Wyntertide

by Caldecott, Andrew

  Oblong recounted the whole sorry story as best he could remember it.

  ‘How did Strimmer know to visit you?’

  ‘It must be the company I keep and . . .’ He paused. ‘Strimmer thinks I’m easy prey.’

  ‘That’s how Wynter regarded me, and not without reason. Accept the truth, Mr Oblong, and let it settle – accumulated failure can be a potent catalyst for change.’ Ferensen rose to his feet and shook Oblong’s hand. ‘You have an appointment, I can tell. So off you go. Dry all day, and the mist will not return.’

  He left a pensive Ferensen marooned in the shade as the sun climbed free of the trees.

  8

  Miss Trimble’s Bequest

  Another expedition took place on the night of Oblong’s party.

  Miss Trimble had lost her nerve on reaching Artery Lane. In under a year the callow outsider had evolved into form master and party-giver, while she remained the School Porter, a lowly, if essential, cog in Rotherweird School’s administrative machine.

  The label devalued her: she bent the rules in deserving cases, she kept secrets, she worked all hours and she ministered to teaching staff, pupils, parents, cleaners and cooks alike. Even Rhombus Smith relied on her for early intelligence on staff disputes, bullying and maladministration. She concealed her social insecurity beneath a brusque exterior, save in the company of Gregorius Jones, which whom she enjoyed a warm but platonic friendship: hot chocolate rather than brandy, as Bolitho might have put it.

  She had been hesitating at the foot of Oblong’s staircase when Boris Polk appeared. She barely knew the Polks; indeed she barely knew anyone outside the universe of Rotherweird School. ‘Mr Polk . . . ?’ she started, unsure how to introduce herself.

  He gave her a warm smile and held out a hand. ‘Boris – Boris to everyone.’

  Thrown by the warmth of his reaction, she turned businesslike. ‘I trust you got your bequest?’

  ‘Indeed I did, and very odd it was too.’

  He appeared not to own a hairbrush, his flame hair spiking in all directions as if electrified, and he was hopping from foot to foot. She detected a subtext: a naturally jovial face looked strained.

  Boris described the kaleidoscope and how his nephew had used it to discover a celestial intruder in Orion, his words coming abnormally fast, before ending so abruptly that she had no opportunity to mention her equally odd bequest. ‘Miss Trimble, I’m sorry, I’ve bad news to deliver. You go first. Enjoy a few minutes – I’ll wait.’

  ‘No worry, Mr Polk. I should get back to the lodge.’ A lie – but was it black or white? The School rules barred her from the staffroom and she felt as much an interloper here.

  Boris caught her shyness. ‘I can walk you up.’

  Miss Trimble’s cheeks burned. ‘No really – how kind – sorry—’

  She fled, and Boris hurried upstairs alone.

  Safely back in her rooms, and encouraged by what the Polks’ kaleidoscope had revealed, she sought distraction in exploring her own bequest: a virgin sheet of astronomer’s black paper for marking celestial bodies with a long-nibbed pen and a pot of silver ink. She dipped the pen and dotted the paper. The ink spot sat for a moment – before sliding like a bead of mercury to the centre, only to disappear and re-emerge as three smaller dots in a rough straight line. A phantom draughtsman. She recognised the configuration from her schooldays: the belt of Orion with its diamond-bright studs – and she remembered the names of the stars too, Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka.

  Bolitho had a penchant for veiled messages, even when ordering lunch. She sensed an invitation to visit his observatory.

  Outside, the storm raged, providing excuses aplenty: a dislodged slate or a window left open. Lights burned in the Quad, but all behind curtains, blinds or shutters.

  Professor Bolitho’s name still adorned the whiteboard at the foot of the stairway, and the engraved brass plaque on the door had yet to be replaced. She and the professor had enjoyed an easy, joshing relationship: she would bring Bolitho food from High Table, memorable during Mrs Fanguin’s time as staff cook, and, in vacation, her own humbler efforts.

  On entry, the set of a one-man play came to mind. A presence lingered, more than a memory, less than a ghost. Nobody could have been in since she had locked the oak door on the Headmaster’s orders, and yet the observatory felt active. The hinged cap of the telescope’s eyepiece hung open and a lens had slotted into place, when she felt sure she had closed it. An instrument in a glass case attached to the wall recorded moving objects captured by the telescope. An indigo line like a patient’s heartbeat crawled across the graph paper, which had been blank on her last visit.

