The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  Mr Sharp leant and whispered something in the horse’s ear, his hand stroking its neck as he spoke. The horse stilled again, and remained calm as he bent and lifted a foreleg, curling it upwards and confirming his suspicion that it was unshod.

  “Right,” he said, dropping the hoof as he straightened. “This may hurt, but it’s the only way to free you, my dear.”

  The horse rolled an eye sideways at him, a demented sliver of white flashing on the rim of the socket, matching the sharp silver edge now glittering through the air as Mr Sharp drew the blade from his coat and grabbed a handful of mane. He wrenched the horse’s neck towards him and slashed at it, three, four, five eye-defying times.

  The horse whinnied and jerked in fear, but Mr Sharp held tight as he cut the skulls from their plaits and sliced through the bridle and harness with the precision of a surgeon, moving so fast that the last skull had not hit the ground before he stepped back with the shreds of harness in his hand.

  The blade disappeared into his coat and he whipped out a large red kerchief and crouched over the scatter of small skulls, moving swiftly but carefully to drop them into it, like a man picking hot potatoes out of a pot with his fingers. The last skull was a puffin’s, and even though he moved fast and gripped tightly, the skull still managed to gimbal sideways and catch his finger in its short hooked beak, drawing blood. He winced and tugged it free.

  The beak chattered and snapped at him even as it fell, but stopped the moment it hit the red silk. He quickly gathered the corners of the kerchief and knotted them together, making a small bundle. He shook it and held it to his ear, as if listening for movement. Satisfied that there was none, he sucked the blood from his wounded finger, spat on the ground and led the horse out into the street with nothing more than a hand on its neck. It was calm and happy to go with him, and the mad look was gone from its eye.

  “Emmet will put iron on your hooves,” he said. “And you shall be protected.”

  CHAPTER 13

  A HARBOUR AND A HAVEN

  Sara led Lucy back into the kitchen. The girl was still trembling with the shock of glinting and what the past had shown her.

  “But such things do not exist,” said Lucy weakly, because she now knew she was wrong. “That green man—”

  Cook plonked two things on the table in front of her.

  “Well, you’re right about him: he certainly doesn’t exist any more,” she said with satisfaction. “That’s my best ladle. Three and a half pounds of solid silver.”

  And there it was, lying there on the scrubbed pine in front of her. A ladle like a sledgehammer. Next to a long pigtail. A green pigtail.

  Sara felt her heartbeat catch for an instant at the sight of it. Then she reached for it and held it up to the light.

  “I didn’t know you kept this…”

  “Well,” said Cook gruffly. “He stole the lovely raven colour from your hair. It seemed only right to keep his.”

  Sara smiled, matching the banked-up warmth in the older woman’s eyes. She turned to Lucy.

  “Cook has a highly developed sense of fair play. It comes out in the strangest ways.”

  “What was it?” said Lucy. “That devil.”

  “A Green Man,” said Sara, feeling the weight and the oily density of the plaited hairs in her hand. It still felt like a living thing to her, and she put it back on the table, controlling her sudden revulsion so that she appeared to be in no hurry to do so. “They’re not normally dangerous. Just mischievous. This one had gone mad.”

  “But how—?” said Lucy, looking from one to the other.

  “Her grandfather left a door open,” said Cook.

  “He unlocked a great many doors that should have remained shut,” said Sara Falk grimly, crossing to the sink and pumping water over her hand, washing the greasy feel of the green hair from her skin as casually as she could. “But I think we have closed all of them again.”

  “But just in case,” said Cook, and tapped the blunderbuss hanging from the pot rail. “Loaded with clipped Spanish pieces-of-eight from the old Potosi mine in the New World, before it became South America. Purest and most powerful silver I know, with nasty sharp edges. So no need to worry.”

  She patted Lucy’s arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze, but her eyes were on Sara.

  Lucy looked at the broken ring on her finger, then at Sara’s unbroken one, then down at Cook’s pudgy hand, which had the same ring on it.

