The White City

by Simon Morden

She shrugged and walked along the top of the wall as it curved down to meet the ground, and jumped when the distance was narrow enough. She looked around: everything seemed on the verge of collapsing, like she’d walked on to the scene of some end-of-days catastrophe.

  The door in the wall didn’t look like it could be locked. It was old and wooden and warped, but she could see nothing between the cracks in the boards. There was no handle or knob on her side, and even though there was a place where she could squeeze her fingers between the door and its frame, it wouldn’t flex, let alone open.

  She frowned, then became aware of being watched.

  The two men were back. Nathaniel, the stone-thrower, had armed himself with a club. His colleague was empty-handed but for some rope.

  ‘Why don’t you hold it right there,’ she said, ‘because I’m not into the whole hit on the head and tied up thing.’

  The rope-carrier licked his thin lips and the pair of them edged forward a step, each one daring the other to go first.

  ‘I can either fly away or knock your sorry arses into next week. Your call.’

  The stone, hidden in Nathaniel’s other hand, flew straight for her face, where it stopped an inch from her nose, turning slowly. She reached up, plucked it out of the air, and dropped it next to her.

  ‘You’re not getting this, are you?’

  They looked ready to run again. The rope-carrier touched his free hand to his chest, four times in quick succession, making the pattern of a cross. ‘God protect us. A witch.’

  Mary had been called a lot of things in the past, and given she could turn into a falcon and light fires with a snap of her fingers, she let this one slide.

  ‘We can talk, or we can call each other names. You’re not exactly Brad Pitt yourself.’ When they didn’t respond, and just quivered with fear and uncertainty, she decided that she’d nothing to lose going with a direct approach. ‘I’m looking for the White City. Do you know where that is?’

  ‘We know of no such place: ask your demon familiar instead. Now, back to Hell, witch, and take the plague with you.’ Nathaniel raised his club higher and gripped it harder.

  ‘Whoa. Hang on.’ She thought about burning bodies and run-down houses, the crosses and skulls. ‘Plague. You’re shitting me, right?’

  ‘Your tongue is as coarse as your manners, you heathen blackamoor. Perhaps I should send you to Hell myself.’ He took another step, and Mary took one back.

  ‘What’s the other side of that door?’ she asked, pointing behind her.

  ‘London, for all the good it does us,’ said the rope man. ‘We are marooned here, and still the pestilence follows us through.’

  ‘Do not furnish her with answers! She will use them for devilry.’

  ‘Aye, that she might, but the sin will be hers, not mine.’ The man dropped his rope, recognising the exercise as futile. ‘You have a name, witch?’

  ‘Mary,’ said Mary.

  ‘A Christian name?’ He wiped at his pale, sweaty face. ‘Beelzebub goes by many disguises.’

  ‘Whoever that is. You’re serious about this plague, though?’ There was something half-remembered tickling the back of her mind. ‘What year is it through there?’

  ‘The year of our Lord, sixteen sixty-five.’

  ‘Fuck. The Black Death.’

  ‘It is a judgement for our iniquities,’ said Nathaniel. ‘If we turn back to God, then we will be saved. As it is, we serve him here. When we are not consorting with witches, that is. We try to live lives of penitence and mercy, for as long as it pleases Him to spare us.’

  She took another step back, and she felt cold, inside and out. ‘You have the plague.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the rope man. ‘Brother Nathaniel is miraculously recovered and seems to enjoy God’s ongoing protection. I confess that I do not. So we burn the bodies of those who come through that door to die on these lonely shores, just as I will be burned in turn. ’Tis a good cause, to keep these lands free from the disease, since we cannot do that for our own.’

  ‘They come through that door?’

  ‘A dozen a day, more this past fortnight.’ He turned away and coughed long and hard. When he turned back, his sleeve was speckled with fresh bright blood, and his breathing was laboured. ‘Witch though you surely are, you had better be gone on those wings of yours, or else stay with us for ever. These houses are nearly full, but there’ll be plenty of room soon enough.’

