Rotherweird

by Andrew Caldecott

  Valourhand came only at night. Under the eaves a row of skylights looked over racks of reserve second copies and outdated early editions. Alarms protected the more valuable books, but not here. Once in, Valourhand would vault from the ground to the first floor, planting the balance beside the central island. She would jump from side to side without stopping until she had landed in every alcove, one to twelve: a gymnast’s clock patience.

  Tonight, though, she had come in the hope that the library’s more arcane rooms might bring coherence to the fragments of her puzzle. She descended to the basement and wandered along the rectangular passage. Her eerie green tube-light made the silent warren of the lower rooms feel like catacombs. After a fruitless twenty minutes in Architecture she removed her shoes and settled in Astronomy, Asteroids & Astrophysics, having been unexpectedly engaged by a recent lecture on antimatter from Professor Bolitho. Only then did she feel a tingling in the soles of her feet.

  She walked towards the right-hand shelves and the sensation strengthened. She walked the other way and it weakened. She followed the pulse into the next room, Gems & Geology, where the signal intensified slightly. She shook her tube-light and titles came into view, some devoted to precious stones, others to less rarefied rock types and volcanoes. She paced the room slowly, moving the small desk and two chairs aside to expose the hot spot, just off centre, beneath a small, nondescript rug. She rolled up the rug and sat on her haunches. She could see no discolouration or other sign of activity.

  It took an hour of painstaking work to extract the wooden nails and prise up the floorboards without causing damage. A cavernous space opened up below. She tied her light to the rope and lowered it, illuminating a jumble of huge slabs of stone – sarsens, judging from their size and rough-hewn surfaces.

  She retrieved her shoes before squeezing her slight frame through.

  The chamber had no obvious entry or exit. On the only patch of bare ground, a single jet-black square tile had been set in the floor. The refined craftsmanship of the flower etched into its surface contrasted with the brutishness of the huge stones. She rested the flat of her hand on the tile: the energy was palpable. Around the stone, strange luminous plants flourished, tiny white skeletons littering their fleshy leaves. They were carnivorous – she had never seen their like before.

  She left her pole on the ground and, with her light in her right hand, stood on the tile. Her head rushed to her feet and her feet to her head. Instinctively she raised her arms and shut her eyes as the tile sucked her in. Unbeknown to her, the process destroyed the tracker beneath her right foot.

  Although underground and still beside a black tile, Valourhand quickly realised that she had exchanged the underground chamber for a circular end to a winding passageway. Huge stones set in the walls supported the roof. Duckboards paved the way ahead, lit by luminous purple-yellow rocks. Above her head the dome of the ceiling boasted a mosaic: a young man with an intelligent face animated by a quizzical expression – an intimate portrait. Relaxed by its humanity, she nonetheless advanced slowly, and on tiptoe.

  Racks were attached to the walls with handwritten labels: pickled girolles, blackberry coulis and dried bird blood. One shelf contained a row of ancient cookery books whose spines were stained with smudged, earthy fingerprints.

  Where was she?

  On turning the first corner, the smell of damp receded in favour of a refined fragrance. Valourhand lived off ready-made meals and had not the slightest interest in fine food, but the irresistible piquancy of this aroma, a tang of citrus with a dash of chocolate, drew her on. The passage ended in a hallway with intricately painted doors on each side and another ahead. She followed her nose through the right-hand door into an extraordinary kitchen.

  Embers glowed in a huge hearth, above which hung pots of various sizes on an array of iron grills and hooks, some with ladles; some not. Pulleys controlled floating shelves, crammed with jars and various cuts of dried meat. On a large rectangular oak table Valourhand counted six chopping boards with as many knives. A stained leather apron hung over the back of a chair.

  In front of the chair a place had been laid for one with a disconcertingly large number of knives and forks, a plate made of wood and a horn goblet. On either side of the fire, four double oven gloves hung over a bare iron fender. Vixen savoured the steam billowing from the various pots. She was about to pick up a ladle when she heard movement behind her.

