The Remnant

by Charlie Fletcher

  “This is what Wayland Smith went to see,” she said.

  “The flag,” said Sharp. “But they cannot have found the flag. It’s safe; it’s always been safe on—”

  “—the island in the island,” said Sara. “Two rings of running water protect it from any Sluagh, even if they found out where it was.”

  “Well that’s where he’s gone,” said Charlie. “And now you know as much about that bit of the story as I do.”

  CHAPTER 12

  NORTH BY STEAM

  The Smith had indeed gone north to find out if his suspicions about why the Sluagh were no longer prohibited by iron were well-founded.

  The first time he had made this journey, it had taken a great deal of time, tough horses ridden hard, a sworn company of battle-hardened followers, several weeks and a lot of fighting. That first time he had arrived at his destination, the island-within-the island, his great hammer was still bloody at his side and an equally well-used broadsword was strapped to the furs across his back.

  Time had moved on but he was still here, he thought. He still carried the hammer, but now it was in a long leather travelling bag. And where he and his companions had once struggled up from the south through snowdrifts and raiding parties, he made the present journey sitting uncomfortably inactive in a carriage pulled northwards by the rhythmically puffing engine of a coal-fired locomotive, his only companion a stranger with a vaguely nautical air who was fast asleep in the corner of the bench-seat opposite, using a tarpaulin jacket as a blanket against the chill. If the hardy men and women who had accompanied that first journey had seen and heard the train he now rode as it passed in the night, they would like as not have thought all the old stories about dragons were true. And now they themselves were an old story, the corrosive passage of time having rusted their heroism from sharp-edged history to a blurry myth no one really remembered anyway. This, he decided, was one thing wrong with the easy modern passage from place to place: the absence of physical effort left too much time for thinking useless thoughts. And a man with his past had far too many things to remember.

  It was not the first time he had travelled by train, but he was still surprised and somewhat exhilarated by the speed and the smoothness of the passage. He spent most of the journey watching the country slide past the window at his side. As it did so he was struck both by how much had changed and by how much remained of the landscape he had known for such an unnaturally long span of years. The journey took him through the now familiar countryside of tall hedgerows and copses and fields, past low-lying water meadows and the high woodland marching in step along the rolling hills above them. He recognised this Britain, had seen it hacked out from open heath and wilderness and marshalled into the particoloured patchwork of greens and browns it now was. He’d ridden over the land before the most ancient blackthorn hedge had been planted, and the wide rivers he now crossed so effortlessly on ingeniously built viaducts he had once forded on blown horses, soaked to the cruppers.

  “How have I lived so long?” he mused, thinking the thought he had trained himself to avoid dwelling on. “And to what purpose if the Iron Prohibition is broken? If the old ravenous power of the dark is behind it, how do we stop it?”

  The stranger asleep on the seat opposite shifted in his sleep and, as his jacket slipped, The Smith saw his assessment of him as a sailor was further corroborated by the florid Union Jack and fouled anchor inscribed on a meaty forearm.

  The Smith had once been a tattooed man, both like and unlike the Sluagh, in the time before the Sluagh were even Sluagh. He had leached the darkness out of himself in an act of furious vengeful will-power, and sworn his life to the light, but there was so much darkness in the world that keeping it at bay and stopping the mark of it returning to blight his skin and his heart had required a binding woven as tightly into the Sluagh’s flag as the Iron Prohibition itself. Indeed, the binding to the light and the Prohibition interlocked and bound each other in place, keeping the equilibrium. It was he who had fought the battles which led to the Iron Prohibition being imposed, and it was he who had bound it there with more than oaths. And now he was travelling an old road to see why the ancient things that should have remained interlaced had begun to unravel. He needed to examine the flag.

  The industrial midlands shocked him, not so much because of the sprawling factories and mills or the forests of belching chimneys, of which he had seen plenty in London, but because they had sprung up in what seemed to him to be an instant, when compared to the long span of his memory. Jerry-built slums stretched in all directions from the industrial buildings like a ramshackle infection bent on blighting the outlying countryside. He thought it looked like radiating blood poison in the moment when it begins to visibly blacken the veins which criss-cross the previously unblemished skin of the dying patient. The land between Birmingham and Manchester seemed to have become ulcerated as a result of mouldering beneath a permanent pall of smoke. North of Manchester, the countryside reasserted itself, wilder now than it had been, higher fells and more open moorland, dry-stone walls taking the place of the hedgerows as a means to mark the divisions in the landscape.

  He watched it all and tried to stay seeing it in the now, and not through the lens of memory. He was travelling to confront present danger and the past was only relevant if it contained clues as to how to succeed in the future. Sometimes the weight of accreted remembrance felt as if he had the world tied around his neck like a millstone and he just needed every ounce of energy to stay afloat.

  He arrived in Glasgow at night and decided he needed to stretch his cramped limbs after so much sitting, and so walked from the station down to the wharf on the Broomielaw on the north side of the Clyde. Having slept everywhere and anywhere over the years, he thought little of spending the night on a bench beneath the open sheds beside the passenger steamers, and was thus the first aboard when the Skye Steam Packet, the Superb, began embarking customers at 5.30 the following morning.

