‘Nothing’s new in the world. Dr Faustus had a conjuring stick,’ he added.
6
To Believe or Not to Believe
Strimmer saw himself as a victim of déjà vu. Sir Veronal had assigned him an unspecified role in a new Rotherweird. Now Estella Scry had done the same, but with this difference: Scry served another; Sir Veronal had served only himself. But whom did she serve, to what end? And when would he be told? To ask outright struck him as subservient, so he wrote, playing his one card with characteristic directness:
Dear Miss Scry,
I have a most unusual book on which I would welcome your expert opinion. But I would not be seen dead in your shop. Suggest time and venue, if interested.
He signed off his letter with the same words which Sir Veronal had used to him: ‘Kind regards’.
The reply came by return.
Enter by house door, 5 Gordian Knot, midnight. If the book is Elizabethan or connects with Sir Veronal Slickstone, be sure to protect against this invasive damp. Estella Scry
Strimmer’s hackles rose. Midnight! Was Scry propositioning him (God forbid) or planning some bizarre ritual? But the second sentence tantalised: why would she suppose he might have obtained the book from Sir Veronal? The ‘Elizabethan’ reference he considered equally bizarre – why be so selective about protective measures? Would not a first edition of the Principia Mathematica or a lost Leonardo Codex be as deserving?
He obeyed, and at midnight to the minute, with the book swaddled like a newborn baby, he arrived at 5 Gordian Knot to find the door unlocked. The Spartan interior had a timeless, pristine quality and none of the dispiriting knickknacks that so disfigured the shop window of The Clairvoyancy. Expensive monochrome rugs on the landings spoke of wealth, but nothing else.
The upper door stood ajar. ‘Do come in, Mr Strimmer.’
The décor remained spare, the only light provided by the silver eight-sconced candelabra in the centre of the table, its twirled arms branching from a stem populated by Bacchic heads and serpent tails. Sir Veronal had also preferred candles, Strimmer recalled, clasping the book tight to his chest.
A bolt slid across and a ceiling trapdoor in the room’s far corner swung down, admitting a halo of candlelight. A shoe appeared, tied with ribbons, followed by a lower leg in a white stocking, and the hem of a dress, deep scarlet velvet slashed to show off pink silk. The figure, her back to Strimmer, descended the stairs set into the wall to floor-level. A spangled fabric netted her hair above a white starched ruff.
Strimmer stood in shock at this flesh-and-blood visitation from the past. The woman turned. Her face was alabaster-white; jewels adorned ears, fingers and neck; cochineal flushed lips and cheeks. She gestured to Strimmer to sit beside her. A finger crooked and twitched. Show me the book, it said. Only then did he grasp that it was indeed Scry.
He unbound The Roman Recipe Book, declaring knowledge gleaned from Sir Veronal as his own. ‘It was bound in 1572 or thereabouts by the Hoy Press.’
‘Was it now?’ said Scry.
He caught in her face a fleeting look of disappointment. Had she hoped for a different volume? ‘Sir Veronal Slickstone judged it useful.’
‘Did he now?’ said Scry.
She flicked through the pages, her face suffused with nostalgia. Occasionally she rubbed the paper as if to seduce it into speaking. She looked decades younger, a trick of the light or the make-up, or both.
Her voice assumed a cold, no-nonsense tone. ‘You will now listen without interruption, for this is a privilege with no equal in the world. Rotherweird hides a natural phenomenon, a mixing-point where matter mixes and merges. With special stones and cages you learn to control the process. This book holds the details of what can be done and how.’
Plausible, thought Strimmer, familiar creatures on one side, amalgams on the other, with coloured circles – the stones? – and the bars. ‘Where is this place?’
She ignored the question. ‘The process confers great longevity. Mr Wynter discovered the mixing-point and we mastered it with him – then pygmies interfered.’
Strimmer struggled to focus: Scry, in a costume from God knows when, talking of a time long past. Scry had fashioned his emergence from a coffin, crowned like an ancient emperor. Was the Herald of Wynter firework her creation too? The cards she had dealt included the Emperor. This abundance of connections did not, however, make her sane.
‘Where is this place?’ he asked again.
