boy, the fire in Mrs Banter’s tower and an outsider tying for first place in the Great Equinox Race, the omens could not be considered promising.
*
Estella Scry listened to the funereal tempo of the Mayor’s descent. He had come for unqualified reassurance and left disappointed, yet she had been merciful, sparing him the truth: he was but a pawn who thought himself a king. Her next appointment would be a different game.
She ascended to the top floor, another single room, each of the four windows with a small rail-less balcony attached like a landing stage, as if to provide moorage for attendant spirits: her bedroom.
She stripped off her make-up, removed her pearl earrings, buttoned her shirt to the throat and wound a silk pashmina around her neck. As she flipped through the hinged layers of her jewellery box, she recited the names of her forbears: Tiresias the blind seer, Cassandra, heard by many and believed by none, and the Sibyl, with her riddling ambiguities. One way and another she would have to play all three.
She re-read the letter.
Dear Miss Scry,
Two numbers, 7.49 and 8.49, have appeared during the cleaning of a portrait (of their founder) owned by the Apothecaries. As The Clairvoyancy sells almanacs and works on mystical numbers, we wondered if you might assist on their significance. Our chair thinks they may be co-ordinates, indicating the whereabouts of other lost artefacts.
Kind regards,
Madge Brown (for the Artefacts Committee)
She chose, and flicked the golden chain over her neck so the pendant rested on her cream shirt, where nobody could miss it: Pi, symbol of a never-ending but pre-ordained sequence of apparently random events, history in a word.
On her desk lay a copy of Rotherweird’s Popular Choice Regulations, a piece of paper bearing the two numbers and a celestial almanac. The answer reassured her, but the existence of the puzzle did not. Another agency must be at work, meaning the whole truth had been withheld from her.
She had replied directly to the Master, knowing he would gather an audience to ridicule her unscientific trade. Why otherwise accept her offer?
*
The rickshaw pulled up outside the Hall of the Apothecaries – such a curious building, the core old and ornate, the wings later and severe. She neither knocked nor waited for the porter but strode in, seven o’clock to the second, to find her prediction confirmed. A full Court had been assembled. The Apothecaries had the air of a conclave of monks and nuns, until you read the faces – analytical, focused and resistant to distraction. She felt a surge of relief. This was part of the game. She could not think why, but that would come in due course.
At her entrance, a man hit the table with a gavel and cried, ‘Any other business!’
Gurney Thomes rose portentously to his feet. ‘There has been a bizarre suggestion by the Artefacts Committee that two numbers in the Founder’s portrait may hold a prophecy or other message. Miss Estella Scry, a clairvoyant, has offered us her professional opinion. I insisted on a no-win, no-fee arrangement.’ As he preened himself, a reciprocal shiver of approval washed back. Clairvoyant; no-win, no-fee: the Master was so amusing.
Scry went from face to face, finding scepticism leavened with contempt. She would enjoy the turnaround. She delved into her handbag and produced her magnifying glass with a snake in search of its own tail coiled around the handle. She held it to the painting, which, propped on an easel, faced the court like a witness.
She quickly caught a second intriguing detail while Thomes delivered his previous analysis of the mysterious numbers with the same smugness.
‘Listing their properties as numbers tells us nothing,’ she announced. ‘We must start with the letters in the sleeves.’
Her bald certainty earned a perceptible shift in attention. Necks craned; eyes focused on her.
‘We are not blind, Miss Scry. The letters say “vale” on one and “sum” on the other – “farewell” and “I am”.’ Thomes spoke hastily, to emphasise that of course he had seen them too.
‘Yes – and no,’ said Scry.
‘There’s no “no” about it. That’s what they say.’
She ignored the rebuke, inhaled deeply, and walked around the portrait with eyes half closed. ‘He founded your Guild to last, yes?’
‘Talk about a statement of the blindingly obvious!’
Scry responded with a saccharine smile. ‘“Farewell” and “I am” – isn’t that rather tepid as a legacy from the founding father?’
Nobody spoke to the Master like this. Thomes turned puce. ‘“I live on through you” – what’s tepid about that?’
Scry now fully closed her eyes, mimicking an appeal for divine assistance. ‘Put the last letter or letters of each word first and we have levamus – “may we rise”. Now that’s not so limp, Master Thomes.’ Her mind was racing, engaged by her discovery and its staggering implications. She had been naïve. She should have realised Wynter would have thought of everything.
‘Rise? To what?’
‘Power . . . power in Rotherweird.’
The faces looked at her, looked at each other, looked at the painting, looked at Thomes, looked at her, riveted. They were not so supercilious now.
‘May we rise to power!’ Thomes could barely suppress his excitement. ‘When?’