  For nights to come, she struggled to exorcise the horror of the creature standing in the doorway. The face had vestiges of humanity, but like the jointed arms and legs, was predominantly arachnid. The creature currently stood on three legs and held in its hands a jar, a bowl and three knives. The eight eyes had human features, including eyebrows and coloured irises, but were suspended on stalks rather than set in the skull. They blinked and swivelled. Between its teeth a dark purple tongue darted this way and that.

  Valourhand froze. What was this abomination?

  ‘Young meat must come to me,’ hissed the creature, dropping the bowl and sharpening one knife against another.

  The unexpected voice and the equally unwelcome invitation brought Valourhand to her senses. She played for time. ‘I’m sorry to trespass like this. I didn’t intend—’

  ‘Of course, you didn’t. Nobody intends to come here.’ The voice was feminine.

  ‘I do like your books.’

  ‘Then you’ll enjoy being pickled.’

  ‘I could get you more.’

  ‘You won’t come back.’ Again the eyes joggled. ‘No, forget pickle –

  you’d be better raw – tartare.’ Flecks of green foam bubbled in the spiderwoman’s mouth as the creature’s body swayed in a disconcerting way. Valourhand twirled her bolas as she edged towards the table, eying the longest knife. She snatched for it, but the spider was quicker. With uncanny accuracy a thread of silk arched through the air and snared the knife. With one hand the spider yanked it back and whipped it forwards again. The blade passed just over Valourhand’s shoulder as she ducked. Deciding defence was the best means of attack, she tried to push the table into the spider’s body, but the oak was too heavy to shift.

  ‘Fresh, so fresh,’ muttered the creature, passing the three knives in her hand through the poison bubbling in her mouth, greening the blades.

  Valourhand ducked again, but the knives were not aimed at her upper body. They were thrown from under the table. Quick though she was, she could not evade all three, and one sliced through her left leg. Clutching the wound, she arched back and hurled the sticky contents of the nearest pot at the spiderwoman’s eyes.

  ‘Spirited girl means lots of blood,’ snarled the creature.

  Valourhand felt her leg stiffen. Worse, the spiderwoman had seized a long iron rod with a sharpened end and effortlessly pushed the table aside with a shrug of her bulbous body. A new line of thread wrapped round her shoulder, reeling her in towards the point of the spear. She flayed at the silky string, only to snag her arm too. She had no weapons now; she was out of reach of the fire and too close for the bolas.

  A new voice intervened, male and prissy, hardly that of a born rescuer. ‘Now look here,’ it said, ‘haven’t you heard of the Library Regulations—?’

  The voice cut off in mid-sentence. Valourhand could not see its owner with the spider in the way, but nor could the spider. A multiplicity of arms and legs had many advantages, but one weakness: turning round. As the spider lurched about, the levelled spear moving away with her, Valourhand took her chance. Seizing a broom with her free hand, she severed the silken threads and darted through a narrow gap between the creature and the wall, almost knocking down the new arrival. She screamed in agony as her wounded leg took the weight. The newcomer, a vaguely familiar middle-aged man in a crumpled suit, stood stock-still, gawping like a fish taking air, as the monstrous creature turned to face him.

  ‘Two for the price of one,’ hissed the spiderwoman.

  Valourhand grabbed the man’s shoulder. ‘Run, you idiot!’ />
  And they did.

  The spiderwoman, taken aback by the appearance of her former quarry alongside the new, hesitated long enough to allow them to get back down the passage.

  To Valourhand’s amazement, the man stopped just before the tile. ‘Library books – this really won’t do . . .’

  But before he could retrieve them, she pushed him onto the tile and he disappeared – but when she tried to follow, the tile did not respond. It needs time to recharge, she reasoned, and adopted a defensive posture, a lopsided crouch to compensate for her wounded leg. Above the din of falling bottles and disturbed shelves around the corner of the passage ahead, she heard two syllables – still the spiderwoman’s voice, but in intonation and message very different: ‘Let be.’

  The creature appeared to be in turmoil, responding brutally to its own suggestion, ‘Such meat!’

  ‘Let be,’ repeated the gentler voice.

  As the bulbous shape lumbered round the corner towards her, she backed onto the tile.

