Wyntertide

by Caldecott, Andrew

  Oblong came over and delivered a schoolmasterly summary of Dante’s great work. ‘The Divina Commedia is Dante’s masterpiece,’ he started, ‘written in the fourteenth century, in three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso – Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. This page is from Hell.’ He pointed to the word Inferno. ‘The verse mixes Latin and primitive Italian – but don’t be deceived by the title: it isn’t a comedy at all.’

  Boris indicated a single ornate manuscript annotation on Finch’s selected page and read, ‘O amicae meae.’

  ‘That isn’t Finch’s writing,’ said Oblong.

  ‘It’s old, most likely Wynter’s,’ added Orelia.

  ‘Why would this book be of interest to Wynter?’ asked Boris.

  ‘Who’s Wynter?’ asked Everthorne.

  Valourhand fumed at their stupidity. ‘He lived here once, long ago. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘He was interested in science and mystical stuff,’ added Oblong politely, but Everthorne had taken no offence.

  ‘Look – I’m from this town and I know the rules. You wouldn’t be here if something wasn’t badly wrong. Tell me only what you want to. I should however point out that two books are missing.’

  Everthorne was right: the shelves holding Wynter’s library had another empty space. The ever-efficient Finch had a card index for every alcove and Valourhand quickly identified the missing volume. ‘Bizarre title,’ she said. ‘Straighten the Rope.’

  Orelia turned away: Vibes had given her that same book at the Hoy Book Fair, only it had not been bound in black. She sensed unseen connections.

  O amicae meae. That single phrase nagged away at Boris. ‘Who are these amicae?’

  ‘We really must stop,’ Valourhand interrupted, gesturing in Everthorne’s direction.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ countered Boris. ‘Oblong is an outsider and he knows everything. Everthorne is one of us – and he found a way in the tunnels and he spotted the second missing book. I vote we tell him.’

  They agreed, Valourhand reluctantly, and Orelia delivered the barest of narratives. The others thought it discretion, but in truth, she wanted to tantalise him. She wanted him to ask her for more – her, nobody else.

  Everthorne inhaled the story, its richness, the scope for illustration. ‘And I thought life here would be suffocatingly dull,’ he said. ‘My grandfather certainly found it so.’

  Valourhand returned to Boris’ question. ‘As to these amicae, Wynter was “disappeared” – or, as I prefer to put it, “atomised” – in the mixing-point. Others had their minds wiped and were shipped to the Indies, where only Sir Veronal survived. But how many were there in all?’

  ‘Six,’ replied Orelia. ‘I’m sure Ferensen said six.’

  ‘Add Fortemain, and that accounts for seven of the ten children.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the Seers,’ interrupted Jones.

  ‘They were locals – they didn’t come from London, and they’re not among the ten. Duh . . .’ Valourhand turned her back on Jones. ‘We’ve forgotten the women! There were three who came at the very beginning: amicae meae – they’re his lady-friends.’

  Orelia offered another angle. ‘Sir Veronal and Calx Bole lived on because they entered the mixing-point. The others had familiars – so maybe those creatures lived on too?’

  Fanguin doubted it. ‘Oxenbridge was a soldier, not one for half-measures – he’d have destroyed all traces of Lost Acre, including any familiars. Why leave the living proof of the past you’re trying to hide?’

  ‘He missed Bole’s cat,’ Valourhand pointed out, ‘so he might have missed others.’

  Everthorne had drifted away as if aware of the sensitivity of the conversation around him, but Gorhambury called him back.

  ‘Show Everthorne the shields,’ he said.

  Everthorne picked up Finch’s magnifying glass and gazed intently. They were sublime examples of the miniaturist’s art, not a hair out of place and every feature rendered with a dispassionate, lifelike quality. ‘I’d say aids to recognition, they’re that detailed.’

  He turned his attention to the women. There were three. One appeared of great age, with a mallet in one hand and a key in the other. The other two, while much younger, were cowled.

  ‘Nuns, maybe?’ whispered Fanguin.

  ‘Cloth does not fall this way, and our painter is too good for such a mistake.’ Everthorne spoke gently to nobody in particular, as if answering questions of his own.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘They’re winged; one pair is feathered, the other leathery.’

