The Paradox

by Charlie Fletcher

  He stopped.

  “What?” said Charlie.

  “Because I got a feeling,” said Hodge. “And tell you the truth it’s bearing down on me heavier than the tons of stone above us.”

  “A feeling?” said Charlie.

  “A premonition,” said Hodge, grimacing.

  “Is that something you have?” said Charlie. “Like, is that one of your gifts?”

  “Gifts?” said Hodge. “What do you mean gifts?”

  “You know,” said Charlie. “Like a special power. The Sight?”

  “Do I look like someone gifted with the Sight?” snorted Hodge bitterly, turning his blindfolded face towards him. “Or are you having a laugh?”

  “No,” said Charlie. “No, sorry, I wasn’t…”

  “Relax, Charlie,” smiled Hodge. “I’m the one having a laugh. No. I ain’t got the Sight, and truth to tell, I ain’t never met a seer, nor met anyone I trust what has done, neither. People what can tell the future is just old wives’ tales, you know?”

  “What?” said Charlie. “Like golems? Or the Sluagh?”

  “Is that you cheeking your elders and betters?” said Hodge.

  “My mum says old wives get things right a lot more than people think,” said Charlie.

  “Well, she’s no fool,” said Hodge. “But I ain’t got the Sight. Just a feeling in my bones. Like a storm coming in. And premonition might be too strong a word for it and all, but the long and the short of it is, I think it might be just as well that someone else knows the drill up here.”

  “In the Tower?” said Charlie.

  Hodge nodded.

  “Normally, when there was enough of us, the ratcatcher’s always had an apprentice. I was one in my day…”

  Charlie looked round at the dank undercroft. He felt the weight of earth and stone pressing down on his shoulders. He felt a similar pressure from the darkness that ringed them on all sides. He grimaced.

  “I don’t mean any offence, but I don’t think I’m who you’re looking for. I mean, I’m more of an outside, on-the-move kind of person…”

  “No one likes tight spots,” said Hodge as if he could read Charlie’s thoughts. “But it ain’t a question of me looking for anything, son. The job has its own way of doing the choosing…”

  Charlie was about to protest further when Jed went mad in the darkness ahead. Hodge stiffened as they listened to a shrill crescendo of sharp excited yelps, then a barrelling, snarling noise followed by a squeal and then silence.

  “Good dog,” said Hodge. “That’s a monster…”

  Jed trotted out of the gloom, his jaws locked around the neck of a dead black rat that was almost as long as he was. His tail was wagging proudly as he dropped the corpse at Hodge’s boots.

  “That’s as big a brute as I seen in years,” said Hodge. “I’d say that’s a good omen for you, Charlie Pyefinch. You’re going to bring good luck to this enterprise, I reckon.”

  Charlie looked down at the bundle of torn black fur and the long pink whiplash of a tail curling out from beneath it like a question mark, and wondered if Hodge was really just whistling in the dark, cheerily talking about good luck to hide the fact he feared that something much less fortunate was hanging over all their futures, like an anvil, ready to drop.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE EMPTY CHAIR

  Zebulon Templebane attended his last breakfast in the counting house that bore his and his brother’s name as the centrepiece of a long, groaning table laid down the centre of the clerk’s room.

  He lay in a closed coffin, topped by a massive pillar candle of beeswax, his unseeing eyes beneath the lid each topped with a gold sovereign, his slack jaw bound shut by a clean, white kerchief carefully tied around the top of his head. The coffin was stained black and polished to such a high gloss that the assembled company of adopted sons could see both themselves and the multitude of other candles arranged around the shuttered room. More than that, they could see the extraordinary feast that spread from the coffin as if it were some morbid cornucopia that had paradoxically spilled a profusion of lively delights down the long table.

  It was the most remarkable superabundance of food and drink the foundling sons had ever seen, more of a princely debauch than a funereal breakfast: the groaning board included hams, chickens, sponge cakes, potted shrimp, potted salmon, ginger cream, wine jelly, tartlets, lemon cake, caramel custard, raised pies, lobster salad, potted pigeons, tongue, all manner of fruit and boiled eggs, hot rolls, muffins and toast. There were steaming jugs of cocoa and there was, most extraordinary of all the anomalous luxuries, two jeroboams of champagne, standing like sentries at each end of the table.

  The counting desks and the high stools which normally occupied the central space had been banished to the walls and there was one ominously empty chair at the end of the table where Zebulon, when alive, was wont to sit.

  Issachar sat at the other end of the board, broken arm strapped to his chest with a black silk sling. The pain of the injury was disconcertingly growing rather than decreasing with the passage of time, but he had taken a small and precautionary dose of laudanum so as not to betray any weakness in the face of his “sons”.

  He looked slowly up and down the ranks of his foundling family, running them through his head as he took a quiet muster roll. Named for the city parishes from whose orphanages and poorhouses they had been taken, the roll made an odd assemblage of names. There was the burly Sherehog, with his newly broken jaw to match Issachar’s arm, both presents from The Oversight; and avoiding his eyes further down the table was Coram, who had once been perhaps his favourite. Between them sat Vintry, Jewry, Westcheap, Aldersgate and Backchurch Templebane, while on the other side of the coffin were ranged Pountney and the often confused Poultry, Outwich, Bothaw and Abchurch Templebane. The only names absent were those who had perished on the river, and the mysteriously disappeared mute, Amos, who had been the youngest of the crew.

