Wyntertide

by Caldecott, Andrew

  Come the next stormy night, she would go exploring.

  11

  Hangover

  Denzil Prim, Head Gaoler of Rotherweird Prison, had a fine line in gallows humour. ‘Coming as a paying guest, Mr Finch? We ’aven’t ’ad one of those since Mad Wally Herbert. Once he were out, he’d break another window just to get back in. He loved the nosh, he did.’

  Marmion Finch, Rotherweird’s Herald and sole denizen of the archivoire, the great library chamber in Escutcheon Place where the town’s secret historical records were kept, raised his bushy eyebrows in recognition of Prim’s wit, a throwaway price for his co-operation. The prison, set into the cliff at the northeastern edge of the town, languished in darkness and damp. Few others shared Wally Herbert’s enthusiasm.

  ‘I’d like a view of the old cells, if you have the time.’

  ‘Time – there’s a word; ’ere we do time, we don’t ’ave it. And no point planning escapes, Mr Finch, a dog couldn’t get through them windows. They’re set in solid rock, and the bars go down and down and down.’ Prim’s voice descended as if to stress the point.

  ‘Carvings are my business, Mr Prim. I have to record them all – whatever, wherever, and however ancient. I heard a whisper . . .’

  ‘Ah, you’ll be meaning Cell One – the oldest, the deepest, the dampest – I’d only put takers of life in there.’

  Precedent there, thought Finch, but it being history, he kept it to himself.

  Prim led Finch down a meandering passage. The first cells had modern steel doors with narrow grilles through which Prim and his underlings could check on the occupants.

  ‘You timed your visit well, Mr Finch. We’ve just the one rowdy cooling off.’ He rattled a grille as he passed. ‘They gets a table and a nice lamp with a floral shade. Mind you, we’re less accommodating on the sanitaries.’

  The deeper they went, the danker the atmosphere became. Two cells with doors of ancient oak hunched round a circular chamber at the end of the final passage. The moisture prickled Finch’s skin.

  ‘Cell number one,’ announced Prim, ‘for the crème de la crème, or should I say, the crimes des crimes. And there be your carvings.’

  A solitary window offered a faintly glowing parallelogram hatched with bars on the opposite wall. Finch blinked several times, then scuffed his shoe on the flagstone floor. It was slick with a covering of moss. He trailed his torch across the walls, which in the gloom had a patterned appearance. Up close he saw shapes everywhere, cut into the rock – shapes with a hint of the three-dimensional, abstract-looking, despite their age. Some repeated and some were more finished, suggesting a process of trial and error.

  ‘We have postcards,’ added Prim, ‘but they never sell.’

  ‘Yes, please, whatever you have.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ muttered Prim, peering back down the passage, ‘’ere comes trouble.’

  ‘Trouble’ took the form of a handsome middle-aged woman with a pale but pleasant face, scarlet lipstick, swathes of dark hair and a forthright stride.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Prim, cursing his assistant for allowing her in at such an early hour.

  ‘Yours may be,’ Mrs Fanguin replied. ‘Where is the blithering idiot?’

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled the cell door.

  ‘Mercifully, Madam, orders are: ten guineas for overnight accommodation and a signed recognisance of twenty guineas for good behaviour. Of course, if he wants a full-blown trial, he can have one.’

  ‘Done,’ she said, handing over a ten-guinea note.

  *

  Finch extricated himself from Fanguin’s pending retribution and resumed his analysis above ground. Only cells one and two were old enough and had the river view, but the symbols in cell one decided the issue.

  Among Wynter’s trial papers Finch had stumbled on a fragmentary report of his incarceration. The accused had shown ‘strange tempers’, calling through his cell window at night to the river below and carving the walls with the edge of his irons. Wynter’s carvings had achieved remarkable precision for such a crude instrument. More disturbing, Wynter had been viciously attacked in his cell, suffering ‘wounds most unnatural’. The perpetrator had such a striking likeness to the under-gaoler that he had passed through without challenge, only for the gaoler to be found days later, strangled in a ditch. Oxenbridge’s report suggested the intervention of ‘dark magicks’.