‘Now is not the time, and don’t go looking. Show patience, and your rewards will come.’
Strimmer turned petulant. ‘You can’t reveal and then withhold the proof.’
His pitiful rebuke decided Scry: he must learn the hard way. ‘If you agree to my terms, leave the book,’ she said, her voice calm, ‘and if you don’t, take it – and the consequences. Follow me up after five minutes.’
Scry left the way she had arrived, climbing the steps in the wall.
Five minutes to the second later, Strimmer followed into her bedroom. Her dress lay draped over a four-poster bed; shoes placed neatly on the floor with their owner nowhere to be seen. One of the four floor-to-ceiling windows swung open, banging against the sill. Damp air flannelled his cheeks. He struggled to comprehend: she had removed her clothes and asked him to follow?
He stepped through the window onto a modest platform with carved owls on the corners, no rail and a sheer drop. Moisture misted his spectacles. Where the hell was she?
Then he heard a whoosh, whoosh, with a snap mixed in, like an umbrella rhythmically opening and closing. He crouched at the edge of the platform and peered down into the unlit space between The Clairvoyancy and Scry’s front door.
The creature did not rise; it soared to face him. In the moment before he fell, every sense was assailed by this mythic horror: the hag from Vulcan’s Dance bathed in a putrefying stench: a feathered, beaked face with Scry’s cheekbones.
As he hurtled towards the street he felt a violent punch to both shoulders – and blacked out.
*
Strimmer recovered consciousness draped over the platform like a sacrifice. His glasses were miraculously intact; his sodden clothes clung to his skin. His shoulders ached front and back. He stumbled back to the bedroom. Her clothes were laid out as before; there was no sign of Scry. Descending to the sitting room, he noticed a single framed photograph of a jagged-edged sculpture which must have stood directly opposite. The marks on the carpet confirmed its one-time presence.
He left the book.
He would be part of this unknowable future.
7
Voices from the Void
The following morning Oblong encountered Jones, running from quad to quad.
‘Warning signs abound, Obbers, yet we do nothing. I’m talking manly action,’ declared Jones, puffing out his chest. ‘I am taking a trip to the marsh.’ He wore his ‘knight errant’ expression, a known precursor to disaster.
‘The marsh is not a marsh, it’s a lake, and, even if it were a marsh, nobody goes there, it’s far too dangerous.’
‘Unguided, yes,’ agreed Jones.
Oblong reconsidered. Bolitho’s subterranean kingdom must indeed be under threat, and the thought of rescuing Morval Seer tickled his romantic disposition. ‘When do you suggest?’
‘Leave that to the weather.’ Jones paused. ‘We shall have change.’
Oblong peered at Jones. His banalities opened doors and triggered solutions. Where had this madcap runner come from? What did he know? ‘I’m game,’ he replied, the same word he had used when accepting Finch’s mission.
*
At first light next morning, the deluge abated. Slates, cobbles and windows had carried the rain’s staccato beat for so long that the silence felt both ominous and relieving. Moisture scarfed the town like gauze and penetrated deep, bypassing waterproofs, umbrellas and chim
ney cowls. Fires sputtered and smoked; and still the
river rose.
The quiet woke the South Gatehouse sentry. He flipped open the single shutter above the entrance gate, piled high with sandbags on the landward side. The parapet of the bridge had sunk from view, with only the stone birds standing proud of the flood, fantastical waterfowl caught at the moment of take-off.
But the rain had relented.
He barged open the narrow door to the embrasure above the portcullis. Miniature waves ran towards him at intervals, and from the direction of the Island Field, halos of yellow green light materialised – tube-lights, illuminating featureless silhouettes apparently walking on water. As they closed, the jumbled shapes resolved into boxes and crates stacked high, and a dark line emerged: the deck of a floating platform, supported on barrels, and tall poles rose and fell. Near the Gate, its crew moored the strange craft to a stone griffin, and a single coracle cast off.
A vacuum-driven Lamson tube-system linked the Town Hall to the two gatehouses, but the glass cylinders, sealed with corks, were rimed with dust, so rarely were they used. The sentry struggled to remember the mechanics.
