Cannonbridge

by Jonathan Barnes

  “What a melancholy message to have received. Yet I imagine that his wishes can be granted readily enough? As the country’s foremost man of letters now, you will naturally play a key role.”

  “No, my dear. I’m afraid you misunderstand. He has specified a date on which all of this is to come to pass.”

  “Surely, he suggests that this should be soon?”

  “On the contrary. All these things are to take place on the bicentenary of his first recorded appearance.”

  “But that would mean…” The lady thinks for a moment. Frowns incredulously. “2016.”

  “Quite so,” says Sir Arthur and for a long time after that nothing at all is said in that room and a terrible silence lies between them as though some truth had been uttered which might make untenable their slightest hope of future happiness.

  NOW

  THE WEATHER TONIGHT was always supposed to be good, fine and mild, without precipitation and with only the mildest of breezes. The good folks at the bank and at the events organiser that they hired for an eye-watering fee would scarcely have pressed ahead with the riverside marquees had the reports contained but a single element of ambiguity. Not on so important an occasion as this. Not with so many dignitaries present, with the movie stars, with the ambassadors, with the Prime Minister himself, for God’s sake. And not, above all, when it was going to cost so much money.

  So they are alarmed, then, when the first signs of a storm begin to make themselves apparent. A wind—exceptionally cold for the season—whips up, rustling the canvas, causing the banners, the famous face upon them to shimmer and distort. In the distance, dark clouds in the evening sky, pregnant with rain. In the air, the promise of a tempest, the ominous tang of electricity.

  These things have yet to come to the attention, however, of the great majority of those inside the VIP tent, riveted as they are by Dr Salazar’s slick and well-prepared speech.

  J J himself is oblivious to the imminent downpour as is SwaineTaylor, as are all the famous people, standing around, champagne flutes in hand, like so many tailors’ dummies, as is the PM himself, a little bored by proceedings, never having been much of a one for literature himself, feigning earnest interest with that air of sober conviction which had done so much to get him elected.

  Only Toby Judd, although he is not aware of the meteorological specifics, senses this shift in the atmosphere, this new urgency. At this very moment, he is moving at speed away from his wife (“Toby”, she hisses, although he ignores her, “get back here”), jostling his way through the ranks of celebrity and power, causing a little mayhem as he goes, jogging elbows, spilling a drink, treading on other men’s toes and tripping over ladies’ ball gowns. A muted chorus of tuts and shushes accompanies his progress. Caroline blushes crimson at the sight of him. And all the while, her lover talks on, speaking not now of Geneva, but of Boston and Haworth and Baltimore, of Karl and Wilkie and Oscar, of Plenitude, of The English Golem, of The Lamentation of Eliphar, Mununzar’s Son.

  At last, Toby reaches the object of his quest. Outside, the wind moves more powerfully, the storm clouds darken and approach.

  “I’ve worked it out,” Toby gasps.

  Swaine-Taylor turns to face him. “Whatever’s the matter? You seem most agitated.”

  “I’ve seen it all. Deduced the truth at last. And I know what you idiots have done.”

  The CEO sighs, glances meaningfully towards the stage and the popinjay who struts upon it. “Can’t this wait, Dr Judd?”

  “No. No, it can’t. It’s waited too long. Don’t you see? That’s the danger. Listen. I think you need to evacuate this whole area.”

  “Ridiculous. Why on earth would I want to do that?”

  “Because he’s coming back. Don’t you see? He’s coming back.”

  “You’re raving. Can’t say I blame you. It has been rather a stressful time for you. Whatever it is we can talk about it later.” He smiles lazily. “Perhaps when we discuss your remuneration package?”

  On stage, Salazar is reaching the end of his address. “And let us remember now,” he says. “Cannonbridge’s last instructions sent in that remarkable letter to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So let us now, on this glorious bicentenary, turn to face the river in which our author lost his life and, with glasses upraised and with gratitude in our hearts, offer a toast to the extraordinary life of Matthew Cannonbridge.”

