Salt laid their fears to rest. ‘Suppose – and it’s a mighty big assumption – Wynter could return, he’d be an Elizabethan out of touch with the modern world. He’s not Sir Veronal and he’s not Calx Bole. He hasn’t lived through the centuries like them. He’d be an anachronism. Bole wanted Lost Acre saved – and revenge as a pleasant extra. We may not like his reasons, but I don’t mind the end result. This book, I suggest, is closed. Mr Ferensen’s first toast was the right one – the redemption of Lost Acre. We humble creatures come and go, but to lose a world . . .’
Fanguin the biologist nodded sagely.
Ferensen looked at the company. He saw old-world virtues – chivalry, curiosity and pioneering courage to name but three, but also more modern ones – forensic thinking, mechanical invention and inclusiveness – a readiness to embrace countrysiders. He forgave himself a punning thought: they had all brought something to the Fair.
He declared the game over. ‘Congratulations. The game is won, and we’ve learned how to learn from history, how to make history, how potent history can be. But sometimes – like now – history should be left to its own devices.’
Ferensen took everyone back to his woodland garden. Paper lanterns hung in the boughs.
Orelia explained to Ferensen how Ferox – or, as they now knew, Calx Bole – had used the stones to separate the spider from the woman, and how his sister had slipped away into the night.
‘You saw their separation, I felt it. How did she look?’
‘She was young and beautiful.’
Ferensen felt an indefinable pain. He and his sister had been parted for centuries by disfigurement; now they would be parted by age. He suppressed the second question: Why had Calx Bole rescued her at all?
Hayman Salt told his legend of the midsummer flower. Boris Polk explained how the bubble worked. Bill Ferdy described the colour and fragrance of the Hammer, and why most would never remember the closing moments of Salt’s adventure or Oblong’s verse-drama.
And Gregorius Jones absented himself, with Ferensen’s leave, disappearing over the fields for a midnight run.
Orelia, untuned to happy endings, held aloof. She returned to Ferensen’s room to peer at Calx Bole in the first tapestry, a corpulent man beside the willowy Wynter. She reflected on the skill with which Bole and his familiar had manipulated both the company and Sir Veronal – leaving the stones for Salt and the notebook for Fanguin, bringing Slickstone to Rotherweird and The Roman Recipe Book to Strimmer, encouraging Valourhand to protest to draw Slickstone and the North Tower together, defacing the last page of The Roman Recipe Book and even dictating the programme for the Midsummer Fair – all this early on, and in the guise of Flask. He and the cat had then acted ruthlessly to suppress any subsequent threat to the plan – burning Mrs Banter’s house and defending Sir Veronal against the attentions of Gregorius Jones. She thought further back. Calx Bole had entered the mixing-point to test the last experiment, so he undoubtedly had courage to match his cunning. Were they right to focus on the possibility of Wynter’s return? Might not Bole aspire to revive the Eleusians, now Lost Acre was saved and Slickstone removed? She remembered the mysterious death of her Roc ancestor, the master carver.
‘It’s time to move on.’ Finch spoke quietly.
Orelia turned, noticing that Fanguin’s box, still open, no longer held the weaselman’s skull. She took Finch’s advice and said nothing, but accompanied him to the maze where Boris, an accomplished amateur, was playing the lute as Ferensen demonstrated the galliard’s five steps – left, right, left, right and then the cadence, a vigorous jump. That mastered, he added spins and lifts. Aggs, his partner, flushed with pleasure as Oblong dithered over whether to ask Orelia to join the dance.
By all appearances it was a world at peace with itself.
*
Gregorius Jones ran to his chosen prominence, a summit fringed with birch trees where, half-embedded in the ground, a jumble of flints protruded like spent meteors. He piled up dead branches, crisscrossing them, and balled dead twigs with last year’s leaves for tinder. On the top he placed the skull, with a silver Rotherweird coin inside the mouth for the ferryman.
Working a flint against his firesteel, he turned sparks to embers to fire. Gregorius opened his arms in brief prayer for the shade of Ferox, his centurion and a soldier’s soldier, who gave no quarter and expected none.
He ran again as the pyre blazed.
Ferox – requiescat in pace.
*
Not so far away, in an obscure glade in Rotherweird Westwood, a stream ambles through the trees on its journey to the Rother. Moonlight catches the naked figure in the stream – dryad or naiad? She walks the water, stops, stoops and weighs her catch of stones for size and colour. She lifts a foot and extends the puckered toes, revelling in her own skin.
Below the water the work is almost done. In the silt sits a walled town in coloured pebbles, with towers and walkways, encircled by a river.
‘Ferox – requiescat in pace.’