  Oblong intervened. The thought of three women had prompted another possible connection. ‘The Commedia – that page from Inferno, the one Finch marked, Canto IX? There was a name. Erinyes – aren’t they . . . the Furies?’

  Hands fumbled for the book and Finch’s marker.

  ‘O amicae meae,’ repeated Fanguin. ‘O my lady-friends.’

  A shocked hush descended.

  ‘Poor Finchy has been taken by hellish women,’ declared Gregorius Jones melodramatically.

  Valourhand ignored him, still weighing probabilities, the key to all solutions. ‘It strains credulity,’ she announced. ‘Finch looks at The Dark Devices and sees what we missed. He then miraculously remembers an obscure note made by Wynter in the Commedia and leaves a marker at that very page, only to be interrupted . . . by them! It’s far too neat.’

  Fanguin seized the baton, to devastating effect. ‘Finch consulted The Dark Devices, but he didn’t leave out the Commedia and he didn’t place the marker. It’s a calling card from his abductors – O amicae meae – they’re mocking us, just as Bole did with his trail of clues.’ Fanguin added a qualifying, ‘I think,’ but nobody challenged his analysis.

  ‘Winged Furies would hardly use the door,’ observed Gorhambury, prompting another glance at the skylights.

  Orelia had a domestic insight. ‘They’re crystal-clear – Finch must clean them.’

  Boris, the inventor, got there first: the two library ladders fixed together to make a single ladder long enough to reach.

  ‘Oblong, you’re the lightest,’ suggested Gorhambury, only for Valourhand to intervene.

  ‘Of course he’s not, I am.’

  Jones carried the ladder from bay to bay with Valourhand perched at the top like a circus acrobat. Two alcoves yielded nothing suspicious but in the third, she cried out, ‘There’s a pane loose!’ She manoeuvred the glass rectangle onto the roof. Cold, moist air swept the room as the wind roared over their heads. Fanguin caught a fleeting tang of decay, the same rancid smell of the excrement Valourhand had found in the marsh.

  ‘The birds have flown,’ Orelia whispered to Fanguin. ‘It all connects.’

  Valourhand lifted herself through the opening as Jones rested the ladder on the frame.

  Gorhambury knew she would not wait, impatience being both her strength and her weakness: a maverick explorer with no sense of teamwork.

  *

  The roof of Escutcheon Place had captivated Valourhand ever since she first glimpsed its forest of ornate spires from Aether’s Way. Close up, bizarre creatures in stone with gargoyle heads twisted their torsos around the spikes. She trod gingerly. Cross-winds gusted down the intersecting gullies, which mirrored the divisions in the alcoves below. She found a smear of excrement whose surface had congealed; a good day old, she decided, and surely from the same source as her previous find.

  She crouched, feeling exposed: a mouse in a meadow quartered by owls. If these creatures had claws, they must be remarkably dexterous, lifting and then replacing a glass pane with such finesse.

  She edged along the parapet to discover a low oak door, tucked into a corner in an arch bearing the carved motto Ceryx audiet. She had no idea who or what Ceryx might be. The outer stone architrave was sculpted with shell-like motifs – human ea
rs; a place for Ceryx to listen? Beyond, a stairway descended into the dark, offering shelter from the storm and an escape route from her increasingly tiresome companions.

  She counted sixteen steps before the passage levelled and widened. At intervals tiny diamond-shaped apertures had been cut into the walls, high enough for a grown man to reach. On tiptoe, she could make out a vertiginous view: the ghostly silhouettes of Rotherweird’s towers against ribbons of lighter sky on the valley rim.

  Where was she?

  * *

  Everthorne followed Valourhand, but quickly reappeared to report, ‘Be careful. It’s blowing a gale, and your friend has vanished.’ He offered a helping hand to those below.

  Gorhambury surfaced last like the captain of a stricken ship. He felt apprehensive: an irascible wind, Furies on the loose and a perilously low parapet – the High Structure Regulations would never permit trained workmen on an exposed roof in these conditions, let alone well-oiled laymen gadding about. He issued directions as if marshalling a children’s treasure hunt: ‘Five minutes to look, then back – if Miss Valourhand doesn’t show, she must take care of herself. And keep away from the edge.’