  Whilst he has been delivering these words, the imminent storm has come to the attention of his audience—the canvas first rustling then moving with increasing violence in the sudden wind, the sound of rain upon the marquee, sounding more as if fistfuls of gravel are being thrown rather than water.

  Salazar tries not to look too thrown by this and, in spite of a few nervous glances exchanged between guests, the crowd largely do the same and revolve, with expressions of exaggerated good nature for the watching cameras, towards where they know the river to be. Swaine-Taylor does the same and Toby sees his opportunity, moving away from the CEO and towards the stage, muscling his way through the throng.

  A few feet away, he sees Mr Keen moving towards him with an expression of profound annoyance.

  “To Matthew Cannonbridge!” declares Dr Salazar and the assembly echo the cry.

  “Matthew Cannonbridge!”

  But by now, Toby has clambered onto the stage and is striding towards the microphone.

  Just as he reaches it, there is a further gust of wind and the whole structure shakes. The sound of rain swells and grows still more persistent. Salazar is looking at him in disbelief.

  “J J,” says Toby and, shoving him out of the way, steps up to the microphone. In the crowd, Mr Keen is moving towards him as, he sees now, are several of the Prime Minister’s security detail.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Toby says. “Your attention please!”

  The crowd, confused, look around.

  “My name is Toby and you probably don’t know me. If you do, it’ll be from that damn video on YouTube or, even worse, from the TV news. But you probably won’t recognise me because I used to have more hair back then. But I’m getting off the point. I’m rambling. Listen. If you really knew me—if you knew me properly—you’d understand that whilst I’m not very accomplished at most things in life I am good at making connections. I saw that Cannonbridge wasn’t real, you see.”

  Expressions of bemusement on some of the crowd, pity and disgust on the others.

  Keen and the guards are nearer now. Outside—a crack of thunder, the storm almost upon them.

  “This might not mean a great deal to you now but I want you all to remember. I’m asking you—all of you who are here today—I’m exhorting you to remember these words. Because I’ve got a horrible feeling that everything is about to change. And to survive what’s coming, to fight the darkness, you’re going to have to remember this. When Matthew Cannonbridge was first sighted, in Geneva and in London and in America, he was bewildered. He was benign then but he wasn’t quite fully formed, always afraid that some evil transformation lay ahead of him. And then, at the parsonage on Christmas Day in 1842, some implacable malevolence took hold of him and altered him forever. Blessborough and the island— they’d created a blank space, you see. A kind of empty thoughtform. And nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum.”

  Another crack of thunder, more rain, the audience still more mystified and ill at ease.

  Keen and the others are almost at the stage.

  “So what was it that changed him in Yorkshire? Think of the date! The year that this bank was founded! An intelligence, remember, beyond that of man! A bank’s not a person. That’s what I was told by its CEO. But what if it was? Don’t you see? What if it was?”

  Keen is on stage now. “Step away from the microphone,” he says. Behind him, the guards are climbing up.

  Toby is gabbling now. “It needs belief, Blessborough said. For the… warping to work. And he’s had almost a century of belief now. And he’s been down there waiting. Growing strong. Strong enough to have re
ached out to me, to have made contact through shards of his work. So what might he have become by now? Dear God, what might he have become?”

  Keen has him now by the arm, forced up behind his back, and is bundling him at speed off the stage.

  “I’d run!” Toby shouts. “All of you! Run!”

  Another surge of wind, the rain relentless, another crack of thunder, followed almost at once by lightning. Such a storm is upon them. Concerned conversation amongst the crowd, an anxious motion towards the door, the PM in worried conversation with an aide, J J looking furious, Swaine-Taylor disappointed and stern.

  Toby is off the stage and about to be manhandled out of the marquee when a terrible sequence of events occurs.

  A savage roar of thunder, a flash of lightning right overhead, screams from the crowd. A surge of electricity in the air. The wind rattles the marquee hard, as if trying to tear it apart. Several of the audience faint away. The rest are afflicted by sudden, brutal headaches and the urge to weep.

