Cannonbridge

by Jonathan Barnes

  Cries at this of “aye” and “certainly” from those seated all about—polite echoes of the same from the two ladies at the front.

  The young man in the lighter robes smiles, gratified. “Then let us begin,” he says. “The operation will be a long one and far from easy. There may in addition be no small amount of peril—for we are to treat today with forces far beyond our comprehension.”

  Miss Lavenham glances at Constance with glee and expectation in her eyes.

  What follows, however, is, as is so often the case at such events as these, a good deal of tedium. There is much Latin of questionable quality intoned by the young man in the lighter-coloured robes only part of which Constance is able to follow. There is much standing up and sitting down again, a good deal of call and response, a fair amount of chanting and half-sung repetition. There is, notably, no refreshment of any kind.

  After what must be more than an hour of this, Constance begins to feel rather out of sorts—afflicted, to equal degrees, by a headache and by sceptical bafflement. The room feels closer than before and the smell of human perspiration is quite palpable. The air is filled with expectation, the black altar gleams, the voice of the man at the head of the temple waxes ever more hysterical.

  “The veil is weakening!” he calls at last, at which it seems that even Miss Lavenham is flagging. “Contact is within our grasp. But first! First, a sacrifice is asked of us and I fear that sacrifice must be of blood.”

  At this, the two ladies trade glances of uncertainty.

  “I have it here!” cries the young magus and draws from some fold within his robes what looks at first like a small red ball but which swiftly reveals itself to be, for all that Constance’s mind rebels at the sight of it, a bloody heart.

  It must be from an animal, she thinks, as the blood drips down the high priest’s hands and mingles with the pale damson of his robes. It must be. It must.

  “The heart,” declares the magus, holding the thing high above his head, “of a corrupt old man whose life was filled with sin. This is the heart, my brethren, of Daniel Swaine-Taylor!”

  He squeezes hard and the thing seems to crumple in his hand. Placing it upon the centre of that terrible black altar he smears his mouth with offal and presents his audience with an evil crimson smile.

  “Now come!” he shrieks, arms outstretched in hierophantic entreaty. “Come to us, oh demon beyond the veil! I bid you come! I bid you speak! I, the Great Beast, demand your presence before the Order!”

  What happens, Constance will think forever after, would absolutely defy belief had she not seen and heard it for herself.

  Miss Georgina Lavenham, however, will have no memory of it all for at this very moment she has just swooned away, her unconscious body falling towards the floor.

  It is only great good fortune and her own quick thinking which means that Constance is able to catch her in her arms and save Miss Lavenham from injuring herself. “Oh, Georgina,” she says softly.

  And then, ten seconds after that, all hell breaks loose.

  NOW

  THE JOURNEY TO London is the longest and most terrible of Toby’s life. They drive through the night. There is blood on the wheels, he thinks, as the Saab speeds on, there’s blood on these tyres.

  He moves in and out of consciousness, his dreams filled with visions of Gabriela, of Caroline, of the murdered Blessborough sisters, of Salazar and Faircairn and Mr Keen himself and, rearing above them all, the dark, mocking, impossible face of Matthew Cannonbridge.

  Once, he wakes to find that the car has stopped, in (he imagines) a lay-by. Keen is bending over him, dabbing something damp at his forehead and forcing his jaws apart.

  “Swallow these,” he says, pushing a couple of pills into Toby’s mouth and following them up with a sip of water from a bottle of Evian.

  Numbly, Judd obeys.

  On another occasion, Toby wakes from a dream of ceremonies and invocations, to see Mr Keen speaking softly into his mobile phone.

  “Yes, sir,” he says and, “It won’t be long now” and, “Pliable so far.”

  His eyes never leave the road. Something in Toby wants to hear more of the driver’s conversation but soon he sleeps once more. He wonders what those pills were and at their horrible efficacy.

  He wakes, deep in the small hours, and what he sees then he is almost sure must be a dream—at least he devoutly wishes that it were so.

