Rotherweird

by Andrew Caldecott

  Strimmer returned to his study, the highest room in the tower, and locked the door. He reflected less on Valourhand’s performance than on her surprise disclosure, gleaned from Flask, that a scientist of distinction had inhabited the Manor. This prompted a recollection of something Flask had revealed to him – a study of the buildings and their materials showed that, church apart, the North Tower and the Manor were the town’s oldest buildings by several decades, close in age to each other. Flask had pointed out the unusual height and rounded shape of the North Tower roof. Strimmer now theorised that the North Tower had always had a scientific purpose.

  Back in his room he tapped the spaces between the crisscrossing beams in the ceiling of his study with a broom handle. The noise confirmed what the roofline suggested (if you analysed without fear of the past, as Flask invariably did): a cavity above. Strimmer reasoned that any access would have come from the middle of his room, where the desk presently stood.

  To his astonishment, on the application of firm pressure, an otherwise invisible hinged panel opened upwards. Armed with a torch, he hauled himself up into an extraordinary room. Half the perimeter was lined with tip-up seats, deeply set so their occupants could sit without being cramped by the slope of the ceiling. In the middle stood a magnificent chair, almost a throne, with clawed feet. With increasingly excited rubs from a shirt-sleeve, there emerged from the dusty wall paintings of stars, signs of the zodiac, numbers and algebraic formulae, and a sealed window decorated as a golden door, apparently opening onto infinite space.

  A wheel with a handle sat low in the floor beneath the window. He tried the wheel and felt a tremor beneath his feet. The entire floor must once have revolved. The phenomenon left no doubt: he stood in an observatory, and one centuries old.

  He descended again to bring up a damp cloth and a powerful lamp. Further details emerged: nine sets of initials had been erased from the twelve seats, leaving three survivors (HS, MS and TF), all pupils, presumably.

  On the revolving section where the telescope must have stood, he made another discovery. A small wooden tile, no more than eight inches square, had been inserted flush between adjoining floorboards. Rendered near invisible by centuries of dust, a damp cloth revealed a fine marquetry inlay of a sun and two moons about the initials HG with a cross beneath. Under a magnifying glass a tiny monogram emerged in the corner, a conjoined H and M. Strimmer deduced that the three surviving students were probably friends, as they sat together. He attributed the survival of their initials as testifying to their innocence of whatever disgrace had expunged the record of their colleagues’ existence.

  The cross on the inlaid tile suggested a memorial, most probably to their teacher. The H and M reflected the first initials of the two survivors. A question emerged whose potential Strimmer found exciting rather than sinister: was the disgrace of the majority connected to the death of their teacher?

  A slight distortion in the floor caught Strimmer’s eye. The beams of his study ceiling were mirrored in the observatory floor, but floorboards rather than plaster filled the gaps. Under the eaves a board had come loose, the edge standing a little proud. Strimmer sank to his haunches to lift it. Below a hidden receptacle held a book.

  The title, embossed in gold on the spine, was mysterious: The Roman Recipe Book. A disturbing woodblock provided the sole clue as to its anonymous author: a devil sitting on an ornate chair, with yet another monogram beneath his feet. The posture – elbow on knee, hand on chin – implied a thinker, and the intensity of his gaze spoke of ambition. Strimmer had on rare occasions consulted antique scientific books in the basement of Rotherweird Library. He judged this to be many centuries old. Opposite the frontispiece he found a manuscript inscription in tiny letters, the ink faded to a purplish brown:

  I

  Was

  Bound

  Bearing

  My∫terious

  Recipes

  He flipped through the pages, thirty-two, without a word on any of them. Each displayed four separate identical squares lined like a stave of music, save that the lines numbered six, not five, and ran vertically. In each square – though always on different lines and in different places – were four coloured circles of red, white, blue and brown. Beneath them appeared on one side recognisable creatures, or parts of creatures – a boy’s head, a claw, a feather – and on the other, a composite. Grotesques, finely drawn, danced on the margins, some tailed, some clawed, some winged. A few pages featured elements, too – fire, lightning, water. Uniquely, the last page beneath the stave showed only ordinary people in silhouette: a soldier, a maid, a jester and other stereotypes. The draughtsmanship was exquisite and the colours vivid, but other than the title, there was no word to be seen.

