Twelve Nights

by Andrew Zurcher

  Contents

  Part One: WARP

  1: Removals

  2: The Author

  3: The Knights of Bithynia

  4: Ghast

  5: The Quarries

  6: Dispersal

  7: The Thread

  8: Phantastes

  Part Two: WEFT

  9: Integration

  10: Flip

  11: The Kermes Book

  12: The House of the Two Modes

  13: War

  14: The Tomb

  15: Sacrifice

  Part Three: WEB

  16: Sparagmos

  17: Leaves

  18: The Clue

  19: The Bride

  20: The Loom

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ANDREW ZURCHER is Director of Studies in English at Queen’s College, Cambridge, and he writes widely on the works of Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare. Twelve Nights is his debut novel.

  @andrewzurcher

  For my children, Aoife, Una and Eamon

  Leap, heart, the wind will catch you –

  Part One

  * * *

  WARP

  Removals

  The sun set at six minutes to four. Kay lay stretched out on the floor, reading the very small print on the back of the newspaper. Her right eye she had squeezed firmly shut; her left was growing deliriously tired, and the tiny words loomed at her amid the blur of her big sinking lashes. More and more she had to close them both, and relax her stiff cheek. More and more she squinted sidelong up at the world, with her head cocked to the right. But if her game caused her irritation, she also felt a sense of modest triumph: she had resisted the temptation to look straight at life since the moment she woke up that morning – exactly eight hours before, according to her watch. Had anyone asked her why she was still keeping her right eye shut at thirteen minutes past four in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when her mother was going frantic and her little sister, Eloise, was playing jacks by herself in the back room, she wouldn’t have known what to say. Keeping her right eye closed was simply something she had to do today, and she was doing it.

  Just opposite her head, against the wall, leaned a large metal-framed mirror. Her father had promised to hang it above the fireplace, but three months later it still stood there, neglected, collecting dust. Kay regarded herself with curiosity in its dull glass. At school the teachers seemed to talk endlessly about character: having it, getting it, showing it and, above all, building it. Kay was sure she had none, or at least none that was visible. She was the person no one ever really noticed.

  Her father was still at work – late, as he had been every day this week and every weekend this month. As he had been every month this year: down at the lab or his office, away for a fortnight on a dig, disappearing off to libraries or meetings – she couldn’t keep track. This morning Kay’s mum had wiped the worktops forcefully after breakfast, then promised her girls a bike ride and a trip to the cinema. But when the sun went down hours later, their winter shoes and coats still lay undisturbed by the door – exactly where they had left them the evening before. Kay could hear the telephone ringing, and she wondered if it was her father calling. He would be late, as usual.

  Just as she was beginning to doze off, her head softly crackling on the open newspaper, her mother burst into the front room, her heels stomping like slippered hammers on the wooden boards. ‘Get your coat on, Kay, we’re going out. Get your sister’s coat on.’

  Five minutes later, as they sat in the back of the car blowing steam in the freezing air and giggling nervously, the two girls still had no idea where they were going, or why. As the engine turned over from gear to gear, in rhythm with the car’s regular surges, their nervousness began to subside. Kay’s hand still held the warm ache where her sister had been squeezing it. She put it in her lap. The night outside the window seemed sharp and clear, and the mostly white lights in the houses they passed shone with a direct intensity. Her window, by contrast, kept fogging up with her breathing. She moved her face impatiently around the glass as far as she could reach, but it was no use. As the car jolted through some lights and then curved down the hill, Ell fidgeted with her foot.

  ‘Eloise, stop it. We’ll be out of the car in two minutes.’

  ‘But I have something in my boot. It’s uncomfortable.’