  Suspicious, she sprinkled chalk dust from Bolitho’s blackboard onto the telescope tube. It soon began to slide, gently but perceptibly. The telescope was on the move. Bolitho must have set a programme before he died.

  Intrigued, she broke an unwritten rule and wriggled into the astronomer’s chair. Through the sight, a luminous smudge held centre field between Orion’s belt and Betelgeuse, the red star at the hunter’s shoulder, as in her self-drawing star map. Running beside and attached to the main tube was a slimmer twin, the finderscope; its fixed eyepiece had a much broader field and low magnification. Here she could see the entire constellation, but with no sign of the intruder.

  The unfamiliar lens opens to view the otherwise concealed, she concluded. She had never heard of such a phenomenon, which gave her an excuse to visit Boris Polk.

  Dare you, she said to herself, before an austere voice intervened: You’re only a porter, he co-owns Rotherweird’s only travel company. Be real. For the moment the second voice won.

  9

  The Smart Outsmarted

  Strimmer’s pen darted through essay after essay on sub-atomic particles. All were highly competent, none betrayed a scintilla of originality. His mind wandered instead to Oblong’s diary. Boredom, a familiar demon, had given way to its more irksome relative, frustration: he had found his way into the belfry to find that the frescoes in Oblong’s narrative truly existed. He had also found a swirl of footprints, which included the tiny soles of Valourhand’s distinctive boots.

  The idiot history teacher had not been writing fiction – at least, not entirely.

  However, he had made no further progress. The tile eluded him; likewise the mysterious countrysider whom Oblong called X. It enraged him that countrysiders should dabble in the past while the town languished in self-imposed ignorance.

  Engrossed by these mysteries, he neglected not only his hapless students, but his political commitments too. The forbidding mastiff at the North Tower entrance kept would-be enquirers at bay, while anyone discourteous enough to approach him in the street was bluntly dismissed with, ‘Wait for my speech.’ In truth he had no policies, and no interest in policy beyond the abstract notion that the North Tower, Rotherweird’s heartbeat, should hold sway over all.

  Estella Scry, however, did intrigue him. At the next meeting with the Apothecaries, she had intervened to correct a minor detail about mass and binding energy in different nucleons – a detail well beyond the most gifted sixth-former.

  He would not demean himself by visiting The Clairvoyancy, but he would have to declare his hand soon.

  A knock disturbed his reverie. Strimmer resented any disturbance, as his fellow teachers knew. He shouted an obscenity, but to no effect. A young woman stepped through the door towards him as if she owned the place. Grey-green eyes flecked with amber and set in a pleasing oval face darted from walls to ceiling to floor before settling on him: eyes which narrowed when she focused. Late twenties, he guessed, but with the poise of someone much older.

  ‘Pomeny Tighe,’ she said.

  ‘Come in.’

  She smiled. I’m in already, in case you hadn’t noticed. ‘I’m from the Mayor’s Office.’

  Strimmer’s heart sank: he had miscalculated. She
must be a minor functionary working for the nauseating Snorkel.

  ‘I wrote an essay,’ she added.

  ‘I see,’ replied Strimmer coldly. Snorkel’s Essay Prize had caused high mirth in the North Tower. They had spent hours penning sickening eulogies which they had submitted under the names of various unsuspecting townsfolk. She must have stooped even lower to get the job.

  Pomeny Tighe perched on his desk, an intimate move – and elegant legs, too. She recited her opening paragraph: ‘“The two political imperatives, power and permanence, are best secured by the judicious use of three tools – policy, patronage and pressure. These fine instruments require sound intelligence for, and in, their user . . .”’ She paused. ‘So, not the sycophantic ode to Snorkel you expected?’

  Unused to being a move behind, and intrigued by both her looks and the lack of respect in her use of the bare ‘Snorkel’, Strimmer decided that Miss Tighe merited a closer look. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Black and strong.’

