Wyntertide

by Caldecott, Andrew

  Orelia tossed her hair. Straighten the Rope, still wrapped up, was resting on her knees. She felt buffeted every which way.

  Before she could respond, Valourhand launched a new diatribe. ‘I trust everyone knows about Oblong’s masterly performance?’ Fanguin and Orelia shook their heads, and she continued, ‘He told Strimmer about everything that matters – Lost Acre, Wynter, the mixing-point, the stones . . .’

  In the kitchen, Oblong winced. Did nobody else make mistakes? He added another measure of coffee, as if doubling its strength might wipe out his error.

  Orelia gaped at the enormity of the revelation: Hengest Strimmer, head of the North Tower, candidate for high office, friend of the Apothecaries, had been gifted the key to Lost Acre’s deadly secret—

  ‘How could he?’ she burst out.

  Boris did his best to mitigate. ‘It was ill fortune, not intention. He kept a coded diary, and his drinks were spiked. He didn’t mention Ferensen and he didn’t give away the white tile’s position.’

  ‘He’s good in a coracle,’ whispered Fanguin.

  ‘He’s even better at anagrams,’ added Boris, standing up. ‘Straighten the Rope – any takers? Come on! He’s the fool; we’re the clever ones.’

  Silence descended, save for a shuffling of feet. ‘The Rotating Sphere!’ declared Boris. ‘Copyright, Jonah Oblong.’

  Seizing these crumbs of support, Oblong sashayed in like an apprentice waiter. Five mugs from Ember Vine’s emporium on Aether’s Way slid precariously before Boris made a timely interception.

  ‘Milk, anyone?’ asked Oblong, brandishing the jug.

  ‘Two sugars,’ added Fanguin cheerily, but Boris launched the more effective diversion.

  ‘It’s time for the book, Orelia.’

  Fanguin, as the oldest person there by almost two decades, felt responsible in the absence of Finch and Ferensen and in consequence was mildly irritated by Boris’ initiative. Boris had called the meeting. Boris had persuaded Orelia to bring the book. Boris had heard Oblong’s confession. Boris had not been sullied by Everthorne’s party trick. And Boris was – well, decent and honourable, and dynamic with it. It was always bloody Boris.

  Orelia placed the cloth-wrapped copy of Straighten the Rope dead centre on the table. With a communal intake of breath Oblong’s misdemeanours flitted from centre stage.

  ‘A bookseller called Vibes gave me this at the Hoy Book Fair – or rather, he lent it, hoping I’d winkle out its secrets.’ Pages and pages of manuscript calculations flashed by as Orelia flicked through.

  Valourhand stared, mesmerised.

  Orelia awarded Oblong a conciliatory smile. ‘The pieces in the diagrams, I now see, make a sphere.’

  Valourhand’s voice changed, businesslike now. ‘We found a quarry in Lost Acre. Bolitho has been there, many times, I suspect.’ She pointed at the diagrams. ‘The four stones rearrange matter – if you fuse different rock types into a single sphere, what then?’

  ‘In the mixing-point they’d surely rotate,’ suggested Oblong, trying to imagine the effect of so many contrary forces. ‘Just like the title says they’d do.’

  ‘But to what end? Something must be changed, something that matters . . .’ Orelia pushed the book across the table to Valourhand, who carefully flipped through the pages.

  The history of physics paraded before her, not as a chronicle but as a developing exploration of a particular problem – but what problem? She traced the impact of Newton and Einstein. She glimpsed Benjamin Franklin’s kite, the lead spheres used by Henry Cavendish, Joule’s water container with its paddlewheel.

  ‘Force fields, kinetic energy, magnetism, weather patterns. Early on – see there, 1600 – we have Gilbert’s De Magnete, the discovery of the earth’s magnetic field. Then . . .’ Valourhand fumbled fifteen pages further forward, ‘. . . come the giants of the 1820s and 30s – Ohm, Ampere, Savart, Faraday. And lots of the nineteenth century’s favourite subject.’

  ‘Evolution,’ suggested Oblong.

  ‘Geology,’ corrected Valourhand. ‘It’s all fiendishly complex, but it’s Bolitho’s writing, no question.’

  ‘Or rather, Fortemain’s,’ added Fanguin. ‘This is history as we’ve never seen it: the same eyes over four centuries, constantly looking, learning and revising.’

