Hallam Tower receded. The darkness drew back, scented with old talcum and kitchen bleach. A chill went over me. I was sure, at that moment, that I heard a baby crying. I slid the drawer back. When the light of Hallam Tower next swept across the frieze of dancing elephants, it did so with an audible swish, a push of memory. Even when I closed the door and slipped back along the corridor’s fresh darkness, the sense remained. Sooh Booooo. The air hissed and exhaled. At the furthest end of this corridor was a smaller door. I touched it with wondering fingers. It pulsed like something living, and the handle turned for me.
Beyond was a narrow upwards-leading stairway. The room at the top had slant walls which pushed into the roofspace and was piled with the wreckage of old furniture. The pale, continuing flash of Hallam Tower wafted through a skylight to stir the cobwebs and glint on splintery wood, a rusted iron bedframe. We had had a washing plunger exactly like this one in our house on Brickyard Row. Here, even, beneath a sheeting of dust and more cobwebs, was a guild certificate honouring some minor success in the production of engine silk. It was granted by the Third Lower Chapter of the Lesser Toolmakers’ Guild, stamped with the seal of Mawdingly & Clawtson, and had been awarded to Uppermaster Ronald Stropcock. I peeled off the back of the frame and pushed the document into my pocket. Proof, at last, of something I’d long known, but the attic air remained tremulous, expectant. There was a longer box in the furthest corner which looked as old as everything else here, and was even more roughly made. But it seemed too big to belong in a Coney Mound terrace. And there was something—a tug of memory which joined with the shuddering pull of the darkness. Soooh Booooo.
CAUTION DANGEROUS LOAD. Those stencilled words amid the old washstands and cracked mirrors—and the vision I’d had long ago at Grandmaster Harrat’s; he and my mother and another woman called Kate clustered around this same rough wooden casket in the depths of Mawdingly & Clawtson. SHOOM BOOM. The pulse of it beat with the circling of Hallam Tower and the hammering of my heart as the casket lid shuddered open. Inside were crisped, ancient newspapers, yet the light which had dimmed that subterranean room where my mother had once stood was scarcely there when I lifted the strange object out; a roughly cut lump of crystal about the size of a human head. I knew now that such things were called chalcedonies, and that the guilds used them to store their major spells. But this one was faint; the wyrelight at its core was scarcely beating. Its power had exhaled long ago. SHOOM BOOM SHOOM BOOM, then silence, and I was back in London, in that dusty attic.
I laid the chalcedony back amid its newspapers. I closed the casket lid. I floated across the landings and halls. Still totally absorbed, unthinking, I reopened the door into the Bowdly-Smarts’ parlour, but inside there was light and commotion. Mistress Bowdly-Smart was howling and sobbing and Trixie was barking, whilst Mister Snaith still sat at the far table, the contents of his carpetbag still spilling out around him. Mistress Bowdly-Smart, her face streaming, let out another howl.
‘I left Freddie crying,’ she wailed in a broad Brownheath accent. ‘It’s good for babies to be left, ain’t it? That’s what every mother’ll tell you, and that’s what my Ronald insisted. Spoil him, Hermione, he said, and he’ll grow up like a selfish little sewer rat, but let the little blighter fend, and you’ll raise yourself a fine upperguildsman. Oh, we were so bloody happy! But you do leave them once in a while, don’t you, for their own benefit, even if they’ve had a wee bit of a fever—otherwise, just like Ronald says, they grow up greedy and expecting it all on a plate … It wasn’t a big house we had then, you understand. Just the two rooms up and down, the way things mostly are in Brownheath. But me and my Ronald was happy then, and I had my own sweet baby. No matter where I was in the house, and if it wasn’t for the sound of them damn engines, you could hear him breathing. But sometimes, I left him crying for the sake of his own good …’
A baby was still crying in some other room in some other house, but the sound was faint, and dulled by a distant pounding which only I and Uppermistress Stropcock would ever have recognised. Then even that faded, and there was a long pause. The other guildmistresses looked pale and shocked by the transformation which had come over their hostess. This was what was not what was supposed to happen. But, at the same time, I could tell that Mistress Bowdly-Smart’s tearful admission of a past quite different to that which she claimed was scarcely a surprise to them. They were used to brushing bits of their lives under the carpet. The silver cutlery which was really thin plate. The infidelities of their husbands. Their eyes turned instead, in anger and in blame, towards Mister Snaith. All the hope and wonder had gone from his audience, and the whispered words which were now exchanged over the cakestands were harsh. Hateful creatures like him, it—well, they were inhuman, mad, ungodly and alien. They would have been burned in a better, more sensible Age, and any God-fearing guildswoman would be happy to warm their hands on the blaze. At the very least, he should be locked up with all the other monsters in St Blate’s. In their crackling black dresses, with their hats pulled down over their set and angry faces and rigid hairdos, these fellow seekers reminded me now not so much of birds but of beetles as they scuttled for their shawls and coats.
