The Light Ages

by Ian R. MacLeod

  ‘You could have warned me,’ I said to Anna when she finally emerged from her room in a crisp blue outfit as new as my own. She’d washed her hair, tying it up with studded ebony pins which I guessed had been her own stocking presents.

  ‘Walcote’s supposed to be about surprises. Besides,’ she glanced both ways, ‘I know you’re not so stupid as to leave anything lying about, are you, Robbie?’

  The tide was against us as the guests hurried towards the smells of bacon and subtle spices, the delicate sound of sizzling, and we headed up through the house.

  ‘Has Sadie shown you this as well?’

  We were alone at the end of an upper corridor on the central wing, staring at a blank willow-green wall.

  Anna nodded. ‘She took me up when I first came here from St Jude’s. I think she does it to most people she wants to impress . . I stroked the smooth surface.

  ‘I was sure this was the right place ..

  ‘Oh, it is.’ She crouched down to inspect the unbroken wainscot. With her hair up like this, the silvery down at the back of her neck was revealed against the white collar of her dress. And she smelled differently, too-fresh-washed, as I leaned beside her and wondered how I could ever have been so stupid as to imagine that the Easterlies hadn’t changed her. Then she muttered something. It could have been a clock-chime, a bell, and, like a shadow cast by the snow’s light, there came the shape of a door. I reached for its outline, but then it was gone. Anna said the same thing again, and added something else. The door came more strongly this time, but it went again. There was a sensation, not so much a feel as a sound, of something grinding shut.

  Anna stood up and leaned her hand against the wall. I though that she was about to try something else, but she seemed merely to be resting against it.

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She took a breath. ‘Walcote isn’t just some ordinary house. This door guards the access point to one of the mysteries of a great guild. And I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat, shall we?’

  Food was served in the same breakfast room as it had been that summer. The guests mingled, waving forks as they conversed, smiled and dabbed the juice from their faces with white napkins the size of sheets as light poured in from the snow-clad gardens. Some of the Christmas tree birds had found their way into here. Their feathers and chirps added to the clamour as they fluttered in search of scraps.

  OneofSadiesdiscoveries. Not that the phrase was mentioned as I addressed myself to filling my plate with a sausage-stuck mountain of mushrooms and scrambled egg, but the glances still said the same thing. My day in the summer, after all, was supposed to have been It. You were invited, patronised, parodied, paraded. Then you were sent away again. It was all too charmingly scandalous of dear Sadie—to invite one of her minor beaux back to her own wedding.

  Many of the younger guests had been, or were now claiming to have been, outside the Advocates’ Chapel on the night Highermaster George sung it down. Of course, you knew him, didn’t you? And wasn’t he always so … To these people, instead of residing imprisoned in that guildhouse as a watchword amongst the dispossessed of England, Highermaster George Swalecliffe, as they sipped their coffee and chuckled wisely over last night’s visit from the Lord of Misrule, was as good as dead. Then they turned their gaze, if it had ever been away from her, towards Anna Winters. How much did they guess? How much did they know? Something even odder than mere destruction had certainly happened in the Advocates’ Chapel, and it didn’t really sound like Sadie not to have dropped hints. But here she was, Anna Winters, resurrected at the very moment before her friend’s wedding like something from a tale. Slowly but inexorably, they were drawn back towards her just as they had always been. Mistress Summerton was right, I thought, as hands touched her and smiles were flourished. Despite everything, Anna could have carried on with this life. The only thing, perhaps, which didn’t seem quite so right on this blissful Christmas morning was Anna Winters herself. Yes, she had and hadn’t changed. Yes, she was and she wasn’t different. The Anna I saw now, backlit against a blazing window, seemed frailer, more shadowy. In a situation such as this, the attention she brought to being the person she thought people wanted her to be had always been absolute. But I sensed now that she was wavering.

  Drawn by the toot of Christmassy tunes, the guests started to move out from the breakfast room, and servants began stacking and wastefully heaping together steaming piles of syrup and kippers, cream and bacon, which, even in their mingled state, would have been fallen upon by the residents of Caris Yard.

  ‘Hey, just leave all that will you!’

  I didn’t need to turn to know who had made a belated entrance. I’d expected to see the Bowdly-Smarts here at Walcote House. After all, little incidents such as the one which had taken place that night in Fredericksville were easily forgotten, and the greatgrandmaster himself, as I now knew, had reasons to feel obliged towards them. Pretending a fresh hunger I certainly didn’t feel, I picked up another plate and moved deliberately beside Grandmaster Bowdly-Smart along the remaining displays of food. He began a thin smile as he glanced my way. Then he realised. At that moment, his wife also appeared in robes and gleaming rubies, although the confused look on her face suggested that her husband hadn’t confided with her about me, any more than he seemed to have confided in Greatgrandmaster Passington. The silence as the three of us served ourselves food was punctuated only by the tink of ladles. This, I thought, is the moment when he could shout out that I was an impostor, a dangerous charlatan. But, for all that Grandmaster Bowdly-Smart knew much about me, there was so much more that I knew about him. He and his henchmen might have been searching for me these last few shifterms, but that didn’t mean he wanted to find me here at Walcote House. This, anyway, was what I’d been hoping, although, oddly enough, I felt something like a sense of mutual recognition as I worked my way along the breakfast displays beside him. After all, Stropcock and I had both come here from Bracebridge by dangerous and tenuous routes, and he was now behaving exactly as I would have done in his situation, which was to do nothing, and to wait. I handed my freshly loaded plate to a servant and walked off, my head singing.