Acknowledgements
When I suspended writing plays in favour of a novel, I naïvely envisaged a solitary journey without the lessons and pleasures of collaboration. How wrong I was. The depth of paper on the cutting-
room floor is a tribute to the contribution of others, if not an indictment of the sprawling character of the early versions. Three in particular helped bring clarity and shape. Charlotte Seymour encouraged me to develop the early history, which proved inspired advice, as well as guiding my search for representation. Enter my agent Ed Wilson and an overdue cull of surplus scenes and minor characters. My publishing editor, Jo Fletcher, then brought to bear her invaluable experience and an unerring eye for detail, further improving the structure and much else besides. I owe Ed and Jo an additional special debt. Both believed in an imperfect script by a debutant which did not fit readily into any one recognised genre, in a world where pigeon-holing appears to be unduly fashionable. The rest of Jo’s team have provided invaluable support, not to mention good company, including, in particular, editor Nicola Budd, editorial assistant Sam Bradbury, mistress of the felt tip pen, and publicist Olivia Mead.
I endured my share of rejections, though always courteous and encouraging, and I would like to thank one particular publishing editor who volunteered a perceptive critique, positives and negatives. Megan Barr, Anthony Tobin and Maddie Mogford were early readers of particular note, and my neighbour at work, Jane Kilcoyne, has provided unstinting support throughout. Others have read various drafts at various times, and I am grateful to them all. Sasha, otherwise known as Aleksandra Laika, has devoted hours of toil to fine-tuning her remarkable and atmospheric illustrations, while grasping the spirit of the book from the outset. She is a talent to watch and a pleasure to work with. Ian Binnie of CC Book Production has a masterly eye for a typeface, so enhancing the book as an object, and art director Patrick Carpenter and artist Leo Nickolls have fashioned an eye-catching and original cover, again faithful to the spirit of the book.
My local Caffè Nero provided writer-friendly conditions in the early hours, and often the loan of a pen. But only my wife, children and immediate family have had to live with Rotherweird
from its tentative first steps to maturity. They have variously read and re-read, encouraged, constructively criticised, proof-read and earthed the lightning at moments of frustration. My debt to them and their patience is beyond words. It is traditional to say that the remaining faults are my responsibility, as indeed they are, but the credit for any qualities the reader may find is very much to be shared.
About the Author
Andrew Caldecott is a QC specialising in media, defamation and libel law, as well as a novelist and occasional playwright. He represented the BBC in the Hutton Inquiry (into the death of biological warfare expert and UN weapons inspector David Kelly), the Guardian in the Leveson Inquiry (into the British press following the phone hacking scandal), and supermodel Naomi Campbell in her landmark privacy case, amongst many ot
hers.
His first produced play, Higher than Babel, was described as ‘Assured and ambitious . . . deeply impressive debut’ by Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard and ‘Vivid and absorbing and grapples with big ideas without being dry, difficult or patronising’ by Sarah Hemming, in the Financial Times, but informed by his love of history, which he studied at New College, Oxford, he was seized by the notion of a city-state hiding a cataclysmic secret: the result, Rotherweird. ‘A history-tragic-comedy all rolled into one’, says Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, and ‘baroque, Byzantine and beautiful,’ according to M.R, Carey, author of The Girl with all the Gifts.
A sequel, Wyntertide, is currently taking shape.
About the Illustrator
Sasha Laika studied figurative art in Moscow, followed by a degree in Graphic Design and Illustration in the UK. A London-based artist for the last 10 years, Sasha creates highly intricate works that draw on imagery from mythology, folklore and religious iconography. Her works are inhabited by mystical creatures that morph between human and animal, and exist in transition somewhere between the worlds of fantasy and reality. She considers Rotherweird the perfect subject for her début work as a book illustrator.
Table of Contents
Rotherweird
Title
Copyright
Frontispiece
Dedication
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Contents
ILLUSTRATIONS
JANUARY
First Interview – The Woman
Second Interview – The Boy
Third Interview – The Teacher
A Sale
Oblong Tries to Learn the Form
Strange Company
Another Point of View
Term Begins
FEBRUARY
Slickstone’s Discovery
Oblong’s Discovery
Hayman Salt’s Discovery
Of Invitations
The Black Tile Opens
Sir Veronal Holds a Remarkable Party
Reporting Back
Retribution and Forgiveness
A Starry Night
MARCH
Of Pupils and Paddles
A Most Unexpected Result
A Dangerous Play
APRIL
A Most Peculiar Business
A Commission
Sir Veronal Makes a Move
Oblong in Search of his Muse
Last Rites
Gorhambury Finds a Mission
Finch Makes a Decision
Valourhand Makes a Discovery
Epiphany
Inertia
A Strange Encounter
MAY
Mayday
A Monstrous Meeting
Fire and Water
Of Towers and Tunnels
Escutcheon Place
The Morning After
Of Stones and Tiles
JUNE
Gawgy Rises
Strimmer Takes Sides
Fanguin Finds an Interest
An Opening and a Closing
Valourhand Goes Prospecting
Orelia Goes Prospecting
Sir Veronal Goes Prospecting
Parallel Journeys
Old Friends
Metamorphosis
Hostilities Resumed
Nemesis
The Play’s the Thing
JULY
Home Sweet Home
Answers and Questions
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Illustrator
Rotherweird Page 40