  Finch had a more rational explanation: Calx Bole, shapeshifting, had been the intruder. But why would Bole, the faithful servant, attack his own master? For not the first time in recent months, Finch had the uncomfortable sensation that the talons of the past were clawing at the present, but he could not articulate why.

  Old History

  December 1565. Rotherweird.

  Fortemain has a head full of stars and this cerebral universe swarms with questions. How do they hang? Who or what sets their seasonal movement so exactly? Why do most oscillate when a few (the planets, according to Sir Henry) glow still as a lamp? In the other place the stars are inverted, yet their light and arrangement are otherwise the same – how can this be?

  A quiet young man, he opposes Wynter more by action than words. Wynter knows he is hostile, but he and Bole agree: the other place’s contrary sky holds secrets that only Fortemain can unravel. He is permitted to use Grassal’s optical instruments in the Tower of Knowledge but his work must be shared, and his precious sheets of parchment are numbered to police this condition. For Fortemain, study is escape. He habitually works into the early hours.

  On this particular winter’s night, the anniversary of Grassal’s death, Orion rides high beside a waxing moon. The golden door is open and the tube with the mirror follows as the sky unwinds. He is astonished at how fast the moon moves, a game of catch-up. Morval would catch the intricate shading on the moon’s face, but she is not permitted here.

  A sharp click triggers a tumble of lighter notes: a pebble bouncing down the slate roof below. He descends a floor and peers into the night to see a spectral figure beckoning. Wisps of mist hang above the frost, but Fortemain can make out bare feet in sandals, a grey robe with hem held above the grass and an oil-lamp lifted away from his visitor’s face.

  The figure walks away. It is Fortemain’s choice to make. He hurries down, unbolts the door and follows the lamp bobbing and swaying north and east towards the island’s higher ground. Fortemain guesses the destination well before they arrive: a building regularly attended by Sir Henry and never by the Eleusians, the oldest by centuries on the island: the Church of the Traveller’s Rest. The figure raises his lamp to the carved stone inscription over the entrance: Sub hanc petram, an unusual variant of On this rock I will build my church. But nothing here is usual.

  The deep-set windows choke the moonlight. The lamp dances in and out of the stone columns, then halts and a spark flares to a flame. His companion, now unmistakably an elderly priest, exchanges the lamp for two candles. ‘To lessen the soot,’ he says, his cavernous voice sounding as old as the stone itself. He unlocks a heavy oak door and leads the way up to the belfry.

  Fortemain fumbles his way up, past walls teeming with figures and scenes, some homely and everyday, others outlandish. Sir Henry had shown him an illuminated book of the hours with the appropriate night sky in a semi-circular frame above seasonal workaday scenes like these, sowers to revellers, harvesters to skaters.

  The priest moves his candle to a fragment of night sky with a tailed phenomenon – a comet, Fortemain would have said, but for the black pigment – but there, on the opposite wall, is its twin in white. A hill with a shadowy henge sits beneath the dark comet, again mirrored on the opposing wall, save the hill is bare; the henge has vanished. Beneath the summit is a cluster of men, raising rocks in leather slings: church-builders. There is even a table nearby where other men are mixing colours, wooden spoons in hand. The past engulfs him, for he recognises the hill’s p
rofile. These are the fresco-makers, in this very church: self-portraits.

  ‘Saeculum,’ says the priest. ‘They say the dark comet comes every millennium.’

  Fortemain squints, peering harder.

  ‘Sub hanc petram,’ adds the priest, quoting the inscription over the porch. He retreats back down to the nave, where he hands Fortemain a small bound book. ‘This is our second treasure, a natural history recorded by the church’s founders. It’s copied from the original, De Observatione Naturae. Keep it, and more importantly, read it.’

  ‘Why me?’ asks Fortemain, bewildered by such largesse.

  ‘Mr Wynter’s experiments will worsen. He or his kind will enter the mixing-point and live on. Someone who knows must do so too, to resist when they return.’

  The priest has not finished. He leads Fortemain to the altar and from beneath a square stone in the dead centre of the floor he produces a perfect sphere of rock with multicoloured seams.

  ‘Tradition places this at the last millennium,’ he says, showing it to Fortemain before returning it to its resting place. ‘That book explains how the rock it belonged to miraculously vanished. We like to think the sphere was part of the miracle.’