  They were all poised between elation at the feast spread before them, and confusion, lest it was a trick. It was, after all, a funeral and not a bridal breakfast. Issachar drank a full bumper of champagne from brim to bottom, taking his time as he did so, letting them hang in the balance. It had ever been his and his brother’s practice to keep the “children” in a state of permanent competition and insecurity, this being the best way to both control them and develop a very specific kind of toughness and obedience. The torn nature of the glances they kept giving the food and then the coffin amused him more than he had imagined it would. He had not, however, had this extravagance laid on to torture them. He had more serious reasons, and felt his brother’s life should be celebrated by some uncharacteristic and memorable gesture. He put down his glass, wiped his mouth and spoke.

  “Why are we here?” he asked.

  “Funeral feast,” said Sherehog, grinding the words out between gritted teeth, his broken jaw having been wired and bound in place by a bone-setter who had obligingly also removed a tooth in order that he might eat and drink via a straw while his face healed. Of all the brothers here, he was the drunkest, since only liquids came easy to him.

  “A wake,” said Westcheap.

  “Show our respects,” said Outwich and Poultry simultaneously.

  Templebane shook his head. He pointed at the vacant seat at the other end of the table.

  “We are here to fill an empty chair,” he said. “For death not only diminishes–it provides. And in this case it provides a vacancy.”

  The boys all looked at each other, eyes glinting in the candlelight. Issachar and Zebulon had trained them well. They could smell an opportunity being dangled in front of them, even if they could not yet discern exactly what it was. Issachar swept his hand around at the table, all the treats and fancies laid out around the coffin.

  “This food. This drink. All today’s unwonted comforts are nothing to the future luxuries that will be available to whoever sits in that chair. All you have to do is take it—”

  More looks flashed
back and forth across the table. And then Sherehog, who invariably preferred a physical solution to a problem rather than one involving too much thought (which always confused him) leapt from his seat. As soon as he moved, at least half of the other brothers followed suit, clawing each other out of the way as they leapt for the chair—

  “SIT DOWN!”

  Issachar’s voice lashed through the air. The mêlée disentangled itself and seats were resumed with a lot of embarrassed coughing.

  Issachar’s eye swept balefully over them, making each one feel it had taken a precise and damning tally of their worth.

  “To sit in that chair you have to earn it,” he said with menacing silkiness.

  One of the few brothers who had remained in their seats raised a finger.

  Issachar stared at him.

  “Coram. You have a question?”

  “How, Father?”

  Issachar sat back and sucked his teeth, lip curled as he did so, as if he had just encountered some unpleasant taste within his mouth. He looked at the coffin, and then his gaze travelled up the pillar of beeswax to the flame burning at the top and rested there.

  “Coram,” he sighed. “Coram.”

  The other brothers exchanged that particular look that passes between people who know a punishment is about to be delivered, but not, happily, to themselves. Abchurch even sniggered until Westcheap mashed a heel into his toes to silence him.

  “Coram,” said Issachar, “of all here, you have the furthest to go to achieve that chair.”

  Sherehog kicked Coram under the table, the toe of his boot striking his shins with a malicious sharpness. Coram ignored it. His eyes were locked on Issachar’s face. There were two reasons that his father could be angry with him. One was survivable, with a little nerve. The other was the kind of betrayal that would only end with him being found face down in the Thames one cold morning. And because he was certain that Issachar could not possibly know that he had agreed to be the eyes and ears of the nobleman Mountfellon, he realised he had to deal with the other displeasure directly.

  Not for nothing had he been one of the more favoured sons prior to the debacle at Blackwater Reach. Sometimes, only very rarely, but certainly sometimes it was possible to impress the fathers by a show of strength rather than of unthinking obedience. And in this moment, even though he had no precise idea what the test actually was, he knew that to blink was to fail completely.

  “Because I came back,” he said clearly and without a shake in his voice.

  Issachar’s eyes dropped from the top of the funeral taper and locked on his.

  “Because you came back alive.”

  “And the Night Father did not,” said Coram.

  Every eye in the room saw the muscles twitch on the side of Issachar’s jaw.

  “And my brother did not,” he said.

  The silence hung in the air like an axe about to fall.

  Coram stood. The scrape of his chair raised one of Issachar’s eyebrows, but other than that no one else moved.

  “If I had been in the Night Father’s boat instead of dearly departed Bassetshaw, who was a fool, or poor Garlickhythe, who was merely vicious but not overly courageous, then maybe he would have returned unscathed,” he said. “But he put me on a boat with Mountfellon. It was his choice, not mine. Had I been on his boat, I could have saved him. And if not, I would not have returned.”

  There was a quiet wheeze of intaken breaths around the table.

  “You speak ill of the dead and think to commend yourself to me?” said Issachar.

  Coram didn’t flinch. He knew that to do so was to lose everything.