  Kay turned to the window again. She counted the streetlamps as they passed, numbering them by their glows on the silvery ground, still frosty from the night before. Her left eye was now growing ridiculously tired – or maybe it was the funny flatness of seeing with just one eye – because in the centre of the circle of light cast by every lamp she was sure she could make out a little circular shadow on the ground. Maybe it was just the wisps of foggy breath still clinging to the glass. She was tempted to open her other eye to check – but then, she thought, if she did, and the little dark circles were gone, would that prove that they weren’t there, or that they were? Sometimes when you looked right at a star, you couldn’t see it; but if you squinted or looked away, you could. And stars were there. Otherwise how would you wish on them?

  And then, all at once, she knew where they were going, and why her mother hadn’t answered her questions. The car pulled up and stopped outside the familiar gate. Kay went rigid in her seat, feeling her spine arch cold against the comfortable scoop of the fabric behind her. For her part, Ell was obviously disappointed. ‘I don’t want to go to Dad’s work,’ she whined, and kicked her grumpy and uncomfortable boot for emphasis against the seat in front of her.

  A night porter sat on duty behind the window at the gate: an old, solid man, stiff and knotted as a fardel of wood, with a curve to his thick back and a white handlebar moustache hanging over a square-set jaw. Kay had never seen him before, but as he shuffled to his feet she recognized the white shirt, black trousers and waistcoat as the uniform of the university’s porters. The gate opened, and he waved them through into the car park, but then hobbled out of his dimly lit room, down the steps and after the car. He seemed to guess where they would park, because Kay saw him making directly for the spot as her mother doubled round a set of spaces and then reversed back in. He moved with a deliberate and stilted pace, but he still got there just as they were opening the doors. It was a soft voice he had; not the sort of rough bark common to university porters. Maybe he had been to a Christmas party, Kay thought. People were always gentler after a Christmas party.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said to Kay’s mum. His voice sounded the way a flannel felt – dense, light and warm – and to Kay it was like a kind extended hand. Yet he stood with his hands dug in his pockets, his fingers working slowly within the fabric, as if turning over coins.

  Kay’s mum was pulling Ell off the booster seat, then checking the little purple boot absent-mindedly. Ell was too old for a child seat now, and far too tall, but her eighth birthday had been a night of tears, and Kay and her mother had afterwards gone from room to room – and even to the car – carefully restoring old and familiar things.

  Her mother shook the little boot; a single jack clattered to the ground, which she retrieved and placed in Ell’s outstretched hand. ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m just here to collect my husband. He’s working late.’

  ‘Everyone’s gone home, I’m afraid, Mrs …’ The man trailed off, and Kay watched him arch his bushy left eyebrow, expecting her mother to identify herself.

  ‘Clare.’ That’s because she doesn’t have Dad’s last name, Kay thought. She’s not Mrs anybody. ‘Clare Worth.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Worth, I’m not telling stories. As I said, I’m afraid everyone has gone home. The only cars still here are mine and old Professor Jackson’s who died Tuesday last, God rest him, a
nd I’ve been round the halls to lock up, and the place is sealed proper and shut down tight, lights off and not even a mouse.’

  Kay felt her mother’s arm tense where she was touching it lightly with the palm of her left hand. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said, ‘but he did come down to work earlier, so I’ll go up and have a look all the same.’

  ‘What did you say your husband’s name was? Worth?’ The old porter sounded soft but insistent, like a wood pigeon maybe. He shuffled his stiff legs quickly to keep his balance. Kay thought for a second that he was almost smiling at the top left corner of his mouth, but then she changed her mind. Or maybe he changed his face.

  ‘More. Dr More. Edward, I mean. More. He’s a fellow at St Nicholas’. He’s working on the Fragments Project.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say as I know the names of the projects,’ said the old man. ‘They come and go. But I got a pretty good head for the people, and I don’t think I recollect seeing a Dr More before.’ He drew a short breath, held his hands up to his face and blew hard on the tips of his fingers, trying to warm them. ‘But I’m just the night porter around here.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll definitely have seen him,’ Kay’s mum said. ‘He’s down here almost every evening. Every night.’

