The Paradox

by Charlie Fletcher

  Sara’s lips were blue with cold.

  “Hadn’t thought hell would be this damn chilly,” she said, and proceeded to interrogate the man further in reasonably fluent but shivering French.

  Within half an hour, thanks to that and the gold sovereigns she carried in her belt as a matter of course, they had a room in the station hotel by the Montparnasse terminal with a roaring fire and a hot bath, brandy and food, and thirty minutes after that, Sharp gone back into the city and had determined there was a train to Rouen leaving from the Embarcadère des Batignolles at St Lazare which a hansom cab–already engaged–could take them to directly. He had also confirmed there was a corresponding fast coach to Dieppe to connect with a steam-packet that would put their feet back on English chalk by five in the morning. He ran back to the hotel with the good news through a pall of thickening snow and explained the itinerary.

  “And then by locomotive to London, where we should arrive by ten-thirty,” he said, shaking the flakes off his shoulders.

  “You are a marvel of organisation,” said Sara, hidden from him by a screen erected around the copper bath in front of the fire. She had, as he had left, announced that she intended to stay in the hot water until hell froze over, and wondered hopefully if that was the reason behind all the unseasonable weather outside. He put her unaccustomed levity down to relief and the brandy she had fortified herself with.

  “Should you ever require another string to your bow, you would make a very effective dragoman.”

  The pink foot he had glimpsed hanging over the edge of the bath made him very aware of the screen and what was unguarded behind it. He cleared his throat.

  “We don’t need more strings,” he said. “We need more bows… And more time. I’m afraid we should leave now. I have a carriage waiting.”

  “Right now?” she said. “You’re sure?”

  “I checked the timetables and the connections in a convenient book at the ticket office at the Montparnasse Station.”

  “Books,” she said with a sigh. “They should be banned.”

  There was a decisive splash and gurgle from behind the screen and he realised that she had stepped out of the bath. He looked away. And found the Raven sitting on the bed rail, cocking its head at him.

  “I read a book. A novel in fact. A diversion,” she said.

  “You?” He laughed despite himself. “A novel?” He turned. Her face was looking steadily at him over the top of the screen as she dried herself briskly. She inclined her head in assent, almost defiantly.

  “Me,” she said. “Guilty of a novel. We spend so much time dealing with the dark realities of the world that I thought I might take a short holiday from the harshness of dry actuality and read a confection, a fantasy if you will. The story was written by a very bright and clever woman and interestingly, though clever, she had taken as her subject the supposedly trifling matter of love: it concerned a long and mutually frustrating courtship between two principled people who allowed their respective pride to prejudice their joint happiness.”

  She ducked out of sight and he realised she was now pulling on clothes as fast as she could. The thought unsettled him.

  “And were you diverted?” he said. Increasingly conscious of the thinness of the screen and what lay beyond.

  “I was enthralled and impressed by the author’s perspicacity,” she said, “but ultimately I was struck by how much of what amused me depended upon the convenient device upon which she propped so much of her artifice, that of otherwise admirable characters lacking the sense to speak and act plainly with each other. I found I was taking pleasure in watching people whom I esteemed being tortured by too much restraint and false modesty. I will have no similar false modesty between us, Jack.”

  And then she stopped his heart by stepping out from behind the screen, theoretically dressed but actually scandalously not yet buttoned up as to her blouse and jacket, which she worked on as her eyes held his.

  “I love you,” she said. “And in the matter of loving you I have no pride. It is simply what it is: true, as true in fact as the truest thing I know. Which happens to be your heart and your friendship.”

  “Sara—” he said.

  “Is that understood?” she said, eyes steady on his. “For it is true to the bone and the bedrock of my life.”

  “Understood and returned tenfold, my—”

  “Good,” she said, and she reached up and stopped his mouth with a kiss.

  It also seemed to start his heart again, for he was conscious of it pounding unusually rapidly, and then he kissed her back, which she allowed for an instant, and then pushed him gently away.

