Mordew

by Alex Pheby

  The sea crashed, struggled, fought to flatten everything and return the world to its original state, flat and untroubled by man, but from up here the tantrums of the breakers were nothing more than the ragings of a baby: so much thrashing about, to no effect. He was so far up that Nathan couldn’t even hear the waves above the gentle breeze.

  Down below there were the slums, and the Merchant City. Down there were the Fetch and Gam, his mother and Prissy. Sirius and Anaximander. Down there was dead-life and the Living Mud. Ghosts. But he was so far up…

  There was a telescope in the room behind him, in the map drawer between matches that struck every different imaginable colour when lit and a kite the size of a hand. He could take the telescope, if he wished, and train it on the alifonjers in the zoo. He could see everything with it. Though…

  The locket was warm in his hand.

  When he turned back there was the tower – like the turret of a place from a story, with a steep sloping roof, surrounded on all sides by grass and bounded by the wall so that it made an octagonal garden.

  But there was not only grass. There were trees too: fruit trees, low and with cherries and apples and pears, ready to eat, and oak trees, tall and climbable, to one branch of which someone had tied a rope with a fallen branch knotted at the end on which he could sit and swing and under which the grass had given way to a trampled patch of earth, dry in the sun and dusty. There was a weeping willow beside a pond, which gave shade. In the pond were carp, fat and white, or black, or mottled gold and silver. They breached the surface when Nathan came near and mouthed things to him, soundlessly. They followed him wherever he went, eyeing him for as long as they could before they returned below, only to come up again when they had breathed enough water.

  At one side of the garden there was a wooden post, notched with the marks of countless sword and axe strikes, and near it there was an archery target from which arrows stuck and over which another bow was slung, just the right size for him.

  There was a fountain too, and beside it a bench. Nathan took a handful of cherries and washed them in the water and sat and ate them, spitting the seeds out in long lazy arcs so that they fell into the thick grass and disappeared.

  Why not try on the armour?

  Why not take the axe, and play at hitting the post?

  He sat and turned a cherry stone against the backs of his teeth with his tongue. It rattled gently in his mouth, and he heard it in his jaw rather than with his ears. He did this for a while without moving, his hand on his chest, but eventually he spat this last stone out, ran to the door and returned with the armour.

  He laid it out on the grass before him, pulled out the stand, and disconnected the parts so that there was the helmet, then the gorget, the besagues, the breastplate, down to the greaves and the sabatons, until it took up more space, laid out, than he ever would.

  It was harder to put on than he’d imagined, and he found that if he put on the helmet first the visor kept falling down over his eyes, and if he put the sabatons on first then the greaves would not fit, but this was part of the fun of it, tying and untying the leather straps and buckling and unbuckling each part in turn. At one point it seemed as if he should take off his locket, to make it easier to get the breastplate on, but he didn’t do that. He moved the locket round so it dangled down his back instead.

  When he had the armour on, eventually, only a few pieces still remaining on the grass, he turned and twisted his arms and legs and ran for a few steps. It felt perfect. In what way, he did not know, but it felt as if this was right. He picked up the axe and ran for the wooden post and when he hit it, the armour clanked, and his knees and elbows rattled like his teeth rattled in his jaw.

  It felt good.

  Why not take off the armour and look at the sky?

  Why not relax?

  When he took off the armour the blue of the sky was deepening, and tracks of high cloud rippled like the marks waves leave in the sand.

  Across the breeze came Bellows’s voice, calling him to dinner.

  L

  After dinner, Bellows took Nathan by the hand and led him somewhere new. Nathan followed without question. How long had he been here? Was it only one day? It felt like forever. Wasn’t it forever? Where had he been before? The playroom. Breakfast. Bed.

  Bellows was speaking, so he should listen. ‘Education to a boy should be as water is to a fish, so much the Master has said on many occasions. He should have it surround him on all sides, so that it supports him, and sustains him, and provides the medium in which he should live. A boy without education flounders on dry land and, eventually, dies. You may well be able to attest to this fact from personal experience. I have so long had the benefit of the Master’s education, His wisdom and His generosity, that I cannot claim to recall what the absence of it would be like, but it seems to me that to be without any of those things, even for a single day, would be a terrible thing. It pains me to imagine you, and the boy-children like you, stranded in the world, aimless and feckless and out of your element, flapping and gasping.’ Bellows took out his handkerchief, the great white one the size of a tablecloth that Nathan had seen before but now couldn’t quite place. He dabbed it at the corners of his nose where it disappeared under his hat, and where his eyes, if he had them, might be.