  Toby wants to shout another warning. But it is too late, far too late. The chain of cause and effect which began on the island of Faircairn, which stretches both forwards and backwards in time, is reaching its only possible conclusion, its unstoppable apotheosis.

  And then, quite suddenly, as if the storm has swept him into their midst he is there. He is amongst them.

  Toby yells out in furious despair, knowing that all is lost.

  In the centre of the floor stands Matthew Cannonbridge, just as he was, frock-coated, his pockets bulging with stones, his clothes dripping with water as if he has but lately clambered free of the river.

  Now he radiates power and energy. He is lightning incarnate. He is the god of the tempest.

  As one and unquestioningly, the assembly drop to their knees.

  When the creature speaks its voice is filled with the accumulated malice of more than half a century. He glances down at the man beside him, grovelling and weeping at his feet.

  “Prime Minister?” he says, an awful sick amusement in his words.

  The politician squeals an affirmative.

  “Splendid.” Cannonbridge smiles for the first time since 1902. “Now, we need to discuss terms.”

  After that, Toby goes a little mad.

  And the whole world goes crazy with him.

  1888

  CLERKENWELL LONDON

  “FORGIVE ME FOR troubling you so late, sir,” says the butler, a cadaverous septuagenarian poached at great expense from one of the country’s oldest families, “but the gentleman is here to see you.”

  “The gentleman, Northrupp?” says the butler’s employer who, in spite of the lateness of the hour, is still at his desk and working, busy with ledgers and account books and, most of all, with numbers. “Don’t you mean a gentleman? Who the devil is it?”

  “No, Mr Swaine-Taylor, I meant, as I said, the gentleman. I fancy that you know well to whom I refer.”

  At these words, Daniel Swaine-Taylor, hitherto merely grumpily officious, starts from his seat and stumbles upwards. It is as though some terrific current has been passed through him. In other circumstances the effect might have been comical. But not here. Most assuredly, not here.

  “Then show him in, man,” Swaine-Taylor snaps. “Immediately.”

  “I feel it only proper to warn you, sir…”

  “What is it now?”

  “The gentleman is a state of some dishevelment.”

  Like an animal cornered, Swaine-Taylor snarls. “Show. Him. In.”

  The butler withdraws, retreating stealthily back into the house.

  In the pause that follows, Swaine-Taylor sucks in a deep breath, runs his left hand over his lips and chin and does his best to compose himself.

  An instant later, his master is in the room and Swaine-Taylor is fighting the compulsion to sink to his knees. He sees also that his manservant was quite correct. Matthew Cannonbridge, usually so dapper, so sober and suave, appears to be in a state of something like shock. The room is dimly lit and the man’s clothes are as dark as ever but Swaine-Taylor can see all the same that Cannonbridge’s suit is glistening with moisture and that his face and hands are stained and daubed with something crimson and wet.

  “Daniel,” he says, and his voice is thick, not with emotion, but, Swaine-Taylor realises, with a kind of glutted quality, like a gourmet after the feast. “I fear I may have lost my temper somewhat.”

  “No matter, sir. No matter. You are not as other men. Our rules do not apply to one such as you.”

  Cannonbridge steps closer. He is sodden, Swaine-Taylor realises, drenched with offal and blood.

  Another step closer, almost touching now, and it can be smelt upon him, the slaughter, the reek of the abattoir.

  “I fear there may be consequences.”

  “No, sir. We will make quite sure of that.”

  “You will protect me, then? Reynolds will protect me?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  If Swaine-Taylor were in any doubt before of his damnation, those four words confirm it for him now.

  “Reynolds shall always protect you. For you are Reynolds, sir. Truly. And we are you.”

  Cannonbridge smiles at this, sharp teeth stained scarlet. “Thank you,” he says. “I knew I could rely upon the bank.”

  And in a horrible parody of affection and gratitude, the old monster takes the man in his arms, holding Swaine-Taylor tight, until every sense the financier possesses is overwhelmed by blood and death and madness.

