Rotherweird

by Andrew Caldecott

  ‘Into the coracle,’ he ordered, and she found herself obeying without a murmur.

  The vessel barely accommodated the two of them but still skimmed across the water, the botanist paddling with a surprising deftness. ‘See,’ whispered Salt immodestly, ‘I could win the Equinox Race if ever I wanted to.’

  He hauled the coracle ashore and rolled it into the undergrowth. Hidden nearby waited a Polk vehicle, a quarter of the size of the charabanc, with the letters RMGD on the side in gold letters – Rotherweird Municipal Gardens Department, Orelia realised after a moment’s thought.

  With a pagoda of flowerpots rattling in the back, Salt drove the foreshortened truck across a field to join the main road north. After a good seven miles by Orelia’s reckoning they branched left onto a modest country lane and began to climb. The smudge of the Milky Way spread above them.

  ‘We need Bolitho,’ she said, gesturing skywards, but Salt ignored her, leaving Orelia no alternative but to enjoy the drive for its own sake. She had travelled further afield than most townsfolk, but like them, she knew little of the immediate countryside. Here and there she saw the lights of distant windows, marking outlying farms on the valley’s upper slopes. Salt pulled up at a gateway in a stone wall. Beyond she could see in silhouette the stringed poles of a large hop garden, and all about, fruit trees.

  ‘The Ferdys?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re not here to see them. From here you walk: you go past the Ferdys – without knocking or attracting attention – and up the hill to the tower. Knock before entering. Whomever you meet, whatever is said, it’s between you, me and this gatepost.’

  ‘And why must you go first?’

  ‘I’ve got business that isn’t your business.’

  Intrigued and irritated in equal measure, Orelia jumped down from the vehicle.

  ‘Knock – remember,’ repeated Salt.

  Orelia ignored him and started walking.

  ‘Women,’ muttered Salt as he drove off down the lane.

  ‘Men,’ muttered Orelia.

  But there had been progress of a sort: Salt’s reaction to the sale of the stones confirmed her instinct that they combined to do something. Might the inhabitant of this mysterious tower know

  what?

  The air had turned chill and she was glad of the heavy woollen jersey she had pulled over her silk shirt. In the meadow beside her, two greys whickered softly to each other, tails swishing this way and that. The land rose again, and over a brow the town of Rotherweird came into view. Her citizens looked down on country-

  siders, yet here the countrysiders looked down on them. The perspective was striking. The town looked recent compared to the ancient beeches and oaks before her. As she walked, her breath steaming, she wondered what lay behind the antagonism between town and country, and reproved herself for never questioning more closely why Rotherweird held such a unique status with no MP, no bishop and no county.

  She found Salt’s vehicle parked between a barn, herring-boned with oak beams, and a horse-drawn dray painted on both sides in green and gold letters: The Ferdy Brewery: Fine Ales and Fine Everything. She should have guessed that this mystery person would be part of the Ferdy household, bearing in mind that Salt was a regular at The Journeyman’s Gist and Bill Ferdy the one man with a firm foot in town and country.

  Below the barn lay a farmhouse, two storeys, with a handsome porch, generous windows and rose canes, shaped by years of pruning, tied to the walls. A rough lawn curled down a slope to a small pond. Orelia quietly skirted the house and walked on to the tower in the lee of the hill beyond. Only close to did she see its hexagonal shape, faded brickwork and leaded windows. She had thought follies a creation of the eighteenth century, but this building looked older – indeed, older than the farmhouse. She could not comprehend how Salt’s mysterious friend with his equally mysterious tower could connect with the four stones.

  From outside she could hear Salt trying to defend himself against the probing questions of a second, gentler, male voice. The drama of the duel removed any guilt Orelia might have felt for

  eavesdropping.

  ‘You find four stones, right by the tile, and don’t tell me!’ Despite the recriminatory message, the unfamiliar voice stayed calm, in sharp contrast to Salt’s.

  ‘I didn’t like them.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  A pause. She could imagine Salt’s tortured face. ‘I sold them.’

  ‘They’re corrupting and dangerous. We have to retrieve them.’

