Wyntertide

by Caldecott, Andrew

  On this particular night he sought refuge in his most potent brandy, only to wake in the early hours to a nightmare scene: monstrous creatures were processing around his bed – clawed, dragging a wing, armoured or maned – bearing slivers of glowing bark which exhaled a pungent incense. Hearing, movement and speech failed, depriving him of the faculties to protest, as all his possessions – books, shelves, carpets, scientific and travellers’ paraphernalia – disappeared through the front door.

  His heart leaped as, the clearance done, his sister entered, on her toes, like a dancer, in a loose shift with golden hair held back: Morval Seer in her prime. She looked at him from the foot of the bed and the anguish in her face eased into a smile. Ferensen felt ravaged by time, even while warming to her recognition: the unbreakable bond of the twin. His amphibian curse slipped away and old scenes replayed – their rescue as children by Sir Henry Grassal; the blossoming of their remarkable gifts.

  Then horror overwhelmed him as from every aperture, crack and crevice, spiders of all shapes and sizes – pinheads on stilts, bulbous bodies on stubby props – skittered in. These weavers worked their skills on walls, sills, beams and windows until the interior was festooned in greyness.

  Morval stooped and gently closed his eyes. The incense engulfed him and childhood dreams returned: he flew over the hayricks and conversed with animals, a reverie born of long-forgotten happiness.

  A dream, but not a dream: at first light he woke to a bare interior hung with cobwebs and wearing the neglect of centuries, even his bed. They had anonymised a residence which had previously been unmistakably his. If Morval had been here, her monstrous companions must be no less real – survivors from the mixing-point. And if she judged him in danger, the threat of Wynter’s return must be real indeed.

  He staggered outside to find the Darkness Rose and his rucksack, packed with necessaries for a journey. Everything else, diving suits and parachutes, snowshoes to butterfly nets, had vanished.

  Rational thought gave way to emotion as Ferensen realised his sister had been inches away from him for the first time in centuries – and yet she had stultified their reunion with soporific incense. She had said not a single syllable. He felt hurt, jilted even.

  Was the gulf in their appearance holding her back? Or did the idea of Ferensen the eelman repel her? Or had she never forgiven his inertia when Wynter wrested control of the Manor . . .

  He felt displaced, a man without hearth and home – until the Darkness Rose caressed his wrist and somehow prompted a more positive construction. Morval believed that a new age of the Eleusians threatened and was offering him a chance to lead the resistance and atone.

  Plant in hand, he shook hands with Bill Ferdy and ascended the hill towards the recesses of Rotherweird Westwood.

  His time would come.

  3

  A Warning

  Making love was not the phrase juste; it was more a bout of shared exercise with a rousing finalé, which suited Strimmer: he liked to be admired, not clung to. Yet Pomeny Tighe did have two disturbing traits. She insisted on putting her hair up first, checking all angles in the nearest mirror to ensure it was perfect. Once, in his excitement, he had interrupted the ritual – and she had dragged a steel comb across his arm, drawing blood.

  And she never talked during the act, barely before – and after, almost incessantly.

  She had a warm side: she brought him a bottle of wine from Vlad’s and two glasses with ‘S’ engraved on one side and ‘T’ on the other. She sent him cards with pithy epigrams – he would have instantly ended the relationship, however gratifying the sex, had this meant a saccharine touch, but it did not. She had phenomenal general knowledge, an exceptional grasp of mathematics and a peculiar but fascinating hobby, constructing automata with clockwork innards. When not wheedling from Snorkel his electoral strategy, she spent time with the Toymakers’ Guild.

  A bizarre interest in medical matters also surfaced. ‘Does Rotherweird have any peculiar illnesses?’ she asked on more than one occasion.

  ‘Only peculiar people,’ he would respond, more intent on her naked form. ‘We have fresh water and clean air.’

  On this particular night, she targeted Strimmer’s political weaknesses. ‘You don’t reach out – you don’t engage with anyone,’ she started.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m offering them land – what more do they want?’

