The haft of the Turning Tower was sheer black in the moonlight. Shoulders gleaming, her dress rustling, Anna walked around the frozen parapet to study it. It cast no shadow.
‘I’d like you to help me.’
‘To do what?’
‘I don’t know.’ She held out the numberbead. Our fingers clasped around it, and I felt once again the pages which Master Simpson had sung. No wonder Saul had smiled. They were so simple, so obvious. After our long journey, after all that I thought I knew, it boiled down to two documents which any mart could have obtained. One was the weather report for Bracebridge over the last ten winters, listing the many terms when the tracks south around Rainharrow were blocked by snow. The other, covering the same period, was the page from Mawdingly & Clawtson’s Shareholders’ Report which detailed the receipt of aether at Stepney Sidings. The two didn’t match; aether was received when none could possibly have been sent. It had been Anna herself who’d insisted on this simplicity when I’d wanted to say everything. People, she said, could only absorb so much. And they weren’t stupid—they could draw their conclusions, make their own enquiries, far better than we could. But it seemed scarcely anything now; a couple of obscure pages and a small contradiction, even if we would be transmitting it with the highest priority from a prime haft bearing the seal and spell of the Telegraphers’ Guild and Walcote House.
We stepped together towards the haft, and Anna reached out her hand. I’d expected something powerful, terrible, dizzying, but instead I was instantly immersed in a warm song. There were no barriers here, no blockages. We were known, we were expected … How, as my sense of being teemed out and was joined by a thousand others, could it ever have been otherwise? For the telegraphs knew, the telegraphs understood, the telegraphs sang. This was all of England, the hovels and the palaces, the guildsmen and the mistresses—even the marts—and it was beautiful and filled with a simplicity of purpose which I had never imagined. There were no guilds, or rather there was one great guild, and we were all its acolytes. We sang aether’s praises even as we swam in our mothers’ wombs; our last breath was its spell. The ballroom dancers below us, yes, they were also part of it, but so were the sleeping farmers and the cold and angry men gathering their weapons in Caris Yard—so, too, were the telegraphers and the ironmasters and the captains on their ships in iceberg waters. In other countries, in other latitudes and languages and lives, amid bondsmen and savages and lives yet to be made, it was always, always the same beautiful, innocent song …
Robbie! You’ve got to help me …
The haft was Anna as well. Simply and seemingly effortlessly, we tunnelled down through gates and sluices and along the pylons which strode across the frozen countryside into London and the web of Northcentral which, even now, still roared. I could feel our numberbead as something small and hard and neat. We passed through the stone walls of guildhalls, through glass and plaster, paper and ink. Messages for the traders and bankers and investors were swirled into the heavy aethered millstones of telegraph offices. Here and there, a guildsman looked up, briefly startled, as we passed by them in an invisible wind, but for Anna and I it was simply a matter of leaving the contents of the numberbead here and here and here … Goldsmiths’ Hall, the vaults and the trading rooms, wave upon golden wave of wealth, surged through us, and already the words and numbers were trickling out, as tickertape and shorthand, pinned through carbons or beneath the clacking keys of stenographers who worked too quickly to read their words, for they, too, were all just part of the same mechanism, the same song, which our message as it multiplied, copy on copy, pinned and licked and enveloped and posted, became part of …
The snowy roofs of Walcote House fizzed into view. Anna was no longer touching the haft. The music was still playing below. It was colder than ever. The moon shone across the grounds.
‘Did we do it?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’s the numberbead?’
‘It’s here.’ She held out a cindered lump.
‘It seemed too …’ Easy? But Anna’s teeth were chattering as she brushed the ash from her hands into the snow.
‘Let’s just get down from here, eh?’
The house was quiet, but the band was playing in the blaze of the ballroom, and the people were turning. A servant floated past, silver tray aloft. Anna grabbed two glasses, and then another, and drank them down, their facets flashing on her throat.
‘Are you sure we should be here?’
