She developed an intrusive habit of pinching Gorhambury’s cheeks – ‘Colour, Mr Gorhambury, give us colour!’ before sending him out every morning at nine. ‘Chin up, chin up!’
Gorhambury felt embarrassed walking the streets. Some gave him the brush-off, others a fleeting expression of sympathy; a few offered money, which Gorhambury, twice shy, always declined. Time sat heavy on his shoulder; every minute crawled. In the evening he sewed tapestries, his choice under the Rotherweird Poorhouse Work-to-Reside Regulations, which he himself had drafted. Though adept at petit point, his idling brain, overworked for so long, protested. He developed headaches, and depression set in, Bo’s cloying kindness paradoxically deepening his gloom.
Salvation came by a circuitous route.
‘You look a practical man, Mr Gorhambury,’ said Bo, wagging a finger at the leaking downpipe beside the front door of The Shambles and the blocked drain below. With a coat hanger, plunger and a bucket of boiling water Gorhambury unblocked drain and pipe, but permanent repairs exceeded his expertise. However, pipe and drain carried a unique municipal number, and several nearby pipes, gutters and drains looked in no better condition. A sense of mission took hold, and he retrieved from his suitcase the leather ledger from his old office and the municipal keys.
On the frontispiece of the book he wrote
GRAND SURVEY of ROTHERWEIRD
Her Exterior Fittings
By Reginald Gorhambury
To his surprise, Bo Tavish embraced the plan. Gorhambury’s hours reversed, breakfast becoming supper, and supper breakfast. He fitted in his petit point between six and eight in the evening, shortly after getting up.
In this new nocturnal world, quiet and study dispelled the shroud of despair, as his notebook began to fill. Sometimes he glimpsed others at work or play in the darkness – most strikingly Hayman Salt hunting gastropods in the municipal flower tubs and a mysterious rooftop vaulter. Gorhambury shrugged off the latter’s disinterest in the Highwire Safety Regulations. They were no longer his concern.
7
Finch Makes a Decision
‘Shot . . . gun . . . barrel . . . organ . . . pipe . . . smoke . . .’ Finch sat at the round table in the middle of the archivoire, his room. No one else came in here; he alone swept the floor, cleaned the windows and maintained the ancient books (using the Finch patent mixture of cedar oil, beeswax and lanolin), just as his Finch forbears had done before him.
On the table lay Orelia Roc’s letter – extraordinarily candid, a serial breach of the History Regulations and therefore to be taken seriously.
Problem one: he, Marmion Finch, archivist of Rotherweird’s citizens, living and dead, had never heard of any Ferensen and could find no reference to such a family since the commencement of records in 1581 – no birth, no death and no request for arms or carvings.
Problem two: if Orelia Roc were to be believed, a photograph showed Ferensen in the company of her great-grandfather in an outlying oak wood well over a century ago.
‘Sauce . . . pan . . . fried . . . egg . . . white . . . knight . . .’ Blink, scratch.
Finch turned to the crux of the issue: his inheritance, the other unopened letter. He read again the prohibition on the front:
To the heirs and a∫signs of Hubert Finch – only to be opened on ∫ufferance
of death, when the dire∫t peril from the other place ∫talks the fief of
Rotherweird.
Orelia Roc had talked of a secret place known only to Salt and Ferensen. Mrs Banter had died in mysterious circumstances.
Finch made his decision. He would suggest a meeting with the enigmatic Ferensen, but for the moment the Great Seal of State would remain unbroken. He followed Orelia’s suggestion that he use Hayman Salt for the message out, and Bill Ferdy for any reply. Salt could be trusted only so far, apparently. But her selection made sense: Salt was the townsman closest to the countrysiders, and Ferdy the countrysider closest to the town. Everything seemed to link.
Knight . . . time . . . past . . . memories . . . lost . . .