  The seamless blue sky was reflected in the snow and the whole wyrelit world was punctuated by the black hafts of moving figures and the shimmering, semi-transparency of the trees. A path had been flattened and set with flaming braziers. In another direction, many of the younger set were heading off towards the great frozen lake to skate. Ahead of me, the trunks of the perilinden trees were like huge upward brushstrokes. The snow was so clean it squealed like sap beneath my new boots.

  The stables were a jumble of eye-stinging cerulean shadows, within and around which a hundred or so guests had gathered. There were many half-familiar faces, but no one I quite recognised, and there was no sign of Anna. Then, from off between the trees, came an angry buzzing. Already, people were smiling, for this sleigh was magical; it pulled itself There was Sadie in her furs, and Greatmaster Porrett seated beside her, manoeuvring the smoking machine between the trees. It stopped with a clatter. They climbed out, and Greatmaster Porrett, in the lurid red fox fur of his huge coat, gave a bow whilst Sadie just stood there to accept the applause. Then he emerged, Greatgrandmaster Passington himself, and the freezing air stilled until the only sound was the sigh of snow from a branch, the distant shouts and calls of the skaters. He was dressed in a plain black cloak. His head was bare and his hair was as dark as ever. He was a tall man, I thought, and made for this role, and his people loved him. Of course, he looked somewhat tired and pale this morning, with shadows pooled beneath his eyes after his visitations of last night, but that only added to his sense of gravity and caring. And the smiles which played across the lips of these women, the grave adoration of the men; I’d only ever seen anything similar when people were around Anna, and this veneration was far more shameless. He both was and he wasn’t simply a man. For he was the pinnacle of his guild, and I could kill him now, run forward scr
eaming with a knife I didn’t have. Like George, I could have my small, useless, moment and there would be blood on the snow. Then I would be taken away and this Age would carry on unchanged. Someone else would clamber to the top of this great earthly pyramid. To truly destroy him, death alone wasn’t enough. I needed to bring him down.

  A guildmaster came to see me here. Grandmaster Harrat’s voice billowed back to me. He was waiting inside this house one night, standing in the hall even though the maids denied letting him in. So I knew instantly he had power. And he had a face I can barely remember, even though he was standing close to me and I could smell the rain on his cloak …

  I slipped my hand into my new pocket and curled my fingers around the numberbead as we all trooped to a courtyard inside the stables where the swept bright-red bricks steamed in the morning sun, wreathing Sadie in mist as she took a pair of giant scissors and cut the pink ribbon looped across one of the stable doors. Greatmaster Porrett did his best to mime surprise as a russet unicorn, big and broad as a carthorse, nervous as a yearling, was led out. Starlight, Sadie’s own black and silvered mount, followed, and the two creatures whinnied and reared like beautiful statues as we all gathered before them for the smoking flash of a photograph.

  Sadie came over as we were ushered on across the snowlit space beyond. Flowers grew here, and their shapes and colours were beautiful. Touch their frozen petals, though, and they shattered.

  ‘Poor Star,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to ride him straight after all this is finished just to soothe him down. But I doubt if Isumbard’ll ever ride that other creature-he prefers machines.’ She took off her gloves, fished in her pockets, sighed. ‘Things have changed a lot since you and I were last around here.’

  ‘You did say you wanted me to come in winter.’

  ‘Did I? Well—and here you are. But where’s Anna?’

  ‘I’d guess she’s off skating.’

  ‘Yes, she’s good at that … And we really need to talk, don’t we—about why you’re both here, for a start.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘I’m a big girl now, Robert. And I’ve got a lot better at seeing through things recently. So please don’t bullshit me. But this—’ She nodded ahead through the trees, where the intricate metal dome of what looked at first like a medium-sized church was rearing. ‘—is something I’d like you to see. It was the one thing I insisted on after tomorrow’s wedding. I didn’t lose all our family traditions.’