The front door slammed as they started departing. Then it opened again.
‘Some odd commotion up around Strand,’ Grandmaster Bowdly-Smart’s flat voice boomed in the hall, ‘But what’s happened here? What’s going on?’ Still wearing his silk-lined coat, his wing collar, his red cashmere scarf, he burst into the parlour.
‘What is it Hermione?’
More mascara and powder than seemed possible had spread across his wife’s face. ‘We should never have left Bracebridge,’ she whimpered. ‘We were happy there, least until little Freddie died. We should have stayed and looked after his grave. And you Ronald—always promising something better. Sniffing around for something, finding bad things out. That guildsman—and look where it’s got us! And you’ve been with that tart this evening . . ‘Hermione—how could you think … ?’ He cradled her wet face in his arms whilst the remaining guildmistresses made their excuses. He glared about for the source of his wife’s anguish—at me, and then at Mister Snaith. He stalked across the long parlour, pushing low tables and cakestands out of the way. Cups flew. The glass front of a big cabinet cascaded in a glittering wave.
‘You fucking troll! I’ll pluck your sodding wings …’ He hauled back the table behind which Mister Snaith was cowering. His feet snagged on the carpetbag. ‘And just what the hell is this? And this … ? All this … !’ Bandages, rubber balls and tapers flew out. ‘You cheap little fraud! You’re not even …’ Mister Snaith, still wearing the coloured side of his cloak, made no attempt to resist as Stropcock threw him against the wall. His toupee went flying. His sleeves jetted tiny plumes of tinsel and smoke. For a moment, Stropcock stood over him, his breath hissing. Perhaps even he was waiting for some sign, some twist of magic. But Mister Snaith just cowered. With a roar, Stropcock grabbed him and wrapped both hands around his throat.
I tried to wrestle Stropcock off. But he was a strong man—and determined—until I jabbed him in the face. With a renewed roar, Stropcock threw Mister Snaith aside and turned towards me. In another moment, as I slipped backwards across a spillage of milk, Stropcock was on top of me, his knees driving hard into my ribs and pushing the breath out of me whilst his hands encircled my throat. I always had been a poor fighter in London brawls, and he had weight and experience on his side.
‘What makes you think … ? Little bastard like you …’
Uppermaster Stropcock was muttering the same insults he’d used all those years before in his office. And he really hadn’t changed. Age had been good to him—he’d scarcely even lost any more hair. The only thing which had receded into the past, I thought, as my arms flailed and my sight began to blur and redden, was that brown overall with its clip of pens. Then, something other than anger contorted Stropcock’s features. His eyes widened. His narrow lips half-shaped a name and, in the shock of doin
g so, his fingers weakened momentarily on my throat.
I skittered away from him, gasping.
‘You … !’ He aimed a shaking finger. ‘You’re that jumped-up bastard’s son from East Floor.’ He attempted another lunge at me, but I threw a chair in his way. Whilst he was rubbing his shins and cursing, I hauled Mister Snaith out from the corner, pushed my way past the watching maids and fled Fredericksville.
‘That was all most, most unfortunate …’ Mister Snaith was muttering. His cloak was half one way and half the other. His toupee was missing. There was an angry scratch across his powdered cheek.
‘I’ll get you a new carpetbag,’ I said. ‘It was all my fault. I’ll replace everything.’
‘No,’ he sighed. ‘It always happens eventually, in one way or another. People tire of me. Next Noshiftday, they’ll all be back in church, telling the priest how foolish they’ve been. I just hope they don’t report me to the Gatherers’ Guild. Well ..
