Rotherweird

by Andrew Caldecott

  river.

  Ferensen moved on, a journey motivated as much by pilgrimage as reconnaissance. He opened the School’s front gate with a key borrowed from Gorhambury; there was no porter on duty, and no sign of life. He felt himself once again the local country

  boy.

  Using another of Gorhambury’s invaluable keys, he entered the North Tower enclosure, only to be halted by a growling mastiff. Ferensen stared at the dog and whistled, low, then high, with an occasional trill. The dog unbared his teeth, smiled quizzically, rolled on his side and fell asleep.

  Gorhambury, ever efficient, had taped the combination to the compound key. As a boy and a young man Ferensen had climbed these oak stairs daily. He found studies, gaining in size and grandeur as he ascended, noting the names on the doors, which culminated in H Strimmer. He quickly found the ceiling panel and opened it with a short, sharp shove. He pulled his Polk-designed phosphorescent tube-light out of a pocket, shook it and hauled himself up into the gloom above.

  The twelve hinged seats were intact, although only three retained their initials – the Seers, and Fortemain. Intact too were the golden door and the painted ceiling. Even the wheel that turned the floor was still there.

  It was here that Sir Henry had opened their eyes to the wonders of the universe. And here Slickstone, in his true name of Master Malise, had taken his terrible revenge.

  Ferensen explored the remainder of the floor. A loose board close to the trapdoor had recently been lifted to expose a rectangular recess, now empty. The hiding place looked designed for a specific object. Ferensen’s magnifying glass revealed a few dusty brown particles, the tell-tale spoor of old leather. A book had been placed there.

  Not that book, he prayed.

  *

  Elsewhere in Rotherweird the past was breaking through.

  Finch watched from his window: the burning tower, the sixteenth trump in the sixteenth-century tarot pack, symbol of the powerful brought low. It could hardly be coincidence. Mrs Banter’s tower, the late Mrs Banter – an inexplicable death, and now an inexplicable fire. He recalled the plans of the Master Builder Peregrine Banter and sensed unseen dangerous connections. Sparks drifted past his window like molten snow.

  Dire peril indeed – it was time. So as not to deface the Great Seal, Finch opened his ancestor’s letter with a paper knife to find a disappointingly cryptic message:

  The key is in the dragon’s mouth.

  He had expected more enlightenment on this threat from the past. The archivoire contained not only a register of every public carving, it was liberally blessed with examples itself – animals natural and fantastic covered the woodwork of the shelves and columns, several dragons among them.

  None held any clue until he reached the rearmost bay, which stored the two contrasting collections of sixteenth-century books taken from the Manor, the one bound in beige leather and the one in black. Examining the vertical partition, he found a dragon’s face at the very top. Precariously perched on his library steps, Finch peered in and spotted a tiny keyhole, and instantly understood: the architect had devised a triple security system. You needed the letter, the tiny key attached to the chain round his neck (a family heirloom), and access to the archivoire to progress.

  Only a Finch, thought Finch.

  He inserted the key and turned. No sound, no change. Blink, scratch. As a last resort he tried swivelling the scaly snout, which turned full circle, triggering a sequence of muffled clicks around the room like a plague of deathwatch beetle.

  Finch took some minutes to discover that two panels had opened high up in the central bays, and another at the back of the room. Each of the former revealed a book – one large and thin, bound in black; one small, bound in ordinary leather, with further loose pages behind. The third cavity was disturbingly empty.

  The title of the black volume had been removed, leaving only the year 1571 in Roman numerals; the spine of the other read: The Trial of Geryon Wynter.

  After ten minutes of study Finch felt reassured that he had made the right decision.

  *

  Gorhambury relished having a task with human contact. He planned to use each person found on his list as an additional searcher, while keeping for himself the most testing invitee.

  Orelia sat on her haunches in what remained of her aunt’s tiny back garden, a ruinous landscape of charred stems protruding from pools of dark water. Her unseen torturer clearly revelled in his work, delivering a wound, allowing a measure of recovery and then striking again to rip the bandages away.

  The Emergency Services staff respected her privacy. The loss of an ancestral building was a bereavement any Rotherweirder could relate to.