  This time it worked and she found herself back in the rock chamber beneath the library, dishevelled, breathless. Gorhambury moved towards her, relief evident on his face, lit only by the eerie glow of her lantern.

  ‘You bloody idiot.’ Valourhand fell to her knees.

  ‘Library Regulations Rule 3 (4): Unless extended, all books must be returned in three weeks. Books in that passage have been there for—’

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘Gorhambury. There was a Reginald, but it got lost. Everyone calls me—’

  ‘Gorhambury, next time a giant spiderwoman is closing in, forget your fucking library books.’

  Gorhambury winced at both the language and the message. She crawled to the tile. The energy had dissipated. The gateway was, for the moment, closed.

  ‘Might it yet come through?’ asked Gorhambury.

  She glanced at the earth of the chamber – no sign of disturbance by any eight-legged creature, or indeed, anything sizeable.

  ‘It never has.’

  She peered at her pallid rescuer. Mentally cleaning up his features, she recognised in the crumpled suit and cadaverous looks the former Town Clerk. ‘Why are you following me?’

  Offended by what he took to be an accusation of stalking, Gorhambury explained – he had been dismissed thanks in part to her protest at Sir Veronal Slickstone’s party; he had been conducting a survey into a disturbing decline in the town’s fabric, and he had seen her enter the library roof. He produced his set of Town Hall keys by way of indirect corroboration.

  Valourhand believed him; such a pedant would be incapable of embellishment, let alone a lie. She softened. ‘Well, I suppose, without you, I’d be—’

  ‘—tartare.’

  She grasped her leg and grimaced. An angry green discolouration had already spread well out from the wound.

  Gorhambury turned solicitous. ‘You’re going to the doctor.’

  ‘I don’t do doctors.’

  ‘Always a first time, Miss Valourhand. I’m going to carry you.’

  ‘You’re bloody not.’ Valourhand picked up the vaulting pole, but it was no use. Her injured leg would bear no weight at all. ‘Bring it,’ was all she could say.

  The girl’s condition had deteriorated by the time they reached the street. As Gorhambury fretted over the quickest route to the nearest doctor, out of the shadows, snail and slug bag in hand, sauntered Rotherweird’s troublesome botanist.

  ‘Salt?’

  ‘Odd time to be browsing for books,’ replied Salt with an odd look in his eye.

  ‘Odd time to be walking the streets,’ retaliated Gorhambury.

  ‘Odd time to be carrying . . .’ Salt broke off on seeing the injury. ‘Good . . . God.’ Before Gorhambury could stop him, he sniffed the wound. ‘Where have you been? Where did she get this?’ His tone was accusing.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Oh yes I would. How long ago – how long?’

  ‘Ten – fifteen minutes—’

  ‘We’re going to the Ferdys – now!’ Salt placed the flat of his hand on the girl’s cheek. ‘There’s only one man who can deal with this.’ He ripped the bottom half of his sleeve from his shirt and tied a tourniquet above the wound. ‘I’ll take the front, you take the back – and we run.’

  ‘Why should I trust you?’ Gorhambury remembered Salt’s pollution of Grove Gardens with Snorkel’s Petunia the previous spring.

  Salt bared his left arm – a long ugly scar ran from the elbow to the hand. ‘I was lucky,’ he said.

  ‘Are you saying that’s the same?’

  ‘It’s the same all right: eight legs, or are they hands? She still visits me in my nightmares.’ Even Salt realised now was not the time to ask how this incongruous couple had found a way into Lost Acre. It might be the burning question, but saving the girl came first. He added, ‘If it’s a bite, there’s not much hope; if it’s one of her knives . . .’

  It felt like an eternity before they reached The Polk Land & Water Company. The girl was now cold, her colour ghostly.

  The Polks and Gregorius Jones were playing cards. Salt took Boris aside and cut the courtesies. ‘Boris – we must get her . . .’ he paused, then said firmly, ‘to the Rainmaker.’

  ‘I’ll run,’ offered Gregorius, as ever inspired by a lady in distress.