  “I’m not mad,” she said. “Or bad.”

  “No,” said Sara, drying her hands and feeling her burned face. “No, you are clearly quite bad when you want to be. Just not in the way you meant.”

  And she grinned.

  Despite herself, Lucy smiled back.

  Cook disappeared into one of the pantries and returned with a slab of crumbly white cheese on a blue-striped plate. Another plate was pushed in front of Lucy, and then a new Eccles cake was placed on it. The golden pastry case was streaked with dark dribbles of mincemeat which had bubbled out of the three slits on top. She took a knife from the rack behind her and carved a neat triangle of cheese from the slab and put it beside the cake.

  Sara Falk, whose eyes were trained to miss as little as possible, could see that Lucy was very hungry. She saw her swallow reflexively at the juices beginning to run in her mouth. Sara, a connoisseur of self-denial and self-control, saw the younger woman steel herself, as if before she allowed herself to eat she had to ask another question. Sara shook her head and presented her with a fork.

  “You eat. Talk later.”

  The smell of the baking won. Lucy used the side of the fork like a knife, breaking a section of the pastry shell and shovelling a portion of the dark brown filling into it before putting both in her mouth.

  Sara saw the smile of animal satisfaction twitch on the side of Lucy’s mouth before she suppressed it. And in truth the Eccles cake tasted wonderful. The nutmeg and the cloves and the raisins and the hard yet flaky sugary pastry all mixed together as she chewed and ended up tasting like she had a dark but happy Christmas Day in her mouth.

  “Have the cheese too,” said Cook.

  So she did. And Sara could see Lucy realise it was perfect, so perfect that she didn’t remember to hide her smile this time. The cheese was like the opposite of all the other tastes and textures, smooth not flaky, firm not crumbly, one curiously flat cheesy taste instead of a mix of spices and fats and flour and fruits, adding up to the missing half that made sense of it all.

  She smiled at Cook and then at Sara, and they smiled too, and for a moment that was enough, that this instant was the first time they had all three shared a smile.

  “Supranatural,” said Lucy, mouth full. “This ‘glinting’. It is supranatural, yes?”

  “It is a supranatural power, yes,” said Sara Falk.

  “So how will you regulate me?” said Lucy.

  Sara made herself pause and choose the right words. Having raised the first smile she had no wish to lose the barely kindled flicker of trust it betokened.

  “Carefully. Kindly. As a friend.”

  “Why?” asked Lucy. “Why would you do that? You do not know me.”

  “Because we all have supranatural powers of our own, child,” said Cook. “We have all been you, in our own way, when we were younger.”

  “Set a thief to catch a thief,” said Sara. “But we’re on the side of light. Not of shadows. And this house, this is the Safe House. No harm will come to you here. The Green Man was an accident. He did come to us out of the shadows with malice, but he came because my grandfather unlocked a door and, as I said, left it open. That does not happen any more. He came because there is something in the house that is a key to both the natural and supranatural worlds, and it is our duty to guard it, and to guard the inhabitants of the natural world from supranaturals who would wish to harm them. It is a key of great power, but it is safe here now. This house, the Safe House, is a bulwark and a bastion against the darkness.”

  “A harbour and a haven,” s
aid Cook.

  “They have sometimes tried to find us, when they remember us, and they have tried to harm us,” said Sara Falk with a smile. “But do not worry, Lucy Harker. You are protected and secure here. They likely do not know where we are, and if they do, then they do not know how to overcome our many defences.”

  “And with luck they do not know how reduced our numbers are,” added Cook.

  “Numbers are not everything,” said Sara. “As long as five stand together to make a Hand, The Oversight remains. It is the oldest law of the Free Company. It’s known as the Rule of Five. And there are still five.”

  “And when there aren’t,” said Cook, reaching to the centre of the table and rearranging the oak twig so that the five-wood star around the candle was more symmetrically shaped, “things go bad so fast you don’t have time to worry because you’re so busy trying to outrun the flames. You don’t believe me–go and have a look at the Monument and see what happened last time.”

