by W.S. Lacey
“Are you ready?” he said.
“I have no idea,” Spender said.
“Just remember, it’s like a trilobite, only bigger- much, much bigger.”
They entered the water and half swam, half bounded towards the edge of the escarpment. They exhausted their breath at roughly the same time and emptied their air bags. Spender reflected that the other man must have been incredibly confident or incredibly desperate; in one or two fathoms, they wouldn’t be able to turn back. If Drusilla had intended to kill them, it was surely a very roundabout way of doing it. North struck out, leading the way around the dim bulk of the land. As Spender followed, he saw the thing called Petrastakos and suddenly remembered what a trilobite was.
A brobdingnagian creature lay in repose on the sea floor, its armor plates encrusted with the accumulated algae of æons. With its great ridged carapace and wide curved cephalon, it looked like some ancient and terrible god of beetles. Spender backpedaled quite involuntarily for a moment and North silently urged him on, bubbles trickling up into his hair. They approached the Petrastakos, discarding stones from their pockets as they went, and swam under the shadow of its legs. As they did so, Spender inadvertently kicked one of the legs. It gave a violent tremor from end to end, sand falling from it and drifting down like dust, and neatly dispelled his suspicion that it wasn’t alive. He looked at North, who looked almost comically dour, just as the monstruous arthropod closed up around them.
The creature had rolled up like a gigantic woodlouse and, as far as they could tell, was shooting up through the water with absolutely flabbergasting buoyancy. For several unpleasant moments, everything was a confused jumble of water and large twitching limbs and then, with a rush and burst of water, the conglobated thing surfaced and unfurled. Spender and North coughed and sputtered as they watched Petrastakos swim away, a curl of water spilling away from its sides like the wake of a ship.
“I can’t,” North wheezed as he kicked at the water, “believe” splash, “that worked!” He laughed in a high pitched breathless way that worried Spender a bit.
“What are we going to do now?” Spender asked. The sea rolled away from them in every direction and they dipped and rode on the crests of the waves. “It would be a shame to go to all that effort to escape only to drown once we’re exhausted.” They were in the trough of a wave and the deep blue waters rose on either side of them like canyon walls.
“Yes, we’re by no means out of the woods. Spender?”
“Yes?”
“I should tell you that there is a distinct possibility that we’re going to be captured.”
“When?”
“Now.”
A swell lifted them up and the galleon that had sunk them loomed over their heads. Spender was agog.
“How did they find us? It’s been two days; we’re miles away!” A number of black capped heads peered over the side at them.
“They’d have to be extraordinarily lucky.”
#
In truth, the King’s men had begun hunting them shortly after Spender first made his appearance in Tyre. They had been hot on the trail and only the extreme circuitousness of their route had prevented their being captured sooner. (Whether accidentally or out of sheer perversity, the Chronicler had pointed them in quite the wrong direction.) They had a very cold reception from the galleon’s captain, during which interview he asked their names. This was the first time anyone had bothered to do so since they came through the Door and they could not help but think that it seemed a bit sinister. They were tipped none too gently into a brig in the lower parts of the ship and left to their own devices. Spender sat on a bunk and gloomily nudged a set of fetters with his foot.
“No one ever seems particularly happy to see us.”
“It would seem that the King has been very eager to make our acquaintance.” North slid down the wall and settled into a well executed slouch.
“North, do you know what’s going to happen? Could you look- really look?”
“Alright,” North said after a moment. He pushed his eye patch back on his head, his eye shining in the dim cell. “It shouldn’t take…” he trailed off and seemed to sink into a reverie, saying ‘Interesting’ once or twice in a low, abstracted way. Just then, the door sprang open and two men bundled in.
“Here you,” said the one with impressive moustaches, “it was the King’s instruction that you wear this.” He tossed a polished, filigreed eye patch to North. As he put it on, it cinched tight and made a locking noise that he didn’t much care for.