  ‘To a shop, a nothing shop. I told them not to sell here – but you know shopkeepers, once they catch the scent of profit . . .’

  ‘Again, why not tell me?’ The unknown character maintained his tone of mild rebuke.

  ‘I didn’t want one of your lectures. And you take and never give. It’s always questions and never answers.’ By now Salt sounded furious – with himself, thought Orelia.

  ‘I plead guilty to that. But it’s for your own good. You don’t know what you’re dabbling in. You really don’t.’

  ‘There you go again – rebuke without explanation. Anyway, who are you, you Ferensens? One disappears, then decades later another turns up, yet never a woman, and never a child.’

  Orelia was intrigued. Ferensen: an offbeat name in an offbeat home, and quite unknown in Rotherweird Town.

  ‘You must talk to the shopkeeper.’

  A long pause. Orelia knew why: Salt was prevaricating. ‘That won’t be easy.’

  ‘Why not?’

  At this point Orelia had had enough. She sacrificed the ‘knock’ of her instructions for a more dramatic entrance. ‘Because I sold the stones,’ she announced, taking three firm steps into the room.

  The two men gaped as she took in a miscellany of objects – Inuit snowshoes, a Seljuk carpet from Konya, a Fang mask from Gabon, among other oddities. She saw travel in Ferensen’s eyes and weatherbeaten face. Light of build and no more than five feet ten tall, with ears out of proportion to the face, his features were otherwise fine. Despite the silver hair, he had the alertness of a man in his prime. She sensed something else, something unnatural, an unease that parallelled her first reaction to Sir Veronal, although the two men could hardly have been more different.

  Salt spoke first. ‘Meet Orelia Roc, the assistant in Baubles & Relics and seller of stones.’

  Ferensen shook her hand. ‘Ferensen,’ he said, ‘just plain Ferensen. We need composure and imagination to unravel this little problem.’ He placed three glasses on the mantelpiece and poured a generous measure into each from a dusty bottle with no label. Orelia caught the smell of brandy and apples.

  ‘If anyone asks, he doesn’t exist – nor does his tower,’ said Salt.

  She ignored the remark, sat down by the fire and rubbed her hands.

  ‘You sold the stones to . . . ?’ asked Ferensen.

  Orelia instinctively trusted Ferensen, not just for his age, but his air of patience and wisdom. ‘The Manor’s new owner bought them.’

  ‘See,’ said Salt, ‘that’s what I was trying to tell you.’

  Orelia interrupted. ‘The stones do something, don’t they?’

  ‘They do many things—’

  Salt found Ferensen’s candour with Orelia deeply irritating. He’d said nothing about the stones’ purpose to him, but the edge to the old man’s voice suggested more to come if he kept quiet. But only three words did.

  ‘—to living things.’

  The phrase hung in the air. They do many things to living things. Obscure, but laden with malignant possibilities. Living things: themselves, the water plants, the rose tapping at the window, the owl hunting the meadow. Many things. On his last visit to the tower the Black Bodrum Nightraiser Special had spared him a hangover, but had also impaired his powers of recollection. Ferensen had said something about his map of Lost Acre, something relevant to what he was saying now, but the detail would not come.

  Ferensen remained his practical, unruffled self. ‘Tell me, Orelia
, what did you make of the Lord of the Manor – as a customer?’

  ‘He would have paid anything.’

  ‘She was at the Manor for the party tonight,’ interrupted Salt.

  ‘In the Great Hall?’

  She nodded. Ferensen’s face clouded. There was pain there. ‘A fireplace with giants on bended knee?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Pomegranates carved in the panelling, smooth as skin itself.’

  She exchanged glances with Salt. How could Ferensen know? The Manor had been off-limits for centuries. Maybe in childhood he had made it over the wall. His possessions certainly suggested an adventurous spirit. She was already engaged by her mysterious

  host.

  Ferensen listened politely to her narrative, asking no questions until, while describing his strangely hostile initial reception, she finally mentioned his name.

  The effect on Ferensen was electrifying. He sprang from his chair. ‘Veronal? Veronal Slickstone? You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?’