8
Valourhand Makes a Discovery
Every massacre has its survivor and every secret a confidant ready to pass it on. The morgue assistant saw the ashy residue of Mrs Banter’s right arm and shared the shocking image – in strictest confidence – with her sister, who told her best friend, also in strictest confidence. Twenty links down the line, the news reached Valourhand, and with it came another thread: Roc, Oblong and Hayman Salt had been seen close to Grove Gardens in the early hours.
Valourhand doubted very much that Mrs Banter had been killed by conventional lightning or by faulty cabling. The image of Sir Veronal Slickstone cupping his hands before the bolt lanced towards her had lodged deep. She needed more information, but she dared not risk Sir Veronal. She could see only one other potential source.
*
Oblong was fine-tuning the props for Form IV’s production for the Midsummer Play when there was a knock at the door. Expecting Fanguin, he opened it with a flourish.
‘Jonah Oblong?’
He stared at the young woman in front of him holding a bundle of books tied up with a strap. Her build was slight, her features gamine, her hair short but frizzy, her dress gipsy in style. For Oblong first impressions were cultural as well as physical: he was in the presence of an enlightened Bohemian.
‘Meet the one-woman Rotherweird Travelling Library.’ The voice had a pleasingly musical timbre.
‘Miss . . . Mrs . . . ?’
‘Sheridan, Cecily Sheridan, Miss Cecily Sheridan.’
‘Do come in.’
With one lissom movement Cecily became the first woman other than Aggs to cross Oblong’s threshold. She had pronounced eyelashes and a warm complexion. Oblong was finding it hard to concentrate.
‘Of course,’ she said, putting down the books, ‘home visits are entirely pot luck.’
‘I can imagine!’
‘I find a drink a good start.’
‘I’ve only got . . .’ What have I got? thought Oblong. Get a grip. Be in control. ‘Old Ferdy’s Feisty Peculiar?’
Cecily gave a staccato nod of approval and sat down as if sitting were an art form.
As nervous men sometimes do, Oblong turned parrot. ‘The Rotherweird Travelling Library!’
She extracted one of the books from the strap. ‘Montaigne – it’s frightful. Half the town hasn’t heard of him.’
‘Shocking,’ echoed Oblong, struggling to summon the little he knew about the great Renaissance essayist.
‘“Am I playing with the dog or is the dog playing with me?” Of course, Montaigne wrote that of a cat, but I prefer dogs.’
Oblong watched in astonishment as the slightly built Cecily took her third gulp of Feisty Peculiar in as many minutes.
‘What’s it cost?’
‘What does what cost?’
‘Membership of the Rotherweird Travelling Library.’
‘This’ll do.’ She stretched out her legs and held her glass to the light, tilting it slightly. The pose was delightfully decadent.
He opened a second bottle.
‘Do you know any connoisseurs?’ She rolled the French word like a jazz singer. ‘I need patrons with money to spare.’
Oblong was keen to please. ‘Sir Veronal Slickstone has the best collection I’ve ever seen. His library is packed with first editions –
early, early.’
‘He showed you. How exciting.’
‘He has pretty well everything. What he wanted was a book on old Rotherweird.’
‘There aren’t any books on old Rotherweird – they’re not allowed.’
‘I thought it damned odd: why buy a Manor with no idea of the town?’
‘You had nothing to tell him?’
The question was throwaway, but Oblong caught a change in tone. Am I playing with the cat or is the cat playing with me? He was beginning to wonder.
She appeared to catch his hesitation. ‘But you're our historian –
/>
you must know something.’
‘I didn’t tell him anything.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t. But you could tell me.’ Cecily removed her right shoe and began caressing her instep.
The need to impress was becoming more acute. ‘There are the frescoes.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Cecily seemed most engaged. She even put her glass down before her next question. ‘What do you think they mean?’
‘I haven’t an idea.’
‘Bearing in mind where they are?’
‘I assume some religious significance.’
‘Because . . . ?’
‘Well, being in the church tower.’
Cecily rewarded him with a smile. ‘I have just the book for you, a novel by our best young satirist – Gullible’s Travels. I’ll drop it in as soon as it’s returned.’ She drained her glass like a Russian. ‘You know my favourite Montaigne saying? “A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can”.’ With this statement, she abruptly gathered her books, shook Oblong’s hand and opened the door.