  He probed as his coffee machine hissed and gurgled, ‘Are you one of the Summoned?’ An implicit compliment: if not, he would have noticed her already.

  She picked up the Popular Choice Regulations and flexed her right foot as if examining her toes. ‘It’s time for change. The Roc woman is an amateur. The Mayor likes his wallow as it is.’ She arched her back and turned her head. Freckles stippled the sides of her nose. ‘You’re standing for change, presumably?’

  Uncharacteristically, Strimmer found himself drawn to confessional speaking. ‘It was a rush of blood to the head, frankly. I’ve no policies, and the electorate can live or die for all I care.’

  ‘You’d waste this opportunity?’ She gave him a look of ferocious disappointment.

  Strimmer could not fully articulate her attraction, but she made him feel alive, and he sensed fragility beneath the steel.

  She did not wait for his reply. ‘I’ve persuaded Snorkel that on Speech Day Roc goes first, then him, then you. You see, Snorkel has a policy that is sound in principle, but his application of it is feeble.’

  Strimmer translated this criticism of Snorkel as you can do better. ‘You said he likes his wallow as it is,’ he pointed out. ‘What is this new policy?’

  ‘He does, but to keep it that way, he needs votes – but let us imagine that he floats the idea, but then you, speaking last, embellish it and seize the glory.’

  ‘This policy wasn’t your idea, by any chance?’

  ‘I like to be creative.’

  ‘Has it a victim or a beneficiary?’ asked Strimmer.

  ‘It has both: greed is the driver.’

  ‘So, whom does it feed, at whose expense?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Guess,’ asked Tighe, leaning closer.

  Her skin had a fresh, translucent quality.

  ‘Well, it sounds risky: you make new friends in the winners but enemies in the losers.’

  ‘They aren’t enemies who matter,’ she said dismissively. ‘Come on, guess!’

  ‘It’s someone out of town?’

  ‘Clever boy,’ she said, ‘but more than just someone.’

  ‘Countrysiders!’ he announced.

  ‘They take your money, they give nothing back, but they’re rich, rich, rich.’

  ‘Are they?’ For the second time in his life (the first had been Slickstone), Strimmer felt outsmarted.

  ‘They’re rich in property, land and what the land yields.’ She paused. ‘In my world, Mr Strimmer, shared likes are a boon, but common hatreds make a bond.’

  Within half an hour they had a strategy, even though Strimmer was feeling like a privileged pawn, promised elevation to royalty if he followed the ordered moves.

  Within an hour Tighe had drawn the curtains and with busy, slender fingers was pulling his shirt open.

  ‘Let’s celebrate,’ she said.

  Later, as she lay naked on her back, head propped on a cushion, he showed her The Roman Recipe Book.

  ‘It must be what it says it is,’ she said.

  ‘Being?’ said Strimmer, applying a long match to the fire.

  ‘A recipe book.’

  ‘For what?’

  She did not know, but felt vindicated in her choice of Strimmer as the man most likely to find a cure for her terrible predicament.

  10

  Figures of Speech

  At noon, an old scene was replayed: same set, the Parliament Chamber, and packed with the same cast, including the Town Crier, tasked with delivering a running commentary to the milling crowd in Market Square. Only the Costume Department had upped its act, for democracy had turned fashionable. For Rotherweirders, the hustings felt like party-time.

  Snorkel had awarded his cause colours (yellow with brown stripes), which his minions freely distributed as scarves and flags. Snorkel wore a blazer, decorated likewise: a Mayor elect, at one with his people.

  After washing off the grime of his adventure and changing, Oblong arrived early to secure a seat. Despite Orelia’s infatuation with Everthorne, he felt proud to be one of her core supporters. He waved in her direction, but elicited no response.

  At five minutes before ten o’clock, the candidates took their seats in order of speaking – Tighe had sold this arrangement to Snorkel because it placed him where he liked to be: centre stage. Each sat behind a small desk, with a single lectern standing centrally between them and the audience. Every gas-lamp in the Chamber had been turned high.

  Orelia was struggling to engage. She had not written her opening words and was armed only with a sequence of bullet-points, one page of statistics and a sheaf of supporting documents. Her confidence waned; her argument might be compelling, but it threatened to sag under the supporting detail.

