Rotherweird

by Andrew Caldecott

  He supported a snowdrop on the tip of his little finger: bloom, slumber, rebirth.

  Saeculum.

  *

  Oblong wrote out his chosen title, The Ballad of the Midsummer Fair, repeatedly, in varying boldness and script, but still he could not get launched. His opening verses sounded trite and undramatic. He worried that teaching worked the safer channels of the brain and neglected more offbeat paths where inspiration lurked. Mindful of the example of Thomas de Quincey, he caught Miss Trimble at a rare moment when the Porter’s Lodge was traffic-free.

  ‘How is Professor Bolitho?’

  ‘He’s in a night owl phase. Nobody sees him.’

  ‘I’d like to see him. I could do with one of his specials.’

  ‘Many of us could, but when he’s fishing the heavens, he’s a different person. I take him food and the rudiments, but he barely registers; it’s that kind of work.’ She gave Oblong a firm look. ‘I see endless teachers with hardly an explorer among them. He’s a man to be treasured.’

  The answer loosened Oblong’s previous two-dimensional assessment of Miss Trimble. ‘I don’t need long, and my diary has spaces.’

  In truth Oblong’s dairy was all spaces.

  ‘If you want to see him, go to his lecture in School Hall. It’s a Professorship commitment. You’d best get there early.’

  Oblong did not regret taking Miss Trimble’s advice. Every faculty had turned out, and every form, packing the largest chamber in Rotherweird School. A surprised murmur greeted Valourhand’s appearance – an unprecedented visit by a North Tower scientist to a South Tower lecture.

  Bolitho turned the lights out and announced in his sing-song voice through speakers, hidden high in the hammer-beam roof, ‘A time before time . . .’

  White particles darted about the ceiling.

  ‘The proton . . . the electron . . . the neutron . . .’

  Dark particles suddenly emerged and pursued them.

  ‘The antiproton, the antineutron and the antielectron – they have the same mass as their positive twins but an opposing electrical charge. Put them together and they mutually self-destruct. Let us imagine this primitive duel.’

  A big bang – or rather the big bang – detonated under Bolitho’s lectern. Proton and antiproton disappeared, only for a new-formed galaxy to spin over the heads of a startled audience, a hologram of Bolitho’s devising.

  ‘Early theory,’ continued Bolitho, ‘had matter and antimatter in equal quantities – a boneheaded view, as they would have cancelled each other out, leaving no room for anything. Next up, the boffins suggest that matter had the advantage by one – meaning that the miniscule early universe was – what, Symes?’

  Every Bolitho performance featured ambush questions. They prevented drift.

  ‘Asymmetrical, sir,’ stuttered the sixth-former.

  ‘Not as bright as Symes. We assume matter won the day – but did it?’ He slid briefly into complex physics before abruptly changing the subject to astronomy. ‘I turn to the question of comets. Clear the floor, boys and girls. It’s time to fashion a solar system in which I shall play the forces of Nature.’

  With a long cane Bolitho selected a mix of pupils of both sexes to play the Sun and the planets, acting with the decisiveness Oblong’s casting of Form IV’s play had lacked. The exercise had apparently been done before. In minutes a central space became a human astrolabe, planets rotating as they orbited a central Sun.

  ‘For the uninitiated, their order is . . . ?’

  The older pupils intoned Bolitho’s unusual mnemonic for the order of the planets: ‘My versifying elephant mixes jolly strong uplifting negritas pensively.’

  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars . . .

  Oblong joined the applause, only to find Bolitho’s wand pointing directly at him.

  ‘Mr Oblong will be our system’s resident outsider: a ball of dirty ice and cosmic dust. Step forward, man! You are at aphelion, the furthest point from Dawson minor, alias the Sun. You have a tail a million miles long. On Planet Earth, Egyptians struggle with the basics of astronomy, and our island is a swamp for paddling primitives. Imagine what forces Comet Oblong might unleash?’

  Oblong caught a wave of half-suppressed laughter from his audience as he walked slowly towards the Sun. Bolitho cast two girls and a boy to follow him as fragments of his tail, spinning them into the Earth as meteors.