Oblong tried desperately to prolong matters. ‘How do I return a book, where, when—?’
‘When and where I feel like it,’ she said. ‘I’m that kind of librarian.’
Oblong gazed after her as the door closed. He had been so smitten by Cecily Sheridan that he had forgotten the deep dust on the floor of the belfry. The frescoes had been unseen for decades.
Outside in the street Valourhand placed a scarf over her head and slipped into the shadows. Cecily Sheridan would not withstand local scrutiny for long.
In recent months she had had increasing recourse to her nocturnal world. The gaps between Rotherweird’s roofs, their pitch, the grappling points, the best for a view, the best for concealment, the linking bridges – she knew them all like the back of her hand. In this starlit universe she was sole ruler and single subject. As a matter of pride, she never touched the street. Her flexible balance doubled as a vaulting pole as she revelled in the exercise and the solitude.
Even as a child, Valourhand had hunted out hidey-holes in the town’s jumbled roofscape, mapping and naming them. She called a favourite space close to Oblong’s lodgings in a narrow cul-de-sac known as Palindrome Cut ‘The Undercroft’. Two buildings joined at ground level, but separated about ten feet up before the left building leaned back over, providing shelter to anyone standing in the space below. Conveniently, a disused lantern brace provided a climbing aid for access. She had installed a primitive floor and here she kept her climbing aids, a sleeping bag and her crystal light.
After shaking the latter, she removed Miss Sheridan’s more distinctive features – the eyelashes, the tinted contact lenses, the wig and the complexion. Then she lay down and reflected. She had visited Oblong hoping for information about Mrs Banter; instead, she had made a far more significant discovery. Flask, who was more prepared to talk about the past than anyone else in town, had never mentioned frescoes.
She waited until midnight before shinning up the church tower. The wooden shutters yielded easily. She crouched on the sill and shook her crystal light gently. Oblong had told the truth: his were the only footprints crisscrossing the floor. She placed her own smaller feet within his, although so fierce was her independent spirit, she found even this exercise in shadow dancing embarrassingly intimate. She shook the tube harder and the room flared into life. For someone strictly rationed on images of the past, the frescoes were a revelation.
Valourhand had never seen a representation of life so long ago. Some images connected with the present and were explicable; the sight of unarmed Saxons fleeing a Roman army in coracles explained the Great Equinox Race. Others were humdrum – the workers in the fields, the husbandry, the seasons.
The documentary nature of these scenes made the more obscure north and east walls baffling. She noted the silver door through which a Roman soldier mutated into a weaselman, and on the east wall, the spreading white flower and the extraordinary tree with a similar blossom, its trunk and boughs shaped to form an almost human aspect – a Druid god, perhaps – but why in a Christian church? And why had this literal artist suddenly turned imaginary? She wondered what images the dampness on the east wall had expunged. The fragments of branch and human limbs amid the purple discolouration were tantalising.
The frescoes must be early, for she saw only an island with sarsen stones and a Druid community. Valourhand left more puzzled than enlightened.
9
Epiphany
Back in his library, The Roman Recipe Book acted as a memory prompt for Sir Veronal, bringing long-forgotten creaturing days to life. Only the significance of the final page, with its ordinary figures in the margin and no hint of the monstrous, eluded him. He worked away at it, his mind now able to dredge deeply buried images back to the surface, even though the process was haphazard. Some permanent damage had been done to his abilities of recall.
When the solution did come, past and present fused in a moment of glorious revelation, and he clenched his fists and cried out. He was looking at Wynter’s last experiment, the most ambitious of all, and only he now knew what it did. He had the stones and the book. He needed only the white tile and the mixing-point to open the way to omniscience. He read again through the notebook containing Mrs Banter’s nocturnal observations of Hayman Salt, the finder of the stones – a sequence of night-time journeys on foot to the woods to the south of the Island Field. Surely the tile would be easy to find.