  She produced her invitation.

  Ferensen fell back in the chair. ‘God save us.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Salt asked before turning to Orelia. ‘That’s the trouble with Ferensens. They sow puzzles, but they never explain.’

  ‘I should have known it was one of them, and I should have expected him.’

  ‘One of whom?’ asked Salt.

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘See what I mean!’ Salt threw up his hands in exasperation as Ferensen followed up with a volley of questions about Sir Veronal’s height, voice, facial features, skin colour and manner. Orelia did her best.

  Ferensen shook his head and returned to the sale. ‘In the shop –

  how was he?’

  ‘He went straight for them. He had no interest in anything else.’

  ‘How did he react on seeing them?’

  ‘He seemed mystified. He wanted to know where they came from. When he first held them he shut his eyes as if they might tell him something. But they didn’t. He was disappointed, but he still paid up.’

  ‘Then there is hope – unless he finds a way in.’

  ‘To Lost Acre?’ asked Salt.

  ‘To his memory,’ replied Ferensen, ‘where his past is locked away.’ Ferensen made a calming motion with his hands, as if blessing a baby. ‘On with the story – and please, call him Veronal. That is his name.’

  Ferensen did not react again until Orelia mentioned the lightning bolt and how it had nearly reduced the intruder to ash.

  ‘Blue-silver, blinding, fast?’ he asked, ‘with an after smell of spent firework?’

  He was right. There had been. She nodded.

  ‘Stands to reason,’ was all he said. He picked a mottled stone egg off the mantelpiece and tossed it from hand to hand. ‘Who did he talk to?’

  ‘Chosen targets, I’m sure, anyone who might know of our past. I heard him ask Fanguin about Flask. He chose Oblong of all people for a guided tour, and then moved on to Finch.’

  ‘Oblong, Fanguin, Flask . . . they’re all strangers to me. One at a time, please, Miss Roc.’

  Ferensen refilled their glasses as Orelia gave three potted biographies. Oblong was the school historian, an outsider. Flask had been the School historian, therefore an outsider too, but Fanguin’s friend. Flask had disappeared and Fanguin had lost his job because Flask had encouraged pupils to dig in breach of the History Regulations and Fanguin had failed to report him.

  ‘Anything else of note?’ asked Ferensen.

  ‘Slickstone has a son,’ added Orelia.

  ‘Not his own, can’t be. He must be adopted. You see, he’s looking, and he wants to look normal while he looks.’ He paused. ‘But that’s enough of that for one evening.’

  As midnight was announced by various clocks, Ferensen warned that the rain would return in fifty minutes. He said goodnight, apologising to Orelia for being obscure, only to add to her frustration by counselling inaction for the present.

  ‘How does Ferensen know Slickstone?’ she asked Salt.

  ‘He tells you nothing.’ After railing against Ferensen for being uninformative, Salt then refused to divulge anything to Orelia about his own private business with Ferensen. The evening, she felt, had promised much and delivered little.

  On the way home Salt made the oddest remark: ‘Imagine a new world where Man could start again. What would we preserve? What would we cut down? Would we be more careful with our discoveries?’

  As they parted in the street beyond the potting sheds, Salt repeated a warning. ‘You’ve never heard of him, remember – Ferensen the Rainmaker.’

  Hard to forget, as rain began to fall exactly when Ferensen said it would.

  That night Orelia could not sleep for the bombardment of questions and an underlying unease. ‘Rainmaker’ – what did that mean? How had Ferensen come by this peculiar gift? What was this new world he and Salt had hinted at? Why had Sir Veronal been drawn to the stones? She recalled the monsters and the cages in the Manor’s tapestry: make-believe or reality? The answers to these questions, she suspected, would explain Rotherweird’s independence of the rest of England and the enforced concealment of her past. But what would happen if this security lock failed? What powers had been so deeply hidden from view?

  Similar questions jangled in Salt’s head as he stirred a mug of cocoa in his house and remembered what Ferensen had said on his earlier snowbound visit including his description of the slippery patch of sky in Lost Acre known as the mixing-point. He thought of the stones doing many things to living things, the strange tree with its spread-eagled arms, and of Lost Acre’s bizarre and dangerous fauna. A horrific possibility occurred. Sleep did not come any more easily to him.

