Wyntertide

by Caldecott, Andrew

  ‘Low voices,’ whispered Ferdy with a wink, ‘or Gorhambury will have our guts for garters. I understand Mr Finch is missing – no body, I trust?’ He felt safe in asking: his visitors wore expressions of anxiety, not grief.

  ‘There were signs of a struggle,’ whispered Valourhand. ‘They took him through the skylight. They wanted him alive.’

  ‘Who did, and why?’

  Gorhambury described the scene in the archivoire, the evidence that Wynter’s women or their familiars still lived, the discovery of the mysterious rooftop passageway and the gruesome remains on the staircase below Aether’s Way. He introduced Everthorne, who nodded politely to the landlord before helping Boris in the distribution of the mulled wine.

  ‘There remains the “why”,’ observed Ferdy politely.

  ‘Three possibilities,’ suggested Valourhand, pacing between chairs and fire. ‘They think he has something, or they think he knows something – or he’s bait.’

  The last hypothesis had precedent, for Sir Veronal had been lured to his death by a sequence of traps that they had unwittingly activated.

  ‘Or any combination of those three,’ added Orelia. ‘Let’s concentrate on what Finch might know or have. The Dark Devices was left on the table: we’re all aware what an extraordinary book that is, so I deduce it told Finch’s kidnappers nothing they didn’t know already. The missing volume from Wynter’s library was catalogued, so it can’t always have been missing. Assume they were after that, and that Finch—’

  Everthorne, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring into the blaze, glass clasped like a chalice, announced, ‘They took it.’ He sat stock-still, no movement of hand or head.

  ‘How can you know that?’ asked Gorhambury gently.

  All heads turned towards the artist, who delved into a coat pocket. ‘Here,’ he said, flourishing the remains of an old book. ‘It was wedged in the storm drain on Aether’s Way.’

  The black-bound spine had been violently broken and the pages torn out or shredded. The sodden remnants suggested a book of diagrams. Although the golden letters were fractured, the title was clear. Straighten the Rope.

  Orelia caught Fanguin’s eye: Vibes dead, Finch kidnapped, Everthorne attacked – and all to do with this book? At least Everthorne’s actions on the parapet now looked less eccentric.

  A refreshed Fanguin voiced what others were thinking. ‘You saw it sticking out – and that’s why you crouched down on the parapet . . .’

  Silence descended. Random thoughts and speculation came and went.

  Valourhand vented her frustration. ‘Calx Bole sets a crossword clue with the answer “The birds have flown” – and they fly. I find their excrement in the marsh on the night of Bolitho’s funeral. They abduct Finch and leave a calling card. They pursue a particular book of diagrams. For reasons unknown, they kill Bole’s familiar. That’s not enough to form a strategy, let alone discover what the enemy is about.’

  Fanguin glared at Orelia. You know there’s another copy. Tell them.

  Orelia glared back. The shapeshifter could be among us now. What about Everthorne – is he all he appears to be?

  Bill Ferdy had a nose for a change in atmosphere. The urgency of the debate was ebbing; incipient torpor would turn to despair unless he could conjure a new note. ‘I received a most peculiar bequest from our late lamented friend, Professor Bolitho.’ He held up a tiny garden trowel with five shiny protruding teeth. A label in Bolitho’s distinctive script said ‘use in extremis’.

  ‘You’re not alone, Bill,’ Boris broke in. ‘I got a kaleidoscope that responds to dark, not light, and shows an unknown star careering through Orion.’

  ‘It’s not a star,’ Valourhand responded. ‘Stars are fixed. It’s a comet if it’s anything.’ She paused. Why give Boris a toy? In the professor’s last lecture, his pupils had played the solar system and Oblong, the outsider, had been cast as a comet – coincidence?

  ‘Comets have an elliptical orbit that can take centuries to complete,’ added Oblong sagely, mindful of Bolitho’s commentary, and how he had moved far from the sun and the planets to the far corner of School Hall, metaphorically deep space.

  ‘But we’d see it,’ countered Boris. ‘My nephew and I have peered through binoculars for a week – there’s not a smudge or a smidgen of anything.’