  Orelia turned to the spine and examined the caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. ‘Why these symbols?’ she mused.

  ‘Resurrection,’ said Oblong.

  ‘Obviously – but why here?’

  Fanguin the lateral thinker had an uncomfortable thought. ‘There’s a prior question: who chose the binding? And whose title is it? Bole’s anagrams always have a double life – remember the inscription in the Recipe Book? Bearing mysterious recipes was an anagram of Geryon’s Precise Bestiarium and both titles turned out to be true. Is this another such title, where both are true?’

  Straighten the Rope; The Rotating Sphere.

  The literal title assumed a darker resonance: strangulation, the garrotte, the hanged man.

  Valourhand spoke, more to herself than her companions. ‘The comet is here – and he’s calculating force fields, the effect of heat as it nears the sun. But it’s only a part of the whole, and I can’t . . . I need to borrow it.’

  Orelia snapped the book shut, wrapped it up and placed it in her bag. ‘Sorry, but this book is going nowhere near Strimmer.’

  Valourhand did not dissent; she had memorised enough to work with.

  Boris tactfully changed the subject. ‘Orelia’s visit yielded another oddity.’

  ‘We have a new suspect,’ she added, presenting the order card for the meeting of the Apothecaries’ Court.

  ‘Scry, the honorary Apothecary?’ spluttered Fanguin. ‘She can’t possibly be what she seems.’

  They all knew Scry by reputation: a charlatan who preyed on Rotherweird’s superstitious fringe; chalk to the Apothecaries’ cheese when set against the Guild’s ruthless pursuit of hard science.

  ‘She’s started attending North Tower meetings with Thomes and Strimmer,’ Valourhand added. She charged her coffee from Oblong’s brandy bottle; no thought of asking first. ‘That means she has more science than she lets on – Strimmer wouldn’t wear it otherwise.’ She paused. ‘If – and it’s a huge if – Wynter were to return, he would need enforcers. Only the Apothecaries have that potential. Perhaps Scry gets Thomes to prepare the ground and persuades Strimmer to stand as Mayor.’

  ‘Who is she then?’ wondered Orelia aloud.

  Fanguin snapped his fingers. ‘Feather or leather – the Furies live in town, so says my bat detector, but in different quarters: one’s definitely in Scry’s vicinity while the other is close to The Understairs.’

  Boris slapped his thighs. ‘My old bat detector? Fancy that! Talking of detectors, did you return my invisibility film?’

  Fanguin shook his head impatiently. ‘You’re missing the point. Think habitat, behaviour, roost, guano . . . The Furies are not familiars; they’re Eleusians. They transform, just like Fortemain. They couldn’t live in town otherwise.’

  Nobody dissented, but for the moment, they concluded, they could only listen and watch as best they could.

  The meeting broke up, leaving most unsettled, for different reasons: Boris over Rotherweird’s political future; Valourhand over the elusive contents of Straighten the Rope; and Orelia over where her attraction to Everthorne might lead. Only Fanguin had enjoyed the chase and the company in the knowledge that he needed the opposite of a rest-cure to keep the demon drink at bay.

  On the ground floor the ladder had moved and the mural had changed. A flight of terns with black caps and red-orange beaks had replaced the Furies; the charabanc had turned electoral bandwagon. Facial expressions declared the candidates’ character: Orelia all girlish enthusiasm bordering on the naïve, Snorkel wearing a venal smile and Strimmer oozing gl
acial disdain. Orelia peered closer. A splash of guano stained her jacket – had it been there before? Was it a mark left from the vanished Furies, or a wish of good luck? If Everthorne had not been billeted so close to Oblong, she would have succumbed to the urge to knock on his door and find out.

  2

  An Aerial Scout

  The following evening Boris made his way to the School. He admired academic excellence and Bolitho’s fevered workings in Straighten the Rope had entranced him. The thought of his brilliant friend imprisoned underground in an alien body dismayed him.

  A faint light glowed through the shutters of the ground-floor window in front of him and the presence of his quarry was confirmed when he put his ear to the door.

  ‘Vides . . . ho, ha . . . ut . . . ho, ha . . . alta . . . ho, ha . . . stet . . . ho, ha . . . nive . . . ho, ha . . . candidum . . .’