  A YEAR FROM NOW

  “SO,” SAYS DR Boyce in his most calm, sensible and professional tone, “you stick by your conclusions?”

  He scans the notes which were left to him by his predecessor once again, looks quickly towards his new patient, a pale, haunted looking man.

  “I do,” says Toby Judd flatly. “I imagine you think I’m delusional?”

  Boyce summons a reassuring expression. “What I think doesn’t matter. I’ve no doubt that all of these…” He eyes wander down to his sheaf of notes again. “All of these concerns are utterly real to you.”

  “Hmph.” The patient wriggles on his chair. “That’s a pity. I’d hoped you might be someone who’d see to the truth of it. But no. Just like all the others. Taken in by the grand mirage.”

  “I confess I’m intrigued by the specifics of your beliefs.” Again, Boyce consults his notes. “It is your assertion that the Victorian writer Matthew Cannonbridge, whose descendant now advises the government, was somehow an entirely fictional creation?”

  “Not his descendent. The same man. You know that, don’t you? In your heart. That the descendant line is just a way to rationalise it.”

  “Ah. Well, we’ll come to that, won’t we? But it’s true that you believe him to be an invented figure dreamt up by this chap called Blessborough? He was then given actual bodily form by the inexplicable properties of a Scottish island and subsequently taken over by the essence of a noted investment bank which has somehow acquired a form of consciousness. How am I doing so far?”

  “Largely accurate,” says the patient with an exasperated huffiness. Boyce phrases his next sentence carefully. “How does it feel to have things laid out so starkly?”

  The patient looks unmoved. “It’s like hearing a perfectly logical series of events.”

  “I take it that you believe you’re the only man who can perceive the truth?”

  “No. Not the only one. There always seem to be a few who can see the reality. Either because we’re particularly sensitive or, in my case, in an especially heightened emotional state. Some of us, believe it or not, like poor Spicer are close to madness. The fine line, you see, between insanity and true vision.”

  “So where are they now? These other visionaries?”

  Judd shrugs. “They’ll be like me. In places like this. Or he’ll have found another way to silence them.”

  “You mean this present Cannonbridge might…” Boyce decides to let the implication hang in the air.

 
; “Why wouldn’t he? There’s nothing and nobody left to stop him. He’s become too powerful. All those years deep in the darkness of the river, growing fat on our belief. He’s unstoppable—a psychotic with the power of a deity.”

  Boyce looks sorrowfully at his charge. “And these beliefs, have they diminished in any way, or been brought into question, by the medication that you’ve been on?”

  “The drugs make me drowsy,” says the patient firmly. “They make me sleep. They introduce… ellipses into my days. They do not, however, render me stupid or blind or forgetful. In fact, as your predecessor may have told you, I am writing a full account of it. The whole truth about Cannonbridge’s life. I’ve even gone so far as to dramatise some of the flashpoints of the author’s life. It, is think, a sprightly and unusual biography.”

  “Ah. Now, I wasn’t aware of this particular project.”

  “No? Actually I gave the man before you the first few chapters to read. Haven’t seen him since.”

  “Well, Dr Marsden is sick at the moment.”

  “Ha! I’ll just bet he is.”

  “Good to see you’ve not lost your spirit, Toby. Well, I think that’s enough to get us started, don’t you? Lots to think about. I might experiment with raising your dosage. But I’ll see you again in a week. Shall I walk you back to your cell?”

  “If you like,” says the patient truculently. “Suit yourself.”

  “Super. Well, let’s shake a tail feather, shall we?”

  The two men rise to their feet, step out of Boyce’s consulting room and set off along the corridors in the direction of the patient’s quarters. They’ve not gone far before Boyce starts to realise that something is wrong. The place—often unruly, its atmosphere clotted with mental illness—is suddenly far too quiet. It is deserted too—they pass not a single soul on their walk. Every door to every room is shut.

  None of this panics Dr Boyce. He prides himself on his professional unflappability. Get the patient back to his room, he thinks, just get him safely installed there, then find out why the institution seems to be in lockdown. Stick to procedure. Follow the rules.