  “No. I speak the truth about them and you know it. You should blame the dead brothers, because that is fair. But if you blame me, you not only do wrong–which in your present and very understandable grief you may or may not care much about–but you also deprive yourself and the House of Templebane of a loyal and resourceful servant. And that I know you do care about.”

  “Do I?” said Issachar.

  “You do,” said Coram. “But if I’m mistaken and you have no use for me, just say so and I will go from here and never return.”

  Issachar stared at him. And then he inclined his head.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  Coram took his seat. Only then did his leg betray his heightened nerves by shaking, but the movement was hidden by the table. To the rest of the room, he appeared cool and calm.

  “One thing,” said Issachar. “I do not need you to understand my grief. For you cannot encompass the merest portion of it.”

  Coram inclined his head. And when he raised it again he fancied he saw the faintest flicker of an approving smile move across Templebane’s face before he turned to the others.

  “So,” he said, “this is how that chair, which will be the chair of my deputy can be won…”

  They all sat forward eagerly.

  “I want a plan for the eradication of The Oversight and the destruction of their headquarters in Wellclose Square. If the House of Templebane is to prosper, I am now convinced it must be in a London stripped of their unhelpful scrutiny. There are allies in the shadows whose powers can help us achieve great things, allies The Oversight would like to prevent us using under the pretext of some antiquated niceties, some secret ‘laws’ that they take it upon themselves alone to both know and enforce. They are busybodies with an archaic pedigree no one cares about, nothing more than an obstacle to trade. And trade is progress, boys, and mankind must travel forward, and so all obstacles to that great enterprise must be eradicated. I want a plan that looks like an accident, just in case we do not succeed at first strike, since they remain resourceful and nothing is certain, but I do not want a plan that will not succeed. Further to that, I want a permanent surveillance on them and reports twice a day, when I wake and when I go to bed. Whoever comes up with the best stratagem—”

  He waved at the empty chair. Then he picked up his glass.

  “Glasses, boys: to the memory of my brother–and to the destruction of The Oversight.”

  BEHIND THE WAINSCOT OF THE WORLD

  Just like as in a nest of boxes round,

  Degrees of sizes in each box are found:

  So, in this world, may many others be

  Thinner and less, and less still by degree…

  by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623–1653)

  … it is conjectured that there are other worlds within the world, as close as a paper-width but unreachable to us. What is certain is that there exists a network of interconnected passages that link similarly appointed places within our single world, allowing of shortcuts spanning hundreds of leagues that may be taken in instants, and that the portals into these tunnels are doubled looking-glasses.

  For those with the ability, it is possible to enter these passages through the very surface of the primary reflector, and move behind the surface of the palpable sphere as effortlessly as a mouse scuttling unseen behind the very wainscoting of the world… this mirror’d realm is not a blessing or a boon to man, rather it is a new territory, perhaps sandwiched between dimensions imperceptible to us, which contains as much danger as it does miraculous opportunities for swift travel… notably there are Black Mirrors, whose operation I know naught of other than the horror they arouse in those that have travelled the mirror’d world, and there are “mirror-wights” or, as they are known colloquially, hop-toads. It is my belief that “wight” in this context does not carry the meaning of “man” as much as its older sense of “swift”, in that it refers to the ability of these people to move quickly between places by the use of the looking-glass highway. A hop-toad is a common name, and must refer to the similar ability to spring nimbly from one location to another, seemingly without effort. Hop-toad also carries a base connotation, which perhaps refers to the rumoured use of the mirrors as a place where supranatural malfeasants can hide from the forces of order which operate on the other, normal side of the mirror. In this respect, the mirror
’d world can act as a variety of infinite priest’s hole for the hiding of fugitives who may well do or have done much harm beyond the mirrors, and who are hunted by those charged with policing such offences.

  from The Great and Hidden History of the World by the Rabbi Dr Hayyim Samuel Falk (also known as the Ba’al Shem of London)

  CHAPTER 11

  THE BLOOD TOLL

  Sara strode relentlessly onwards through the mirrors. Her progress was steady and repetitive as she walked in an increasingly trance-like state until she found she had somehow lost track of time in a sensation more acute than merely not being sure what hour it was, or even whether it was now night or day. It felt more uncanny than that: the deeper she delved into the mirrored maze, the shallower her connection with the outside world became, and the looser the grip and dictates of its temporal pull seemed to be. In fact it felt both as if time had lost track of her and that she had been moving inexorably away from the tug of some great magnet, its power decreasing with every step until the point came when she had become unhitched from something that had previously moored her to the concrete world. She now felt cast adrift in a way that made her somewhat nauseous. It was no longer a matter of not knowing whether it was night or day: it was increasingly unclear to her whether she had been walking for minutes, hours, days, weeks or seasons. The sensation made her head spin with something like vertigo.

  The Raven rode her shoulder, curiously comforting in its proximity, head tucked under its wing as if asleep.

  “How long have we been walking?” she said.

  The bird lifted its head, shook it, peered around and then tucked it away again.

  “You too?” she said. “I can’t tell if it’s today or next week. But I don’t feel tired.”