  Was it a songbook, with some long-lost notation? If so, why go to such extravagant lengths to hide it? He toyed with the motion that the diagrams were a speculative early guess at DNA, the building blocks of life, but these inked body parts and monstrosities with their mix of man, beast, bird and insect were hardly real.

  ‘Grotesques, finely drawn, danced on the margins,

  some tailed, some clawed, some winged.’

  Strimmer doubted that the book had any contemporary value beyond its age and binding, but the obscurity of the title, the tantalising inscription and the illustrations tickled his interest. He replaced it, re-securing the offending board, just in case. He had not forgotten Flask’s disappearance.

  *

  Marmion Finch, chastised on the way home by Mrs Finch for overfamiliarity with a woman half his age (Roc) and underfamiliarity with the new force in Rotherweird society (the Slickstones), took refuge in the archivoire. Valourhand’s performance had shown style and pluck, but it was her underlying message that had intrigued him. A great scientist had lived in the Manor – what kind of scientist? Had he owned the sinister black-bound books, or the orthodox books in beige? Maybe he had owned both? Had he uncovered the mysterious threat that had led the redoubtable Elizabeth I to abandon the Rotherweird Valley to its own devices?

  He fingered the golden chain round his neck. Ghost . . . train . . . times . . . change . . .

  8

  Retribution and Forgiveness

  Orders for Gorhambury were usually delivered by an underling in the form of notes written by the Mayor’s ferocious secretary, whose style was quite as peremptory as Mr Snorkel’s: ‘Last month’s tax revenue – S’s desk – now!’ or ‘Mayor’s rickshaw – scratched

  paint – deal!’

  The habitual exclamation mark was present in today’s injunction: ‘S’s office – 10 a.m. sharp!’

  The secretary, her hair wrenched back with combs, her painted eyebrows dark and pencil-thin, gave a curt nod of approval as Gorhambury arrived on time. She stood up, smoothed her skirt over her knees and opened the door.

  Something was horribly wrong. He had not been kept waiting.

  Snorkel’s massive partners’ desk sat in the middle of a powder-

  blue carpet like a ship at sea. He flourished a bank statement –

  Gorhambury’s own personal account – with a credit for three guineas highlighted in pink ink.

  ‘Well?’

  Gorhambury peered at the entry, too bewildered to protest at this invasion of privacy.

  ‘001426 – three guineas credit – I’ve no idea. I never accept money from strangers.’

  Gorhambury might have added that he was never offered money by strangers. He and Marmion Finch were the town’s incorruptibles.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Gorhambury!’ Snorkel suddenly exploded in self-righteous indignation. ‘You’ve a pension, a bicycle-tyre allowance and an indecently generous overtime rate. How dare you sink so low!’

  Gorhambury suppressed the observation that his overtime rate worked out at less than his ordinary rate as his encyclopaedic memory tripped into action. The transfer matched the date of his meeting with—

  ‘Mrs Banter ring a bell?’ added Snorkel with perfect timing, like many corrupt men a re
morseless cross-examiner when pursuing the faintest whiff of corruption in others.

  ‘I did her a favour. I got her an invitation.’

  ‘Oh really – to what? You’ve never given a party in your life.’

  ‘There was a clerical mix-up. She felt horribly left out, you see, and I felt sorry for her.’

  ‘You refer to the Manor?’

  ‘Yes, but I was going anyway, and—’

  ‘Issuing invitations to other people’s parties – that’s positively regal.’

  ‘She lives alone. It seemed kind.’

  ‘Money is the evil of our time. It’s a straight red, Gorhambury. Get your things and get out.’

  ‘I’ve done eighteen years, three months and twenty-two days of loyal service – surely you mean a warning?’ protested Gorhambury, ‘to be reduced to writing under the Employment Regulations?’

  ‘Red, red, red!’