“We understand that you have uncommonly good sight;” said the one with no moustaches at all, “it’s a good thing, our coming in here just now, or you might have seen or done something untoward. Very lucky.”
“Yes, lucky.” They leered at Spender and North. “We would conduct ourselves very correctly, if we were you. Even the most uncanny eye is a poor match for such unrivaled serendipity.”
“So just watch it,” the moustache-less man said pointedly before slamming the door. Spender and North sat, considerably nettled, for some time.
“They did pick the absolute worst time to rush in” North said, “it usually takes me a while to sort out everything and get it in its proper place. Luckily, I don’t think this new patch works at all like they intended. In fact, I can see better than ever.” He adjusted the eye patch minutely. “Yes, it’s pretty clear. Either we’re going to die, or the King is… or not.” He looked crestfallen. “I think it does work. I see altogether too well now; I can see so many Possiblies that I can’t pick out the Most Likely Wills.” He cringed.
“This is awful, I think I’m going to be sick.” Although the Felicitous Guard certainly lived up to their name, they were not very clever. They had left the eye patch that North had gotten from Tartessus and he soon slipped it underneath the other. This alleviated things considerably and allowed him to reflect on his poor opinion of the King.
#
They sat in the bowels of the ship they knew not how long, the ship’s timbers sighing and shifting and a swinging lantern casting light and shadow first on one wall, then the other. They were fed regularly and found the food strange in that it was decidedly not. There were cress sandwiches, something in aspic (which Spender had always abhorred), and an indifferent curry, among other things. After a half dozen such unlikely meals, they were unceremoniously clapped in irons and brought above-decks. The captain was standing resplendent in brass buttons, epaulets, and a plumed cocked hat.
“We’ve entered the harbor,” he said. “Some distance up this canal, you’ll be sent off the ship pending your trial before the King.”
“Trial?” Spender exclaimed.
“Surely, as leaders of an organized insurrection, you didn’t expect his Majesty to congratulate you?” The ship glided through the narrow walls of the canal, along which were lined the silent grey people of the capital city. Dark clouds massed above them and lent to the atmosphere of foreboding. As they sailed, the land rose up around the canal and, for a time, they navigated between the high walls, with only a patch of sullen sky above them. The canal became narrower and, just when it seemed that the ship would become wedged between the walls, they made fast.
There was no dock proper, only a small stone landing with narrow stairs set into the wall that led up and out. Spender and North were made to walk a plank off the ship, where they were received by a retinue of Felicitous Guards. They were prodded up the precarious stair and, having reached the top, got their first glimpse of the King’s palace.
It was not, as Nameless had said, a fortress or a magic tent; it was not even a palace, strictly speaking. It was an estate and highly incongruous in that it would not have looked at all out of place at the edge of a park. It had a circular drive, narrow gables, and what looked like stables off to one side. Spender and North had a moment to look inquisitively at one another before they were taken and hauled down the wide gravel drive. It seemed at first that they were being t
aken to the stables but, just beyond, the ground fell away and they saw a dark granite edifice.
“The dungeons,” the Captain said somewhat unnecessarily.
#
They were handed over to gaolers and put ‘at the bottom’. Their cell was large, deeply gloomy, and unforgivingly spartan such that they found themselves nostalgic for the ship’s brig. North hammered on the door and shouted through the barred window.
“I’m beginning to seriously doubt your king’s legitimacy!” After listening in vain for a while, he returned and sat by Spender. “Between us, we’ve been starved, lashed, chased, bitten, imprisoned, nearly drowned, and imprisoned again. I don’t know how much more I can tolerate.” Spender made a sound of commiseration. At length he spoke.
“What do you think happened to the people who disappeared, the ones who first went through the Door?”
“I don’t know,” North said. “I suppose that’s something to ask the king.”
#
North was in his rooms. It was one of the first truly pleasant days of the year and his windows were open to the smell of damp earth and growing things. It was such a fine day and he had so little to do that he was considering a walk down to the river. Before he could get his jacket and hat, however, he heard a knock at the door.