  The dome was wrought iron, and it resembled a huge birdcage. Disturbed by our approach, the creature within was cawing and fluttering from trunk-sized perch to perch. There was much talk, as the more knowledgeable gathered closer and the more sensitive hung back, of how, this year, the Guild of Beastmasters had once again excelled itself. The dragon was even bigger than the unicorns, but, as it stretched its pinions and screeched, it stirred up the same ammoniac gusts from the slurry pooled at the bottom of its cage that I remembered from the Tenshiftday when my mother and I had stood before that rabbit hutch on the rivermeads. The dragon-hunt, I gathered, was a big event of Christmas at Walcote House, and Sadie and her father were amongst its keenest exponents. In an ideal world, their unicorns would spear their quarry with their horns, but in reality, long, light spears were carried. The creature could fly but it would have its wings trimmed before it was released, and I was disappointed to learn that it couldn’t actually breathe fire. The dragon bared its serrated teeth to emit an ear-splitting scream. Splatters of blood broke from its wingtips as they beat against the bars. People scurried back until only Sadie and I, and then just the greatgrandmaster, remained. He looked up as the dragon thrashed its tail and paused in its screeching to stare back down at him. An odd silence fell over the crowd. In the distance, still, came the cries of the skaters, and beyond that the baying of balehounds. And beyond that – but the grandmaster turned and gestured us back towards the celebrations in the great house. After all, this was Christmas Day.

  Hot chocolate was being served in the sunlit hallways. It looked like mud but tasted like heaven, and I was on my third or fourth cup by the time I found Anna sitting on one of the large sofas at a turn on the east stairs. She had her skates around her neck. Bits of her hair had come loose from those ebony pins. But for two small bright lozenges on her cheeks, her face was pale.

  ‘Have you seen Sadie yet?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s off riding Star. But I’ve had a message from her. She says she still wants me to be head bridesmaid. Can you believe that?’

  ‘I’m not sure that even she does,’ I knocked back the rest of my steaming silver cup. ‘The way she’s just been talking to me.’

  ‘But we’re planning to betray her!’

  ‘You’re having doubts? I thought—’

  ‘What do you expect me to have!’ We waited as a couple drifted by. ‘This is the last day of my life I’ll spend like this,’ she continued more quietly. ‘Whatever happens tonight, nothing will ever be the same. Why d’you think I’m sitting here? Why do you think I went skating?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I sighed, and gestured to a passing servant for more chocolate. ‘I’m always—ow!’ My finger was twisted as my empty cup was snatched from me. The servant stalked off. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘You should know, Robbie. Most of the workers here come from fishing families in Folkestone and Saltfleetby, and there’s been a lockout at the smokehouses, some kind of trouble with the guilds. Things are bad down here as well. At the end of the day, though, he was probably just upset because servants like the odd please and thank you like everyone else—or hadn’t you noticed?’

  The Christmas banquet began in the great hall at noon and was to be followed at six by a service in the chapel, which in turn would give way at about midnight to the evening ball. Six hours seemed like a ridiculously long time to set aside for a meal, but, as always, I hadn’t allowed for the bloated wondrousness of Walcote House. The guests fanned in beneath slim white pillars entwined with holly and were presented with what the untutored might have assumed to be the entire meal. Sweetmeats and delights; nuts and berries; amber, ruby, pink and russet varieties of wine. At least I was sitting directly beside Anna this time, and there were no big displays of flowers immediately in front of me. We were far from the main tables amid the last minute additions, all of whom seemed to have a long story to explain how they had got here ..

  ‘And what about you—Master, Mistress?’

  ‘Oh,’ Anna gave me a glance. ‘We’re old friends from Yorkshire.’ The conversation crawled on and a servant delivered soup into the bowl he’d placed in front of me. I selected the correct spoon from the outer edge of my place setting, dipping it away from me. I didn’t even blow on the surface, or pull a face when the green fluid turned out to be cold. Despite my many other concerns, I’d found time to study a book on etiquette whilst I was in the Public Reading Rooms. I glanced at Anna, and raised the correct glass in whispered tribute to the kindness of Highermaster George.

  There was poached turbot and salmon mayonnaise. The main courses began with snipe followed by ortolan, then grouse, then pheasant, then duck, then woodcock, then a goose, all of which were punctuated by sorbets, salads, jellies and truffles. But most of the hot food was cold by the time it reached us, and most of the cold was lukewarm. Perhaps it wasn’t so much fun to be rich after all, I thought, gazing though the maze of bored, masticating faces towards the top table. Greatmaster Porrett’s brown, bald head bobbed as he addressed himself to the cream-sauteed fillet of leveret and cast occasional and almost equally hungry glances towards Sadie although the greatgrandmaster beside him was scarcely eating, and his wife looked more withered than ever. By now, sunset was flaring across the room and the children had long been released to run about the house. I was sitting envying them when a servant came to tap Anna’s and my shoulders and beckon us away.

  The so-called chapel to which he led us was in fact a huge church. Here, all the deeds of the Passington family were celebrated in the
ir many guises, deeds, alliances. From up on that balcony, the third greatgrandmaster’s wife had fallen to her death, and this very patch of paving bore the stain of her blood which no amount of scrubbing can remove. Canon Vilbert was in fine and tipsy mood as he showed Anna and I around this vast, sweet-smelling mansion of God, which members of the Plantmasters’ Guild were busily decorating for tonight’s service with swathes of holly, red berries and lanternflowers which gave off a fiery glow.