  ‘I saw it,’ muttered Valourhand. ‘I saw it in Lost Acre. I nicknamed it Orion’s Lantern.’

  Fanguin, his voice faintly slurred by the mulled wine, intervened. ‘You mean its make-up masks it here and reveals it there? That’s pretty rum.’

  Valourhand felt a trail opening up. Bolitho had made a bizarre remark, which she had taken as jest at the time, but recent events suggested otherwise. ‘Bolitho left me an empty box labelled dark matter – at the time I thought it a joke in poor taste, but at the end of that last lecture he asked a most peculiar question: Suppose Oblong – meaning the comet – was made of dark matter?’

  ‘What’s dark matter?’ asked Jones.

  ‘Use your grey matter,’ giggled Fanguin.

  ‘Think of your shadow,’ replied Boris quickly, to pre-empt a crushing response from Valourhand, but the scientist’s mind was elsewhere; she added a trite explanation, while thinking deeper.

  ‘Dark matter cannot be seen by the best telescope, yet it makes up most of the universe – and it’s not to be confused with dark energy or antimatter.’ Her mind was racing in multiple directions – surely not – but why not? Relativity, gravity, radiation – she could barely keep pace with the potential consequences. But it felt right. It could be . . .

  She spoke more forcibly now, centre stage, her back to the fire. ‘I’d hazard a guess . . .’

  They listened closely: Valourhand would resort to guesswork only if it alone could explain the otherwise inexplicable.

  ‘I believe there is a comet, and it’s our comet. A primordial impact made the bowl in which Rotherweird sits, Lost Acre, and the gateways. The debris made the comet, and Lost Acre’s millennial cycle is the comet’s millennial cycle. There had to be an explanation – now we have it!’

  The image held them: coitus between rock and rock, unspeakable violence, fracturing dimensions playing tricks with matter itself.

  ‘Cripes,’ said Jones.

  Ferdy loved big-picture science and the talk of creation and elemental forces, but leavened by the farmer’s practical eye: keep your feet on the ground. Whatever the cosmology, Wynter and his acolytes presented the danger in the here and now. He nudged the debate back to its starting point.

  ‘Closing time approaches, ladies and gentlemen, and we need something to mull over. When you lack answers, it is best to formulate questions. Let everyone provide one unanswered question which they think matters . . .’

  Nobody challenged the proposal, so he started at the back and worked round. The first contributor predictably stated the obvious.

  Jones: ‘If the cat-thing works for Wynter’s servant, and the flying things work for Wynter’s disciples, why are they fighting each other?’

  Oblong ventilated the question that had been exercising him since the funeral: ‘Why did Bolitho rocket me skywards with the town on my chest?’

  Gorhambury, ever political, asked, ‘Where did Strimmer get his glove?’ The question held a menacing innuendo: might the election be part of the enemy’s grand strategy? In the matter of Sir Veronal Slickstone, disparate threads had joined to make the whole – the Fair, the church frescoes, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Midsummer flower, The Roman Recipe Book, to name but a few – and now the mysterious comet had joined the cast.

  Boris, thumbing through the remains of the ruined book, said, ‘What is Straighten the Rope about? Bell-ropes, anchor ropes, a hangman’s rope? We only have fragments – but from the little I can see, there’s nothing to do with ropes.’

  Was the title yet another anagram? Oblong to
ok out a pen and, affecting an absent-minded doodle, experimented on the back of a beer mat.

  Orelia didn’t intervene. She had a whole copy but she was none the wiser, despite hours of study. She felt exhausted. All these questions were doing nothing to illuminate; they only obscured.

  Fanguin tried a new tack. ‘We’re right to focus on Wynter’s women and their familiars, but we mustn’t forget Fortemain. The trial record is silent, if I remember right – so what became of him?’

  Valourhand blushed, a rarity. The name suggested an ancestor and yet she had given him little thought. She ran with Fanguin’s question. ‘If Fortemain escapes the mixing-point, old age takes him. If he doesn’t, he’s punished like the Seers.’ She paused. ‘Only with what in his cage?’

  And Ferdy, last to speak, held up his gift. ‘Why on earth give me a trowel?’