  ‘You won’t, you’re pedalling,’ replied Boris.

  Gorhambury offered to stay behind so as not to slow the charabanc.

  ‘No, we need you. For a start, have we any keys to the North Gate?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not permitted to use them,’ replied Gorhambury.

  ‘You’ll use them!’

  ‘If you’re not back, I’ll use the reserve charabanc for the morning run,’ said Bert, subdued at missing out on yet another adventure.

  Boris placed a consoling arm on his twin’s shoulder. One of them had to play by the rules.

  Salt joined Valourhand under a blanket as Gorhambury fooled the gatekeeper with an outrageous lie and the straightest of faces. After a frisson of self-disgust, he found to his surprise that he had rather enjoyed the experience.

  Boris and Jones pedalled like fanatics, the pistons and drums whistling and wheezing. Gorhambury barely knew the rural roads beyond the main highway to Hoy, but the novelty of this journey into the wild unknown did not dispel his conservatism. He was appalled that the town’s long-distance transport had been entrusted to such a reckless driver. Despite the gravity of the girl’s condition, Boris Polk yelled ‘Yahoo!’ and ‘Bazoom!’ as they cut corners at speeds Gorhambury would have thought impossible.

  When well away from the town, Salt emptied his bag of slugs onto the verge, as Gregorius Jones, ever the mediaeval knight, produced a stream of enquiries about the patient: ‘Look to the lady! Mop the brow, Gorhambury! Hang on, dear girl, cling to the rope!’

  They were quick. The roads were clear and the weather dry, and in half an hour, they were at the Ferdys’ farm. Ferdy took in Boris and Jones as Salt carried Valourhand to Ferensen’s tower. Gorhambury trailed behind, unclear as to which group to join.

  ‘Follow me, man, follow me,’ Salt instructed him.

  At the door of the tower an old man with a lively face and a firm handshake greeted them. Ferensen and Gorhambury were hurriedly introduced. The formers expression changed when he saw the wound. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘by the fire.’

  It was the same piece of furniture on which a frozen Salt had been revived some months earlier. This evening the battle between life and death was closer.

  The old man cleared a table. ‘Crush these!’ He handed Gorhambury a mortar and pestle while mixing the contents of two small phials. The herbs smelled pungent and exotic.

  Gorhambury’s attention was caught by the volume of objects and books on view, as well as the single room’s remarkable shape. He had always assumed countrysiders to be hardworking men with limited intellect, if honest values.

  Ferensen cut off the girl’s jeans below the kn
ee, removed the tourniquet and applied a steaming poultice. He gave her a tetanus injection and applied a sweet-smelling ointment below her nostrils before turning his attention to the wound. He moved quickly and silently.

  ‘The neurotoxins of this particular creature are not to be treated lightly,’ he observed by way of commentary. ‘Another half an hour and our patient would be in serious trouble. As it is, I’m hopeful she’ll have nothing more than a war wound to show her children. Fit young lady, I’d say.’

  ‘Miss Valourhand is a rooftop vaulter as well as a scientist,’ said Gorhambury.

  ‘Is she indeed . . . and you?’ asked Ferensen.

  ‘Gorhambury.’

  ‘He’s our former Town Clerk,’ chipped in Salt.

  ‘And who might you be?’ countered Gorhambury.

  ‘Who indeed?’ came the unhelpful response as Ferensen ambled over to his drinks rack. ‘Arrack with ginger enlivens the vocabulary. A useful side-effect when describing the unusual.’

  Salt poured as Gorhambury explained the night’s events. ‘We were in the library.’

  Salt raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s a long story. I’m homeless but I kept a set of town keys. As security . . .’ Gorhambury was protesting too much, a fault of the innocent as much as the guilty.

  ‘Keep going,’ encouraged Ferensen.

  ‘I heard footsteps downstairs and went to investigate. There’s a small room in the basement – Gems & Geology. The boards had been raised. I squeezed through. There was a long pole on the ground, and a black tile.’

  Ferensen and Salt exchanged glances. The black tile was in the town itself.

  ‘And you stood on it!’ murmured Salt to himself.