  ‘Suppose Oblong were made of dark matter? What then?’

  More giggling as Oblong reached Earth.

  ‘By now Saxon battles Dane – and Englishmen can write!’ announced Bolitho.

  So the lecture played out, a fusillade of facts, theory, performance art and stand-up, which left the audience as exhausted as the speaker.

  ‘Next term I shall educate you about the differences between matter, antimatter, dark matter and negative matter,’ concluded Bolitho.

  Valourhand hung back at the end, as did Oblong. She ignored the historian and only offered Bolitho a question – no thanks or compliments. ‘I assume antimatter requires an antiperiodic table?’

  Bolitho had the wit to realise that his usual small talk would cut no ice with Valourhand. ‘Surely, and antimatter can bind together just as matter does.’

  She flicked her head back to Bolitho as she moved through the doorway, too casually not to be rehearsed. ‘Another time perhaps,’ she said.

  Bolitho tapped her shoulder gently in response. On one level diplomatic relations had been opened, but Oblong sensed a deeper engagement, from Bolitho particularly, which he could not decipher.

  He seized his moment. ‘Terrific, Professor – I dare say you need a sharpener after that.’

  ‘I’ve a new creation – the Sloe Burner – but she has to wait. It’s the fishing season, you see.’

  Miss Trimble materialised and steered Oblong away. ‘Night work, he means – you won’t be seeing him for weeks.’

  Falling prey to that siren voice which says that what you do not have is what you need, Oblong headed home in a gloom. The Sloe Burner would surely have dissolved his writer’s block as a candle melts wax.

  3

  Sir Veronal Makes a Move

  The message appeared in Strimmer’s pigeonhole in the Porter’s Lodge. The watermark of a weasel’s head on the envelope was as good as a signature. The note inside came straight to the point:

  13 Old Ley Lane. First floor, neutral territory, only you and me. 12 noon. No strings, no conditions, no recriminations, no second chance. The North Tower interests me.

  Kind regards,

  Sir Veronal Slickstone

  Strimmer smiled at the words ‘kind regards’. This man did not deal in kindness. The letter contained no mention of a reply. Sir Veronal knew he would come. He would, however, tread carefully.

  He faced a second dilemma. The quality of Sir Veronal’s collection of old books had filtered through via Oblong and those children who had been invited by the young Slickstone to the Manor. Sir Veronal might pay well for The Roman Recipe Book. If not, he might at least enlighten him about its subject matter. The last sentence of the message carried ambiguity. He recalled Sir Veronal’s interest in Flask. Was the newcomer interested in the North Tower’s current work, or its history – or indeed both? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Strimmer decided. He felt an urge not to

  disappoint.

  *

  Strimmer found the door of 13 Old Ley Lane unlocked. The walls, though bare, were tastefully painted and the floors swept. In Rotherweird’s crowded streets the ability to command an empty house spoke eloquently of Sir Veronal’s power and Snorkel’s subservience.

  His host’s affection for candles persisted: creamy yellow beeswax on giltwood torchères in the hallway and on the landing above. Light from another illuminated the single large room on the first floor.

  Two chairs faced each other across a round table, on which stood a fine period cut-glass decanter and two tumblers of the same design. The decanter held iced water with slices of lime. ‘Neutral
ground’ was the message.

  Sir Veronal emerged from the shadows to greet him. ‘Shall we sit down?’

  They did so. Strimmer approved – no flannel.

  Sir Veronal filled the glasses. ‘I propose some rules. We tell no lies – but may decline to answer any question or any part of a question. We ask alternately. Your involvement in your colleague’s pitiful stunt at my party is an irrelevance. I’m interested in what you have to say, and I’m not hostile. I assume your position is the same.’ He paused before adding, ‘The fact of this meeting and our exchanges are confidential on pain of death.’ Sir Veronal spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Strimmer nodded acceptance.

  ‘I’m the host – you go first.’

  ‘Why buy the Manor?’

  ‘In search of my past, which lies here somewhere. I believe it was erased by some cataclysmic event – which, ex hypothesi, I cannot remember.’ Sir Veronal told the truth about his arrival in Rotherweird. He just ignored what his dreams had revealed since.