  Once again, steam power afforded him a faster and infinitely more comfortable passage north than his first journey: he breakfasted well as the boat churned down the Clyde and turned right into the inner sea-lane leading to the Hebrides. He sat outside for most of the journey, relishing the clean, cold air, and the Highlands passing on one side and the islands on the other. They emerged from the Sound of Mull and rounded the desolate headland at Ardnamurchan, where there was a flurry of interest from his fellow passengers who all congregated on the starboard rail to point and comment on the building work occurring on the wild westernmost point of land. He understood it was the foundations of a new lighthouse being erected by an enterprising Mr. Stevenson, apparently a great builder of such things. When he turned to the empty rail on the port side, he saw the open waste of the Atlantic stretching to America and he thought of Lucy Harker and the Irish girl, and wondered if they had got there and what their fates might be. He wondered if Lucy was looking back across the same sea, thinking about The Oversight and what she had left behind. He had developed a gruff fondness for the awkward girl, and though he had taken pains not to share the thought with anyone but Cook, he had been more than sad when she decided to leave them and find her own way in the world. He had taken her under his wing and shared more of his deep past with her than he did with most. It wasn’t that he felt she owed him loyalty because of that. It was the simpler, less definable thing of just having begun to like her, perhaps because she clearly had so much trouble liking herself.

  Cook said Lucy had a romantic liking of her own for the venatrix Cait, a thing that would make her unhappy, since the tall Irish girl did not share her inclinations. He hoped she had found fulfilment elsewhere. He hoped she was forging a new and happier path wherever she was across that grey expanse of constantly shifting water.

  The boat was not very full, and he remained undisturbed for the main part of the journey. Most of the passengers spoke in the Gaelic, and he felt a strange thrill of recognition and something like nostalgia as he heard it again, for
it was an echo in his head and a reminder of earlier times, when even the English language wasn’t formed as it was now. When he’d first come north, he and his band of fighters had not spoken a language that his present companions in The Oversight would understand. Riding over open land before the oldest hedgerows had been made was one thing; outliving a language really made you feel old. He smiled at the thought and just for a moment felt a deep pang of sadness that he had no one to share the wry observation with.

  The boat passed the night at Tarbert due to an unscheduled stop requested by the engineer who suspected a bearing was about to give way. He worked through the night to repair it, and the boat completed the journey by reaching Portree mid-morning on the next day. The Smith had stood on deck and watched the towering scenery on both sides slide past as the Superb churned doggedly northwards between the island and the mainland, turning westwards at Kyle of Lochalsh where the view opened out to reveal a vista which included the contrasting mountain ranges of the Red Hills and the Black Cuillin: the sunlight caught the granite on the former, giving them a rosy glow, which along with their more rounded shape afforded them a friendlier feel than the aggressive jumble of sharp peaks, deep gullies and cavernously shadowed corries cut into the dark basalt and gabbro of the Black Cuillin beyond. The Red Hills reflected the sun, thought The Smith, whereas the Black Cuillin seems to swallow the light. And then the Superb rounded the small island of Scalpay where an immobile herd of sheep stood at the water’s edge and watched, unmoved by the spectacle as the boat entered the Sound of Raasay and found, as if by accident, the small harbour town of Portree at the base of the hidden inlet that was its ultimate destination.

  CHAPTER 13

  WIGHTS

  The mirror’d world did seem untenanted and sterile to the uninitiated. And even the few who were used to negotiating their way through the seemingly endless maze could become careless of the fact that every mirror held the possibility that other eyes were staring back at you through the veneer of your own reflection.

  Once The Citizen had been convinced of the sense of Dee’s plan, he had returned briefly to his quarters to assemble a minimum of necessary luggage, and then had allowed Dee to lead him back through the mirror. Dee had led The Citizen away from the looking-glass from which they had stepped out of London and the known environs of the house on Chandos Place with great care and attention but he had been so concerned with following the clicks of the get-me-home that he had not once looked behind him.

  And so he missed something.

  The thing that Dee missed, just as he turned the first corner and failed to check behind him, were the Mirror Wights.

  First one head dropped, as it were, out of the looking-glass ceiling a couple of hundred yards beyond the place Dee and The Citizen had entered the mirrors. It had a long sailor’s pigtail, which was the first thing to appear, then a round face, shockingly white as all Wights were, with staring black eyes like jet pebbles. It peered after the departing group, and then smiled as they turned out of view, revealing similarly black teeth.

  It rolled itself out of the ceiling, uncurling like a monkey and landing quietly on bare feet. It wore a sailor’s jacket and short wide-legged trousers, all bleached to a uniform white that was almost as complete as his skin. He beckoned behind him, waving unseen companions on with a flat-brimmed hat.

  As he scuttled soundlessly towards the spot that Dee had emerged from three more pale figures stepped from the mirrors and clanked towards him. They were not sailors, but two were soldiers, Roundheads of the era of Cromwell’s army from the look of them, pale figures from whom every last bit of normal pigment had too been leached by the mirrors: they wore breastplates and swords and wore heavy soled boots. The other was a murderous-looking man with a spade-like beard bleached as white as the rest of him.

