The Light Ages

by Ian R. MacLeod

  ‘So—who exactly owns this place?’

  ‘Owns?’ She caught her cigarette in the corner of her mouth as she turned to look at me and the powder around her eyes flaked in a sudden harshness of the light. After all, I thought, we are simply human. And there was something about Grandmistress Sarah Passington, some knowledge and sadness, which I didn’t understand. Surely, I thought, these people owed it to the millions they exploited to at least be happy. She ground out her cigarette in the pot-pourri. ‘I’ve never really thought of people actually owning Walcote.’ She waved away the smoke and thought for a moment, her head bowed. ‘There has to be someone, doesn’t there? And I suppose you might say that that someone is Daddy, seeing as Walcote is entailed through the Guild of Telegraphers.’

  ‘Doesn’t that mean that your father’s—’

  ‘—he’s the greatgrandmaster.’ Sadie flashed another of those looks of hers; full of meanings and contradictions. ‘He’s in charge of the entire guild. Or thinks he is.’

  Silence fell between us.

  ‘We used to have marvellous games of hide-and-seek here,’ Sadie said eventually. ‘Although there’s a sad story of a lad a generation or so ago. They only found him years later, mummified like an old apple in some cupboard. That’s servants for you … But everyone’s so changed now. The children I was with, they’re all grown up.’

  ‘Does Anna Winters come here much?’

  ‘Not back in the hide-and-seek days. Although, later …’ A puzzled look crossed Sadie’s face. ‘I can almost see her wandering these corridors in tinkly old sandals.’ She shook her head. ‘But Anna was probably never like that. Somebody so poised and elegant. Do tell me, Robbie. What was she really like back then?’

  ‘I think we notice things differently when we’re children.’

  ‘Hmmm. And that old house by the waterfall. Her poor dead parents. That dreadful aunt.’ Sadie picked up a silver-backed hairbrush which lay on the gleaming dressing table. ‘I remember the first day when Anna came to school at St Jude’s as if out of nowhere. There’s always one in every year. Someone with whom you know you can’t possibly compete. No matter what you wear, no matter what you do or who you are, there’s always … Anna. And she took me as her friend. That was the marvellous thing. Anna chose me as her friend even though I’m clumsy, wealthy Sadie Passington, halfway good at many things but never particularly good at any of them, trailing this whole bloody guild and all these houses around behind me like a huge lead weight … Every night, she let me brush her hair.’ Still carrying the silver-backed brush, Sadie went to the window. ‘When Anna’s around, everything’s always brighter, darker, different … Oh, you must have your stories about her too, Robbie … Do have a cigarette ..

  I took one from her case. It tasted like the feathers of some perfumed bird. And I did have my stories; the memories of Anna Winters were waiting as if they had always been there. The mint smell of decay and bluebells in the sloping woods of that old aunt’s garden. Me, and Anna Winters. Anna Winters, and me. The two of us exploring the wet-leafed valley and the game we played of racing sticks under a bridge, urging them on until the gong called us back for lunch in that sere house beside the waterfall …

  Sadie sat down on the bed beside me, rocking its springs. This, I thought, as Sadie leaned against me, the light from her necklace shuddering sparks with each heartbeat, is a better vision of the past than the truth of Redhouse and Bracebridge and that dreadful accident. I decided Mistress Summerton was right; I’d judged Anna too harshly.

  Sadie showed me Walcote House. From the east wing, through state rooms far bigger than the inside of Great Aldgate Station to narrow stairways which contained the inner workings of this great palace, which was at least as complex as the largest factory. Then a balcony which looked down into the steaming crater of the main kitchens. Whole farms serviced Walcote House, set downwind at the edges of the estate, hidden from view by hills which had been raised for that purpose. There was even an underground system of rails. There were telegraphs and tunnels, and honeycomb ducts to provide a clean flow of whatever temperature of air the climate outside was failing to provide. And yet all the while, as she showed me this and this and this, Sadie kept pressing me for stories of my life. It made an odd counterpoint.

  ‘So. What does it mean, to be a radical? Would you have me fire Lessermaster Johnson over there who picks up fallen petals in the orangery, just because he’s old now and doesn’t do anything productive?’