  *

  Sir Veronal reclined on his bed. The four bedposts were carved with a veritable bestiary – pelicans taking flight from the mouths of dragons, snakes entwined with butterflies. Three huge tapestries hung from the surrounding walls on the theme of summer, autumn and winter. Nobody asked about the absence of spring; it seemed an indelicate question.

  His servants had never seen the phenomenon before – he was known to them as a cold man, but this explosion of energy had been spontaneously prompted by loss of temper.

  The actress kept vigil. She had been closest to him when the lightning had flowed from his fingers like magic. The dark smudges on his fingertips confirmed that this dramatic outlay of energy had caused his coma. Had a device, hitherto unknown to the world, been installed beneath his skin? Had it malfunctioned, or had he intended to kill?

  She feared the answer might connect with his obsession with Rotherweird. She decided that a Jacobean revenge play had begun, and in that thought she found a new justification for further investigation. You cannot play Lear without exploring how life with the late Queen had been before the play commenced. She could not play Lady Slickstone without knowing more about Sir Veronal’s past. This town had to hold the material she needed.

  At about midnight Sir Veronal surfaced, sharp as ever. ‘The woman – I want all there is to know.’

  His Head of Security was already briefed. ‘There are two science faculties in Rotherweird School – the North and South Towers. What they do beyond teaching is something of a mystery, but they fund the town. The South comes within the School’s jurisdiction and the North works with the Apothecaries’ Guild. The woman is Vixen Valourhand, by all reports a withdrawn personality but a brilliant scientist. She teaches chemistry and particle physics.’

  Sir Veronal sat up. ‘She got the better of you.’ He decided against further rebuke. ‘Did Strimmer know what she was up to?’

  ‘The Great Hall cameras suggest he was both surprised and unsurprised.’

  Sir Veronal greeted this ambiguous answer with a knowing nod. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I would say, sir, he’s a man to have on your side – devious, ambitious, and without scruple.’

  ‘Did any acceptances not turn up?’

  ‘None.’
>
  ‘Any present uninvited guests?’

  ‘Mrs Banter. She owns Baubles & Relics. You may recall we showed her out – firmly.’

  Sir Veronal strummed the headboard with his fingers. ‘With Mr Gorhambury in charge of security? It’s too much of a coincidence. Get into his bank account and check for money. Then get Snorkel on the job. I want retribution. This town has lessons to learn.’

  The actress blew out the candles and withdrew to her room. She sensed that the Second Act of this drama was already showing more promise than the first.

  *

  Strimmer stood with a hand on each side of her doorway. Valourhand sat by a mirror, halfway through the laborious process of restoring her former appearance, cheeks running turquoise with dye, short hair still spiky. She had morphed back into jeans and T-shirt.

  ‘You might have told me. You could have got yourself killed.’

  Valourhand knew the remark reflected irritation at the lack of consultation rather than concern for her welfare. ‘I was faster.’

  ‘Whose idea was all this?’

  ‘I give credit to Flask for the general idea, but the detailed execution was mine.’

  Strimmer wondered what else Flask had said to Valourhand and kept from him. ‘So,’ he said, ‘either our interloper has invented a new weapon or he has unnatural powers. Whichever, he’s more than the Snorkel palm-greaser Flask said he was.’ Strimmer’s tone turned suspicious. ‘In your delightful speech, you said the Manor’s former owner was a great man. Who told you that?’

  ‘He was a great scientist. It was Flask – who else?’

  ‘If Sir Veronal is after information, as I think he is, he’ll be interested in what we know. But I’m against asking him here first. I’d lose the high ground.’

  Always ‘I’ and never ‘we’, thought Vixen, as Strimmer continued, ‘You weren’t there, but Slickstone left the party for a good twenty minutes with the strangest possible companion.’ He paused for effect. ‘Oblong.’

  Valourhand remembered the historian loitering outside the house as she made her escape. She had had enough of Strimmer. ‘Night,’ she said, indicating the door.