  When he spoke again it was only after he had pulled himself together and straightened his lapels. ‘Still. Let us not dwell on the past. Today we will introduce the fish to water and let him swim. I will both lead and follow, and who knows where we will end up. Eh, boy?’

  Nathan followed close behind Bellows, walking almost in his footprints, except Bellows’s stride exceeded his by quite a way and Nathan had to skip between the gaps to keep up. He could think of nothing to say in reply, and in the silence left in the conversation, Bellows described the men who were painted in the pictures they passed, and the places on the framed maps. He gave brief histories of the artists who had made likenesses of flowers and vases and braces of rabbits strung by the ankles, and game mallards, limp and glaze-eyed. The corridor stretched on forever, so much so that Nathan could scarcely believe any building could contain its length, or that there were enough artists in Mordew to make all the pictures that decorated its walls.

  When it eventually came to an end, they passed through a white stucco archway and into a vaulted hall, the roof domed and made of clear glass onto which rain drummed and slicked in sheets. It put a cast to the light which made thin shadows, the ghosts of waves, on the walls around them.

  It was like the library in Gam’s den, except that Nathan couldn’t picture that now.

  The books in this library were arranged so that they presented a uniformity of colour and height, each shelf holding books of the same type, ten, twenty, fifty to a row. There were so many shelves and they reached so high up the walls that what little arithmetic Nathan possessed was insufficient to enumerate them, though he felt the need, suddenly, to try. Fifty to a shelf, fifty shelves. What did that make?

  The room smelled of leather and stale spices, and there was the taste of dust on the edges of his tongue and a dryness in his eyes.

  Bellows strode towards a lectern, on which a book was already split, a red ribbon lying between the open pages. Bellows stood so that he leant over the book and indicated that Nathan should take a seat.

  ‘I hear that you cannot read, Nathan; is that correct?’

  Nathan looked down at the desk behind which the only chair had been placed. There were things crudely carved and inked on it – hanged men, dragons, a cat seen from behind – and here and there were letters. Nathan recognised what they were, but the import behind them was lost on him. He could not read.

  ‘You hang your head in shame?’ Bellows said, quietly. ‘Dear boy, there is no shame in ignorance. Ignorance is nothing more than a great opportunity, a wonderful absence that is the precursor to the delights of learning and knowledge. Do not seek to hide your ignorance but bring it out into the light. Bring it to me, as you would
bring an empty vessel you wish to fill. In this room, amongst these books, you will find that there is an endless bounty for which you need only express the desire. It will be given to you. Bring forward your empty bowl, your dry cup, your cracked plate, and let the Master fill each until they overflow.’ Bellows gestured that he should come forward, and, again, Nathan did as he was told.

  Bellows danced over to meet him and placed his hand on Nathan’s back and half-pushed, half-urged him on a tour of the shelves.

  ‘These shelves contain the wisdom of the ages, which the Master has curated and archived, which, if only we could contain it all, would allow us to know those things that have been known by the greatest thinkers of the past. Imagine. If we could only let their words pass into us, to understand and hold them, would not we, then, be as great as they were? Here…’ Bellows indicated a bank of shelves filled with books primarily bound in shades of brown, except for the odd exception. ‘…we find Philosophy, a body of knowledge that treats thoughts as if they were abstract things, and, in so simplifying and condensing them, uncovers the rules that govern our thinking. Here is Chemistry, which repeats the job, this time with the things of the world, so that we might see how each stuff combines with another, and so makes up the objects of our experience. Here is Law, wherein the dictates of proper and improper behaviour are outlined, and here is History, where the actions of the men of the past are recorded. So with Literature, and Politics, until we come to the smallest, but not the least, section of the library – the Magics!’