  As he pressed closer, trying to make sense of the gibberish, the door fell open to reveal Gregorius Jones, seated cross-legged on a small mat. Naked from the waist up, feet bare and eyes shut, he was clasping his hands over his sternum like a man in prayer. A sickly-sweet scent emanated from a squat, coloured candle on the floor beside him. The ‘ho, ha’ represented an exaggerated form of fast but deep breathing.

  ‘Arma . . . ho, ha . . . virumque . . . ho, ha . . . cano . . . hi, Polk . . . Troiae . . .’

  ‘Jones, what are you doing?’

  ‘Qui . . . ho, ha . . . primus ab oris . . . I am clearing the mind.’

  Boris doubted the exercise would take long, but he played along. ‘Excellent news, as I’d like to hire that very organ.’

  Jones sprang to his feet, touched each ankle with the opposite hand and cried, ‘Fire away, dear Polk, fire away.’

  ‘That candle stinks.’

  ‘Honeysuckle rose,’ said Jones. ‘There’s a cordial goes with it.’ He pointed to a glass filled with liquid of the same purple-orange colour beside his map.

  ‘We remember the Hydra and your gallant rescue of Miss Roc from the blazing roof,’ Boris started.

  ‘In the words of the Brahmin, “I take what comes”,’ replied Jones modestly.

  ‘I’ve a special task for Vulcan’s Dance.’

  Jones edged closer to reality. ‘What have you to do with Vulcan’s Dance?’

  ‘I am, confidentially, the Master of the Fireworkers.’

  ‘That was a bizarre appointment.’

  ‘So is this.’

  Boris explained Jones’ proposed role, whose qualities Jones then summarised. ‘Put shortly, you require nerve, skill, strength, presence before an audience, quick reactions and fearlessness in the face of the elements.’

  ‘All six,’ confirmed Boris.

  ‘At your service.’ Jones bowed, but the handshake with which the athlete sealed the deal did not match his outward aura of calm; the grip was as tense as strung wire.

  Emptying the mind of what? Boris wondered. By an open fire, a pair of tracksuit bottoms hung over a clotheshorse, the legs grotesquely stiff and caked with mud from the thighs downwards. The scented candle had a secondary purpose.

  ‘I should have taken The Rotherweird Runner’s advice,’ said Jones, indicating his bequest from Bolitho. The red leather-bound book lay open on the floor at a page headed One Walk NOT to Do with the title Mired in the Marsh above a muddle of dots and tussocks.

  ‘That’s plain stupid! You’re lucky to be alive.’

  Jones abruptly changed the subject. ‘Do I make the official programme?’

  ‘Aerial Director,’ suggested Boris.

  ‘Aerial Scout would be better,’ proposed Jones, an odd request, but it caused Boris no difficulty; after all, Jones would be on the lookout for misfiring fuses.

  ‘Just keep it under the hat.’

  ‘Mum’s the word.’ Jones resumed stretching and bending. ‘I have a spare mat, dear Boris. Come and shed the twings and twangs of life.’

  ‘It’s been a long day—’

  ‘My point exactly, dear Boris.’

  ‘Another time, but thanks all the same.’ He waved farewell and left Jones to his callisthenics, pausing on the outside step for long enough to hear the strange mantra resume.

  ‘Odi . . . ho, ha . . . et amo . . . ho, ha . . .’

  Boris foresaw another first in a year of increasingly bizarre events: a Latin poetry recital at a firework display.

  Deeply inhaling the incense, Jones revelled in his new exercise regime. It held back the darker memories, whose closing footfalls were gathering in pace and volume.

  *

  In the absence of Finch, Oblong tried Madge Brown in the library, only to meet the usual stone wall.

  ‘Well, obviously, Mr Oblong, there’s no history of anything here, and that includes the Apothecaries and any other Guilds. Why are you so interested?’

  ‘Their support of Mr Strimmer struck me as odd. I understand they’ve never shown any political interest before.’

  ‘Always a first time,’ replied Madge Brown.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Orelia said when he passed on the news.

  3

  Molecular Matters

  A tinkle of hammers, scrabbling, a pummelling thud . . .

  Finch instantly thought mirage, an illusory hope of escape. A stone brick shuddered, dust puffed from a widening gap, moss dislodged and fell. He rested a palm flat on the speaking part of the wall.