  “Not in front of the Raven,” she said, perfectly straight-faced. “And not now. We have a train to catch. I have a sense of dread on me and every minute away from London makes it worse.”

  She looked around the room.

  “One day it might be pleasant to spend time in a place like this, with a fire and fine brandy and a comfortable feather bed and no cares in the world. But I’m afraid that is for another life.”

  Sharp nodded. Then stopped and wondered what exactly she had meant by that. Her face was unhelpfully unreadable on the subject. She held out a hand. The Raven hopped aboard from its perch on top of the armoire and climbed to her shoulder.

  “Lead on,” she said. “Time and tide wait for no man…”

  The Raven clacked its beak in her ear.

  “Or woman.”

  CHAPTER 47

  RUDDY GLUE

  It should have been a jolly last meal.

  Cait announced her plans for the morning, and though her departure was regretted, it was decided that the timing couldn’t have been better in one respect, in that Cook had that very day acquired a carcase of salt-marsh lamb from the meat market, and had spent a happily energetic afternoon with her heavy Chinese hatchet and boning knife, jointing it and putting up the resultant cuts in the cold larder. As a result, chops were on the menu for a lavish farewell meal and, as the topper, she had taken delivery of a large and much anticipated basket of Westmoreland damsons.

  Lucy was set up with a darning needle, pricking lots of holes in the purple-blue skin of each small and astringent plum, which she then dropped into the wide neck of a wicker-wrapped five-gallon demijohn on the floor beside her.

  “Damson gin,” said Cook. “What you’re making now will warm us through next winter. You’ll be glad enough of it then, I imagine. Winters aren’t getting any hotter, I’ve noticed, and these things go in cycles.”

  Charlie was set to help Cook prepare the supper’s dessert.

  “Men should learn to cook properly,” said Cook. “Then they might learn to be a little more independent. Put an apron on or you’ll end up with sago all down your front.”

  “What are we making?” he said, resigned.

  “Ruddy Glue,” she said. “It’s a beautiful old pudding with a bit of bite to it, just like me. Take two pints of those damsons, and get them on the fire in the same amount of water, then shake in a pint of crushed sago. You’ll find a sack of it next to the oatmeal over there.”

  She looked at Lucy, who was scowling over her chore.

  “What’s making you so cheery?” she said.

  “Nothing,” said Lucy, jabbing the fruit in her hand and wincing as she went through and pricked her thumb.

  “I can see that,” said Cook, her eyes flicking to the door out of which Cait had just passed in order to pack her bag for the ten o’clock embarkation in the morning. “Well, when you’ve chewed it over, spit it out or swallow it.”

  She pulled up a chair and joined her in preparing the damsons. Charlie was kept stirring his pot until the stones broke free of the fruit, at which point he was to skim them off and crack them (with a hammer on the back step), splitting the sweet kernels out and placing them back in the pot with the fruit and sago, which by now was becoming stained vermilion.

  “Sugar it,” said Cook without looking up. “And maybe give missy here a spoonful, be
cause she’s still looking very sour.”

  Lucy finished pricking a damson, dropped it in the demijohn and then carefully laid the needle on the table and left without a word.

  “That wasn’t needed,” said Charlie.

  Cook didn’t reply. Just carried on jabbing with even more intensity. Five damsons later she looked up at him.

  “I know,” she said with a sigh. “Truth is, Charlie Pyefinch, that I’m an imperfect vessel. Wish I’d bitten my tongue, but I didn’t. I’ve just had this feeling something bad’s coming for the longest time. Sometimes I say things and the worry and meanness comes out by mistake. I’m no bloody saint. Show me the pot.”

  She peered inside.

  “Good,” she said. “Now pour it into one of those oven dishes, the deep one with the yellow glaze, and put it in the range to bake. It’ll be lovely.”