  Her shock had an added source. She had been appalled by the attack of the cat with fiery feet, not to mention its gift of speech and declaration of interest in an unspecified book. She remembered the missing ‘S’ volume from her aunt’s notebooks of the nocturnal movements of her fellow citizens. The lack of reference points tormented her. Her aunt’s murder and the fire both appeared to be Slickstone’s doing, but if the cat were his ally, how and where had he acquired it? And what book were they pursuing?

  ‘Miss Roc?’ She looked up to see Gorhambury. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I know this is poor timing, but there’s a countrysider who wants to speak to you.’

  She looked at him, eyes suddenly alert. ‘Name?’ Mindful of security he gave a description instead.

  ‘He lives in a tower.’

  ‘How convenient – I very much want to speak to him.’

  It was Gorhambury’s turn to be surprised. ‘We have others to find.’

  ‘Place? Time?’

  Gorhambury whispered, before adding in his polite municipal voice, ‘Would you be so kind as to find Mr Oblong?’

  ‘Leave it to me.’ She moved away, shaken from the torpor of despair.

  Gorhambury felt he had helped by providing a distraction. Bill Ferdy would be gathering the rest, leaving him to recruit the incorruptible hermit Marmion Finch.

  Lights shone from the ground-floor windows of Escutcheon Place. Gorhambury rang the bell, then knocked, and when no reply came, he bent down and shouted through the letter-box, ‘Gorhambury here – a countrysider wishes to meet, now, tonight.’

  ‘What on earth took him so long?’

  Another unexpected reply. The mysterious countrysider commanded respect in the oddest places.

  In minutes the great door of Escutcheon Place disgorged its owner. Finch looked raffish, more bandit than Herald, in leather boots, a long leather coat with a sheepskin collar, an astrakhan hat and a staff with a carved bone bird at the top – a finch, presumably.

  His welcome was cryptic. ‘We cannot have the Town Herald in the company of a former Town Clerk at dead of night – villainy, sir – villainy, corruption and preference. So – you may not see me, but I shall see you. Raise your hand sinister when you reach where we’re going. Look back, and you’ve had your lot.’

  Gorhambury worked through the Finch-speak. ‘Lot’ must refer to Lot’s wife, turned to salt for disobeying the orders of the angels of deliverance when fleeing the city of Sodom. If he looked back at Finch, the expedition was off. The hand sinister meant the left hand. He left the house and started walking without looking back. It had been a most peculiar evening – what next?

  *

  The Hydra remained beside the ruined house. Its operators had left. Orelia found Oblong in the Golden Mean, and then chance took a hand. On a roundabout route to the rendezvous, they stumbled on Valourhand, lounging against a wall. She looked exhausted, but paradoxically also wore an expression close to ecstasy. The girl with the golden bolas obviously liked special effects, whatever their cause, purpose or destructiveness. Nonetheless, Orelia made an impromptu decision based on Valourhand’s protest at Sir Veronal’s party. Any enemy of Sir Veronal was a friend of hers.

  ‘You’re coming with me. We’ve a meeting to attend.’

  The evening delivered yet another surpri
se. ‘I know – with a countrysider who lives in a tower.’

  *

  The grate, in a tiny alley off a small one, lifted easily. Gorhambury raised his left hand without looking back and descended the iron rungs beneath. The tunnel felt as cold as a prison cell. He headed for the voices, magnified by a cavernous echo, to find a vaulted crypt supported by rocks of great age, lit by candles in spent bottles scattered about on trestle tables. The floor was paved, but not in a modern, orderly way. Barrels lay stacked on the walls, a few chairs in front of them. Above the barrels hung a freshly painted sign bearing the painted legend The Journeyman’s Gist Underground.

  Before Gorhambury could remonstrate about the vices of trading after midnight in flagrant breach of the Licensing Regulations, he received a ribald welcome from Boris (‘it’s old Bor’emvery’), a pint of Sturdy, a seat, a warm handshake from Ferensen and a pat on the back from Finch with the words, ‘Ale met by moonlight.’

  Finch’s expression turned grave on seeing Orelia. ‘Condolences,’ he said, ‘and time for us both to open up.’

  She nodded, remembering their exchange at Slickstone’s party.