  Surprisingly open, thought Strimmer, save that nobody had ever suggested that Sir Veronal had been to Rotherweird before. Another damned mystery.

  It was Sir Veronal’s turn. ‘Have you fully explored the North Tower?’

  ‘There’s an old classroom above my study, long sealed off.’ Strimmer decided to be more forthcoming – nothing ventured, nothing gained. ‘It was an observatory, but the telescope is gone.’

  Sir Veronal smiled appreciatively.

  Strimmer took the plunge. ‘What do you make of this?’ he said, placing the slim leatherbound volume on the table.

  Sir Veronal’s eyes narrowed. He picked the book up, sniffed it, rubbed the spine with his index finger and weighed the whole in his hand. It was an act – the moment he saw the title – The Roman Recipe Book – he knew, for now his memory had blossomed, making connections rather than merely retrieving moments at random. More locked doors opened as he struggled to suppress his excitement. With a small gold magnifying glass he squinted at the covers and the inside pages, one by one. He held the spine with its mysterious title up to the candle. He took considerable time over the frontispiece of the seated devil above a

  monogram.

  ‘Remarkable,’ muttered Sir Veronal. ‘Quite remarkable.’ He hesitated. For such rich fruit to fall so obligingly into his lap might be accident (wealth and celebrity attracted good fortune more often than not) or malevolent design – a false facsimile, perhaps? He turned back to the front, and there was the inscription, if fainter than he remembered it:

  I

  Was

  Bound

  Bearing

  My∫terious

  Recipes

  The writing he recognised, and the hidden message he already knew. He held the genuine article, beyond the slightest doubt.

  I have the book and the stones.

  Fearing that his sense of triumph might come across, Sir Veronal launched a distraction, opening a page with a dog and bat in silhouette above the usual diagram and a fearsome mix of the two on their right.

  ‘Not a Recipe Book for pets,’ he said, as his mind continued to work out the consequences of this outrageous stroke of luck. All he needed now was the location of the white tile. Still, he must give Mr Strimmer a little more to secure his trust.

  He closed the book and placed his right hand on the cover, as if taking the oath. ‘Elizabethan, 1571. The numerical letters MDLXXI are spread about, in order, buried close to the spine. You need my glass to see them. But the monogram repays special attention.’

  ‘It’s a place, not a person,’ he explained. As is the way with monograms the answer, once revealed, appeared blindingly obvious. Sir Veronal ran his fingers along the lines – an ‘O’, a ‘Y’, and an ‘H’. ‘Hoy. The town had several presses. This one ceased to be active in about this time. The title is obscure, but it must be rare indeed to merit binding of this quality. My turn, I think – where did you find it?’

  Strimmer described the small recess in the floor of the Observatory Room at the top of the North Tower. There had been no room for a companion volume, he said, adding that Valourhand knew nothing of the book. He did not mention Robert Flask as the man who had tipped him off about the unusual profile of the North Tower’s roof. The book, after all, had been his discovery.

  Sir Veronal found the explanation amusing. Wynter had chosen the hiding place for his most precious artefact well, no doubt foreseeing that in the event of his fall, the authorities would close the observatory as a mark of ‘respect’ to Grassal.

  Strimmer saw a question he should have asked at the beginning. ‘You say you came in search of your past – but what told you your past was here?’

  ‘A letter.’

  ‘That’s not very informative.’

  ‘Your Mayor said he was prompted to write by a Paul Marl, but the man does not exist. I assume Mr Snorkel was after my money. If so, he succeeded. The letter used the term “outsider”. It struck a chord, but I’ve yet to learn why.’

  There are hidden layers here, thought Strimmer. How did Snorkel know to ask Sir Veronal?

  ‘Does anyone else know of your tower room?’

  ‘Nobody.’ The answer was prompted by vanity. After all he had discovered the room. Flask had merely encouraged him to look, indirectly.

  ‘Valourhand – why does she oppose me?’

  ‘She’s a perverse exhibitionist. Don’t waste your time on her.’

  ‘Her performance required courage.’

  ‘If that’s what you call a reckless search for limelight.’