  ‘Real production means making something that people need, Sadie.’

  ‘And isn’t any of this?’

  It was a genuine problem—what to do with guildspeople such as the thousands who serviced Walcote House, although I’d never heard it discussed at any of the People’s Alliance meeting. They would certainly need to be re-trained, re-educated. And this whole place, too, would have to be stripped, emptied; with its big rooms and huge sleeping capacity, it might make a useful citizen’s academy. All these ornaments and paintings could be shipped to a museum. But it seemed a harsh truth to tell Sadie, and I guessed that she knew far more than her cleverly misguided questions revealed. Of all the many things that she was, Grandmistress Sadie Passington most certainly wasn’t stupid.

  ‘And don’t you have lots of secret signs and codes just like the guilds, you revolutionaries?’

  ‘We’re nothing like the guilds, Sadie. That’s the whole point.’

  We were standing in a plush and windowless corridor. It was a dead end, and the willow-green walls looked almost conspicuously ordinary.

  ‘But we could exchange secrets, Master Robert. How about that?’

  I opened my mouth to assure her that true knowledge was priceless, then closed it again as Sadie started loosening the pearls which held the low frontage of her dress together. Disappointingly, she ceased unbuttoning when only the upper curves of her breasts were revealed. She drew out the rest of the necklace I’d been admiring earlier. The strung jewels were fat as teardrops, dark-hearted and glinting.

  ‘Daddy has given me one for every year I’ve lived. I wish there were fewer of them. And I’m due another one—oh, much too soon …

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Have you heard of whisperjewels—they’re a bit like touching a haft, only more portable and useful. You saw what I did with your door. That’s quite simple really, just another way of opening the thing without all the faff of having to turn the handle. But take this and have a try …’ The whisperjewel felt warm as a hen’s egg as Sadie clasped my hand around it. I still had no real idea what the thing was, other than that it was something which probably involved a lot of money and aether, but as my fingers closed, I heard something chime in my head.

  ‘What was that?’

  She chuckled. ‘The whisperjewel’s telling you its secret. Now …’ Sadie bustled me over to the blank green wall which blocked the end of the corridor. ‘You have to chant that spell yourself.’

  I closed my hand around the whisperjewel again. The sound I heard would have been impossible to transcribe using the ordinary letters of the alphabet. Sadie laughed out loud when, with a sound that was a cross between a starving chick and a broken hinge, I attempted to imitate it.

  ‘No. It’s more like this ..

  She laid her hand on the green wall beside which we were standing, and made a clicking, musical sound. When she had finished, I realised that the previously featureless wall beside us had changed, and that a door, which looked as solid and well made as any other, had appeared in it. Sadie gave a little bow, her dress still askew, and the door swung open to reveal an upwards-spiralling staircase.

  ‘This leads to the Turning Tower,’ she explained as we began to ascend it.

  This circular turret was the highest point of Walcote House. From its parapet we could look down on all the rooftops’ leaded complexities and out across the greened and blued landscapes of its grounds. So much land, so much sky and sea, so much air … Heights never normally bothered me, but this o
ne was dizzying. Doves circled the rooftops, looking like scraps of Walcote House’s white stonework come to life. I felt as if I could walk across the sun’s rays which hung around the Turning Tower. In the centre of the tower, gleaming in the sunlight, stood a golden haft.

  ‘Does the tower turn, then?’ I asked.

  ‘What a lovely idea! No, no. Not in any physical sense anyway.’

  I walked closer to the haft. I’d seen such objects, through which guildsmen of various kinds communed with their charges, in my wanderings around the Easterlies, although all of them had been smaller than this, and none had quite this gleam, this power, this polish. It writhed upwards like a solid flame from the brass—or perhaps gold—collar of its base and reared, at its triple-horned peak, far above my height like a black rent in the summer sky. ‘What does it do?’

  Sadie shrugged. ‘It’s a telegrapher’s haft. Just like all the ones you see in the back room of every telegraph office. Or almost. They come in different levels of power and access, and this one’s a prime, like the one you’ll find at the very top of the Dockland Exchange in London, and in a few other special places.’