‘Ask the numbers, that’s why they’re there.’ She retraced her steps, fingering her necklace as she continued, face as deadpan as her voice, ‘For 7.49, read seven hours and forty-nine minutes; for 8.49, read eight hours and forty-nine minutes. The first is the length of sunlight on the shortest day of the year; the second the difference in time between that and the longest day of the year. The Apothecaries may rise at the Winter Solstice – this year’s Winter Solstice.’
Thomes flapped his hands in irritation. ‘We are scientists, Madam. The times you mention are variables. This is mumbo-jumbo.’
‘Of course they’re variables.’ She allowed herself a hint of irritation in her own voice. ‘That is the point.’
‘Every year the figures will differ, just as they differ at different latitudes. They are as precise as two pins, one on a calendar and one on a map. On this year’s solstice, at this precise latitude, the Apothecaries may rise.’ She let her hand brush his arm, an offer of truce, now she understood the game. ‘You were right to ask me. Thank you.’
Thomes sharpened his goatee beard with his right hand and turned to the assembly. ‘We would never disappoint the Founder, now, would we?’ he declared with a flamboyant gesture.
The outburst of applause surprised them both, as if a long-suppressed energy had suddenly blossomed: the moment a rabble turns into an army.
Thomes could not quite bring himself to muster an express invitation, but he did manage it indirectly. ‘We make far better liqueurs than Vlad’s, Miss Scry.’
She followed him through the twisting corridors to his study, which lacked the crude ostentation of Snorkel’s private chamber in the Town Hall, but could not possibly be called Puritan. Carvings of the finest quality gave the wall panelling and furniture an air of refinement. An antique Turkish rug looked made for the room, a perfect fit, wainscot to wainscot, the opulent colours faded by age, but the thick wool, warp and weft, intact. Behind Thomes’ walnut pedestal desk and high-backed chair an ornate display cabinet held scientific books and instruments on alternate shelves. Scry glanced through the titles, which covered the evolution of science from its very beginnings. She understood now: Wynter could not return alone. He would need assistants, administrators, enforcers. He would need the Apothecaries.
‘The quince loosens everyone’s secrets,’ Thomes said with a piercing, almost predatory look at Scry. A young Apothecary appeared, pulled out Thomes’ chair, and then a second for Scry. Thomes dismissed her with a lordly tilt of the wrist. ‘We may agree,’ said Thomes, ‘that the Founder would not leave such an instruction with no policy in mind. Power to what purpose is the question.’
‘I do agree – and that’s why you have to trust me.’ She had one card left, but she bided her time. ‘Your founder has an ingenious face. Tell me about him.’
‘The History Regulations apply to us too,’ replied Thomes.
She could see Thomes had a card too. ‘No traditions handed down?’
The girl returned with a tray. The air-twist glasses, a technique requiring the finest materials, mirrored the rug and carvings for style. The decanter, half filled with a mellow amber liquid, had a ribbed waist; the glass was centuries old.
Thomes poured as the girl offered pale biscuits glazed with sugar.
‘It is said he was the first Mayor.’
The liquid smeared the glass like oil, but it warmed the throat. The rich autumnal taste of quince with a thread of apple lingered long on the palate.
‘I see on your shelves a first edition of the Popular Choice Regulations. 1650, to be exact.’
Thomes took out the book. ‘You mean he authored it?’
‘As the first Mayor, it’s logical.’
She opened the book and turned to the frontispiece. Tiny letters centred at the bottom read:
Excudebat Sacheverell Vere
For the populace of Rotherweird
‘Vale Sum – a V and an S: might they not also stand for Sacheverell Vere?’
‘They’re in the wrong order.’
‘But we mix the letters, remember. And 1645 would precede your foundation.’
Thomes gulped the remains of his glass, cheeks flushed. ‘Occasionally – very occasionally – we elect honorary members,’ he said.
*
She left, as her clients often left her company, half enlightened and half disturbed. Only Wynter could be behind these interlocking clues. Her task had been to find a retinue to carry out the many tasks his rule would demand, and so far, so good. But Wynter’s execution had preceded the foundation of the Apothecaries by a good seventy years, so Wynter could not have arranged Vere’s portrait.
A reassuring answer struck her: the traitor Slickstone would have had the same problem: as Mayor, he would have needed enforcers too. She remembered him glad-handing the townsfolk at the Mayday Fair. He had planned to stand against Snorkel in the coming election – he could have doctored the portrait to seduce the Apothecaries.
She hadn’t needed to take on Slickstone, so she had kept well away. After all, Wynter had prophesied that his ‘most special Judas’ would return to Rotherweird and self-destruct, and Wynter never misspoke in matters of prophecy. The gore below the mixing-point testified to that.