  She knew almost nothing about the Black Death, except that it killed thousands, was spread by rats, and it ended when London caught fire.

  ‘You’ve gone nowhere else but this island?’

  ‘Some try,’ said Nathaniel. He lowered his club and tapped it in his empty hand. ‘I persuade them to stay if I must. Most can be reasoned with, being honest Englishmen and women, though truth be told, there is no escape.’

  She could tell him about the boats, how they grew up out of the sand. There was a portal here, and the lines of power connecting it with other doors to London would cut the coast in several places. Perhaps even the beach where she first spotted the skulls and crosses.

  ‘I think you’re very brave,’ she said. ‘It gets better. It really does.’

  ‘Cold comfort from you,’ said Nathaniel. ‘John will take his place in the houses, and I will conscript some other damned soul to help me dispose of the dead. If that is better, then I do not know what is worse.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go.’

  ‘Aye, go,’ he said. ‘Go before the door opens, and we have to be about our dread business.’

  She definitely wasn’t going to tell them about the boats. They’d quarantined themselves for a good reason, and she wasn’t going to put temptation in their way. So she nodded and trotted back to the wall, climbing up on it and running along the top of it.

  John called after her. ‘Before you go, tell us if you can: where is this place? Are we in some cloister of England, or are these the foothills of Heaven?’

  ‘Neither. It’s just … Down,’ she said, and she raised her hand in farewell.

  10

  Mama dumped herself next to Dalip on the crest of the dune and splayed her legs out in front of her. She took a while to get comfortable, wriggling the sand into shape with little movements of her hips and shoulders. Then she sighed.

  ‘You know that girl’s not coming back, don’t you?’

  Dalip chewed at his lower lip and, rather than answer, he reached between his knees for a handful of sand and let it slowly dribble away.

  Mama nudged him in the ribs to get his attention. ‘She’s been gone all day. Either Crows did for her or, the other thing happened, as we all feared.’

  There was nothing to see that he hadn’t seen for himself every time he looked up. The beach, the bay, the sea, the distant island: that was it. Once in a while, a bird would drift into view and his heart would leap, but they were only ever regular seagulls and they broke his hope a little more each time. Now, the sun was going down and he was in pieces. Today’s achievements had been to dig two graves, lose Luiza, lose Mary, lose the maps, lose the boat and lose Crows. They’d gained a handful of loose change and a plastic egg.

  All in all, not a fair exchange.

  ‘Perhaps she can’t find her way back,’ he said.

  ‘We’re like pimples on a face, Dalip. We’re in plain view for all to see – we’re the orangiest things in the whole of Down. No one is going to miss us here, least of all Mary.’ She waggled her toes. ‘We’re the only ones left, so we have to decide what to do now.’

  ‘We have to stay here, in case she comes to find us.’ He remembered a similar argument, not so long ago, even though it felt like a lifetime had passed. He’d been on the other side then, persuading the others to move on and away from the portal, while Mama had been all for staying put. He made a face. ‘I know how it sounds.’

&nbs
p; ‘We can’t stay, can we? We all understand why. There’s nothing left for us here.’ She gestured at the empty beach. ‘We have no wood, no way to light it, no food, no way to catch it, and we can’t hang around here for another boat because we can’t go chasing after them when we have no idea where they went. We’ve got to get on with living as best we can.’

  ‘What does Elena want?’

  ‘That girl doesn’t know what she wants at the moment. But the sure thing is, if we stay here she’ll do nothing but weep over Luiza’s grave, and I don’t trust Down to leave her alone in her grief. Once this place has its hooks in you, it doesn’t let go.’ She leaned in, butting her biceps against his. ‘Us three have to stick together, because this place is as cruel as it is beautiful.’

  She knew she was right, and so did he. He’d had all those thoughts himself. ‘We can’t go anywhere now. It’s going to be night soon.’

  ‘We can go under the trees. It’ll be warmer out of the wind.’