  It was lovely. But the farewell meal wasn’t quite jolly. What had become an easy association between the six of them, in which conversation and laughter had begun to run freely became, this last time, too stilted and self-aware to be comfortable, as if the shadow of the future departure was casting a pall into the present.

  And then The Smith of course deepened the shadow tenfold by taking a breath and telling them about the Sluagh on the iron rails. Lucy felt a shiver of horror go through her at the thought of Sluagh in the city. The others couldn’t believe it, not at first. Cook swore quite a lot.

  “Cold iron’s been our ally long as there’s been an Oversight,” said Hodge. “It’s not possible.”

  “It’s like the sun turned into the moon,” said Cook. “It’s all different now.”

  She swore some more in a language Lucy didn’t recognise.

  “You must be mistaken,” said Hodge. Jed whined and nuzzled his hand. He didn’t notice, his blind eyes pointed towards The Smith.

  “No,” said Cook. “I felt something changed in the air. The cream in the pantry all went sour overnight.”

  “This’ll be bad as the Great Fire,” said Hodge.

  “Worse, probably,” agreed The Smith. “Worse because normal people won’t notice the boundary’s shifted because they never knew it was there in the first place. When things go bad and they’re being preyed on they won’t know by what. They’ll think it’s each other. The fire just destroyed buildings. Breaking the bonds that glue society together, that’s harder to repair.”

  “Worse than the Disaster, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Cook. “But we survived that too, didn’t we? And those that go on surviving have to eat. Just because the world’s going to hell in a handbasket doesn’t mean we can’t have a nice sustaining supper to see us on our way.”

  The mood remained sombre despite her bravado, but the food was delightful and abundant. The whole Last Hand sat in the cluttered warmth of the kitchen, faces lit by the candle in the five-wood wreath at the centre of the table, and having enjoyed the chops and the trimmings Cook piled on with them, they cleared the course and watched as Charlie brought the baking dish to the table. The sago had disappeared, the whole vermilion mush having darkened to a deep crimson gum that looked very handsome in the gold glaze of the earthenware dish. Cook put a jug of cold milk and a bowl of crushed sugar on the table next to it.

  “Damsons?” said Hodge, nose crinkling hopefully.

  “Ruddy Glue,” said The Smith. “Your favourite.”

  Lucy looked at the sugar and then caught Cook looking at her.

  “I spoke unkindly this afternoon, Lucy Harker,” she said, swallowing. “And though it was just words, they can hurt more than anything else, especially if they come from one whom you’ve every right to trust as a friend.”

  Looks were exchanged across the table. The Smith opened his mouth to speak.

  “I want to trust you,” said Lucy.

  The Smith closed his mouth and just looked a question at her instead.

  “But you can’t,” said Cook. “Or rather, you can’t let yourself.”

  “It is a want that comes from the weakness in me,” said Lucy, not looking away from The Smith’s anvil-hard eyes. “And I have not survived on my own for so long by being weak.”

  “But you are not alone now,” said Cook. “You’re part of us. Part of The Oversight.”

  “And that makes me safer?” she replied, still looking back at The Smith.

  “It makes you part of something bigger,” he said.

  “I am already part of something bigger,” she said. “I am part of the world. And the world is large and I can get lost in it. I can survive and prosper, unnoticed and unremarked by any ill-wishers. In the wide world, I can live free and move fast. I can plot my own course.”

  “You are too young and inexperienced to understand about courses,” snapped The Smith.

  Lucy was pleased he showed some anger. It frightened her just enough to put steel in her resolve.

  “And you are too old to notice the world changing anew,” she said. “Or to know where it might be headed.”

  “You—” he began, half rising out of his chair.

  “Let her speak,” said Cook, and though she spoke quietly, the edge in her voice cut through the suddenly heightened tension and dropped him back into his seat without finishing the sentence. Lucy swallowed and tried not to look at Charlie who was staring at her, trying to send signals she didn’t want or have time to read.