  It was an inconsequential question, but talk of trowels and earth prompted Boris into spontaneous recitation:

  ‘Earth to sky and sky to earth

  Matter matters in rebirth,

  Sky to earth and earth to sky,

  Life’s mutations do not die—

  ‘Bolitho’s self-written epitaph,’ he explained.

  Orelia sat bolt-upright in a moment of revelation: Wynter’s first house had been taken over by a more benign presence; his victims had been reborn as bookbinders; and someone had brought Morval Seer library books and paints to comfort her in Lost Acre – but it hadn’t been Ferensen – so who else but Fortemain?

  ‘“Life’s mutations do not die . . .” Fortemain lived on!’ she pronounced.

  ‘As who?’ asked Valourhand, her scepticism evident in the tone of her voice and set of her shoulders.

  Orelia tossed a log on the fire before replying. Sparks flew. ‘Bolitho.’

  Disbelief and laughter greeted her suggestion, but Orelia held her ground. ‘Think about it: both have an exceptional gift for astronomy. Bolitho was brought up abroad, so masking his origins. Throughout the summer he hides away in his observatory, only to emerge to give a midnight lecture in the countryside which revealed to Oblong the location of the celestial entrance to Lost Acre.’

  Oblong offered support for her theory. ‘He gave me a personal demonstration in his planetarium that showed the sky in England, centuries ago, at the time the Eleusians were conceived. He portrayed their genius as a freak of cosmic timing – but how could he know their birthdays, unless he was one?’

  Fanguin, flushed by the fire and more than his fair share of mulled wine, followed suit. ‘Bolitho arrived back here years before Slickstone – he knew about Lost Acre’s millennial cycle; he knew Bole was alive and active, but he didn’t dare come out in the open.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Boris.

  ‘Because . . . because he wasn’t privy to Bole’s plans. He didn’t know what form Bole was currently taking so he had to work undercover. That’s why—’ He stopped and smiled. ‘That’s why he grew that beard for the Slickstone party – so as not to be recognised.’

  Ferdy spoke quietly. ‘If he did live on, he was put through the mixing-point.’

  Valourhand, hitherto strangely subdued, joined in. ‘Someone came to me in Lost Acre and delivered Bolitho’s obituary, so that clearly wasn’t Bolitho. Who else is out there?’

  Orelia looked at the five silver teeth of the miniature trowel and remembered a coloured illustration . . . and a larger brick slid into place. It was a bizarre idea, even horrific, but it fitted all they knew. ‘Bolitho’s not dead; he’s out there now.’

  As others gasped, Valourhand hunted for reasons. ‘How exactly?’ she exclaimed.

  Gorhambury had as yet said nothing, but this flight of fancy had to be grounded. He could not have Town Hall staff burying citizens alive, let alone the esteemed former Professor of Astronomy. ‘Miss Roc, you cannot fool the undertaker, the doctor, the grave diggers . . .’

  Orelia shook her head. ‘In the summer Bolitho gave me a wish-list of books he hoped I might come across. They included Mammals by Archibald Thorburn, the nature artist. He wanted one particular plate, of a creature with feet like Bill’s clawed trowel. Bolitho is a moleman!’

  Valourhand returned to Bolitho’s epitaph, sounding uncharacteristically distraught.

  ‘Earth to sky and sky to earth

  Matter matters in rebirth . . .

  ‘Orelia is right: the astronomer and the mole, sky to earth and earth to sky. He had himself buried alive so he could escape. Remember the Sewage Sub-Committee meeting? That discussion about subsidence by the churchyard wall?’

  Orelia followed up. ‘He went into hibernation, as moles do. He closed himself down – that’s how he fooled everyone. Then he burrowed—’

  ‘Wicker coffin,’ Boris added, ‘breakable open.’

  ‘Time,’ Bill Ferdy called, speaking both as the publican and more generally; they needed to absorb and reflect.

  As he cleared away the glasses, Boris patted him on the back. ‘Thanks, Bill. You got us moving.’

  ‘A final glass for a final question,’ said Fanguin, scooping out the dregs of the mulled wine, flecked with fruit peel and sediment. ‘Or really, a question about your questions: which are the ones Bolitho wants us to answer, which are the ones the enemy has planted and which are the ones of our own devising?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Best sleep on it.’