  ‘But so will Snorkel – and there are others – The Understairs is packed with—’

  ‘—retards,’ he interrupted.

  Unexpectedly, she slapped him hard on the arm as a child might. ‘Voters.’

  ‘I’ve got everything in hand,’ he said grandly.

  She was lying on the rug before the fire, her skin glowing like soft wax. The remark came quietly, offhand, delivered with a half-smile. ‘Betray me, Hengest Strimmer, and I’ll cut you to pieces.’

  4

  Special Offer

  In his latest consultation-cum-séance Snorkel mentioned one of the Summoned, a young lady by the name of Pomeny Tighe.

  ‘Is she loyal?’ Snorkel asked as he crossed Scry’s palm with the usual ten-guinea note.

  ‘Does it matter?’ she replied, intrigued. Snorkel rarely asked unpredictable questions.

  ‘Her mind is sharp as a knife, and she’s certainly more engaged with the election than anyone else. She identified the countrysiders as a target – only for Strimmer to steal my idea!’

  *

  That evening Pomeny Tighe eyed the resulting manuscript invitation with suspicion.

  INVITATION TO THE SUMMONED

  (A select few)

  From Estella Scry

  A free panorama of your past and possible futures

  Terms:Absolute discretion

  Place:5 Gordian Knot, behind The Clairvoyancy, after hours, rear door (my private residence)

  I do not do readings or predictions. I do panoramas, where the past is settled landscape and the future an outline in mist.

  Scry had pencilled in a date (the coming Saturday) and a time after dark, sensitive to Tighe’s working hours and an assumed desire for privacy.

  Tighe clasped and unclasped her delicate hands. Nobody living could know the horror awaiting her, but might this promised ‘panorama’ offer some unexpected hope? The studious if decorative handwriting lacked the flamboyance of the charlatan.

  Why not give it a chance?

  *

  She found her way to The Clairvoyancy and the twisting alley behind. The door to Number 5 had been left on the latch.

  As she entered, a door above her on the third-floor landing swung open, an arrival perfectly predicted.

  ‘Confident tread,’ said Estella Scry, ‘with neither rush nor hesitation.’ She was wearing a gold-coloured blouse over a charcoal pleated skirt, with discreet pearl earrings and her gold Pi medallion on a chain.

  ‘3.141592653589793238,’ observed Pomeny Tighe, ‘and so on. In my prime, I could reel off a hundred points.’

  ‘Memory failing?’

  Was that jest or diagnosis? Tighe peered into Scry’s eyes, limpid as ocean water. She had no inkling what might lie in those deeps.

  The clairvoyant poured two glasses of something grey with a mild froth, a fruit juice with a sharp citrus taste, then twisted a china pot in the centre of the table, releasing an aroma of ginger and cinnamon. The white tablecloth had a silky, expensive sheen.

  Tighe understood: taste, touch, smell: you have to chivvy the senses if you want the gods to speak. Only the savage sculpture with its pointed silver ribs on the side looked incongruous.

  They sat down and Scry did not pussyfoot. ‘Let’s focus on what’s wrong with you,’ she suggested.

  ‘Wrong?’ Tighe repeated, taken aback.

  Scry elaborated, ‘You’re different and you don’t know why.’

  ‘
That could be said of most of us.’

  ‘Only the ill and the mad,’ she pointed out, ‘and you’re neither. You’re in full bloom.’

  An inappropriate remark if ever there was one, thought Tighe, but Scry could not know that. The big question, hitherto half-suppressed, slipped through her defences. ‘When was I first here, and why?’

  Scry leaned forward, clasping Tighe’s hands. ‘Is that a test or a genuine enquiry?’

  ‘Both,’ she admitted candidly. She knew she had been here before, but her failing memory denied her the details. She could vividly recount the last decade of her life, but little more.

  Scry scowled, which Tighe thought odd; surely she, the client, should be the unsettled one?

  ‘You’re the victim of trauma,’ Scry said after a moment, ‘a cataclysmic event whose nature I cannot discern.’

  ‘How can I have been here before, when nobody knows me?’