  Mr Keen, head back, relaxed and happy, is singing, with all the antic fervency of a revivalist preacher: “Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day!”

  Toby grimaces, rubs his eyes, but still the vision persists. “I’ve got a beautiful feeling everything’s going my way!”

  It is with tremendous relief that Judd succumbs again to drugged sleep.

  SHORTLY AFTER DAWN, they stop for breakfast. There’s a Starbucks by the side of the motorway, a pricey trough for the human cattle who are transported on the roads which connect England to the highlands. Sitting in the car park, seeming, no doubt, to any blearyeyed yet curious motorist, like a couple of talkative buddies, Mr Keen lays down the ground rules.

  “No attracting attention of any kind. No asking for help. No messages on napkins or scenes designed to get sympathy from the baristas. Just be polite, be obedient, be discreet and, above all, be unmemorable. Is that understood?”

  Judd nods to show that those instructions are comprehended fully.

  “I won’t hesitate to hurt you,” says Keen softly and with a quite inappropriate air of good humour. “In fact, I’d appreciate a good excuse to do so.”

  Toby stares at him, still muzzy-headed from the drugs, aching from the trauma and weary, weary from grief.

  “Good,” says Keen. “Then we’re on the same page. Come on, Dr Judd. I’m hungry.”

  INSIDE, TOBY PICKS at his croissant and sips sullenly at his black coffee. Keen, who has opted for the breakfast of a child—a tub of pink yoghurt and a carton of unnaturally yellow banana frappuccino, topped, sickeningly, with cream—attacks his meal with gusto.

  Toby watches this display for a while before, asking bitterly: “What made you like this?”

  “Like what, Dr Judd?”

  Toby lowers his voice, hisses: “A killer.”

  Keen shrugs, sucks on his straw. “Socialism.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious. Used to be a right little Bolshie. Union man. Sold the Morning Star on the high streets on Saturdays. And then something happened which helped me realise that the war was lost a long time ago. Money’s the god of this world. We can either serve it happily or we can wither or die.” All this is delivered in the calmest, pleasantest of tones.

  “And what was it?” Toby asks. “What was it which triggered this Sixth Form revelation, this startling moment of debate club insight?”

  Keen’s face darkens. “Now that,” he says in a voice of overt menace, “is a long story. And it’s one for another day.”

  Toby sighs and takes another swig of coffee, the taste of it bitter in his mouth. “Toilet,” he says. “Need to go.”

  Keen glares at him. “Try nothing.”

  Toby rises to his feet and walks miserably towards the lavatory. The gents are as foul as motorway conveniences always are, no matter how often they’re cleaned and regardless of which conglomerate owns them. Two men are lingering by the urinals and there is a vile smell in the air. There are also, Toby notices, no windows. He goes next door instead to the disabled cubicle, slightly cleaner than the others. Here he sees that there is a window—and one that has been left a little ajar at that.

  Fuelled by rage and sorrow and savage indignation, he climbs more nimbly than usual up onto the toilet seat and to the window.

  Yes, he thinks. Just wide enough for me to get through. If I force myself. If I wriggle and squirm. He vaults upwards, opens the window as wide as it will go, puts his head out, then his neck, then his shoulders and flails and pushes and strains. The car park tarmac beckons and he feels the gid
dy joy of the chicken who spies a gap in the farm fence.

  So caught up is he in this tiny moment of triumph that he does not hear the toilet door click open nor notice the sound of footsteps advancing across the floor.

  What he does notice, however, are the hands upon his legs which drag him from the window and back into the cubicle. He notices the rueful face of Mr Keen and he notices his words, delivered with gleeful mock-regret (“I thought we were on the same page”). He is also thoroughly aware of what happens next. Mr Keen takes up Toby’s right hand, picks three fingers at random and, with an exhortation to his victim not to call out, pushes each of them in turn back beyond the point of endurance, taking relish in each decisive snap. It is over quickly but the pain persists.

  Judd whimpers softly.