  Coats, boots and scarves were gathered from chairs, tables and the floor. Shock and sadness pervaded The Journeyman’s Gist and nothing further of moment was said.

  Valourhand still couldn’t work out who had delivered her mysterious letter in Lost Acre – Bolitho had not then been buried. And she sensed that Orelia was holding something back. Only one way forward beckoned: a perilous journey for which she needed a companion, someone malleable – and now.

  Outside, fog and gas-lamps had dissolved the town into disconnected smudges of light. Partings in whispers provided the backdrop as she made her move.

  ‘Oblong?’

  Images of Cecily Sheridan surfaced whenever Valourhand addressed him directly, and he nearly answered ‘Cecily’. He swallowed. ‘V . . . Valourhand?’

  ‘You’re needed. No ifs, no buts; just follow.’

  She stalked off, knowing he would obey, which he did with an apologetic wave to the rest. Anything was better than returning to the scene of his forgotten party, even with Aggs’ restored tidiness. Still nobody had thanked him.

  Orelia felt disappointment of a different kind when Everthorne declined her offer to walk him home.

  ‘I welcome the challenge,’ he said, flourishing the map distributed by the Town Hall to the Summoned. Though drawn to her, for the moment he needed to paint and settle the inner turmoil which had afflicted him since his return.

  ‘We’re here,’ replied Orelia, laying a finger on the map, ‘and you’re there.’ She kissed him on the cheek and disappeared into the fog without looking back. She felt both bereaved and concerned that his run along the parapet had been a reckless flirtation with death.

  *

  Boris watched Everthorne plod into the gloom, reflecting on the common demands of their respective trades, painter and inventor: intensity, imagination, technical know-how, bloody-minded perseverance and self-discipline. Yet artists attract women and inventors do not. The artist’s subjects share the artist’s vision in an intimate way, he reasoned, often the process as well as the product, whereas the beneficiaries of inventions just use them. The thought of women brought a twinge of guilt: Miss Trimble had made a bid for his attention outside Oblong’s party, but he had barely acknowledged her. He trudged home feeling despondent, his thoughts turning on Bolitho’s appalling secret.

  *

  Fog usually depressed Everthorne, obscuring line and draining colour; he thought of it as how an artist’s vision might fail on the threshold of death. Yet tonight he welcomed the enveloping dankness: i
t was as if the town were exhaling its own uncertainty. The gypsy-looking girl, Orelia Roc, had spirit, but naïveté too. Her political rivals would be entertaining to paint: one wily and corrupt, the other cruel and hubristic. He suspected she would have little chance against either of them.

  Focusing on others relaxed him. Back in 3 Artery Lane, he resisted his sketchbook and went straight to bed, wondering if the source of his unease had been lying dormant in his genes only to be awakened by the town of his forbears, this peculiar jigsaw of stone and wood, lost history and new inventions.

  Topsyturvyland.

  At dawn he set out north up the Rother to check on a family heirloom recorded in his grandfather’s sketchbooks.

  *

  Fanguin had a miserable homecoming. His wife was in the kitchen in slippers and dressing gown.

  ‘You shouldn’t wait up,’ he started; Bomber had her hands on her hips, which was never a good sign. On the other hand, his place at the table was laid and a pan simmered on the hob.

  ‘Just a drink with Oblong, you said.’

  ‘There was a crisis—’

  ‘He’s an outsider, Fanguin. Keep your distance.’

  ‘He came to supper – you liked him,’ he protested.

  ‘He has an outsider’s agenda.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Bomber, Oblong couldn’t run a bath!’

  ‘Then what’s so gripping about his company?’

  In search of diversion, Fanguin lifted the lid off the casserole, releasing a wave of flavour – kidneys, mushrooms and thyme. No cook himself, he still respected the art form. She deserved a peace overture. ‘Bomber, you’re a star.’

  ‘Yes, I bloody am.’

  The way she said it sounded peculiar. She wasn’t a conceited woman, so she must be asking him to observe – but what? He was fairly confident that she hadn’t had a haircut; and her clothes were undeniably familiar. ‘Delicious!’ was the best he could muster.