  They part in the porch. Trudging back to the Tower of Knowledge, with a layer of ancient natural history in the crook of his arm, Fortemain feels he has come of age.

  June 1566. London and Rotherweird.

  Wynter’s experiments do worsen as the Eleusians ‘progress’. More often than not their animal-bird-insect creations survive. They fashion familiars as pets, but Wynter tires of heraldic monstrosities with limited brain capacity and usefulness. It is time for the Sixth Day, the crowning act of creation: to merge humans with other life forms or elemental forces. There will be casualties, so he needs children who will not be missed. Coin will not catch, or catch safely; nobody gives coin for nothing. He needs a lure, an emblem of innocent charity.

  Wynter the traveller has tasted what others have not. He fingers the twisted tuberous root as he heads for the kitchens to hook his line.

  *

  Master Malise pinches his nose in disgust: in the gutters of London fish offal splatters the quay; streams of excrement clog the cracks in the cobbles; dead animals litter the foreshore – scavengers scavenged, their innards picked apart by crows. Prospecting urchins sift the mud for coin and jewels and rifle nets for edible slivers left from the catch. The birds have the wherewithal to wheel away to open fields and clean air but these human scraps are doomed to scuttle through their lives like crabs. The river looks turgid and flat in the milky sunshine.

  He cannot conceal his contempt for their feral talk and slow wits, but she, his fellow Eleusian, the one Wynter calls Mel, Latin for honey, knows how to smile. She feigns warmth, and they flock to her. He has lain with her and she feigns warmth there too. She is practised but cold: a born dissembler, and almost as clever as he.

  Mel plays this game because it works. She holds out the long, flat biscuits and the urchins snap off fragments, licking before they bite. Soon, craving more of the luxurious, pungent sweetness of gingerbread, they follow her to the wagon – but one boy hangs back. He’s taken the lure, but still he doesn’t move. He has the same abject leanness, but without the hangdog look the others wear. He has a striking symmetry of face and body, one might almost say noble.

  ‘You wish me to follow?’ asks the boy, his voice calm, clear as an actor.

  The suffering and sadness in his face passes Malise by, but not the faint sardonic smile. I come as a martyr, not as a fool: that is the message. This boy knows the promises are hollow.

  ‘I expect you to follow,’ hisses Malise.

  Wynter does not blench at Lost Acre’s monstrosities, but he draws the line at dirty children in the Manor. They are scrubbed and clothed in velvet and fur from top to toe. Suspicion lingers, but more gingerbread and steaming meat pies quickly dispel it. In the Manor’s Great Hall they line up, booted and suited, to meet their benefactor.

  Bole reads out name, sex, height and weight as each comes up. In days some will sprout claws or mandibles; some will learn to burrow or fly; some will die. In Malise’s reckoning they have become worthwhile.

  The last two catch the eye for contrast: a stunted boy with carrot-red hair and, always last, the boy without blemish. Wynter narrows his eyes as he too catches the message: I come as a martyr, not a fool.

  ‘Vibes,’ says Vibes, affecting a bow, off-centre like the rest of him.

  ‘I will not have such names in the Manor,’ crows Wynter. ‘Spin the letters, Mr Bole.’

  Bole spins. ‘Bevis,’ he says.

  ‘Bevis it is. And who is this one?’

  Bole looks at his paper. ‘No name.’

  ‘Friend of Vibes,’ says the boy, returning the name Wynter has just banished.

  The Eleusians close in from the shadows, the better to see the contest, but Wynter dismisses him with a single syllable. ‘Tyke.’

  There is ambiguity here: tyke, a childish mischief-maker, and Tyche, the female goddess of luck. The boy does not bow. I am a martyr, but not a fool.

  *

  The next afternoon Fortemain tracks down Bevis and Tyke beside the Rother. Bevis paddles in the shallows, entranced by the transparency of the water and the small spined fish which dart and stop, while Tyke sits on an outcrop, sunning himself, easy as you like.

  ‘This does not last,’ says Fortemain.

  ‘What doesn’t?’ asks Bevis.