  “The Oversight is sinking,” she said carefully. “It is more than sinking. This is not news to anyone round this table. It is being attacked and targeted. So it is not merely dwindling and failing, it is being destroyed by hostile forces. Joining it does not make me safer. It draws attention to myself. It makes me a target.”

  The room was very quiet, only the fire crackling and the spatter of windblown rain against the windows answering her declaration. Cait looked at the ceiling. Cook sniffed and then blew her nose.

  “You feel we have harmed you?” she said. “You think we have not had your best interests at heart after all we have—?”

  “No,” said Lucy. She took a deep breath, risked a glance at Charlie, but he was leaning back and studying the ceiling beside Cait. “No. I think you believe that you are rescuing me from the sea where you found me rowing my small boat. And I think you want to help me by bringing me aboard your larger ship. But I think that you have all been on your ship so long that you do not understand it is holed, fatally damaged below the waterline. You don’t really believe it can sink, that it is in fact sinking under you right now, sinking fast.”

  Cook glared at her. Charlie and Cait remained fascinated by the ceiling, and The Smith just stared at her with eyes as worn and unyielding as the blunt face of his hammer.

  “You don’t believe in us,” said Charlie.

  The “us” slipped in beneath her guard and bit sharply at her resolve. It spoke of his loyalty but felt like the worst betrayal at the same time. Maybe he knew this. Maybe that was why he kept his eyes on the beams overhead.

  “I would like to,” she said, “but that is the same weakness as wanting to replace the family I lost.”

  “Wanting a family is not weakness,” said Cait. “For one thing, it is the essence of motherhood, and if there’s a stronger thing in the world than a good mother, then I’ve not yet seen it.”

  And again that, coming from her of all people, was another betrayal. But then Lucy felt in a way which she knew was irrational that Cait had already betrayed her that afternoon.

  “Wanting is always a weakness,” said Lucy, turning her words neatly back on her. But as she did so, she felt the unpleasant twist of the weapon as her low blow slid in. She knew she had won the argument, at least on her own terms, but she’d done it ignobly. Still and all, despite the silence around her, she’d won. She was not as interested in being noble as being safe.

  It was hard to get the ring off her finger. It did not seem to want to move, but once she had so visibly started to try and divest herself of the talisman, she felt she had to keep tugging and twisting until she could take it
off and slide it back towards The Smith.

  She didn’t see him move, and flinched as his hand found hers, then relaxed as she realised he was going to help her take it off. But he just stopped her hands from moving at all.

  “Keep the ring,” he said. “However you make your choice, keep the ring. Oh, and this—”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin gold chain, from which hung a little cage.

  “For your heart-stone,” he said. “As we discussed.”

  And now it was her turn to feel on the receiving end of a low blow. The sad generosity in his eyes was insupportable to her.

  “You don’t need to explain any more,” he said. “I see that it is done.”

  “I do want to fight the shadows,” she said. “I wish to be strong, but I wish… I think I need to be a different kind of strong. There is a strength in numbers–sometimes–but there is also a strength in solitude.”

  She looked across the table for support, but Cait was still looking at the ceiling, avoiding her eyes.

  “She wants to be like Cait,” said Cook.

  “A venatrix,” said The Smith.

  “A free hunter,” said Lucy.

  “Alone,” said Cait, finally lowering her eyes and looking at her. In her own way those eyes were as adamantine and unreachable as The Smith’s had been before he accepted her decision. “A true fiagaí is always alone… whence the freedom.”

  Lucy looked at them all.

  So. Alone then. She was to have neither quite what she wanted, nor what they wanted. Just alone. She would do it with as much dignity as she could. Her voice felt like it had to sidestep something uncomfortably lodged just behind her larynx.

  “I will always owe you a great debt,” she said, hoping her eyes were not glistening.

  “But you will not stay,” said Cook.

  “NONE of us should stay,” said Lucy. She nodded at The Smith. “You said it. You taught us the history, you said when the Last Hand fails, as it has in the past, whoever is left separates and scatters and only returns when enough new blood is found to rebuild.”