Gorhambury, already at his desk, colour-coded paperclips at the ready, was struggling to deal with reports on flood-levels, food, sand and sacking reserves, methane and barometric pressure. He uncorked a pithy message: Alien craft approaching South Gate. Gorhambury, prone to take such reports at face value, dismissed the ‘alien’ as hyperbole and hailed the Town Hall rickshaw driver.
‘Top speed to the South Gate,’ he said.
‘Ghostly, ain’t it,’ said the sentry on Gorhambury’s arrival.
‘It’s a raft following a coracle, meaning it’s one of ours,’ Gorhambury replied. ‘Raise the portcullis.’
‘But – Mr Gorhambury!’ stuttered the sentry as the temporary Mayor started shifting sandbags; Snorkel’s lofty rule had imbued civic staff with the belief that Mayors never dirtied their hands.
A countrysider, a handsome farmer with a regular market stall, clambered out of the coracle and splashed along the parapet. He wore long rubber boots, an elderly knee-length waterproof coat and a cap. He walked through the Gate and shook Gorhambury’s hand.
‘We thought you might be needing supplies,’ he said, ‘so we’ve fruit and veg and what we could get from Hoy. They’ve not delivered to the Ten-Mile Post, thanks to the weather. It’s been hell on the lower pastures.’
Gorhambury felt humbled. Nobody had spared a thought for the countrysiders, their winter crops or marooned livestock. ‘What do we owe you?’ he replied, but the farmer shook his head.
‘You owe nowt but recognition of who we are and what we do.’ He gave Gorhambury a wink. ‘Thou’d do t’same for us, no doubt. We’ve a condition or two: we deal with you and Miss Roc, to be sure of proper distribution. And we do it in The Understairs, not Market Square.’
‘Be a good fellow,’ said Gorhambury to the rickshaw driver, ‘and get Boris and the charabanc, pick up Miss Roc on the way, then find Sewage & Maintenance. Last but not least, get the Crier on board – figuratively speaking.’ He hated unintended puns; they afflicted proceedings with levity.
Within the hour the charabanc had arrived and the platform was docked and unloaded, while the Crier, bell tinkling, spread the good news in iambic pentameter.
By nine o’clock the mist obligingly eased. Orelia opened proceedings. ‘We are in your debt,’ she told the countrysiders. ‘Hell and high water, and still you remember us. I hope we’ll return the compliment.’
The countrysiders, men and women of all ages, dispensed advice to those who sought it. ‘You best sow spinach in August, sprouts in April, and parsnips in May.’
‘Kale tastes sweeter after frost.’
The Understairs tenants, growers from seed in their high window boxes and rooftop patios, engaged most.
A young man with a wheelbarrow barged his way to the front. ‘Order for Mr Snorkel!’ he barked. Before he could read out a lengthy list, Gorhambury stopped him. ‘No proxies. If Mr and Mrs Snorkel want a share, they can come themselves.’
‘I’ll get the boot,’ whined the servant.
‘Tough,’ replied Gorhambury, surprising himself.
An Apothecary came next. ‘This is unlawful canvassing, Mr Gorhambury, and a disgrace,’ she protested.
Gorhambury maintained his forthright approach to dissenters. ‘It’s charity work – their charity.’ He indicated the countrysiders. ‘You or Master Thomes are welcome to help, as is Mr Strimmer – a second delivery is expected shortly.’
She flounced off.
Bendigo Sly dismissed the proceedings as a naïve stunt, with one proviso: Miss Roc had a natural warmth which her opposition lacked. Not as dangerous as charisma, but the quality remained an asset. If Vlad could bottle its essence, his master would benefit from a liberal swig. He concluded that Strimmer remained the greater danger, but Roc should be watched.
8
Phony War
The company had experienced just such a lull approaching Midsummer, with no visible hostile activity – then enhanced by warm weather, now by dispiriting dampness and a world purged of colour. The Island Fields reacquired its blotchy complexion as the waters subsided, but only slightly. Tangled driftwood rather than riverbanks still delineated the margins of the Rother.
Oblong visited Baubles & Relics after closing to find Valourhand ensconced with Straighten the Rope and Orelia relaying the fire.