  “The Wildfire hasn’t been loosed to take the city for nearly two centuries, and The Oversight, like the city itself, was made better and stronger after the Great Fire,” said Sara, the light from the candle dancing in her eyes. “Even now, even after the Disaster that befell us, we are better if fewer, and in this place of all places, we are safe. There is nothing in London that can harm you.”

  She caught Lucy’s eyes and for a moment considered whether she had just lied to the girl, for she had just glimpsed a kind of cloaked reserve in them that made Sara wonder if there was in strict truth one thing in London that might harm Lucy, and that was Lucy herself.

  CHAPTER 14

  HOWEVER…

  … thirteen hours of hard riding north of London, it was raining with a peculiar viciousness, as if the blustery night had a score to settle with the small and often overlooked county of Rutlandshire, and had determined that if it couldn’t drown it by dawn it would at least wash it away into the featureless oblivion of the neighbouring Lincolnshire fens.

  On an exposed stretch of the Great North Road, five miles out of Great Casterton, a solitary carrier’s cart was making slow progress through the relentless squalls, horses head-down and hunched against the downpour, the driver so tightly wrapped in his oilskin coat that he appeared no more human than the lumpy bales and boxes lashed down beneath the tarpaulin behind him. The only illumination on this lonely road came from the dim lanterns swinging from the front and back of his cart.

  A sudden flash of lightning turned night to day for a jagged moment, revealing a stark T-shape by the side of the road made from a tall pole topped with a horizontal crosspiece.

  The oilskin bundle pulled back on the reins, slowing the horses, and then took his whip and reached backwards, prodding the tarpaulin at the rear of the cart.

  “Bowland’s Gibbet!” he shouted in. “Bowland’s Gibbet!”

  The tarpaulin shifted and coughed, and then something slithered out from beneath it, two boots splashing into a deep puddle as a hidden passenger dropped off the tail of the cart.

  For a moment the carrier could see him quite clearly in the glow of the tail-lantern, a thin youth, a little taller than average, his body wrapped in a high-collared serge overcoat that was clearly a worn hand-me-down from a much larger man. He wore a battered hat pulled low over his forehead, and the lower part of his face was swathed in a chequered muffler wrapped several times round his neck. His eyes were the only visible features, flashing briefly in the dull lantern-light as he bobbed his head and raised a hand in silent thanks.

  “Bowland’s Gibbet!” repeated the carrier, “and the main gate to Gallstaine Hall beyond.”

  He pointed his whip at the roadside gallows, and then aimed it across the way to a high wall topped with iron spikes. Fifty yards further on the wall was broken by an ornate pair of gates set back from the highway, clearly the main entrance to some great estate beyond. He turned and cracked his whip and the horses leant resignedly into the wind-driven rain again and headed on into the foul night.

  “And good luck to you, young man,” he shouted over his shoulder, already re-swaddling himself in his oilskin.

  The youth watched the tail-lantern swinging away, leaving him alone and lightless in the centre of the road, and then he drew his coat more tightly round himself and ran down the wall until he got to the gate.

  There was no lodge house and the gate was, on closer inspection, unusual: beyond the thick wrought-iron bars, where you might have expected to see a driveway snaking off towards some large house hidden in the elegant parkland beyond, there was only a blackness even darker than the surrounding night.

  It was not the gate to a driveway.

  It was the entrance to a tunnel.

  The young man found a brass bell handle set in the stone gatepost and yanked it hard several times. In the distance he heard a bell jangle, and a dog started barking. A door opened in the side of the tunnel and light slashed across its width, revealing that it was floored with coconut matting and vaulted with brick. It was also wide enough to easily accommodate a carriage being driven down it.

  A large brindled mastiff hurtled out of the door and charged the gate, barking and snarling with such gleeful savagery that the boy stepped back a yard, even though the bars kept the animal from him.