  ‘But that’ll mean …’ He clicked his tongue. She knew what it meant, which is why she suggested it. Get Elena away from her cousin, stop him staring out to sea. ‘Okay. We’d better move while we still have some light.’

  Mama hauled herself to her feet, using Dalip’s shoulder as a brace. She held out her hand.

  ‘Come on, Dalip. We can’t give up now.’

  That stung him. He wasn’t giving up, least of all on Mary. She hadn’t deserted them. Not when they were Bell’s prisoners, and not now. So why would he give up on her? She wasn’t dead, either. Not her.

  He wanted to say something to that effect to Mama, but all that came out was a growl. He took her hand instead, and she pulled him up. He looked one last time towards the far horizon, and there was still nothing. How was all this possible, when the sun had risen on such promise? He deliberately turned his back and blotted out the view by descending the far side of the dune.

  ‘We’re,’ he started. He still hadn’t found the right words to say to Elena, and these weren’t right either. ‘We’re going into the forest. We might not be able to light a fire, but I can build a shelter, or at least a windbreak.’ He had a machete, so he wasn’t promising anything he couldn’t deliver.

  Elena looked up from the heap of sand that covered Luiza’s body. She’d placed flowers on top, and the plastic egg against the side of the dune at the head end. Those were the only things she had to lay there. Sikhs didn’t mark graves – shouldn’t even have graves – but this wasn’t his relative or his religion and he didn’t say anything.

  Mama went around behind her and gently lifted her up, guiding her with an arm around her, whispering in her ear as she went. It was going to be okay, she said, when the truth was the worst had already happened, and it might never be okay ever again.

  At least the forest was still there, and they camped in a little hollow in its scrubby fringes. Dalip found that the machete was incredibly useful: he could cut saplings, split them ready for weaving, sharpen stakes with the edge and hammer them in with the flat side, and chop undergrowth to cover the frame.

  It was past twilight by the time he’d finished, and he was utterly exhausted. It was little more than a low semicircular trellis, with a rough roof lain across it, but it would have to do. Mama rolled in, and encouraged Elena to follow. By unspoken agreement, Dalip would sleep just inside the entrance. Best, perhaps, if any of the Wolfman’s men were still hanging around, but that didn’t seem likely. Tomorrow they too would be gone, in a direction yet to be decided.

  He got down on the ground himself and stretched out. It was hard, and uncomfortable, but he’d forgotten what it was like to sleep on a bed, and was so tired at the end of every day that it didn’t really matter any more. He lay there, not moving but for his chest and his eyelids, listening to the noises of the night. Mama and Elena were making little mutters as they turned and shuffled, and the softening wind made the shelter creak and scratch. Further out was the static hiss of fluttering leaves, and beyond that was the profound, deep silence of Down that threatened to drown out everything else.

  The sky outside darkened to impenetrable black, and even the insects seemed to quieten. His thoughts started to become discordant as he began to drift off, amongst scattered moments of clarity that he would remember later.

  Mary would be waiting for them when they woke up, sitting on the beach, wondering where they’d got to.

  He could try to make fire: he had soft steel and hard stone to spark together, and plenty of time to practise catching bone-dry tinder alight.

  The coins and jewellery would have value as refined metal and cut stones. Keeping them was more than a sentimental connection to home.

  He didn’t want to be responsible for Elena and Mama, but just because he didn’t want to be, didn’t mean he wasn’t.

  With his hand still curled around the machete’s grip, he slowly fell asleep.

  And just as slowly, he woke up.

  Yesterday, the moon had risen some time after midnight, and had still been in the sky in the morning before being chased away by the sun. Tonight, he could see the vague glimmer of silver through the woven walls of the shelter, and knew there were still several hours of darkness. That wasn’t what had woken him.