  Sir Veronal nodded and stood up, the questioning phase apparently over. ‘I have two requests. I shall reward you for both. First, I wish to borrow your book, and I do mean borrow. Second, I would like you to watch Valourhand. What she gets up to, whom she sees.’

  ‘What reward exactly—?’

  ‘You may choose certain money now, or a chance of power later.’

  Strimmer sensed a test – two caskets, one banal, the other transforming. ‘I can wait.’

  Sir Veronal nodded approvingly.

  Strimmer could not explain his decision rationally. He knew

  Sir Veronal was ruthless, and yet he felt a nascent trust between them.

  Sir Veronal appeared to read his thoughts. ‘I’ve travelled the world a long time. Kindred spirits are hard to come by. I have a final question, which you needn’t answer. Your age?’

  ‘Thirty-two – and you?’

  A coldness flitted by, incongruous after their mutual openness on far more intrusive questions. ‘As the older man, I decline to answer that one.’

  On the tiny balcony a misshapen cat wobbled precariously. As Sir Veronal craned his neck, it arched its back, spat and leapt into the street.

  ‘I’d drown such things at birth,’ said Strimmer.

  ‘An experiment gone wrong, perhaps,’ replied Sir Veronal.

  Strimmer, no stranger to dark humour, found the inflection in the remark odd.

  Strimmer left the meeting with mixed feelings. He believed that Sir Veronal had observed the rules of the game and told no lies, which meant that The Roman Recipe Book had use beyond its rarity value. As to his own prospects, he felt he had passed a preliminary interview, but tougher tests lay ahead. Money was power, and Sir Veronal had the wherewithal to displace Snorkel. His coattails were well worth hanging on to.

  ‘An experiment gone wrong, perhaps.’

  4

  Oblong in Search of his Muse

  Keats’ nightingale, which

  In some melodious plot

  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

  Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

  had infected Oblong with an interest in ornithology in the hope that he might produce a work of similar permanence. With acquaintance the interest deepened, despite the absence of any artistic by-product, although his fieldwork suffered from an inability to remember defining features – leg colour, eyepatch, tail shape.

&
nbsp; Woken by a territorial wren in the ivy beneath his bedroom window, he felt a surge of ambition. If fine poetry could flow at dusk in a country churchyard, why not during the dawn chorus in Grove Gardens? From April the gates stayed open, and at this early hour on a Saturday he would be untroubled by human company.

  Thunder had crackled in the night, but cloud and humidity had cleared. Notebook in pocket, Oblong hurried through the streets. Shadows still prevailed, but bars and pools of light were beginning to appear and spread. The cobbles glistened. Words came and went –

  half lines, titles, adventurous rhymes. Once in the Gardens, he settled on a stone bench near the edge of the cliff. The birds sang with gusto, but his Muse stayed away. Thoughts refused to knit together. He decided to probe the gardens’ darker corners.

  Grove Gardens took its name from the life-size statue of a Druid, leaning forward in an attitude of defiance, his staff levelled eastwards across the river. Frost damage repaired with modern materials lent the old priest an unflattering blotchy complexion. Salt’s design fitted the garden to the name, and the Druid to the garden. Slender trees, mostly silver birch, suggested a grove, and the rock benches resembled fallen megaliths. Swathes of Hayman’s Muscari, multicoloured white and blue, hung over the paths, whose elliptical route fostered an illusion of space with sporadic open views of the river. Dead tree stumps supported wild roses and clematis, in bud but not yet in flower.

  At the path’s end a lantern hung on an ornate iron frame swathed in honeysuckle that created a bower-like effect: scene of many a Rotherweird marriage proposal. A bird trilled – warning or welcome? The ambiguity held literary promise, but was it a visiting warbler or a resident chaffinch? He moved to get closer, and tripped.

  He looked down and managed only a curdled cry. Two stockinged legs protruded unmoving from the foliage, toes pointing upwards.

  He did not want to see the face. He did not want to touch anything. He retreated a few steps, and then ran, mouthing like a fish the single syllable ‘help’. Half glancing back, he collided with the ample frame of Hayman Salt.