He stopped. We’d already reached the turn between the grand buildings which led to his warehouse.
‘Will you—?’
‘Oh. I’ll be fine. After all, and not so very long ago, I did perform …’
The little changeling walked away towards the clamour of Northcentral’s engine house, still muttering about the good, great old days when he’d been respected, feted. A sharp wind was stirring over the houses, tearing the fog into stripes of black. Glimmers of the stars and fragments of the moon were showing overhead.
But Stropcock had been right about the traffic; it had backed up both ways along Guild Parade. Somewhere, something was happening, but I had no desire to investigate. The pulse of that chalcedony stone, faint though it was, still roared out at me. Rubbing at my bruised throat as the cabs streamed and steamed, I took a short cut towards the Easterlies along the series of interlinking sidestreets behind Goldsmiths’ Hall. After the noise and bustle around Westminster, they were dark and empty. Even the streetlights, to save gas or through some oversight, were unlit. Then I heard the thud of hooves, the heavy creak of some big carriage. My blood chilled as it pulled out of the darkness and stopped beside me.
‘Where have you been?’ Sadie’s voice, and her face framed in silver fur, floated out. ‘Get in, get in—quickly! Are you all right, Robbie? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost …’
The driver had calls and cries which made the late evening traffic of Northcentral part for a grandmistress’s carriage.
‘It’s George,’ Sadie said. ‘He keeps mentioning your name—we thought you might be someone he might actually listen to.’
‘What is it? What about Anna?’
She sighed and lit a cigarette. She had several extra rings, now, I noticed, on her fingers. ‘Poor Anna seems to be the last person he seems to want to listen to at the moment. He’s been saying the most odd things.’
The modestly named Advocates’ Chapel, in fact an enormous church, had been standing at a crossroads on the Strand for an Age and a half As a separate guild, the Advocates no longer existed, having been swallowed by the Notaries’ Guild, and the chapel’s large but dumpy spire had long been a useless landmark, largely unnoticed by the traffic which smoked around it. But tonight, it was the centre of much attention. Theatre-goers and revellers spilled across the roads, smiling, pointing up as the fog thinned and the spire glowed. The general impression amongst the crowds as Sadie and I bundled through them was that they were witnessing some odd guild ceremony.
The chapel’s main doors looked as if they had been prised open, and George was inside amid many lanterns and much dust and smoke. Anna was there as well, and she was pleading with him, although George looked through her and through Sadie and I as well as we rushed towards him across the nibbled floor. He was stripped to the waist, ribboned with sweat and dust. In his left hand he had a rolled-up plan. In his right he was waving a crowbar.
‘Ah—Robert …’ George seemed to notice me on second glance. ‘London’s a bog—did you know that? This whole building’s afloat on nothing but the swill of some old drains … This thing’s probably hollow.’ He struck a pillar with the crowbar. Flakes of stone flew. ‘What time is it, by the way?’
‘Close to midnight—but what are you doing?’
‘Midnight?’ He gave the pillar a push. The thing was six feet in diameter. ‘I’d hoped it would be quieter outside by now. We’ll have to stop the traffic—clear people back. I really don’t mind the involvement of the police.’
‘He’s talking about singing the chapel down,’ Sadie said. ‘Whatever that means.’
‘You’ve got to speak to him, Robbie,’ Anna added, her face wide and white. ‘He’s stolen the spells for this building from his guild academy. He keeps saying something about the opposite of Hallam Tower.’
‘Got to go up top again,’ George announced, waving his crowbar like a dandy with a cane. ‘Why don’t you come with me, Robbie? I can show you just what I mean …’
The tower’s spiral stairway went up and up. George paused halfway on a gantry and waited for me, absently rapping the great single bell. Dust and plaster rained down on me. The air boomed. The Advocates’ Chapel’s main spell, he explained, scampering ahead of me again, wasn’t just bound into the foundations. It wove all the way up to the spire and through the walls and around the buttresses in aethered strips of engraved copper. Once that was unbound, the entire building would become as frail as paper. But the weight of the stones still seemed impossibly solid as I peered down from the tower’s high balcony at the turning lights of the Strand. Guildhalls. Theatres. Glowing tramlines and telegraphs bound up in a vast cat’s-cradle which I thought, for a dizzying moment, might catch us as we fell.