  The porter told her he had a directory and a telephone, and he would save Kay’s mum the trouble by calling up to the office. She started to protest, but he had already hobbled painfully round and was walking back to his lodge. Eventually they trailed after him. Kay’s mother’s hand was cold in hers, but then it would be, in the middle of winter. They waited outside the steps of the tiny lodge – really just a bricked-in nook between two buttresses on the old archaeology building, with a lean-to roof and a pretty, circular window. The little window had silver stars stuck in it, and Ell pointed at them and started talking about a card she had made at school with stars just the same, and tinsel. She had repeated herself three or four times, to no effect, by the time the porter turned up again in the doorway. Kay tried to ruffle her hair, but it was drawn back over her scalp as tight as ice.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t find Dr More on my list,’ he said. ‘In fact, I can’t find him on the university list either. Edward More, you said? I tried both spellings.’

  Kay’s mum sighed heavily and, leaving the girls, went in. They were quiet enough under the window ledge to catch a few snatches of conversation from within. The car park, silent and almost empty, had a few bare trees – saplings of four or five years’ growth – dotted at regular intervals down two aisles. Kay remembered that there had been grass here once, but now it was almost all paved. The tree branches glistened black in the bright spotlights from the roofs of the archaeology building. The Pitt, they called it. Kay squeezed hard on her left eye, plunging herself into darkness, and gripped Ell’s hand more tightly, as if to compensate.

  When the door opened, the muted voices suddenly shot out and rebounded around the empty courtyard. Clare Worth was protesting again: ‘… don’t understand. I mean, I know you say it’s current, but he’s definitely here. He’s been here for years. I can show you the room.’

  Kay heard the porter pick up his ring of keys, then pull the door shut behind them as they descended the three or four steps into the car park. Her eyes were still closed, and maybe that was why she heard the crisp echo in the courtyard so acutely, with its single clear report. Each step her mother took made a crack against the frosty stone and pavement.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ Clare was asking the porter as Kay prised open her left eye again.

  ‘Rex. Just Rex,’ he answered with a wince. He stepped with a stiff hip over a low wall running round the inner grass border of the courtyard, and set off for the near corner where Kay’s father had his laboratory and office, on the second floor. Her mother shot him a sharp glance, as if he had just loosed a tarantula, but then – with more resignation – pursued him. She seemed to have forgotten all about her daughters. She didn’t speak again, but as she passed by, Kay could see that there were a lot of words in her throat; from the side it looked like it was going to burst open. She and Ell fell back and followed the two adults, holding hands and looking down, watching their footprints making tiny depressions in the frost, crunching slightly. Rex had a light step, Kay noticed, because although her mum’s new shoes ground visibly into the frozen grass, for all his rough limp and shuffle Rex’s feet didn’t seem to make any noise, and hardly any marks at all. All she could hear were his keys jangling on the big ring in his right hand. For a second, in the glare from the spotlights, she saw it very clearly, that ring of keys, and noticed that it had an old-fashioned locking mechanism, with a hinge to open it – like something she had seen at her father’s college once, hanging in the manuscript library. Only this ring wasn’t plain. She caught another view of it as it swung again briefly into the light. She made out two bits of carving or metalwork, one on the hinge and another on the hasp. She watched for it as they walked, and with glimpse after glimpse she pieced together the design. It was the same on both sides: a long and sinuous snake entwined with a sword.

  He must have been in the army, she decided. He had probably been injured: the limp.

  ‘His room is on the second floor,’ her mother was explaining. ‘And his name is just here on the board – look …’ And then her voice trailed off, because, as they could all see – and they were all looking – his name was not on the black painted board, where it had always been for as long as Kay could remember, in its official white lettering, next to the others. Where his name should have been, the board instead said, DR ANDREA LESSING. Her mother pushed through the heavy swinging doors into the stone lobby, and the girls trailed after.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Ell whispered to Kay. Her voice was sharp, urgent.