  “Back to the car, I think,” says Keen. “You know the rules.”

  IF ANY OF the employees or customers of that particular roadside coffee house think it at all odd that a man should return from the bathroom with one hand in his pocket, sweating despite the chill of the morning and with tears in his eyes, then none remarks upon it nor takes the slightest action.

  THE REST OF the journey is passed in silence. By the time that they arrive in the capital, twilight has begun to fall.

  1897

  READING GAOL

  “I CONFESS MYSELF surprised,” says Prisoner C33, “that you have contrived to see me at all. I am permitted, you understand, but few guests.”

  Cannonbridge smiles his inhuman smile. “I have a good deal of friends. Many of whom enjoy considerable preferment. Our meeting was not, therefore, an especial challenge to arrange.”

  The prisoner yawns and stretches and somehow succeeds in preserving in his voice at least an echo of that satiric puckishness which once had been the engine of his fame.

  “How very impressive, Matthew. I may call you ‘Matthew’, mayn’t I?”

  The two men are sitting opposite one another, hunched over a stained and rickety table, in a grimy little room, barely more than a compartment that is set aside in this great and terrible prison for the infrequent and fiercely rationed conjunctions of captives and members of the public. Outside the door is a guard and beyond him can be heard the eternal prison clangour of doors and locks and boots on metal, of mocking cries and sobs of lamentation, of injustice, of despair.

  Against this persistent cacophony, Cannonbridge gazes levelly at the prisoner.

  “Might I ask,” says the inmate, “why you wished to see me? As you behold, I am scarcely in the best of conditions in which to play the host.”

  In this, the prisoner is assuredly correct. In his old life outside these walls, a life of wealth and reputation, he had inclined to plumpness, the aesthetic ringlets which had framed his cherubic face making him resemble, it was often said, some ancient god of excess, of pleasure and carnality. In here, his hair has been cropped close and his body has become almost lean. His prison clothes have become too large and he sits rather oddly within them like a malnourished child or a very old man, shrinking and pitiful.

  Sitting, visibly weakened and unsteady, upon that grim seat he might easily form the subject of some salutary oil painting entitled ‘Cast Down’ or ‘The Fallen Sensualist’ or ‘The Rewards of Vice’.

  “I wanted to see you,” says Matthew Cannonbridge, “because I have grown concerned about your welfare. Tossed in this dreadful institution by a society that once revered you. Beaten and broken and forgotten. Humiliated. Brought low. Spurned. Bedevilled.”

  “All these things are true,” says the prisoner, sanguine to an almost comical degree. It is not difficult for a second or so to imagine him as once he was, lolling upon a chaise longue at one soiree or another and delivering elegantly prepared bon mots in those soft, well-modulated tones, which contain within them the merest spicing of the accent of his homeland.

  Then the illusion flees and reality is reasserted. The deposed man, the humbled poet, is returned. “And yet,” he goes on, “I do not believe that your motive for this visitation is composed even to the smallest degree of any vein of human sympathy. Indeed, from all that I know of you, Matthew, I am far from certain that you are even capable any more of that most vital of emotions.”

  Cannonbridge gazes coolly at him, the charge neither accepted or rebutted.

  “So I shall ask you again, Matthew, why have you come here and what is it that you want with me?”

  “Very well.” Cannonbridge makes a curious, almost ritualistic gesture with his hands, palms outstretched—the closest he must come, thinks Prisoner C33, to conceding a point. “I have arranged this little consultation only because…” He pauses, places his hand carefully back upon the tabletop, “I am desirous of finding myself… on the right side of history.”

  The prisoner does not stir but only breathes, slowly and carefully. He has learnt patience in this place, after all—oh, how painfully he has learnt it. “Could you trouble yourself,” he says at length, “to explain?”

  Outside, a shriek, a muffled curse, the sounds of the misery of the caged.

  Then, the words of Matthew Cannonbridge. “This,” he says and his manner seems to indicate that he refers to the whole of the dismal scene, “is not how you will remembered. Not in essence. Rather, in time, your captors will be cast down, your false friends vilified as Iscariots and, most glorious of all, your sins will be transmuted into virtues.”

