by Iain Pears
‘Then I might get to meet him as well?’
‘A few of his rougher people, more like.’
‘I see. I am beginning to wish I had never met you, Dr More.’
‘It would be best to make him lose interest in you. Are you sure you have had no contact with your mother?’
‘I’ve already told you. I’m not protecting her. It’s not as if I owe her anything.’
‘Can we go in? I’m freezing out here. How well do you know this place?’
‘Fairly well. I’ve been here often. Are you sure you don’t want to get some food or something? You really do look a fright.’
‘It’s not the first time.’
‘Hmm,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘What an unusual scientist you are, to be sure. Well, if you’re certain, let’s go in. It is a complete mess in there, and huge amounts of material get lost or destroyed, but what still exists is in there, somewhere. If I know where to look, I might find what you’re after. You will have to give me a hint.’
‘We found an electronic reference to what was supposedly an article published in 1959. The copy we obtained contained some script called the Devil’s Handwriting. It was in fact in something called the Tsou notation, which was only invented half a century ago. It appears to be a fragment of your mother’s work. The complete document is said to be in the papers of an academic who died in 1979, which were lodged in here.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes,’ he said, a little ruffled by her tone of disdain. ‘Why?’
‘It’s just that I have never heard such a ridiculous story in my life.’
‘It’s the best we have.’
‘You are desperate, then.’
‘What are the chances that this man’s papers are in there?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘If they ever existed then I don’t imagine anyone has looked at them, and it’s the things which are consulted which get destroyed. Nobody can be bothered putting them back again. Finding them may take some time, but the only way to tell is to go and look.’
‘Then let us begin,’ he said.
*
They spent all day on it and despite Emily’s skill and knowledge they came up empty. Jack doubted whether anyone else could ever find it, even if they tore the place to bits. How she did it, by what process of logic she went from one underground level to another, marching what seemed like miles through anonymous, half-lit ranks of files, occasionally pulling out a flashlight, examining a shelf, then grunting and moving on, he did not know. Still, she gave the impression that she knew what she was doing, and the more he trailed after her, the more confident he became. There was something about her competence which reassured him.
Even when a deafening siren went off after many hours and she cursed noisily he did not feel too disheartened.
‘Chucking-out time,’ she said with a sniff of disapproval. ‘We’ll have to stop and come back tomorrow.’
‘Have you found anything?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have established that the papers still existed fifty years ago, which is pretty good. I have even narrowed down where they might be. So we have made progress. One thing puzzles me, though.’
‘And that is?’
They were walking swiftly towards the exit, feet clattering on the cold concrete floors. Jack was looking forward to being outside once more; the weather wasn’t good, but the clammy feeling inside the building was even worse.
‘There is no trace of anyone ever having consulted them. In order for someone to have hidden something among the papers, they would have had to find them first. In that case there would be a record that they had been looked at. It would really be a great help to know more,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid I …’
‘Great secrets, my renegade ears unsuited to hear?’
‘That sort of thing. Also, the less you know, the safer you are.’
There was a long pause, with each feeling offended at the way the other was speaking. Jack was the first to make amends.
‘Can I offer you some food? A meal? There must be somewhere round here.’
‘I thought you had no money,’ she pointed out.
‘True.’
‘We can offer you hospitality, if you wish to accept it. It will not be as comfortable or hygienic as you are used to, but you don’t look as if you can afford to be too fussy. You smell a bit, as well.’
*
He accepted the invitation; he had no real choice as he didn’t fancy the idea of another night sleeping in the open. In summer he might not have minded, but at this time of year it was far too cold. Besides, he was tired and worried. He felt half dead by the time he was led into a bare chamber furnished only with a rough bed, after a quick but surprisingly enjoyable meal. He collapsed onto the bed before Emily had even left him alone in the room. As he sank into oblivion, he was sure he heard a faint titter of amusement. He didn’t care, as long as everyone let him be.
When he did finally surface, he was bathed in sweat and couldn’t immediately remember where he was, why he was there. Only the smell from the pillow, used no doubt by many people before him and without even a sterilised cover, jolted him back to understanding. Slowly, desperately, he levered himself up and sat on the edge of the bed for a while before going to find the shower.
The bathing facilities were primitive beyond belief; just a tube with a nozzle which rained hot water down on him. At least it took his mind off his thoughts, forming and half-forming uncontrollably as he dried himself.
The clothes they had found for him were a different matter; they reminded him of his past too much. He had to dress like one of the people he was more used to watching and controlling. Trousers, cream top and a light blue jacket. There was a mirror in the washing room, and he examined himself thoughtfully when he was done. He had not shaved, and in the clothes he looked very different. No longer the sleek member of the elite, but not convincingly anything else yet either. He looked ridiculous.
Emily didn’t agree. ‘Much better. You don’t look quite so full of yourself.’
‘Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.’