  There was a pressure, a weight against him, down his right-hand slide, pinning his arm and the machete against the sandy soil of the shelter floor. In his befuddled state, he couldn’t work them free, and it was only when he pulled hard and Elena grunted against his chest that he realised she was almost lying on top of him, arm across him, leg hooked over his, her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

  And he had an erection.

  At least he managed to stop himself from panicking. He wasn’t responsible for what happened in his sleep, and neither was she. If he could extricate himself without waking her then no one but him would ever know.

  He took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself, and slid his leg out from under hers. She made no sign of stirring, and he took encouragement from that. Inch by inch, he eased himself away, and even managed to lift her head so that it rested on his arm rather than his shoulder. He reached under her for the machete, and carefully pulled it free.

  Only his arm remained trapped, and there seemed no way of moving it without disturbing her. The situation was so foreign to his experience that he was desperate enough to try something he’d seen in a film once.

  He bent over until his mouth was near her ear. ‘Elena, roll over,’ he whispered.

  She murmured her assent and turned to face the other way, as Dalip slid his arm clear.

  It had worked, and he was surprised, but now he had to creep away quietly and find somewhere he could wait his erection out. He tried to rationalise his shame away as he slowly stepped through the deep shadow, but however he tried, he was just embarrassed. His own body betrayed him – his cheeks burned with the still-warm memory of her pressed against him – and left him vulnerable to improper feelings of lust. There hadn’t been time to build two shelters, but the thought hadn’t even occurred to him, and it should have.

  He was a grown man, not a boy, and sharing sleeping space with women wasn’t going to help him keep pure. Especially Elena. He didn’t know if he found her attractive. He didn’t even know if he should be thinking about it, with Luiza not even cold in the ground.

  He crouched down and remembered to breathe. It really wasn’t his fault. They were all vulnerable, none of them thinking straight, and nothing untoward had happened. He was doing the right thing now, and that was what was important. He wasn’t some beast who couldn’t control himself: he was fulfilling his vows and keeping the faith.

  There were two lights.

  The moon was behind him, halfway up the dome of night, a quarter full and appearing as bone-white horns behind the haze of high cloud. Then there was a lesser glow, coming from the beach.

  At first, he thought it might
be a fire, and that the remains of the Wolfman’s crew had come to the beach. Or Mary. But the light was constant and more blue than red, illuminating the cold mist that was collecting over the dunes. When he stood to check properly, he realised that it was roughly in the direction of both graves.

  There was a chance that investigating was exactly the wrong thing to do. No one ever said Down was safe, and this might be one of the bad things that it might inflict on the unwary. On the other hand, if he didn’t hurry, he might miss whatever it was. Down, even when it unleashed storms that required a sacrifice to dissipate them, seemed to have the knack of choosing the right victim.

  He picked his way through the brush until he reached the dunes. Climbing the first one confirmed his suspicions, that the light was centred on Luiza and the boat-womb. The air above it shone with a luminous fog that must be visible for miles. It was a beacon – if Mary was up there, then she would see it. If not, then, well … whoever else was abroad would look up and wonder.

  Dalip walked down to the slack, then up the other side. This was the dip in which he’d interred the Wolfman. No night-time light show for him, weighed down with a load of damp, dirty sand, just decay and corruption. The fog thickened, and glowed brighter.

  He didn’t quite know what he was going to find, but it was unexpected in that it wasn’t something from Down at all. As he slipped down the dune, he could see the source of the light was the small plastic egg that Elena had placed as a grave marker.

  He picked it up, and he could see his bones through the redness of his fingers, though he could barely look at all. It was bright enough to bring tears to his eyes, even though the egg itself was cool to the touch.

  Was it technology from some future London, or was it magic? Would he be able to tell the difference? He hadn’t been able to work out what the thing was before, but a portable light was a portable light and therefore had a high utility.

  As he stood there, contemplating the marvel he held, he heard the unmistakable sound of a heavy chain, the metallic rattle of links as they passed over some solid object. For a moment, he thought of the Wolfman, but he was dead and gone and this noise was different anyway: slower and more reverential.