  “Indeed?” says the prisoner. “Is that what you believe?”

  “This is what I know, sir,” he replies, “for I have seen it.”

  C33 gazes silently at this strange trespasser. Although a good deal more must be passing through his mind, in the end all that he says is: “And so you wish to be remembered as… a visionary, then? A man ahead of his time?”

  Matthew Cannonbridge nods. “Quite so. And I am understandably eager to avoid…” He pauses, searching for the best and most apposite phrase, “… reputational damage.”

  “I see. Well, thank you, sir, for your candour. Now, might I be allowed to be equally candid in return?” Something of the old fire is in his voice again, a little of that passion and wit which had been feared lost forever. Not waiting for the author’s permission, the prisoner speaks on, more swiftly and with increasing fluency. “Evidently I represent to you an object of considerable interest. I feel it only just to say that you have long formed a comparable object to me. Your fame, your wealth and notoriety—the way in which, whilst rumours of your transgressions abound, you look no older than you did when first you took the public stage. I think you will comprehend why I might find such a figure… intriguing.”

  Cannonbridge is amused. “Is that so?”

  “I have always been drawn to mysteries, Matthew, and there is, I fancy—no, I am sure—a dark mystery to you.”

  Cannonbridge seems unruffled by the allegation though there is something—just the tiniest indication around the eyes and in the tilt of his head, that he is not wholly immune from disquiet. “And is it,” he says, the tone of droll amusement perhaps somewhat forced, “a mystery that you believe yourself to have solved?”

  “Not as yet, no. And not entirely. But I do possess what I think we might call a clew.”

  “How frustrating.”

  “I wonder if you will recollect, Matthew, that my sorely mistreated but always beloved wife Constance once took a particular interest in matters that we may as well call the magical, the occult, the oracular?”

  “I do not.”

  “No? Well, perhaps it was a thing that she confided only to her intimates. Now, I remember her telling me, not long, in fact, before that chain of events which led to my own ruination were set in motion, that she had once attended a certain ceremony at the premises of the Order of the Moon-Born in which, after a great deal of theatrics, that, remarkably and, I suspect, somewhat to the surprise of all who were present on that weekday afternoon, contact was apparently made with what seemed to be a genuine spirit.”

  Cannonbridge all but shrugs. “What of
it? One hears many peculiar stories about the Order. I fancy that the drink that they serve there must be unusually potent or else augmented with some other substance.”

  “Perhaps, sir. But my wife is hardly given to excess nor to an abundance of imagination or fancy. I should always take her word in all things. My current position affords me a good deal of time for thinking and I have thought much about the tale that she told me of that weird, blood-tinged event. Oh, it began, I am told, with a great and terrible rushing in the air, as though some mighty gale were rushing through the room although the place (no doubt they thought of it as a temple) was deep beneath the earth and the day without quite still. Then every candle was snuffed out and all was plunged into darkness. The ground seemed to shake beneath their feet although no tremor was reported in any other part of the city. And then, after all these unprecedented phenomena, a voice was heard, deep, mocking, ancient and cruel and sounding somehow, though no-one present could ever say exactly why, inhuman and issuing from some impossible, invisible mouth.”

  “Remarkable indeed. If true. And did this disembodied voice impart anything of interest?”

  “Oh yes, I rather think it did.”

  “And what, pray, was that?”

  “Now I think that you know, Mathew. Or perhaps you will know.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “It said it was an aspect of something greater. Some… form of life beyond humanity. Not a demon or a devil as we would understand it. Rather, it represents what comes after man. The next stage, so to speak. It represents the most remarkable leap of… cognition.”

  “And you imagine that you comprehend the words of this… aspect?”

  “Certainly, locked up in here, I am sufficiently vain as to believe that I am beginning to see the pattern. Seeing you today has helped in that regard. Or rather… smelling you.”