  Gorhambury slunk back to his desk, from which all municipal property had already been removed. Somewhere in that trampled soul, rebellion whispered. A year or so earlier, following a security failure, he had been given a spare set of keys to the main municipal buildings as the man least likely to lose them. They were still there, in a polythene bag taped to the underside of his desk. He pocketed them, together with a large leather notebook and a box of pencils from the Mayoral stationery cupboard. In lieu of notice, he said to himself. As he tramped home, he agonised over how he would pay the next month’s rent.

  *

  Mrs Banter too received a follow-up dismissal after her ejection from Sir Veronal’s party, the letter terse to the point of brutality, and no less wounding.

  Dear Mrs Banter,

  Gatecrashers are not welcome in the Mayoral Suite. Be so kind as to treat any current invitations in your diary as withdrawn, and expect no more in the foreseeable future.

  A rubber stamp had appended a facsimile of Snorkel’s signature. She detected the long hand of Sir Veronal Slickstone in this further humiliation.

  Her emotions swung from one extreme to another: from hatred of the interloper and an urge for revenge to a burning desire for reconciliation and a relaunch into society. After hours of agonising reflection, she found a way to accommodate these contrasting ambitions. She had one point of leverage.

  The next morning she delivered a note to the Manor, inviting Lady Slickstone to tea.

  *

  The luck fell to Valourhand. When Sir Veronal contacted the Mayor at dawn, demanding action, he insisted on clemency for the night’s worst offender. A reprimand would do. Snorkel, smarting from the label ‘Snorky Porky’, which he feared might stick, argued for instant dismissal, to no avail.

  Rhombus Smith delivered the reprimand in the manner of a complimentary rebuke. In his eyes she had enlivened the evening. He liked it when fact out-coloured fiction.

  9

  A Starry Night

  The following evening, true to his word, Vesey Bolitho stood in the entry porch of the South Tower and welcomed Oblong with a cocktail. The first gulp almost laid the historian out.

  ‘Mars’ Mistake,’ said Bolitho. ‘Mixology is an art form. You wouldn’t keep to the path in a beautiful park, so don’t be a slave to the recipe book. Try the Bolitho Beginner’s Guide. Pour in an inch of anything with a kick. Add one enhancer, as the mood takes. Splash something pale into something colourful or vice versa and add that too. Discard any undrinkable outcome. Then serve the survivors with a celestial name appropriate to final impression. Ice is optional, as in the planetary system. This has chilli sauce – for the shy ones.’

  From the hallway they climbed to the observatory, Bolitho pausing for breath on every landing. The walls were circular, the ceiling domed, the telescope resting on a raised dais. The aperture to the sky was closed. A sea of paper obscured the floor. Bolitho apparently dismissed tables and chairs as spatially inefficient. The room was almost dark.

  With the flick of a switch a skin in petal-shaped segments rose from the rim of the room towards the ceiling. A low eerie blue light descended: nightfall.

  ‘How does the School afford equipment like this?’

  ‘A goodly fraction of the world’s inventions come from the two towers of Rotherweird School and the work benches of the Apothecaries. Others claim the credit while we take our cut. You should see the science labs.’

  Near the telescope stood a table crammed with glass discs, grinding wheels and metal scoops filled with coloured powders. ‘Rock dust,’ explained Bolitho. ‘Up there swim the deeps, and these are my fishing rods. However, that’s not why you’re here.’ Bolitho brandished a remote control like a wand. ‘On the fourth day of Creation . . .’

  As Bolitho spoke, the Almighty’s work – suns, planets, moons, nebulae – appeared on the roof of the observatory. With a laser pen the astronomer embarked on a tour of this two-dimensional cosmos. He awarded some only a name; others earned an explanation or anecdote. The horse-head nebula in Orion was the creation of dust. Mizar in Ursa Major should be renamed ‘the Drunkard’s Star’, being an optical double to the sober, one or three to the overindulged. It was a bravura performance.

  By the end Oblong felt infinitesimally small, but this was only the introduction.