  Shudder. Shudder. Shudder.

  He thrust his fingers into the crack and nearly lost them to claws the colour of tortoiseshell ripping through the frangible mortar. He blinked and squinted, starved of light for so long, and blinked again, trying to focus his eyes on a candle fixed to a twisted wire whose flame danced in front of him.

  Looking down, the Herald saw for the first time his coarse beard, all coal and frost, and his jagged fingernails. The candle, protected by a glass ampoule, was fixed to a crown-like contraption on his visitor’s head.

  A giant mole – and yet, not quite: he took in burned umber fur and bunched clawed hands, but the creature had enlarged eyes, extended arms and legs and the straight-backed bearing of human anatomy. And it stood a good five feet tall.

  In a fruity bass the moleman said in flawless English, ‘Get your skates on, Mr Finch, this tunnel ain’t sound and we don’t want an entombment.’

  The moleman trotted back up the tunnel at a businesslike pace. Bending head and knees, Finch kept as close as he could, aghast that his bizarre rescuer knew his name. Walls and ceiling bled ill-smelling mud, glistening slicks which soiled Finch’s already filthy clothes. Cracks zigzagged between the leaks, sandcastles assailed by the tide.

  ‘A giant mole – and yet, not quite . . .’

  ‘Marsh,’ cried the moleman over his shoulder, ‘dead trees, dead plants, dead men, dead everything.’

  ‘Have you a name?’ cried Finch, flailing for an anchor in all this strangeness.

  ‘Talpidus sapiens, but my other half calls me “tope” for short.’ A dull thump ahead caused the moleman to pause and sniff the air. ‘That’s the trouble with tunnelling where your nose says “don’t”: the further you go, the longer your early work has to fall in!’ Energised by the threat, the moleman worked through the malodorous debris, showering earth in all directions, rebuilding as he cleared, patting walls and ceiling firm with feet, paws and even the top of his head. Eventually, after an intersection, the earth became drier and the tunnel doubled in height.

  The moleman turned to scrutinise Finch while combing his coat. ‘Nothing scissors, soap and a cocktail won’t cure,’ he announced.

  Their pace improved as first the air freshened and then duckboards appeared. This more salubrious tunnel soon brought them to an antechamber which resembled an organ loft: pipes of all shapes and sizes ran up the walls and into the roof while dials, levers and wheels protruded at different levels. G
as-lamps hissed along the walls.

  The moleman offered a commentary, tapping each pipe or glass face as he passed: ‘Heating, methane-lamps, ventilation fans, drinking water, waste disposal, humidifiers, security sensors, a seismograph, a barometer and’ – he paused by a pipe thicker than the rest – ‘that most essential trench-tool, the periscope. Don’t ask me about the technicals; they're down to the other half.’

  Familiar names were engraved on the brass and stencilled on the dial faces – The Rotherweird Barometer Company, Turnpull & Sons (plumbers on the Golden Mean, known for quality and prices to match) and Cycloptics, the telescope shop. The barometer bore the year 1881. The tope’s haunt had been long in the making.

  The moleman flicked the cover from the periscope. ‘Have a gander while I fix us a sharpener,’ he said, before disappearing through a circular oak door studded with a crescent moon and stars in black iron.

  Finch lowered his face to the eyepiece and swivelled it, bringing into focus the bleakest of landscapes: Rotherweird Marsh at nightfall. The tussocks had an untethered look, the splashes of green too emerald for ordinary grass. The limbs of a dead tree protruded like a beggar’s disappointed hand. No animal or human ventured here.

  Faced by two rows of numbered levers with polished wooden handles alongside the telescope, Finch pulled the first and largest and the swamp spun away to a sweep of the Milky Way. Other numbers brought other objects – a planet, star groups, the face of the moon. Immersion in deep space felt vertiginous after his long confinement.

  The last lever summoned Orion, the most brilliant winter constellation. An elongated smudge marked the deep blue-black of the sky northwest of Rigel – a smear on the lens? The ceiling whirred like the buzz of a trapped fly as the eye latched onto its target.

  The circular door beyond swung open, and his host carried through a tray with two small decanters, one a tawny brown and the other barley-sugar orange, two cocktail glasses and an array of dry biscuits. Prosthetic fingers attached to the claws offered Finch a glass of orange cordial.