  ‘Fury droppings!’ cried Fanguin, but his words were lost to the wind.

  Orelia quickly found the mysterious door and one by one they joined her.

  Gorhambury blocked the doorway. ‘We cover our tracks first. Jones and Boris, with me – the rest of you, wait.’ At his direction, Jones manoeuvred the ladder to a resting place between two bookshelves, less of a giveaway than leaving it against the roof. They restored the pane and returned to find Oblong delivering another lesson, this time in mythology.

  ‘Ceryx was the son of Hermes, the messenger of the gods. At a guess, it’s ancient Greek for Herald. It looks like a passage for eavesdropping – maybe how a Finch ancestor kept his ear to the ground.’

  To Oblong’s chagrin his revelation received not a word of congratulation.

  ‘That sort of knowledge suggests a troubled childhood,’ muttered Fanguin.

  Orelia privately agreed with Oblong’s theory. The passage must run behind the social section of Aether’s Way, home to coffee shops and gossip. A lesson from history: the dark arts do not change.

  As Gorhambury led the way, Everthorne re-imagined The Vanished Herald as a scene from Dante’s Inferno: a troop of grotesques frogmarching a tabarded man down a tunnel to hell.

  *

  Valourhand moved on as soon as the scratching above her head ceased. Roc and Salt had been the cutting edge of the last adventure; this must be her odyssey. The descent levelled out to a dead end facing a wooden wall. She pressed and probed to no avail. Distant voices confirmed that her companions had found the passageway. She jumped up and down in irritation – only to release a disguised panel in the floor which revolved and tipped her towards the aerial bridge below.

  Though not a long fall, a violent gust of wind caught her in mid-air. She twisted, flinging both arms at the parapet – and her grasp held. Years of nocturnal exercise, honing strength and flexibility, saved her. There were shops along this section of the Way, and the open space between them where idlers loitered to enjoy the view were unsurprisingly deserted. She hurried on towards the nearest downward stairwell, still hoping to escape her pursuing colleagues, but a cry of panic made her turn.

  *

  Valourhand’s jump had obligingly opened the wall beyond and jammed the panel open, alerting those behind to the trap. They stepped across to a conventional descent on to Aether’s Way, emerging through a concealed doorway in between two shops. Boris pointed out Valourhand, retreating on the other side.

  Everthorne, hitherto a reassuring presence, broke away, running along the parapet, eyes down and arms outstretched like a child playing aeroplanes.

  Nobody moved, but Orelia cried ‘No!’ loud enough to alert Valourhand.

  ‘Quiet!’ shouted Gorhambury.

  One distraction, one false step . . .

  Then it happened: an avian form with wings for arms and the face of a hag, human-sized, swooped out of the void at Everthorne. Erinyes. Real time crawled, seconds dragging into minutes . . .

  The artist eluded the first attack, stooping as his attacker stooped, his arms embracing the low flanking wall, but the creature wheeled about for another pass.

  As Valourhand searched for a loose cobble, Fanguin the biologist saved the day. With an ear-splitting screech, he ran towards Everthorne, crouching and rising, his arms flapping wildly up and down: bird against bird. The creature opened its wings to the wind and pulled away into the night.

  Everthorne skipped down from the parapet. Valourhand vacillated between rage at his idiocy and admiration of his sang froid, but decided to leave him to the others. She found a stairwell roped off for repair, lit by a single gaslight, and ran down to the first corner, only to recoil in horror.

  The body was lying twisted near the foot of the stairwell, head jerked back, teeth locked, legs unnaturally splayed, eyes flared. She stepped forward again, muttering, ‘It’s only a corpse!’ to herself. The lips and eyes had a human quality. The teeth were too big for a cat. The frozen expression mixed agony with release.

  As the others joined her, she said, ‘He’s in The Dark Devices.’

  ‘Calx Bole’s fire-spitting familiar,’ added Orelia, arriving with Boris, who placed a consoling arm on her shoulder. This creature had threatened to kill Orelia and set fire to her aunt’s tower. She had cause to say much more.