“Spender! Good to see you, do come in.” Spender availed himself of North’s hospitality and, while they were in his rooms, they talked of nothing in the companionable way one does when with a particularly good friend. In the fullest, best part of the afternoon, as the traces of spring made their way through the open window, they decided to both of them go to the river.
They walked through the dappled light and shade beneath newly green trees and, skirting deep, fertile patches of mud that would have proved highly diverting in their youth, ambled along the riverbank, watching the ducks that launched into the placid waters and paddled about with a proprietary air. Spender idly tossed a few pebbles into the water.
“There’s a society;” he said, “they meet under Finch, and they’re about a sort of rational inquiry into the inexplicable.”
“What, like a Ghost Club; do they go around holding séances and writing letters to those Cottingley girls?”
“Nothing like that. They’re supposed to be impartial and skeptical and all that. To get in, though, you need to go and investigate something unusual or supernatural. Most of the old, well known places have been taken by now, but I think I found something very much out of the ordinary. It’s a sanitarium, I believe.” They had come to the bridge and dawdled as they crossed.
A punt was making its way lazily downstream; the gentle ripples from its passage spread to the edges of the water and, encountering stones and trailing branches, started back on themselves, forming drifting matrices of intersecting concentric circles.
“I wondered if you shouldn’t like to join me?” Spender said.
#
The things that one can do when locked in a dank cell with nothing in one’s pockets are few indeed. The walls were chilly and damp so Spender and North whiled away the dragging hours by sitting back to back, trying to remember the name of the boy who had been caught keeping a family of mice when they were at school.
“Remember he had one in his pocket and, later, they found the rest of them?” North said.
“What was his name; was it Gorringe?”
“No, Gorringe fell into a ditch or a well or something and got pneumonia.”
“Was it Woolley?” But they weren’t ever to recall whether or not it was Woolley because a voice drifted up from the dark recesses of the cell.
“Feeling the tedium? You shouldn’t be here for too long. Unless I’m mistaken, this is where people await summary execution.” A battered and disheveled figure issued from out the gloom and approached them.
“Why do you say that?” Spender asked.
“Because I’m to be hanged tomorrow,” he said, drawing closer. Though they had not known that he was there, his presence was made unremarkable by this last.
“Hanged?” Spender and North repeated at roughly the same time.
“I should have expected as much,” the man said, hunkering beside them.
“What did you do?” North asked.
“My name is Dogwood,” the man said abruptly, “I’m a Poet.” He sat and watched them. They started and North murmured ‘Oh, very good’. “I composed a poem about the King and it seems that he didn’t like it. It went:
Our King is awful rubbish
And he’s quite the awful dunce
He’s boorish and offensive
And he hasn’t bathed in months
“Of course, I was in my cups when I penned it. My verse is usually better than that.” A heavy tread stopped outside the door and a guard shouted in.
“Quiet in there! This is a prison, not a lovely garden party!” Dogwood howled derisively back.
“What; are you going to hang me?” The guard stomped away, muttering darkly about ‘prisoners these days having no respect’. Dogwood fastidiously brushed the dirt off of a bit of floor and sat with them. “Would you like to hear some of my poetry, my real poetry, that is?” They did and he began reciting, his voice eddying and lilting in the darkness. Spender and North both thought that it was good poetry, though very strange. Later, they would be obliged to admit that they couldn’t remember what it was about nor could they recall a single line. He went on and the low hum of his cant enveloped them and lulled them. It is no easy thing to fall into so much as an uneasy doze whilst propped up against another person, but they found that they had slept under Dogwood’s spell for, the next thing they knew, a trio of guards had burst in and shackled them once more. As they were dragged from the cell, Dogwood called after them.
“Give that miserable tyrant my regards!”