But she nursed a residual anxiety that this analysis did not fit the Slickstone she knew. He believed in his own power; he had never been one to cultivate allies.
There were two other possibilities, but surely not after all these years – not without a single sighting . . .
Her mind turned to her next, even harder assignment: to find and kill Fortemain, if indeed he still lived.
7
Fieldwork
From Arctic explorers to astronauts, from bathyspheres to The Beagle, no scientist had studied in such conditions, concluded Vixen Valourhand after two months in the spiderwoman’s lair. The early days after Lost Acre’s Midsummer renewal had been tranquil; the surviving creatures slow to re-emerge into the wrecked landscape.
Even during this halcyon period Valourhand kept close to the spiderwoman’s front door. She never went out after dusk. She never killed unless attacked and studied only carcasses, found on the ground or snared in the wiry remains of the spiderwoman’s webs. She took to picking them up with the fire tongs after discovering that some played dead, sprouting a disturbing selection of eyes, teeth and fangs when disturbed.
She designed a whole new vocabulary and built family trees, the better to catalogue this new world. Some fauna approximated to terrestrial life, especially trees with heavy seed and underground animals, being less likely to find their way into the mixing-point, but others were so far removed from their origins as to be almost unidentifiable. She found hidden attributes in simple exteriors – poison sacs, retractable wings and claws – and startling realignments of fur and feather, beak and bone.
She became so engrossed that previous loyalties to the company and the coming term at Rotherweird School slipped away. But for the note, penned in an old-fashioned hand, she would have remained a student of Lost Acre until taken by age or a passing predator. It appeared on the front door mat one morning, but in her disconnected state she did not think to consider who the postman might be.
Rotherweird needs you. The enemy has an ingenuity you can only guess at. The attached may be of interest.
She unfolded the enclosure, from the Rotherweird Chronicle, and read the name beneath a grainy photograph. The concluding paragraph announced a funeral procession, to be held in Market Square. With difficulty she translated the day and date into real time, only forty-eight hours away.
She had no interest in the rest of the obituary, for she had her own memories, an improbable friendship, given the traditional enmity between the North and South Tower Science Faculties – enabled by her attendance at a Bolitho lecture about antimatter entitled ‘The Evil Twin’.
Afterwards, Valourhand had put to Bolitho the case for an anti-periodic table. He read her well, eschewing patter for hard science. Thereafter they sporadically discussed the mysteries of particle physics in his rooms. Bolitho patted her forearms with the palms of each hand when she entered and in time she understood it as an embrace with no threat of follow-up: respectful affection. He greeted nobody else in this fashion, and she let it become their ritual. Then came the distractions of her encounter with Sir Veronal Slickstone, her experiments with lightning and her visit to Lost Acre.
The news of Bolitho’s death flipped her rating of her present existence like a coin. At a stroke, cutting-edge work turne
d amateurish: a physicist trying out biology and advancing nobody’s interests, including her own. She burned the carcasses, tidied the kitchen and sorted her papers as she re-engaged with reality. Who had delivered the letter? The front door was tight to the floor, yet the envelope showed no sign of friction. Who was the ‘enemy’ to whom the author referred? Wynter, Calx Bole – or someone else? How did the author know she was here? And why call on her to help Rotherweird? She finally remembered the new term. She had courses to plan.
She set off at noon in search of the white tile.
Rotherweird needs you. The letter felt like a call to arms.
8
Eulogy Dress
Absent-mindedness commonly accompanied the forensic precision of Rotherweird’s scientific minds, and the post office catered for this frailty with its Delayed Action Service, where letters and parcels could be left for delivery weeks or months later. Within days of Vesey Bolitho’s demise, the Service delivered a letter to Boris
Polk.
A week before his death, his old friend had told Boris to expect the unexpected at his funeral, so the Professor’s instructions came as no surprise. He was to collect a firework from the South Tower and install it on the eve of the funeral procession; the coordinates for location, the angle of lift-off and the time of ignition were all minutely specified. More immediately, he was to visit Bolitho’s tailor for further orders.
Clasping a huge pair of scissors, which he sporadically snapped open and shut like a lobster, the tailor was out of sorts.
‘I cut a mean cloth, Mr Polk, but I draw the line at all-in-ones.’ Behind the tailor two racks held rows of baggy black overalls. ‘There’s a B guest list and an A guest list: you’re to deliver to the As, I to the Bs. I fear the Professor went loopy at the end.’
While the tailor crammed one rack into two carrier bags, Boris scanned his list: the usual suspects – himself, Fanguin, Jones, Oblong – with two mild surprises in Gorhambury and Valourhand. Neither seemed natural Bolitho friends, Gorhambury for his lack of mischief and Valourhand as a rival from the North Tower.