‘There’s Anna!’ he shouted. ‘She’s outside!’ She was easily recognisable in a red beret, standing beside the silver of Sadie’s coat amid the angels in the graveyard. She looked up, her face a small white heart. George had roped lanterns around the spire to illuminate it. The night wind licked over us and London shimmered and yellowed as he showed me the verdigrised copperplate engravings which were bolted to each side of the four compass-facing pediments. I traced their swirls and felt a thrill of something heavy, musty. ‘Now—just listen …’ George spoke slowly, his voice wavering up and down a long semitone. There was a gritty rumble beneath us, like a millstone turning. ‘Now …’ He grabbed the crowbar he’d leaned against the parapet just as my fingers were snaking towards it. ‘We’d better get back down …’
To unbind the spell which sustained this ugly old building, to unlock its buttresses and foundations as a guildsman might twist open a seal, it was necessary to know the entire charm which had bound it, and which existed in its entirety, so George claimed, within the scrolled lines of the drawing he’d stolen from the libraries of his guild. But that wasn’t enough. Copper strips were buried in the rubble beneath the Portland stone facing, and the strengthening chants which long dead workmen had infused into them had to be exposed. He hefted his crowbar. A winged white marble memorial unpeeled and shattered across the aisles. George’s forehead was cut. His thin body was smeared and shining.
‘This place isn’t safe!’ I shouted. ‘Why don’t you do what Anna asks and go outside?’
‘Ha! Anna!’ The dank building gave a groan. ‘She’s always right about everything, isn’t she? And I don’t suppose I have been myself lately. It must have been something I’ve eaten. Clams it was, I think …’ He spat dust from his mouth. ‘God, I can still taste the foul things. Like salt and some sort of rotting weed.’ The traffic was hooting outside. A police bell was ringing. ‘Maybe they were cuckoo-clams—can you have such a thing? God knows we sluice enough aether and filth into the Thames.’
He drew me to the apex of the church, the point beneath the centre of the tower, which tunnelled up above us now like a crystal grotto as engine ice began to seep out of the stone. He swept the glittering dust away from the key-plate which bound all the other spells and lay embedded in the paving. It was circular, and the points
and ornamentations were pooled with vivid enamels which rippled in the light of George’s lantern. When he touched his fingers to them, the colours were already wet. He smeared them across his face and started chanting. The phrases were convoluted and ragged. Some wooden part of the tower must have caught light from the heat of one of the many lanterns, for wafts of smoke were beginning to trail around us.
‘You’ve done enough!’ I yelled.
George turned to me. ‘This is just the beginning.’ He spat and coughed. ‘Didn’t I tell you England needs a sign—the very opposite of Hallam Tower?’
He was empty-handed now and I grabbed his shoulders in an attempt to drag him outside, but he threw me off with an easy shrug, tossing me back across the aisles. His strength, pouring into him as the power drained from the church, was prodigious.
‘People have noticed you, George. They’ll believe and understand—isn’t that what you wanted?’
‘Tell that to the cavalry captain!’ He wiped his mouth with his paint-smeared hands. ‘Tell that to all the rest of the people who died and suffered on Butterfly Day. But you’re right, Robbie—this isn’t safe. You should go out …’ Then he raised a hand. An expression of puzzlement, bizarre in its ordinariness, crossed the paint-smeared mask of his face. ‘But wait—just one moment. I’ve been meaning to ask you something. It’s about Anna …’ A blistering wave of heat and plaster dust swept over us as an archway collapsed. ‘Fact is, I’m not sure that she’s entirely who she claims to be. Those parents of hers—there aren’t any proper records. Odd, isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘You’re the only person who remembers her as a child. I’ve been to her room in Kingsmeet—oh, I know it was most unguildsmanly of me … Nearly burnt myself on the tiny vial she keeps on the dresser. Why on earth should Anna need acid, and a pipette? And when she rescued me on Butterfly Day—it wasn’t really Anna at all. You do understand me, don’t you? You of all people. You do realise that it’s not just—’ He licked the dust from his lips. ‘—those damn clams I ate …’
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