  Ferensen surveyed his polyglot company: the known quantities –

  Boris and Bert, Bill Ferdy and Hayman Salt; the recently met: Gregorius Jones, Vixen Valourhand, Gorhambury and Orelia Roc, and the unknown: Marmion Finch and the fresh-faced historian Jonah Oblong.

  He opened proceedings. ‘To the few who do not know me, I am Ferensen, a countrysider with the town’s interests at heart. If I am to be effective, my presence in the valley must remain a secret. You will in time discover why.’ He paused. He was asking them to take much on trust. He hurried on, ‘Rotherweird has suffered the closure of its only pub, a suspicious death, an attack by lightning, the arrival of a man of unparallelled wealth and power – and now a fire.’

  Salt noted that Ferensen had omitted to mention Sir Veronal’s status as an outsider – the most telling point against him, surely.

  ‘You might think that enough, but tonight two of our company have had a most unexpected journey.’ He let the words hang, before pointing at Valourhand and Gorhambury. Two more unlikely companions it was hard to imagine. Ferensen, despite the suspicion, had won his audience’s attention with a minimum of effort.

  ‘These are symptoms of a danger whose potency you cannot begin to guess at. I have called you here to pool experience and to decide on a strategy. We must do the first before the second. Nobody knows all there is to know, but everyone knows something. We need whatever you have – and especially anything odd, however trivial.’

  He gestured gently at the former Town Clerk. ‘Mr Gorhambury.’

  Accustomed to marshalling facts for committee meetings, Gorhambury came over as concise and clear. ‘I am the former Town Clerk, disgraced because I gave my party invitation to the late Mrs Banter.’ Gorhambury speaking with feeling? The audience was intrigued. ‘Sir Veronal bypassed every regulation. Every permit went on the nod. The closure of The Journeyman’s Gist was his doing too. He is obsessed with the past.’

  Ferensen intervened. ‘Before we get to tonight’s events, any questions for Mr Gorhambury so far?’

  ‘Why let that bastard nick my pub?’

  Ferensen saw a need to focus where it mattered. ‘What brought Slickstone here?’ he asked.

  ‘The Mayor wrote to him after someone wrote to the Mayor.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Valourhand, revived by the beer.

  ‘Marl,’ Gorhambury replied, ‘Paul Marl.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ grumbled Salt.

  Nor had anyone else.

  Ferensen wrote the name down. This mattered, he sensed, but he could not see why. Finch sensed trouble too. He had never encountered a well-intentioned anonymous letter, and here, with past and present so horribly entangled, he feared the worst.

  Gorhambury moved on to his visit to the library, the effect of the magical tile and the fight with the spiderwoman, modestly portraying Valourhand as the heroine.

  Boris Polk was incredulous. ‘A spiderwoman!’

  Jones giggled.

  Valourhand sprang to her feet, wincing as she did so, and yanked up what was left of her jeans leg. ‘Where do they think I got this? Ice skating?’ She raised her leg.

  ‘It’s true,’ repeated Gorhambury.

  ‘Of course, it’s true,’ growled Valourhand, her perspective on the world too self-centred to appreciate quite how bizarre their adventure must sound.

  Ever sensitive to those he had rescued, Gregorius Jones restored order. ‘You have our apologies, Miss Valourhand. We will not be ribald again.’

  Even she could not reject such a retraction. With a petulant, ‘You’d better not!’ she sat down. The feline way she did so electrified Oblong. What was it about her? What was it?

  Ferensen turned to Orelia who stood and surveyed the company. They hardly inspired confidence. Countrysiders and townsfolk were unnatural allies – the Valourhand woman was unduly aggressive, whatever the truth of the bizarre story about the spider. Boris Polk might be a lovable maverick and a brilliant inventor, but reliable? Jones belonged to some mediaeval order in which physical fitness and damsel-rescue passed as the Holy Grail; Oblong should be in a class, not teaching one; Salt had the selfishness of the self-appointed loner; Gorhambury’s world was hemmed in by rules and regulations, and, she thought, I’m no better. She drew little comfort from the fact that Finch, the macabre-looking Herald, probably rated as the sanest there.