  ‘This is some kind of joke, girls,’ said Clare Worth, forcing a smile at them. ‘It’s a joke, that’s all.’ She took out her phone and dialled. ‘I’ll try the office again,’ she was saying. ‘There was no answer before, but maybe he’s back now.’ And then her face went white. ‘Stay here,’ she said, her voice suddenly pinched almost to a whisper. Turning, she practically leaped up the stairs.

  Kay looked at the ring of keys. She stared at it, at every small detail, one after another, taking them in.

  Rex noticed her staring, smiled, unhooked it from his belt and held it out to her. ‘Have a look if you like,’ he said with a warm half-chuckle. He passed her the whole set. His hands were big and gnarled, like the rootball of an oak. She observed them as she took the keys: oafish but gentle, and somehow slender, too, and as he stretched out his fingers she thought she smelled something sweet, like soft fruit – maybe blackcurrant. But then she had the ring. It held an amazing collection of keys. Even Ell came over to look, which was unusual because she tended to make a point of being officially uninterested in whatever Kay was doing. Kay handled them one by one. The best was an enormous key that looked like a fork, with sharp tines, and seemed to be made of gold. It had the same snake and sword cut into it as the ring. And there were three silvery keys, each slightly different from the other, but all with the same kind of shape: a long shaft, with a flat bit fixed at the end – one was square, one circular and one triangular. There were three wooden keys, too – but hard wood, almost like stone, with a gorgeous gold-flecked grain in them. And there were others, short and long, stumpy, heavy. There might have been twenty or thirty of them.

  ‘Stupid keys,’ said Ell, and she turned towards the full-length mirror that hung against the lobby wall, studying herself. Kay and the porter – Rex – watched her, too. That faint smile was hovering at his cheek again; like Kay, he knew that Ell didn’t mean it. Her sister was shorter than Kay by a hand or more. Where Kay was olive-skinned and chestnut-haired, Ell had bright, almost translucent skin, and undulating tresses of a fine, almost golden red. Their father was fond of remarking that their family was composed of four elements. ‘Your angel mother is the air, as open as the sky. I am the hard and plodding earth,
’ he would say, ‘but you girls are the quick matter of the world.’ Kay, he said, was water: silent, deep, cold perhaps, but quick with life. Ell, by contrast, was fire, hot and unpredictable, both creative and destructive.

  Moody, more like, Kay thought. And she smiled, despite herself.

  She looked at the grandfatherly porter and thought she should try to be polite. ‘What are they all for?’ she asked.

  He was still watching Ell. ‘Nothing of any consequence now,’ he answered. ‘Just look at that beauty,’ he added, almost as if to himself. ‘I’ll wager she won’t need any keys at all.’

  Taking the steps two at a time, Ell had begun to jump up the spiral staircase in her fur-edged purple rubber boots. They were a little too big, a hand-me-down gift from Kay which she had not yet quite grown into. They made her seem smaller than she was; clumsy, a little delicate. At the fifth or sixth step she turned round, grinning impishly, her face flushed and radiant after the cold air outside, her full lips pink and puckered. With an air of priestlike gravity, as if she were performing a sacred ritual, she took her hand from her pocket, opening her palm to reveal three of the jacks she had been playing with earlier at home. ‘Knucklebones’, their father called them; it was that rare thing, a game he approved of, and he always said the same thing – ‘a very ancient game of skill – and chance’. Ell was the acknowledged master of anything and everything to do with jacks, and she wore her title with pride. Now she tossed the little stars into the air, flipped her slender hand with a dancer’s grace, and caught them neatly upon her knuckles.

  Kay smiled. Show off.

  It is sometimes the case that something exceptionally beautiful happens just before a calamity. The calamity even seems to reach back in time and twiddle the beautiful thing round, making it even more beautiful because of what was about to happen – or anyway, Kay thought a few moments later, that’s how it comes to seem.