‘What have we got to lose now?’ She suppressed a most un-Anna-like burp. Her face was pale. Her eyes were blazing. ‘Let’s dance!’
The ceiling spun, the chandeliers turned, faces and dresses loomed and fell away from me, and it was the lancers, then the quadrille. Mad gallops and slow turns, legs and arms and feet, the push and the lunge, but of course I could do everything when I was with Anna. The fever-heat of her flesh and her hot wheaty scent poured out through the fabric of her dress. She was white, her face was shining, and her shoulders were marbled with sweat. Come on, Robbie. This is what you always wanted, isn’t it? But this was like some mad fairground ride, with the rainbowed light of the chandeliers flooding overhead. Finally, I fell back, but Anna was still determined. She grabbed the arm of one of the old gang, one of the faces from the pier, and drew him to her before he could shake his head. I staggered towards the wall, my lungs rasping. Nothing had changed here. Nothing ever would. The only thing I noticed, and this was hard to tell at first through my sweat-damp clothing, was that the air seemed colder; it was as if a window had been opened somewhere.
There was a pause in the dancing. The band was replaced by a string quartet and the guests drifted towards the clawfoot tables around the edges of the ballroom as supper was served. I looked up at a cherub clock. Their wings were already pointing past two thirty. Anna had found a plate and another glass of wine. I followed her and watched in disbelief as she heaped herself cutlets and peas. Tonight, her arms were entirely bare. She had seemed so complete to me before that I hadn’t noticed that the Mark on her left wrist had entirely vanished. I leaned towards her. ‘Shouldn’t you…?’
‘Oh, that.’ She knew instantly what I meant. But she was speaking loudly enough for the people on either side of us to glance at us. ‘What difference does a little thing like that make now?’ She waved the serving spoon to emphasise her point. Gravy splattered the front of my shirt. ‘Oh, dear.’ She giggled and grabbed a serviette. ‘Now, spit ..
I shook my head, breathless.
‘Well, don’t then.’ People watched as she pressed the cloth to my chest. The stain vanished. ‘There you are.’ She looked at them. ‘And what on earth are you all staring at?’ There was a muttering. Word was fanning out. After all, there had been rumours about Anna Winters since that night at the Advocates’ Chapel. The things, dreadful things, which had been shouted at her by poor, mad Highermaster George. And now she—but at that moment the Master of Ceremonies announced that the greatgrandmaster and his daughter the grandmistress would lead the next dance. For now, at least, the faces turned away from us, towards the man and the woman who were emerging from opposite sides of the shining and empty dancefloor.
Sadie was slimly and somewhat sombrely dressed in stormy greys and blues. She’d done little to her hair and her face since we’d last seen her, but she made a fine sight compared to the overdone herbaceous borders of rustling gown which surrounded her, and her father did, too. Perhaps, I thought, these. people really are special—after all, isn’t that what we’re supposed to think? Then the violin sighed its first note, playing with the melody as, graceful as the music itself, the tall and elegant couple began to turn. I doubt if I was the only person who glanced then towards Greatmaster Porrett, and it would have been hard not to think that he was the wrong partner for her. This man—this darkmaster—and Sadie, they plainly belonged to each other. The way he held her, the way his arms clasped her back and his face lay close to her hair, would have been almost scandal
ous for a father and daughter were they not the people they were, and for the rightness of how they seemed together. No wonder, I thought, he persuaded Grandmaster Harrat and Edward Durry to take the risks they took. No wonder, even now, that he seems to float above his slim reflection as he swirls with Sadie across the dancefloor.
It really was getting colder now. Some of the women were pulling on their stoles, and you could see the greatgrandmaster’s breath hanging amid Sadie’s hair as his hand touched the whisperjewels at her neck, fingers drifting along them like some sensual rosary. Then the flow of the music changed. It was the point in the melody where its ache was the strongest. The darkmaster’s fingers paused amid the whisperjewels as he caressed his daughter’s neck and I saw his eyes widen slightly as his knuckles clenched and loosened on that missing space. The dance moved on and he murmured something, a question, an endearment, a spell, into Sadie’s ear, and she replied, and said something more, and their whispers mingled as the slow, stately dance continued. No one but Anna and I would have known that they were exchanging anything more than loving words. Still, there was something strange and shocking about the conclusion of their dance. The music stilled and the two dancers drew apart. One or two guests started clapping, but the sound only added to the empty clip of the greatgrandmaster’s heels as he turned and walked across the dancefloor and left the ballroom.