  Bolitho made an expansive gesture. ‘Above you spreads the unique celestial geometry of a particular night in England four and a half centuries ago, 1546, to be exact. Astrologers focus on the moment of birth, but it’s the moment of conception that fixes our talents. All those stars have their gravitational pull on those miniscule lines of DNA as they mix and match. This rare alignment of the heavens brought the most particular gifts and defects into the world.’

  He flicked another switch and the sky vanished. Ordinary lights came up and the skin retracted back into the rim of the dome.

  Bolitho suddenly looked frail, and said as much. ‘A star near the end of its existence we call an “evolved star”. Yes, I am unwell, Jonah. I may not be around much longer. I wanted to give you a glimpse of Rotherweird’s origins. As our only historian . . .’

  He turned off the lights.

  Back in his lodgings Oblong reflected on his unexpected astronomy lesson. He checked the birth dates of his class, but they were scattered, as he would have expected. Then he remembered that Bolitho had talked of Rotherweird centuries ago, and a generation of prodigies connected with her past. The town’s extraordinary concentration of scientific talent had to have a rational cause, and an exceptional gene pool from long ago made sense – but why here? And why had they been brought together? An exceptional teacher might be an answer, but that explanation raised questions about the original owner of the Manor and why the town’s main building had been closed off for centuries. Oblong felt as if he had the outlying jigsaw pieces only. They provided the background, but left the main story obscure.

  Old History

  1561. The Rotherweird Valley.

  Dusk, early autumn – you can tell from the colours. Master Malise, older now, cheeks lightly stubbled, dark hairs covering his arms, has ventured beyond the Island Field in breach of Sir Henry’s instructions. He is pursuing the study of toxins, another breach of the rules. Here on the margin between woodland and meadow grows Amanita virosa, the destroying angel, which he prefers to Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric, another deadly mushroom found nearby. The agaric is too showy, its bright red-orange cap declaring its danger. This mushroom is all innocence on the outside, all white cap, white gills and white stalk, dressed like a saint. He has already force-fed a paste to mice and studied the convulsions and organ damage that followed.

  He hears someone nearby, and then that voice: ‘Not that clump, Calx – they’re spent – go to the left.’ A pause. ‘Ah, a boy is watching us. If he has manners, he will show himself.’

  So Geryon Wynter introduces himself and that famous sixth sense he so likes to display. ‘It’s one of the wonder children if I’m not mistaken.’

  The voice is sibilant, yet penetrating in its unforced quietness. They make an incong
ruous couple: Wynter, lean of body and aquiline of face, and the corpulent servant. The servant bustles about as Wynter stands motionless, save for the coal-black eyes, which dart from boy to servant to mushrooms to possible paths – a quicksilver mind.

  Malise has never felt dominated before. He half resents it, half welcomes it.

  More names are exchanged.

  ‘He wonders about our baskets.’

  Wynter the mind-reader: Calx Bole, the servant, holds several wicker baskets. From inside them Malise can hear scratching and fluttering. He is indeed curious.

  ‘Shall we tell him? Shall we show him? Such an interest in mushrooms deserves reward. No doubt Sir Henry is learned on propagation and edible fruit, but I teach too. Your little white mushroom attacks the liver, which the ancients list, with the brain and the heart, as one of the three principal organs of the body. Who needs armies when you can strike down rulers with mushrooms? Now tell me – how are your class? Are all ten of you alive and well?’

  He is being toyed with. Malise is fascinated, drawn to Wynter and his arcane knowledge, but repelled at the same time. He senses love can be like this. ‘There are two peasant children also.’

  ‘Twelve disciples, Calx, locked away in this valley, with no possible future but arid, unapplied study. We could elevate them. We could show you a real future, Master Malise.’

  Malise does not reply. He already knows he stands before Grassal’s polar opposite. Of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Grassal knows only half. This man knows the Tree through and through.

  ‘Give him a pot, Calx. Even wonder children must learn to fetch and carry.’

  Malise is flattered by the invitation, but resentful of Wynter’s knowing assumption that he will comply. Wynter moves for the first time, so light of step that he slithers rather than walks.