  I walked around the object. It both shone in the sunlight and seemed to absorb it. It cast no shadow.

  ‘It’s mainly for show,’ Sadie said. ‘Hardly anyone’s allowed up here.’

  I took a step closer. The landscape seemed to recede. The air whispered around me. Even on this Halfshiftday afternoon, England’s telegraphs were busy. I could feel them all now, the endless chorus of orders and bills of lading and invoices and proclamations of birth and death and bankruptcy, humming along the wires from town to town.

  ‘But I wouldn’t touch it,’ Sadie said sharply. My hand fell away. ‘Daddy’s made me do that once or twice just at the lesser haft of some minor local exchange I’ve had to visit. Even those ones always make me feel sick and giddy.’

  I stepped back. The air stilled. The sunlight of the Turning Tower settled once more around me.

  ‘And I suppose we should get a move on before someone notices us up here. The afternoon’s almost gone and I’ll have to get changed before dinner.’

  ‘You look fine.’

  She flounced down from the Turning Tower. ‘There’s so much more onus on us girls to put on a show. But the dinner tonight’s no big thing. You could go straight down as you are and no one will mind. There’s barely a hundred attending …’ The door behind us closed, and vanished. ‘No, you go that way. Straight down the stairs, then ahead. The servants will direct you. You can’t miss it ..

  A glint of silk, and Sadie had already disappeared down the corridor. Rubbing my temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache, I plodded in the direction she had indicated. Straight down and ahead. But there seemed to be many landings in this part of Walcote House. The statues clustered around me. I was lost. Then I saw someone striding along the white-pillared corridor. He swung his arms. His shoes clipped purposefully. I waited for him.

  ‘You don’t seem quite at home … ?’ His hair was a little too black for someone of his age, and cut a little longer than was the custom. But he was tall and possessed the sort of fine features that don’t easily fade.

  ‘I was trying to find my dinner …’

  That hadn’t come out quite the way I’d intended—but the black-haired guildsman smiled his understanding. Laying a hand on my shoulder, he steered me left a few paces, then pointed me ahead. I was soon in Walcote House’s huge but elusive main hallway, following the guests who were heading into one of the state rooms. Glasses chimed. People stood framed by tasselled mirrors as they threw back their heads in laughter or waved to friends. At the furthest end of the room, which was even bigger than the entrance hall, open doors gave glimpses through the twilight of a structure which I might have described as a tent, were it not for its size and grandeur. I was ravenously hungry, but the food at this strange standing-up dinner was oddly small: wafery discs topped with single shrimps; solitary lumps of mouldy-looking cheese. Still, I grabbed what was going from the passing silver trays. Realising I was thirsty too, I downed several glasses of the same light and fizzy wine which I’d drunk a bottle of in my bedroom, until, hearing the sound of a piano in a far corner, I went in search of it. Sadie had been right about the need to change her dress. Elaborate though it was, it scarcely compared with these visions, which reminded me of meringues. I was still feeling hungry—and thirsty. I’d have got better food than these scraps at any chophouse in the Easterlies—and good beer, too, although I was getting a taste for this fizzy stuff.

  The piano player turned out to be a youngish man with heavy-lidded eyes and thinning blond hair which fell in a lock across his forehead. The piano was long and high—like a wooden yacht, with its uptilted sail—but the sounds he produced from it were tentative. Nevertheless, an admiring group had gathered around him to listen, and I, with little idea of what else I was supposed to do, did the same. The men nodded thoughtfully. The women fluttered their fans. It was as if they and the music were infused with a subtle beat which I, standing here beside them, stretched and reflected in the piano’s polished outlines, couldn’t quite catch. And they fitted here, these people. Into their bodies, their faces, their clothes. I took another passing glass and swigged it. Suppressing a burp, I noticed that a cluster of young men had turned towards me.

  One of them offered me a hand, and said a name I didn’t quite catch. Another followed in his wake. I caught the flash of impossibly white teeth. Then another. Their flesh was as full and soft as Sadie’s. Upperhighergreatandseniorgrandmasterofthisandthisandthis … Even as I smiled and nodded back at them, their identities remained a blur.