There was a pause. Streams of condensation froze on the windows. Sadie stood alone. Then, with a clatter of silverware, a guildmistress started screaming. She was by the serving tables, and from the commotion around her an odd sight emerged; the lid of the big silver tureen seemingly moving by itself, leaving a brown trail in its wake. Finally, someone leapt forward and picked the thing up. Beneath, coated in gravy but otherwise unmistakable, was a huge dragonlouse. The brave guildsman stamped on it until it was dead, then, in the absence of any nearby servants, managed to scoop it up using the tureen whilst several guests retired to be more or less ostentatiously sick.
The music struck up again. It was getting damnably cold now, so what else was there to do but dance? And the candles, too, were guttering. I wandered at the edge of things, watching Anna as she whirled, clapped, turned. It had been a while now since I had seen a servant, although the drink trays were still plentiful and she was one of many who, on the night of the last dance of the Age, made the most of them. It was hard to tell when the difference between a disappointing ball and something more became obvious. Many of the older guildsmen, I noticed, had gathered in groups and were talking agitatedly, and there was no sign now of any of the Passingtons, or of Greatmaster Porrett. But the music went on; every time the band tried to stop, they were shouted at to continue. Dance after dance beat down through the hours as the wings of the cherubs turned and the music grew shriller and more irregular and the lights gloomed and vanished until the ballroom was only illuminated by the snowlight of the settling moon. There were few people left now in the middle of the dancefloor. In the pauses between numbers, when the band pleaded to be allowed to rest, the unmistakable moan and yelp of the balehounds could now be heard. But Anna was still dancing. Anna would never stop.
‘Robbie!’ She grabbed me again. Her eyes were sunken and blazing, and her forehead was bone-white. ‘And the rest of you! Come on!’
Somebody turned and muttered something. Anna, her hand digging sharply into mine, tilted her head. ‘What was that?’
‘I only—’ But the man was jerked back and fell coughing to the floor.
‘Come on! All the rest of you …’ Grudgingly, a little afraid, a few other couples began to move. But the whispers were louder now, and people, at some point, had begun to notice the absolute bareness of Anna’s left arm. Annasachangeling … Annasatroll … But she swept me on, and shouted and beckoned, and the exhausted band no longer mattered, because the house itself, in slow creaks and booms, seemed to be lumbering out its own sad music. The cherub clock had stilled. Bits of plaster and gilt crackled from the ceiling.
‘What are you all afraid of?’
Anna swirled her red dress. But by now, we were all afraid. Windows around the house really were open now, or had burst, and freezing air swept in. Oriental tapestries took flight. A chandelier creaked from its rosette and exploded across the dancefloor, spraying blood and glass. Out in the main hall, the untended candles had set the great tree alight until a few enterprising guests used the foaming jets from shaken wine bottles to put it out. The tree became a corpse, dripping, smoking and stinking. The parakeets had fled from it, and were circling the ballroom when the world outside suddenly began to pale and brighten.
‘What is it!’
But even Anna stopped and looked about her now as the shadows changed. This, stalking huge and white across the glittering lawns, spearing the wrecked ballroom, was the dawn of a New Age. It flared through the trees and Walcote House groaned as a turning spear of light struck the ballroom’s windows as the edge of the sun rose, and, right to left, and one by one, the panes burst in sighing, glittering plumes.