It was only six in the morning, but the trip back to the Depository was a long one, especially as Jack insisted on a roundabout route and walking the last mile. He wasn’t even entirely certain why he was bothering, but Emily seemed quite optimistic and he didn’t have any other ideas at the moment.
‘It was a long shot, you know,’ he said as he padded after her down yet another dimly lit corridor made of stacks of rotting cardboard boxes.
‘Thrill of the hunt,’ she said, craning her neck to stare up twenty feet into the gloom. ‘This place has never defeated me yet, and it is not going to today.’
So, when she finally gave a cry of triumph and clambered up a ladder, then pulled out an old box which cascaded dust onto his head, he was surprised, and relieved. Above all, he was quite proud of the fact that he had gone to the trouble of finding her. He doubted anyone else could have made their way through this hell-hole of antiquity so effectively.
She gently carried the box down and blew even more dust off the top. ‘Look.’
He could just make out the writing on an old label, nearly detached and yellow with age. ‘Lytten, Henry. Papers. 1982/3346.’
‘What are the numbers?’
‘An old and now entirely useless filing system. We’re lucky. If the label had fallen off I would never have found it.’
‘Well done. Now let’s have a look and leave.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, dear me, it’s not that easy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are another eight boxes up there. It could be in any one of them. Still, the longest journey starts with a single step,’ she added cheerfully, taking him over to a desk in a dark corner. ‘You look through this one and I’ll start getting the rest down. Now, what are we looking for?’
‘It could be an electronic data holder. Or a paper printout. That’s the most
likely.’
‘Off you go, then.’
He did as instructed. Piece by piece, he took the papers out of the boxes and settled down and tried to read, if only because Emily had begun to do the same. He didn’t want her to realise that he found reading difficult, that he was long out of practice. It was made tolerable only by the fact that he would occasionally sneak a glance at the young woman now sitting opposite doing the same, a frown of concentration on her forehead somehow making her dusty face oddly attractive.
It had an almost hypnotic effect on him, to concentrate absolutely on something. He even began to have a faint glimmer of understanding of these people and their insistence on the virtues of pointless activity.
Alongside that was a sense of growing frustration. What was all this stuff, these boxes of old, dank notebooks and crumbling envelopes? Everything was written by hand, and he had never seen that before, except in a museum. He was impressed by the effort, but he had to struggle through every word, and even then they meant very little to him.
There were dozens of notebooks, folders, packets of paper, some covered with writing, others with only a few illegible scribbles. He spent half an hour on an old, yellowed, fragile sheet, carefully analysing each letter, adding them together then extracting the sentence, but it meant nothing. ‘I will see the storyteller next Wednesday’ had so far lost any context that there was no hope of understanding its significance, if it had ever had any. Another scrap, which was written on a primitive writing machine and so was much easier to read, was equally problematic – ‘Mr Williams’ work over the past three years has ranged from the incompetent to the fatuous. He is ideally suited to a career in your bank.’
After three hours Emily found it, but only because she ignored his instructions and went through everything. The prize was not what he had anticipated. No little sliver of plastic or metal. No freshly printed sheets of symbols. Instead, it was buried at the bottom of a large box of papers, and it did not look new or fresh. It was scarcely larger than his hand and consisted of about fifteen pages that were bound in leather. The dust as he opened it made him sneeze. Inside was page after page of the bizarre script which meant nothing to him and which, Hanslip had said, only a machine could understand.
He studied it closely. It was written by hand, in an ink which had not faded. Only the first page was in normal characters. It read, ‘The Devil’s Handwriting’. There was a stuck-down piece of paper with ‘Tudmore Court’ printed on it in black.
‘That must be it,’ he said. ‘Well done!’
‘Not what you expected?’
‘No. Tell me, does this look as if it was recently put there?’ It seemed more than ever like a bizarrely complicated way of hiding something. The box and its contents looked as though they had been undisturbed for a very long time indeed: the dust, the smell of decay, the mouse droppings all appeared as though they had never been touched.
‘If it was, then it was hidden by someone who knew what they were doing. I would have said it had been there for a while. Look,’ Emily said as she picked up another book. ‘You see the mark here? It’s the outline of the notebook. The cover has stained it a little. That only happens over a long period. And it was slightly stuck to the papers above it. That again normally takes years.’
She took it from his hands, examined it closely, then held it to her face and sniffed. ‘If you want my opinion, then it seems like the real thing to me. Genuinely eighteenth-century.’
‘What do you mean? Eighteenth-century?’ he asked sharply. ‘Not twentieth?’
‘No. The paper, the handwriting, the smell …’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘Then we will have to go through the entire lot carefully. See if there are any other references, to give it a context. Faking one document is hard, but faking several of them would be almost impossible. We can run some tests on the paper and ink.’
‘Let me try something else, first of all. Could you call the man in charge?’
Emily ran up the stairs and came back a few minutes later with the caretaker, the old man who had waved his hand dismissively when they had arrived and allowed them to wander around at will.