  ‘They take you to a different place and they change you. Depending on the outcome, you may need this.’ Fortemain finds this difficult; he wishes to warn without instilling panic. Tyke takes the tiny map and examines the arrows marking a path from a tree in a meadow to a stream on the edge of the forest. They end at a cross and a cave.

  Fortemain takes the map back and points. ‘You can hide here on your return.’ He flips it over to reveal another plan, this time of the Rotherweird Valley. ‘The house is close to the only road out.’ By the house is a name: Tom Ferdy.

  Tyke tunes the bell of Fortemain’s voice: complex, dissonant at the edges, but the heart of the note is true. ‘You are risking your life,’ he says.

  Fortemain blinks. The boy has a strange resignation to his fate. ‘Anyone would.’

  Tyke shakes his head. ‘Anyone should.’ He pockets the piece of paper. ‘One day I may return the favour.’

  Feeling heavy of heart, Fortemain retraces his steps to the Tower of Knowledge knowing he cannot prevent, he can only mitigate. He wonders where Morval is, and what she is recording in Wynter’s terrible books.

  June 1566. Lost Acre.

  On the way to the tile, they are blindfolded. A surprise, Wynter tells them, one too glorious to be diminished by clues, richer even than gingerbread. They can feel underfoot the bridge over the Rother and hear the swish of the grass, followed by the wrapped-in sound of the bowl fringed by beeches where the white tile hides. Then, after a shaking of every sense and sinew, they face a strident new vocabulary of sound: the grass whirrs; birds or animals churr and shriek. Somehow, they have travelled to a different world.

  There are other voices surrounding them: Mr Wynter’s richly dressed young men and women and his corpulent servant. They catch the squeak of hinges as doors open and close, and the singing rattle of the winch, but nobody cries or protests.

  There follows a cacophony of mocking laughter or applause or an intake of breath, and often the sounds of the chase – flapping, threshing, running, the squeal of animals in pain.

  They cannot see the reason for the laughter when poor Bevis emerges with one hand like a lobster claw and his back plated, gifted by a companion crayfish.

  The debate is brutal; only Fortemain and Morval Seer stand apart.

  ‘We’re not there yet,’ says Wynter, ‘not by some way.’

  ‘Put that monstrosity down,’ suggest
s an Eleusian woman, waving a stiletto in each hand. She has a penchant for ‘putting down’ the failures.

  ‘He could wait at table – a lobsterman serving fish,’ jests Malise.

  ‘I wonder if he swims?’ adds pretty Mel.

  Wynter raises a hand. ‘We cannot risk the over-monstrous. Only the pidgeboy comes back with us.’ The misshapen bird, its human element barely visible, has already managed to fly despite the uneven limbs. ‘The others stay here.’

  ‘Bring on Tyke – bring on the ratwigs!’ cry the men, who loathe the boy’s innocent beauty; it rebukes their corruption.

  The women, also mindful of that face and body, half-hope Tyke will be spared.

  Wynter smiles. I come as a martyr, and not as a fool – so be it. Ratwigs as large as your fist, tailed and with furred armour, burrow and nest in Lost Acre’s rotten tree stumps. Two are pulled out with tongs to accompany the boy. Tyke breaks precedent, flicking off his blindfold as the cage rises. He ignores the mixing-point and watches his watchers.

  In swings the cage; out swings the cage – to silence. One ratwig with a face at front and back straddles the bars, but Tyke stands easy, as before.

  Bole coins a new meaning from an old word. ‘A pure,’ he shouts. ‘We have a pure!’

  Tyke has never known quite who he is: a ghost ship without port of origin. There is no recorded parent, place of birth or teacher, and in this vacuum stories attach, even among the denizens of the mudflats – found in the reeds like Moses, bastard son of an earl. Do the stories beget the presence, or does the presence beget the stories? He knows only that he is different.

  Others talk of his stillness, distance and insight, but such language falls short. Still, yes, but he is articulate. Distant too, in that he is apart from the crowd, but he cares for all, including the mangled ratwig, doomed to die. Insightful, yes and no: he has no feel for the future but he reads people, their voices as much as their faces.

  A stiletto releases the ratwig from its misery as Wynter asserts his authority. ‘Bevis and the “pure” will guard the cages.’