  “Down, Saracen! Down, you devil!” snarled a man’s voice, every bit as ferocious as the dog. The gatekeeper limped up behind the brute and wrested it back from the bars. Behind him a small child with a dripping nose appeared, rubbing sleep from his eyes and carrying a bull’s-eye lantern. The gatekeeper snatched the light from him and held it up to the bars.

  “Who is it?”

  The young traveller stepped forward, bobbed his head in a silent greeting, and then reached inside his coat, fumbling for something. He produced a letter and took off his hat to keep the rain from it as he held it out through the bars, keeping one eye on the barely restrained dog. The gatekeeper took the folded paper and looked at the name inscribed on it in thick slashes and curlicues of black ink. It read, “To the Viscount Mountfellon–By Hand–Most Urgent and Private.”

  He flipped the envelope and examined the crimson blob sealing it on the reverse. The wax bore the imprint of a grinning skull above a deeply incised motto reading “As I am, you will be”.

  Most skulls grin because the lack of any skin robs them of any viable alternative: this skull not only grinned, but positively gloated.

  “Right,” he said. “Whitlowe! Running Boy! Letter for his Lordship; cut along sharpish!”

  And he handed the letter and the lantern to the small child who sniffed once more, wiped his nose and then turned and sprinted down the tunnel, the circle of light bobbing around him steadily diminishing as he sped away from them into the dark.

  The gatekeeper turned back to the soaking youth on the other side of the gate. He leaned forward and opened the shutter on the lantern, increasing the light playing on Amos.

  “See your face?”

  Amos unwrapped the muffler. His green eyes were a startling counterpoint to the burned caramel colour of his skin. The gatekeeper nodded as if he’d made a great discovery.

  “You’re a darkie.”

  This wasn’t news to Amos. Nor was it something he ever forgot, indeed his “brothers” made a point of reminding him of the fact at every opportunity, the only variation in the monotony of their practice being the seemingly endless litany of new and unkind words they dredged up from the teeming docks and market gutters to describe the visible effect of the mixed strains in his ancestry. So he didn’t react to the gatekeeper’s comment. He just looked back at him with an entirely neutral expression.

  “You to wait for a reply?”

  He nodded. The gatekeeper gave him a sly smile.

  “So who’s the letter from then?”

  The youth shrugged and said nothing.

  “Come on, cully,” said the man in a wheedling tone. “Just a natural interest as to what must be so important to be delivered so late and in such w
eather…?”

  The messenger again kept quiet. The gatekeeper scowled at him.

  “Don’t say much do you, cully?”

  He shook his head.

  “You stupid or something? Cat got your tongue? Or just haughty, like?”

  The youth shook his head again, shivering at the rain runnelling down his neck as he unwound his muffler and pulled out an oval brass plate he wore around his neck on a worn leather strap. There was just enough light from the door in the side of the tunnel for the gatekeeper to read the letters stamped into it:

  MY NAME IS AMOS TEMPLEBANE AND I AM MUTE BUT INTELLIGENT.

  The gatekeeper’s lips moved as he read the words slowly, then gave a snort of unkind mirth as he stepped back and looked at the dripping boy.

  “Not intelligent enough to stay home and dry on a wet night though, are you?”

  Amos rolled his eyes and made a dumb show by which the gatekeeper was invited to open the gate and allow him inside the mouth of the tunnel, out of the weather. The gatekeeper in turn made a pantomime of shaking his head.

  “No one inside the gates without his Lordship’s permission. Don’t worry though, darkie: you just stop there until we see if there’s a reply. You can’t get any wetter.”

  With that he turned on his heel, leaving the dog to sit and stare at Amos on the other side of the bars, and disappeared back into his cubby and closed the door, cutting off the slash of light so that all Amos could see was a distant glow from the running child, who was now out of sight beyond the initial incline of the tunnel. He put his brass badge back inside his coat with a well-practised and fatalistic sigh, shook out his muffler and made a kind of hood which he then tied over his hat, and retreated into a natural recess made by the gateposts that gave at least the illusion, if not the strict reality, of protection from the unending downpour.