  Go for broke, she decided. ‘I believe my aunt was not killed by a malfunctioning garden lantern. I believe Sir Veronal did to her what he tried to do to Valourhand. As for the fire, I’m afraid my aunt had an inquisitive side. She tracked our movements from her tower – at all hours – with telescopes. She kept notebooks. They’re not very savoury. When I went there on the day of her death, the first S volume was missing. And another thing. Sir Veronal bought four stones from Baubles & Relics. We got them from Salt.’ Salt did not react; he continued to stare glumly into his beer. ‘Sir Veronal thought them important, without knowing their purpose. My aunt impolitely upped the price. As to what they do, I’m hoping someone here might help. You see—’ She looked at Ferensen who did not immediately respond. Orelia disliked being kept from the truth.

  ‘—our Chairman might know, the indestructible Ferensen, who hunted butterflies with my grandfather in Rotherweird Westwood –

  in 1893.’ She ignored the uproar and laughter. ‘When he didn’t look a day younger then than he does now.’ She noticed Ferensen was not laughing. Nor was Marmion Finch.

  ‘Truly, seriously,’ she added. With those two words Orelia sat down.

  Bill Ferdy could not accept such a seismic shock to family tradition. ‘Lookalikes,’ he said. ‘Ferensens are always coming and going.’

  ‘Salt – help us on the stones,’ said Ferensen, almost too hastily.

  ‘I ain’t telling much, seeing it’s none of your business.’

  Orelia glared at him. Salt always played the idiot gardener when he wished to be obstructive.

  He shrugged. ‘Only, that the place Gorhambury says he’s been to – it exists. It’s called Lost Acre, and I’m her guardian. You don’t play games with Lost Acre or you’ll end up like them two: facing a monster you don’t understand.’

  If only you understood, thought Ferensen, but he said nothing.

  ‘I dunno about the stones, except they’re creepy. They were just there in Lost Acre, as if waiting to ambush me. Why I sold ’em dirt-cheap . . .’

  And on the sly, thought Ferensen privately. If only you’d told me first – this is the root cause of all our trouble.

  ‘I don’t know what this meeting is designed to achieve, but . . .’ He repeated his mantra, ‘Just leave it to me. I know the place.’

  Orelia felt like pointing out that Salt had no better prospect of passing the spiderwoman than Gorhambury or Valourhand, but Ferensen intervened. ‘Tell them how Lost Acre is now,’ he prompted. />
  This time Salt did respond. ‘All right – everything over ground is dying or hiding.’ Unaware of it himself, Salt turned emotional. ‘This wonderful, dangerous, extraordinary place is about to implode or explode, while we sit and drink beer.’ He crashed his glass on the table.

  Boris added an enigmatic contribution. ‘On behalf of The Polk Land & Water Company, and consumers of Ferdy beer in all its multi-marvellous forms, I offer my latest invention, once the prototypes are tested.’

  ‘What invention?’ asked Ferensen.

  ‘Bubbles,’ said Boris. Pressed, he would only say that The Polk Land & Water Company would soon have to change its name.

  Oblong felt an urge to contribute. ‘I can add something. My predecessor, Robert Flask, disappeared.’

  ‘Dismissed, then disappeared,’ muttered Gorhambury.

  ‘Sacked for meddling, as I heard,’ interrupted Salt, now keen to break up the meeting, ‘and anyway, that’s old hat.’

  ‘I have his notebook, which was given to me by Fanguin.’ He explained how the sole surviving entry, STOLE CAR, had turned out to be an anagram for Lost Acre. Most had forgotten Rotherweird’s previous historian – he was just another outsider, after all – but the linkage of Flask with Lost Acre did engage their interest.

  Salt stood up, red in the face. ‘If you’ve told Fanguin about Lost Acre, young man, the whole bloody town will know.’

  Oblong made little effort to defend Fanguin. ‘No, I haven’t. He’s a good friend, but . . . mercurial.’

  Nods all round. The epithet was well-chosen.

  ‘Let him tell his tale,’ boomed Finch.

  ‘The other entry was ASC 1017.’ Oblong explained the Chronicle’s bizarre entry about the Midsummer Fair, the frescoes in the Church Tower with their strange flowering tree and his correspondence with Dr Pendle. ‘All this leads to a puzzle: our special Midsummer spectacle this year is to be a re-enactment by my form of that very event – thanks to an anonymous letter to the Headmaster.’