‘Has anyone else ever asked for these papers?’ Jack asked him. ‘I know there are no official records. But unofficially?’
‘These? Why do you ask?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘No one has been to look at them. Officially or unofficially.’
He glanced sideways, very slightly, but in a way which put Jack on the alert. Taking Emily by the arm, he pulled her close.
‘I think we should get out of here quickly,’ he said. ‘Not through the main gate. Is there another exit?’
She nodded. ‘Follow me.’
39
Jay woke up alone the next morning; Kate was already preparing breakfast, and Callan was sharpening his spade so that the earth could be dug and stacked into a mound over the burning twigs to make the charcoal. They would set it going, then leave it; the charcoal burner would be along later to tend it for the next three days.
He was peaceful and happy until a flood of memories burst into his head. Was all of that true? Surely not, but every single recollection was crystal clear. The memory of her warm body against his, mixed with images of Henary’s dark countenance as he heard the news. The pleasure he had felt in telling the story mingled with a vision announcing that he would never be allowed to tell a story again. That, in turn, faded as he recalled how her hair had felt as she rested her head on his chest.
Maybe it was all a fantasy. No one else was behaving any differently. Callan was whistling, Kate was busy stirring a pot, her hair now held up with a short length of vine so it would not fall into her eyes. He got up cautiously. They both greeted him. Nothing in their words or expressions suggested anything amiss.
As they ate, Callan laid out the plan for the day. Make the fire, stack more wood, walk halfway back to Willdon, stopping to mend a bridge over the river which was in poor repair. Then one more night in the forest.
Work began; Kate prepared the sticks, he and Callan stacked them in triangles, about three feet high, then stacked longer ones around and on top, leaving only a small hole for the smoke to escape. Next the wooden structure was packed with leaves and turf to make it airtight, and finally covered with earth. Once this was done, they were ready to drop the burning embers of the fire into the hole to set the structure alight, and finally seal it so that it would burn slowly, combusting the wood but not consuming it. That was the tricky part, which needed the charcoal burner’s skill.
The memory of his young days spent sitting all night with his uncle in the woods near his village made Jay forget more recent events. He lost himself in the work and was pleased to see how much he remembered, cutting short logs and sticks so they fitted perfectly, sealing the structure and making sure as much wood as possible would be burned.
Only towards the end did he get a reminder. They were nearly ready for the embers when Callan stood up and stretched himself.
‘That was a good morning’s work, young student,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised.’
Jay smiled.
‘She is good as well. I thought she’d just go through the motions, but she’s worked hard and well. Look at her! She even looks like a farmer’s girl now. If I could have her for a few months I’d turn her into a proper forester.’
‘I think she’s enjoyed herself. It must be oppressive, being so powerful.’
‘Well, maybe, but she’ll go back to her real life quick enough, I think.’
Jay knew instantly what was passing through the soldier’s mind.
‘When she does, everything else will go back to normal as well. You know that, don’t you, young Jay?’ He smiled in a kindly way.
Then he sank to his knees, a surprised look on his face, and pitched over onto the grass.
Jay backed away in horror as he saw the thick arrow that had gone straight through Callan and out the other side. The blood
was already flowing copiously from both wounds, and he was transfixed by the sight until he heard a scream from the woods. It was Kate, who was struggling with two men who had grabbed her. Ignoring all danger, she shook off her attackers and hurried towards Callan, going down on her knees to examine the damage. Stony-faced with fury, she stood to face the three men who came running up, swords and bows at the ready.
‘What have you done?’ she spat. ‘Why did you do that? Fetch me some water, quickly.’
They slowed as she spoke but did not seem inclined to heed her words until one man – tall and massive, who looked as though he could pick her up with one hand – grunted. ‘Do as she says,’ he said in a thick, almost incomprehensible voice. ‘Find me something to use as a bandage.’
He glared at one man in particular, who was carrying a bow.
‘You. Go back to the camp. I don’t need you here. You’ve done enough harm.’
The huge man sank down beside the twitching, moaning form of Callan and bent over him. ‘You’ve been injured. I’m going to have to take the arrow out, otherwise you’ll die. Do you understand? It’ll hurt, but I know what I’m doing.’
Callan nodded, his teeth gritted in pain. The man bent over once more and, with great force, took the arrow in both hands and snapped off the head as easily as Jay would have snapped a twig. Then, holding him with astonishing gentleness, he rolled him over. ‘Pull out the arrow,’ he said gently. ‘Can you do that?’
Kate bit her lip with nervousness. ‘One swift pull, evenly and straight. It’s the only way. Are you ready?’
She prepared herself, taking hold of the arrow with both hands, closed her eyes and, with a mighty tug, pulled. It came out in one go, and Callan’s screams echoed through the forest, making the birds fly off in fright.
‘Do you know how to bind wounds?’
She nodded silently.
‘Then I will hold him still. Bathe the openings with cold water and we will patch him up. Then we’ll take him to the camp and get him proper treatment.’