  ‘D’youhaveacard?’

  ‘What?’

  A slower smile. ‘Do you have a card?’

  I’d made sure to transfer the invitation Sadie had given me to this jacket—just in case someone should ask to see it. ‘I’ve got it somewhere …’ I fished around in my pockets. ‘Here it is.’ The man took and inspected it, his face a studied blank. He passed it on to a friend. Someone nearby made a choking sound. The music—little more than a child’s one-handed plinking, really—continued. They were all still smiling. But whatever card it was I was supposed to have, it was plain that I didn’t have it. My invitation was flicked by a manicured thumbnail, then handed back to me. ‘Useful, I’m sure. Tells you where you are for a start, doesn’t it?’ Tellsyouwhereyouareforastart, doesn’tit? It took me a moment to decipher the slurring words. The suppressed guffaws of his companions rose, subsided.

  ‘And from whom did you get this?’ another asked. ‘Your ticket to the show?’

  Back in the Easterlies, you didn’t have to understand a joke to thump someone for it. But that wasn’t an option here. ‘I was invited by Sadie Passington,’ I said. I’d expected more hilarity, but at least Sadie’s name gave them pause for a moment. ‘I was with her this afternoon,’ I continued. ‘She showed me—’

  OneofSadiesdiscoveries. The phrase was whispered again. I paused, losing whatever I’d been trying to say. OneofSadiesdiscoveries. This was like some new guild, some new language. And the smiles were knowing, insidious. The music, I noticed, had stopped now. I balled my fist around my empty glass. My skin tingled.

  I flinched as a hand settled on my shoulder.

  ‘Tell you what—Master Robert, isn’t it? Trifle hot in here, don’t you think?’ The heavy-lidded face of the man who had previously been playing the piano leaned close to me in a breath of hair oil. ‘I could show you some of the grounds. Atmosphere’s a lot less stuffy …’ I heard a final departing whisper, a hiss of syllables, then we were walking out onto the terrace under the evening sky.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ The man sat down on a lichened wall beside a tumble of roses. Long, low sunlight glinted through his thinning hair. ‘Known them for years. They’re like—what would you describe it as? When something new and interesting suddenly appears?’

  ‘Flies around a heap of shit?’

  He chuckled
once, then louder. ‘I’ll have to remember that! Me, I’m just a journeyman here-as you are, I’d guess. I’ll play for my supper, and I’ll be grateful for it when it comes.’

  ‘Haven’t we had supper already?’

  ‘Oh no.’ He nodded towards the huge tent which could have housed several circuses. ‘Supper’s over there. That was just hors-d’oeuvres. But you should call it dinner, really, rather than supper, Robert.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll try to remember. I—ah ..

  He smiled. ‘Haven’t told you who I am, have I? You’ll think I’m as ignorant as the rest of them.’ He offered me a soft hand to shake. ‘Highermaster George Swalecliffe. I’m in the Guild of Architects, nominally at least, not that I ever get to build anything. So I have to bide my time with these people and play the piano when I’d much rather be out supervising foundations. What did you think of it, by the way? My little composition?’ Finally, he let go.

  ‘You mean that noise on the piano?’

  His blue-grey eyes had brightened. Now they subsided again. ‘I wouldn’t take too much notice of what I think, higher-master,’ I said. ‘I really don’t belong here.’

  ‘Oh, just call me George. And you should never dismiss your own opinions, Robert. They’re always important. Please.’ He patted the stone wall. ‘Sit by me. You must be the revolutionary Sadie’s been telling us so much about. Even if I hadn’t known who you were, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you—if you see what I mean. We’ve got so much in common. After all …’ He clicked his fingers to draw over a waiter bearing more wine glasses. ‘We’re both socialists.’

  I drank my wine, and stared into its bubbles. Not for the first time in Walcote House, I was at a loss for words. ‘Do you know Sadie well?’

  ‘Everybody knows Sadie. As to how well—you should be warned that sweet Sadie does have a habit of bringing people to Walcote and—ah—rather dumping them. She doesn’t mean it intentionally. She’s brimming with good will. But then something else comes along, and she gets distracted ..