There was a long pause, sounds of weeping and coughing, the drip of wreckage. Glances were cast again towards Anna. Troll … Witch … But she looked small now, flecked with plaster and glass; harmless and helpless and withered. I steadied her and helped her to stand. Her eyes were dark tunnels, and her breath was fierce and sour. She felt impossible hot and light. How could they blame her for this? But people were turning, moving slowly towards us with hate on their lips and the need for someone, something, to accuse. Troll … Witch … I dragged her back between the tables, but we were being cornered when shouts wafted through the broken windows. It was something about The stables! The greatgrandmaster! and the strange, sleepwalking figures blinked and turned and walked off that way as well, slowly at first, drifting out through the shattered glass and across the snow which was littered with the bright bodies of the parakeets.
Anna and I followed. People were running and the freezing air filled with the distant bark of balehounds, the smell of smoke. Walcote House, when I glanced back at it, still looked white and entire, but its windows were deep and dark; the sunken sockets of a skull. I stumbled on with Anna slowing behind me until she stopped in the dragging snow with her hands pressed against a tree, her hair dangling lank.
‘Are you all right?’
She coughed and shook her head, then nodded. ‘You go on.’
I hesitated, but the commotion ahead through the woods was growing. Guests were milling down by the stables. There came a whooshing of air. A shadow passed over me. A branchful of snow deluged over my neck. Women were screaming, people were pointing upwards from where I stood. The shadow beat again, shaping itself into giant wings. Green and heraldic, the dragon was perched on top of the steeple of a perilinden tree which shivered and swayed under its weight. The beast split its mouth and cawed, then flapped its wings and half rose and then settled again. It seemed at first to be the entire focus of all the shouting, but as I backed off, I sensed that an even more agitated crowd had gathered around its empty cage.
The door hung open. But someone was inside, kneeling in the floor’s sulphurous mess. It was Sadie, and her head was bowed as she cradled what I took at first to be a long lump of meat. People were murmuring, making signs as they pressed against the bars. Many of the men were weeping. No one seemed to know what to do as I stepped into the cage and stumbled towards her. Then I saw that thing which stretched from her lap had had a face. Even now, it was breathing.
‘Can’t you help me, Robert?’ I looked down as Sadie stroked the pelt of the greatgrandmaster’s black hair, which hung from his bared skull. ‘I did this, you know.’
‘You didn’t. It was my fault.’
Her fingers strayed over what was left of his eyes and nose. She kissed his torn lips. ‘I’m so sorry, Daddy,’ she murmured. ‘I was stupid and selfish. And all about some silly wedding. And now it’s too, too late I crouched beside her. I tried to look into the greatgrandmaster’s eyes. But there was nothing to see in the
m, and then, with a spray of blood, a wet spasm of bones, he died. I laid my hand on Sadie’s shoulder, but she shrugged me off and stood up. She looked, as many would remark later, composed and impressive as she stood inside the dragon’s cage beside her father’s body in her bloodied clothes.
‘Well …’ She wiped her hands on her frock. ‘He’s dead. You should all go back to the house.’
The guests, now entirely silent, began to drift away. ‘Where’s Anna?’ she asked me.
‘She’s back there-between the trees. People—’
‘I know what people were saying, Robbie. She can’t stay here now, can she? And neither can you. Are you sure she’s all right?’
We found Anna crouched against the same tree with her hands on her knees. ‘Look …’ She smiled and pointed. We watched as the dragon, with a stronger beat of its wings, lifted itself from the perilinden tree and turned and rose and diminished, flying north.
I crouched towards Anna, half lifting her up. She neither cooperated nor resisted.
‘I’d let you have that stupid car,’ Sadie said, ‘only it wouldn’t get you anywhere.’
‘We could walk.’
She shook her head.
The stables were entirely empty and peaceful as Sadie led us into the yard where, yesterday and in another Age, we had stood to be photographed. She unbolted the door which held Starlight. Big and beautiful, a sigh of light and muscle, the unicorn emerged. She embraced his huge neck.
‘I haven’t got any tackle for him. I ride him bareback, but he knows you, Anna. D’you think you’ll be all right?’
Anna, who could once have done anything, been anyone, just stood there.
The Light Ages Page 45