  Everthorne nimbly passed Valourhand and stepped over the body. They let him: he had seen animals in the beams in Oblong’s flat and the wings of the Furies in The Dark Devices. He had the artist’s eye.

  Everthorne felt riven, both drawn to the face, a grisly jigsaw of cat and boy, and repelled by it. His brushes had never shirked the harsher subjects: maggots in meat, birds snared in mist nets, mad faces in the asylum where his father had spent his final months. He worked through the scene in his head.

  ‘. . . a grizzly jigsaw of cat and boy . . .’

  ‘A fire-spitting cat, you say – and you’re right! He descends the stairwell and is surprised from above. The wound to the head comes first. The attacker recoils. He or she anticipates the fire.’ By way of explanation Everthorne traced a finger along the brickwork. ‘Soot. Seconds later, there’s a fatal strike from below.’ His finger followed a raking wound from haunch to shoulder.

  Fanguin stooped and picked a small jet-black feather from the congealed blood. ‘Feather did for him.’

  ‘Everthorne’s attacker had leathery wings,’ added Valourhand. ‘When was Finch’s absence discovered?’

  ‘Yesterday evening,’ replied Boris.

  Fanguin resumed his diagnosis. ‘There are early signs of decomposition. My money says whoever kidnapped Finch killed the cat-boy the same night.’

  Gorhambury added another note to his burgeoning list: two Furies, feather and leather – different agendas, maybe.

  Everthorne revealed a practical side.

  ‘We can’t leave the body here. There will be questions.’

  Half-boy – does that make it murder, mercy-killing or pest control? Valourhand privately debated the philosophical issues while Everthorne removed his coat and bundled up the corpse.

  ‘He deserves a decent burial – remind me where the gardens are?’

  Nobody demurred, although Fanguin did briefly consider dissection, only to dismiss the idea as inappropriate.

  Gorhambury handed Everthorne his key to Grove Gardens. ‘Due east you’ll find the gate. Salt is horribly untidy, so there’s bound to be a spade. The rest of us need to talk. We might catch Ferdy if we’re quick.’

  The thought of the pub wrenched them back to reality. They were drenched and freezing.

  ‘I’ve never known such an autumn,’ grumbled Boris.

  ‘Chin up,’ retorted Jones.


  Rotherweird had sucked in the storm. Cobbles and walls glistened with rain; down pipes gurgled and whistled.

  Orelia came alongside Gorhambury. ‘Everthorne needs watching – you saw him on the parapet.’

  ‘Be quick, then, Miss Roc, and do nothing foolish.’

  The storm diminished to a sulking passivity. The wind and temperature dropped, and the rain gave way to a fine mist.

  6

  Post-Mortem

  The gate to Grove Gardens stood ajar. Orelia closed it behind her and retrieved the key from the lock. She advanced through the mist, her feet crackling on the gravelled paths. Her aunt had died here for no better reason than a surname shared with one of Wynter’s executioners. Now she feared that vicious chapter had been a mere overture.

  Walking the escarpment, she heard familiar words spoken by him, hauntingly beautiful: ‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee . . .’

  Beside the dark druid, Rotherweird’s oldest statue, Everthorne leaned on a spade. He had worked fast; the turned earth was already level.

  She linked an arm through his and led him away, as the mist thickened into fog.

  ‘It’s like burying a stillborn,’ he said.

  Nothing further passed between them until they reached The Journeyman’s Gist. They found the windows shuttered and front door locked, but through the keyhole firelight flickered on the flagstones.

  ‘I should go home,’ whispered Everthorne.

  ‘This is home,’ replied Orelia, deliberately misunderstanding. After tapping on the window shutter nearest the fire, she heard muted voices, then footfalls, and a side door opened.

  Ferdy hurried them inside. He had not lit many candles, for the blazing fire gave light enough. The company sat in a semicircle, coats and jackets draped over chairs and tables. Boris stirred a large saucepan on a gas ring behind the bar. The aroma of lemon, cinnamon and cloves mitigated the clammy odour of a drying-room.