  The one who still wore a helmet arrived at the sailor first.

  “Sure this is it?” he said, holding his eye close to the mirror.

  The sailor nodded.

  “No doubt. They smelled of blood, and I’m thinking it come from in there.”

  “Well then, brother, who wants to go first?” said the unhelmeted one.

  The sailor stood up between them.

  “Me,” he said. “It’s always me, innit?”

  And without further pause he checked the mirror for himself, and then, drawing a nasty-looking dirk from his belt, stepped through it and into The Citizen’s study and laboratory.

  The others waited, swords drawn on either side of the mirror. And then, after a long pause of almost a minute, the sailor’s head reappeared.

  His mouth was leaking a tiny bead of bright red, and when he smiled his teeth were slick with something not saliva.

  “Oh, lads,” he said. “We are lucky, lucky bastards and no mistake. I never seen such a lovely thing. Come on in.”

  The others stepped through the mirrors and found themselves in the dark room. The sailor grinned from ear to ear and led them into the tiled laboratory area behind the curtain.

  “Feast your eyes, lovelies, and then drink your fill,” he giggled.

  He was pointing at two cages. In one a depleted-looking Sluagh lay on the floor, and the other held a nearly naked man with green skin and fear-crazed eyes. Both were chained in position, and each had been arranged so that one arm was strapped clear of the cage, with a cannula emerging from the wrist.

  “Why, brothers,” he said, pointing at the arrangement. “It is as if the departed gentlemen have left these packages here for us, for look, they even have blessed straws inserted into their veins, so we can drain as much or as little as we need quite as if we were in our former lives and availing ourselves of a barrel with a spigot.”

  “Fuck me,” grinned the helmeted soldier, unbuckling his chinstrap. “It’s Christmas.”

  “I know,” giggled the sailor. “But don’t drain ’em, mind, and make sure you turn the little tap on them tubes so they don’t leak, ’cos from what luggage they was carrying them as just left here ain’t coming back in a hurry. So tomorrow can be Christmas too, and the day after and all the ones beyond.”

  The Green Man saw them approaching and screamed, a sound of pure terror.

  “We should gag this monkey,” said the sailor. “He’ll only draw attention to himself, and that won’t do at all.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE GUARDIAN

  The journey from Boston to Marblehead had taken just over an hour. Cait had nudged Lucy awake as the horses slowed to a walk. They were in another built-up township, bordering the water. She could smell the tang of the sea, and woodsmoke and the smell of fish drying on racks on the stony beach beside the roadway.

  They turned up a slight rise and approached a handsome three-storey mansion built in the Georgian style, with a shallow, columned porch whose triangular portico echoed the much larger one on the roof above. Two oil lamps burned either side of the main door, the lights of which reflected off the glass panes in the generous astragal windows that flanked them.

  “Now that’s some house,” said Cait.

  “Lee’s Mansion,” said the Proctor. “Least it was. It’s a banking house now. Or the half of it is.”

  The carriage halted level with the door, which swung open as if on cue.

  “Jeremiah Lee was once the richest man in America,” said the Proctor.

  Cait stepped out of the door and onto the steps. She ran her hands across the wooden façade of the house.

  “Couldn’t afford stone though,” she said. “Just mixed sand in the paint to fake out the wood and make it look like honest ashlar.”

  “Sorry it don’t meet with your approval,” he said.

  “Well,” said Cait. “What’s the point of America if it tries to look like somewhere else?”

  “I’ve always admired the effect. It’s ingenious,” said the Proctor, ushering Lucy out of the carriage.

  “Ah,” said Cait looking studiedly unimpressed. “Yes, I spent much of the voyage over being told that about you.
”

  “About who?” said Prudence Tittensor, emerging with her dog.

  “New Englanders,” said Cait. “Proud of their ingenuity.”

  “You have something against New Englanders?” said the Proctor.

  “Well,” Cait sniffed. “I’d have thought the old England was mischief enough for one world without the need for a new one.”

  Lucy followed her as she walked up into the dark hallway within. At first she thought there was no one there, and all she saw, by the light of one meagre candle on a table by the far wall, was hint of fine panelling, an expanse of rich red turkey carpet and a wide staircase with barley-twist bannisters sweeping up to the floors above.

  Then the shadows moved and she realised there were people standing along the walls, waiting for them. The shortest of these figures retrieved the candle from the table and approached them. She was an old lady in a plain, pale grey dress the colour of sun-bleached driftwood. She wore a matching woollen shawl drawn around her narrow shoulders, and her hair and her eyes were precisely the same hue as the rest of her clothing.

  “If you’d follow me,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong as she turned and led the way to a door behind the stairs. They did not have time to take in much about the other figures who stepped away from the walls and followed behind them, other than the general impression that they were of both sexes and all ages.

  The grey lady, who Lucy took to be some kind of housekeeper, led them through a pair of rooms, unlocking doors as she went from a ring of keys attached to her belt on a long silver chain. The rooms were also lined in wood panelling and seemed handsome, if sparsely decorated. Then their guide pushed a section of panelling aside and led the way down a narrow set of hidden stairs which brought them to the largest room so far.