Spender and North were marched up into the sunlight (this being a very generous description of the leaden, ugly cast of the clouds) and past the stables to a side door of the manor house. As they climbed a staircase and passed through a wide windowed corridor, Spender and North were once again aware of a strangeness. But for the sound of an old woman assiduously scrubbing the floor, they walked in silence. This feeling of unease, of something being very wrong at the periphery of their consciousness intensified as they were led into an antechamber. They waited. The stillness of the room seemed to grow. Spender was feeling that he couldn’t bear another minute when the doors before them swung open from within and they entered.
The King’s court had once been a ballroom. There were now two rows of pillars leading to the end of the room where were massed a catafalque, a simple door, and a jumble of vaguely esoteric articles, the nature or purpose of which were not clear. Central to all this was the Seat of the King. The guards took Spender and North by their arms and brought them before a low dais where, on a winged armchair, sat Adelard Odd.
Chapter Ten
He wore a dark jacket and waistcoat of a cut much like that worn in the nineties and, under his chin, he had tied a white stock. To say that Odd had the look of a mad composer would not be far from the mark. His hair swept wildly back from his temples and he had a way of looking out from under his eyebrows with black, inscrutable eyes. The guards held Spender and North quite unnecessarily as they stood rooted to the spot. Odd sat stiffly in the chair and seemed to grip the arms. When he spoke, it was Spender he addressed.
“Mr. Spender,” he said, “Have you come all this way, after so many years, with vengeance on your mind?”
#
Lewis had a horse. It was a good horse and he liked it very much, even if its face scared him after dark. Mama would cover its head at night and then it was all right. The next day he could uncover it and ride it back and forth, back and forth as much as he pleased and, really, it was not so bad at all when it was light. Lewis loved his Mama- he was supposed to say ‘Mother’ but she didn’t mind; she sometimes read to him and was never cross. Papa, who was called Father, was only somet
imes cross, and even then not terribly.
One day, he lost Fosie and decided to go downstairs to see if Mama or Papa had seen him. He slid down one step at a time, looking through the spindles the whole way. When he got to the bottom he sat there. The curtains were drawn and that was strange. It was dark inside but opening the curtains wouldn’t make it much brighter because it was a dreary, dreary, dreary day. The door at the end of the hall was open and the light came out of it onto the floor and the wall.
Gran’pa, who was supposed to be Grandfather, was sitting in a chair- he had a beard where he hadn’t one before. It looked as if he was crying the way Lewis did when he fell at the Park. He knew he mustn’t cry, though, and he worried that Gran’pa would get scolded. He was going to hide upstairs when Gran’pa called him. There were pieces of paper on the table and the floor and Gran’pa had one as well. He stood by Gran’pa’s knee and Gran’pa pulled him in with one arm and held him very tight. He told Lewis that a wicked man- an evil man- had made off with something.
Papa came in and Gran’pa sent Lewis to him. Papa didn’t look at him and Lewis was scared. Papa said that Mama had gone on an outing. He said she would be gone awhile. ‘Where did she go?’ Lewis wanted to know. Papa had to go.
There was Nan and she was all right. She brought him his egg and took him to the Park and for the longest time Lewis didn’t understand. One night he woke up and was terribly thirsty. He called and called for Mama but she didn’t come. Finally, Nan came but Lewis didn’t want her. Nan told him that Mother had gone out and couldn’t bring him water. Then he did understand and he cried and cried.
#
Things were never quite the same for Lewis Spender. His father never spoke of it again until many years later, when he was about to die. Spender stood by the bed as his father creased and fretted at the top of his bed linens with a palsied hand.
“It’s a damnable thing,” he said, “to lose so much. I had hoped to live longer, to see a little more; you’ve really only begun.” His mind seemed to wander and his fingers continued their unceasing movement. “Had I known, when she left, I should have stopped her, Lewis.” Spender realized, with a bit of a wrench, that he was talking about his mother. “We had both known him; I met him first, I think; but that was long before, when he was thought to be harmless. I still can’t imagine why she went to him.”