  ‘You were a babe in arms perhaps. I cannot see what is lost.’

  ‘Ah, but you do see more than you’re saying,’ said Tighe.

  ‘I do,’ replied Scry, still soft, still authoritative. So far, she had spoken in short, sharp sentences, fencing practice; now she suddenly turned poetical. ‘We set out adrift – tides drive us, winds play the compass. The ordinary settle comfortably as soon as they can; they are much of a muchness. Only the special await reunion. Whoever you are, Miss Tighe, keep the vigil. It will be worth it.’

  Tighe searched for Scry the person; despite her dwindling powers of analysis, she found a starting word, one she had always hated: spinster, with its connotations of desiccation and waste. Predictably, there was no equivalent word for men, although she knew plenty like that. Was Scry a spinster? Tighe had thought so at first, taking into account the prim, sexless way of dressing, the lack of warmth and the bare walls. No doubt celibacy suited her trade; passion would disturb foresight like a heat haze.

  And yet . . . her short speech had carried an emotional charge, and the unlikely sculpture had a disturbing fierceness.

  What reunion with whom? Why invite her to join this vigil? Tighe nodded her thanks, shook hands and left.

  Outside, the twisted shadows enveloped her. Touched by the soothsayer’s ambiguous gift, she felt welcome and unwelcome, anchored and adrift, better informed but more ignorant.

  *

  Estella Scry paced her room. The young woman’s hands had that telltale aura: Tighe had been in the mixing-point. But who had put her there, and when – and most importantly, why?

  5

  Just Checking

  After her initial dynamic impression, Pomeny Tighe’s performance disappointed Snorkel. She carried out her administrative tasks, but to his political plans she contributed only superficial compliments with a mischievous edge.

  ‘A fine speech, Mr Snorkel,’ was her response now, and when he thanked her, she followed up with, ‘Give the Guilds more of the same.’

  ‘They’re a different audience,’ he felt the need to point out. ‘They have to be bought.’

  ‘That sounds like more of the same to me.’

  As worryingly, she was pursuing a mission of her own.

  ‘Why the hospital records, Miss Tighe?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m looking for improvements for which you might claim credit.’

  ‘Child mortality is neither a problem nor a vote-winner, take it from me.’

  ‘I’m hunting for clusters.’

  Snorkel, an inveterate liar himself, had a nose for lies in others. ‘Well, you can stop right now – and do put that toy away.’

  Tighe did so, but with a petulant look that unsettled him, as did the deterioration in her handwriting: initial angular clarity had changed to florid loops.

  *

  Bendigo Sly, Snorkel’s lead eavesman, observed the dainty pockmarks in the dust on the top flight of stairs. Tighe must walk like a dancer.

  No hard evidence, Mr Snorkel had said, just a need for reassurance. The refined political nous of their first meeting had meant an agenda, but she had recently been acting dumb and he wished to be sure.

  The door was unlocked and Sly debated this curious fact. Most, given a key, would use it. ‘Nothing to hide’ was the obvious message – but maybe the intended one?

  He slid the door open. He prided himself on sniffing out opposition to the interests he served.

  On the bedside table lay a loose-leaf manuscript entitled The Sieve of Eratosthenes Revisited, which was little more than a sea of numbers. On the desk lay a screwdriver and automata parts, not a cause for concern. Many Rotherweirders, Sly included, designed and built mechanicals in their spare time.

  Tidiness prevailed everywhere: clothes scrupulously folded, shoes perfectly aligned. The chest of drawers and the wardrobe yielded nothing untoward; the skipping rope explained her lithe figure, the ranks of cosmetics her immaculate appearance.

  She had hung an ancient print of a foreign university beside her bed. His nose twitched at the potential breach of the History Regulations, but you could not judge the Summoned by local standards.

  Sly’s summary: the room of an adolescent sixth-former of unimpeachable character – until he turned to leave. A horizontal pencil line marked the bare white wall beside the door: her height, marked with her initials. On the bed lay a teddy bear with ears, nose and mouth heavily restored.