What of human obstacles? He had Snorkel on a silver lead, and Strimmer onside. He considered Valourhand too ignorant to pose any serious threat. The actress puzzled him. She had read one of the Black Books, which had, surprisingly, prompted not discretion, but an uncharacteristic display of independence, which he could hardly miss. Why else attend the wretched Mrs Banter’s funeral? He anticipated a demand for more money. Disposal presented a problem – he could not afford another death in Rotherweird, nor could he risk sending her back to the outside world. He would find a way.
He moved to the next task. With a ruler and squared paper he began to copy the last page of The Roman Recipe Book. He added dimensions before calling his most trusted retainer.
‘Get this to the foundry and keep it secret. The specifications must be exact, and the material light. Use titanium.’
The man, now in his sixties, peered at the page and blinked, and Sir Veronal could not resist sharing his moment of triumph, however obscurely. ‘It’s nothing – only a cage with special attributes,’ he added.
‘For?’ mouthed the servant, fearful some monstrous pet would be joining the household.
‘A remarkable illusory trick,’ replied Sir Veronal.
10
Inertia
April ended well, the skies clear, the breeze light. When rain came, it was fresh, and mostly at night. Swallows arrived early, swooping above and below Aether’s Way, taking insects on the wing. The bakers’ crumbs they left to the common sparrow.
Only Ferensen did not relish the change of weather. His skin felt dry; his eyes puckered in open sunlight. He would rise early to continue his search for the black tile in the shade of a parasol. There was system in the way the hedgerows radiated from the town, in the location of ancient barrows and beech clumps, the latter’s roots binding the ceilings of the tombs below. Ferensen drew diagrams and pursued possibilities, like Professor Bolitho hunting an undiscovered planet, working on a mix of data and hunch. Yet Rotherweird stubbornly refused to yield her secrets, and he began to fear that the entrance might be in town, out of his reach.
Deeper down, Ferensen knew he was marking time, all too keen to obey his own advice to play the waiting game, such were the ambiguities of his position. He had long shut out memories of the old times, the images too horrific, too painful. But Veronal’s return had left him no choice but to face his buried demons. And if Salt was right, Lost Acre was facing destruction. Ferensen considered the place depraved, a distortion of the natural order, creatures jumbled together by t
he mixing-point to make grotesque parodies of their original selves. Salt, in thrall to diversity, thought differently, but Salt had not witnessed how the mixing-point could be abused.
So Lost Acre’s apocalypse had to be a blessing, and all the more so with Veronal closing in – but for one desperate qualification: he loved his sister, and she remained marooned there, imprisoned in such a cruel and ingenious way that he alone could never rescue her. Veronal might know how – if he recovered his memory – but that was the last thing to be desired on every other
ground.
Ferensen’s uncertainty had been aggravated by Mrs Banter’s death. Boris had passed on via Panjan the rumours about a lightning strike. He knew freak bolts occurred, but not in the prevailing atmosphere of that particular evening, which he could recall like a book. Veronal’s powers appeared to be returning, another bad omen.
Ferensen walked to the maze he had constructed long ago in the woods beside his tower. At first sight it appeared conventional, with the oak-beech hedge turning this way and that; only inside did the wooden gates reveal themselves, each one locking another as it opened; and bridges that rose and descended over streams: a challenge of almost limitless permutations – the closest Ferensen came to training, should the Eleusians return.
An oak chair like a small throne greeted anyone clever enough to reach the heart of the maze. Here Ferensen opened the letter from Rotherweird Town, its existence alone a matter of concern. He went straight to the name at the end – Marmion Finch. Finch – the surname of the first governor, left behind by Robert Oxenbridge to oversee the orderly transition to independence.
The text’s businesslike tone reassured Ferensen.
Dear Ferensen,
As Rotherweird’s hereditary Herald, I reside in Escutcheon Place, an unusual house with an unusual history. I hold a letter, closed with the Great Seal of State, which is to be opened only in time of ‘direst peril’. Might this be such a time? I have reason to believe you may know, although I have no inkling how. I have undertaken to keep your presence secret.
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