‘Yes, Mr Oblong?’ Orelia greeted him stiffly.
‘No, thanks,’ added Valourhand as if dismissing a travelling salesman.
Oblong persevered, achieving a stunned silence as he placed the sphere on Orelia’s desk, where it turned and turned of its own volition. ‘I thought you should see this.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Valourhand. ‘The moleman gave it to Finch to give to you to put in the mixing-point on the Winter Solstice. He chose you as the man least likely to attract attention.’
Upstaged again, Oblong mumbled, ‘Something like that.’
Orelia reappraised Oblong. He had shared his mission, when she had not shared hers from Vibes until forced to. He deserved better. ‘We believe it’s going to transport Bolitho’s observatory to Lost Acre,’ she told him. ‘Everyone will be on the Island Field for the election result, so it’ll be safe.’
‘But should I do it?’ asked Oblong.
‘Any move by Fortemain will be for good,’ said Orelia.
Valourhand belatedly entered the fray. ‘Well . . . I’m not so sure. He’s concerned about the seismic effects, but believes the river will soften the blow. But he’s also concerned that if this millennial technology were abused, it could destroy the town. The river, you see, can only absorb so much shock.’
‘Well, all things being equal, I’ve agreed, so I’ll do it.’
He’s changing, thought Orelia, slowly but surely, just like Gorhambury – he’s more his own man.
*
Strimmer, in contrast to the company, was unsettled by the absence of friendly action. Scry’s transformation validated the mixing-point’s existence and, in Strimmer’s eyes, its vast untapped potential, but he sensed another transformation. The Apothecaries had been energised, direction added to intellect, but Master Thomes would divulge nothing.
‘They were my cards, Mr Strimmer,’ he parroted whenever they met.
Scry maintained her distance too, so he must again, as with the wretched Oblong, tap the unwary.
The fog swallowed houses and humans alike; only gaslight conferred definition at night, as in the arc encircling the Apothecaries’ Guild Hall, Strimmer’s chosen point of ambush.
‘As a candidate, I’m keen to understand hard-working professionals,’ opened Strimmer, but his stilted pitch fell on stony ground, to judge from the target’s bewildered reaction. He moved on hastily, ‘including neglected academ
ics like Mr Fanguin.’
‘You’re here a lot these days, Mr Strimmer,’ replied Mrs Fanguin suspiciously.
Avoid direct questions, thought Strimmer. ‘Your Florentines are irresistible.’
A good-looking man, thought Bomber, wondering how deep the coldness went. ‘Mr Fanguin is indeed seriously neglected,’ she replied, taking the bait.
Strimmer reeled her in. ‘Vlad has opened a small bar on Aether’s Way – how about a quick Winter Warmer?’ He had no intention of risking an encounter with Mr Fanguin in The Journeyman’s Gist.
Unbeknownst to him, the offer had a like attraction for Mrs Fanguin. Anonymous at work and excluded from her husband’s projects, she felt a visceral pleasure at the prospect of sharing a drink with a stranger – not that he could be interested in her that way, not at her age. ‘Why not? It’s on the way home.’
Vlad’s new bar overlooked Aether’s Way through ogive windows. The tables for two were each set with a single candle; no beer, Vlad’s spirits only. The back wall shelves held a gallery of cut-glass bottles as multi-coloured as their contents. Strimmer decided on sloe gin.
‘I’m afraid the Apothecaries are neglecting their duties to the North Tower,’ he began. ‘They appear to be distracted.’
‘They’re making as well as designing,’ replied Mrs Fanguin. She leaned over a little. ‘They’re brewing, too.’
‘I bet they don’t tell you what they’re making, they’re that secretive.’
‘I have eyes, Mr Strimmer. Silver sticks – ceremonial sticks, no doubt, to celebrate your victory.’
‘I’m a physicist among many, but Mr Fanguin is the best biologist we have.’ Strimmer had intended this offhand compliment as small talk, but a deeper significance struck him, for it happened to be true. When the mixing-point became available, Fanguin would have his uses. Socially, Strimmer loathed Fanguin’s tweedy bonhomie, but the mind had always been sharp.
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