  If Snorkel felt any self-doubt, he did not betray it. His podgy fingers drummed the tabletop while his eyes darted from row to row; he looked like a man convinced his message would startle.

  Strimmer, by contrast, affected mild boredom. Orelia wondered how such froideur could garner votes.

  Gorhambury, the words in loco parentis still fast about his neck, made a ponderous entry, followed by a pedestrian introduction which he had carefully written out in full. ‘Welcome to Speech Day,’ he started, ‘as defined in Popular Choice Regulation, 42(3). “Speech” means “speech” – and that means no questions. Our candidates may not exceed the allotted fifteen minutes. I shall tinkle the bell with a minute to go. They will speak from your left to right. Miss Roc, the floor is yours.’

  Gorhambury sat to the side, bell in one hand, stopwatch in the other.

  Orelia acted on instinct, leaving all her papers on her chair save for her one-page bullet-point summary.

  ‘Evidence,’ she said, pointing back at her chair as she reached the lectern, ‘for you to read if you wish.’

  Evidence against whom, evidence of what? Necks craned. She had won their attention. ‘I run a shop—’

  Not the way to go, thought Snorkel.

  Strimmer barely heard; she was a woman with no science, end of story.

  Orelia built her attack: how Snorkel gifted the Committee chairmanships in exchange for policies to his commercial advantage; how those in his coterie received scholarships from the Snorkel Foundation; how the Committees outsourced contracts to businesses in which the Snorkel Foundation held shares.

  Gorhambury gaped in horror and elsewhere a few cheeks puffed; a loud ‘Disgraceful!’ from Fanguin momentarily turned heads – but otherwise polite attentiveness reigned. A dismaying truth dawned on Orelia: they would turn a blind eye to corruption so long as Rotherweird worked.

  Riled, she raised her voice and changed gear. ‘This is your money, your trust betrayed! It’s time for a change – that is what elections are for.’

  A surprising figure rose – surprising even to Snorkel. Estella Scry projected her silky voice across the Chamber. ‘Ele
ctions are for policies, Miss Roc, and in you I hear and foresee a lack of them.’

  The word ‘foresee’ had resonance from her, whatever her place on the spectrum between ‘prophetess’ and ‘charlatan’.

  Orelia floundered. ‘I . . . I was making the case for change . . . I—’

  A volley of well-directed questions from Snorkel’s placemen followed. They had been briefed to ignore Gorhambury’s prohibition. Orelia fought to keep control, saying gamely, ‘I’ll take them one by one—’

  But it was too late; she had lost her audience – and in what felt to Orelia a matter of moments, Gorhambury’s bell guillotined any worthwhile reply.

  Snorkel peered heavenwards in rhetorical disgust: If she can’t time a speech, how on earth can she be trusted to run a town?

  Orelia slunk back to her seat, as disappointed in herself as her audience.

  Snorkel waddled past, his unhurried gait counter-intuitively more suggestive of political acumen than Orelia’s striding approach. He adopted a tone of apologetic disappointment. ‘I don’t run a shop of dead antiques. I run a town of living people. Dealers in old chairs have no grasp of company law, the complexities of charitable giving or the dedication of our Committees. Has Miss Roc ever sat on a Committee? Has she ever tried to? No, of course not – she has a shop, and profits to make.’

  Oblong sprung to his feet, and Orelia closed her eyes. Please no! ‘That’s very unfair,’ he said, ‘really, very unfair.’

  Snorkel sneered, ‘Listen to her pet outsider, the historian.’

  Oblong turned crimson and subsided to a chorus of hissing.

  A lamb among wolves, Orelia felt horribly exposed. Several women glared as if she had betrayed her gender.

  Snorkel moved seamlessly to self-accolade and then proffered the killer blow. ‘But I am fallible,’ he conceded, his voice lower, ‘and I declare a single regret.’ He paused. ‘We indulge the countrysiders. Rotherweird Town has the vote and they do not – and yet in they sneak, with their carts and high prices. Why should we pay through the nose for our own produce? I offer a new covenant: we pay a fixed fee – no more than workers of the land deserve – and if they do not maintain the yield, we will take back our land and farm it scientifically. Have we not the wit to double the yield and halve the price?’