  He did not linger. Nothing was visibly wrong, but something intangible was.

  6

  A Bicycle Made for Two

  Bert Polk and his wife had their birthdays in the same week in November, and this year marked twenty years of marriage. A tandem struck Boris as the right present: a symbol of travel and togetherness, teamwork and pleasure. For bicycle rickshaws and the charabanc, his vacuum technology factored in weight distribution, likely load and pedal-power. The tandem would require additional calibration to cater for hard climbs to the valley rim. He needed a co-pilot for testing, and one came quickly to mind.

  He decided, hesitated, decided, reconsidered – and then on Saturday evening had a rush of blood after a pint of Sturdy. He marched to the School gate, almost turned back and had a second rush of blood, which propelled him into the Porter’s Lodge.

  ‘I wondered . . . ?’ Boris blushed.

  Miss Trimble, severe in School uniform, blushed back.

  ‘I need help.’

  ‘With?’ asked Miss Trimble, half perturbed, half enchanted. He looked so delightfully batty.

  ‘A tandem.’

  The Porter’s Lodge had witnessed many ribald reports of Polk prototype failures.

  ‘Naval, aeronautical or—’

  ‘A two-wheeled traditional, wholly terrestrial,’ replied Boris.

  Now or never, thought Miss Trimble. ‘Tomorrow at ten, outside the School gate?’

  ‘Tomorrow at ten, how splendid!’

  ‘The forecast is good, I’m told.’

  ‘Is it? Double splendid!’

  ‘Ten then.’

  ‘Yes, ten! Bravo!’ Boris beat a hasty treat as a bevy of sixth-formers approached.

  *

  Miss Trimble had dressed for cycling below the waist with running trousers tucked into coloured socks, and running shoes; she was less the bicyclist above in a fluffy purple jersey with her golden hair hidden beneath a jaunty beret.

  Boris wore traditional testing kit: tweed trousers, tweed waistcoat over a collarless shirt, laced boots, and goggles pushed back on his brow.

  Boris smiled. She looked magnificent.

  She smiled. He looked barmy but benevolent.

  ‘If you feel uncomfortable, holler,’ he advised. ‘We’ll drop in on the Ferdys for a refill.’

  The forecast had not played them false. Undiluted sunlight made for a magical morning of unusual warmth for the season of mists.

  They passed over the South B
ridge and made sprightly progress along the valley. Boris quickly decided that the seats were too close. Every time Miss Trimble leaned forward to speak to him, her ample bosom kissed his shoulder blades, oddly soft and firm at the same time. Was this intended intimacy or just small talk on a tandem? His steering was becoming distinctly erratic.

  ‘What do the pipes do?’ she asked with another teasing nudge in the back.

  ‘They give a whoosh.’

  ‘How much of a whoosh?’ she whispered in his ear.

  The morning chill receded, but Boris’ body temperature was rising faster.

  Miss Trimble imagined herself in a chariot with a red-haired woaded Saxon. She pedalled faster and Boris accelerated to keep up, until the gentle slope steepened.

  ‘Here goes then,’ she shouted, as in the spirit of the moment, she yanked off the beret and shook her hair free.

  ‘Right-o!’ cried Boris.

  Instead of edging the vacuum switch forward, he gave it a flamboyant kick, as if starting a motorcycle from cold, the better to impress his passenger.

  The tandem surged from dawdle to breakneck, and counter-intuitively, uphill, dislodging their feet from the pedals – including the brake. Miss Trimble abandoned her handlebars and clung to Boris, further loosening his control. On the tandem sped, the riders leaning in and out as the bends demanded, until the curve ran out. More by luck than judgement, Boris steered the tandem through a fortuitous hole in the hedge into a field and a head-high heap of cut grass.

  Boris came to seconds later to see the tandem on the ground, front wheel spinning like a sewing machine. The front handlebar had acquired a modernistic twist but otherwise the damage appeared superficial.

  Miss Trimble surfaced beside him, hair everywhere, cheeks flushed. ‘Whoosh!’ she said, brushing grass off her chest.