  The books Bellows showed Nathan now were few, but their importance was indicated by the cabinet in which they were placed, which was glass, decorated with intricate flowers and birds. There were a dozen books, perhaps, and rather than standing on their edges, upright like soldiers on parade, each had a plump, silk cushion on which they reclined, and there was a hand’s breadth between them.

  ‘That cabinet is locked.’

  ‘There’s no keyhole,’ Nathan said.

  ‘Correct, and no key either. The Master has locked it, and His Law forbids anyone access to it except He and His named agents.’

  From that point onward, no matter what Bellows discussed and no matter how enthusiastically, Nathan’s attention would drift towards that locked cabinet. Bellows would attempt to distract him, moving to the opposite side of the room, gesticulating his love of calculus with earnest excitement and pointing at passages from volumes with a twig-like finger, but eventually Nathan’s eye would return to the Magics like a homing pigeon returning to its roost. What did they do, these books? Who wrote them? Why? Unlike the other books, which seemed content to keep their secrets until opened by Bellows, these ones begged to be understood.

  Bellows clicked his fingers and began a new topic, and Nathan did his best to concentrate.

  LI

  When Nathan eventually returned to his room it was dark and the curtains had been drawn and the lamp lit. So long did it feel as if he had been away that everything seemed unfamiliar to him again. He drew the bath, scrubbed the residue of books and play from his skin, applied the ointment to his arm, which was now almost entirely back to its old self, and put on his nightgown.

  When he reached his bed, with every intention of going directly to sleep, he saw the mirror the old man had hung that morning. What had the Master said? He would be able to see his friends? He felt no urgency, but he climbed onto the bed, pulled the locket out so that it hung outside rather than inside his nightgown, and looked into the mirror.

  At first it was himself he saw: cleaner and neater than he thought he was, but himself nonetheless. Then, slowly, he faded from the frame and images appeared, still lifes like the braces of rabbits and portraits in the hall. They came one after another, gradually enough for every detail to be taken in, but changing with sufficient frequency that a sense of movement was sometimes suggested.

  Here was Prissy. She was with Gam, and they were in the sewers, searching. Now here was Prissy’s face, up close, her eyes sad, and then her legs, up to the knees in ordure, her dress floating beside her, the filth ruining it unnoticed. Gam now, bending over something, caught in a blockage. Prissy’s face again, her hands raised over her mouth. Over Gam’s shoulder: a corpse, bloated and blue, then a skull from which the face had been chewed. Nathan turned away, held his locket.

  But he did not get under the covers. He turned back.

  Here was Nathan’s mother, alone, staring into the fire. Then images of her thoughts – of Nathan, of his father – then his mother again, looking over her shoulder, then the back of a man. A hand in a pocket. A coin.

  Nathan found that he was holding the locket very tightly now.

  There was a knock at the door. Nathan jumped, tore his eyes away from the mirror with the sense that he had done something wrong. The door opened a crack and the tip of Bellows’s nose came through.

  ‘Would warm milk help you sleep, Nathan?’ Bellows followed the words in, carrying a tray with a steaming mug in the middle.

  Nathan nodded, went back to his bed and got in. Bellows placed the tray on the table beside his bed. ‘Thank you, Mr Bellows,’ Nathan said.

  ‘Please,’ said Bellows, ‘Bellows is sufficient. Night night.’

  Over the next days, Bellows took Nathan on a detailed expedition through the books of the library, always skirting the Magics but never ignoring them, using their glamour to offset the dryness of the other subjects. One book in particular drew Nathan’s eye – it was bottle green and the air rippled around it.

  Bellows never read from the Magics. Instead, he took volumes from the shelves and opened them at the back, choosing a topic from a list there, then riffled forward. He read about the motion of water around the world, and how the sun makes rain fall. He read about the first men, the ancients who poisoned the land, and the return of God to punish them. He read about the tiny spheres that made up everything, and how these spheres could be induced to mate with each other and make new things. When words were not enough, he leant down and showed Nathan strings of numbers, and diagrams in which the shapes of objects and their movements might better be elucidated.

  Nathan would listen, expressionless, toying with the locket and looking blankly at all he was shown. He tugged at his shirtsleeves and bit his lips when Bellows expounded excitedly on this topic or another, reaching up to indicate the state of exultation an intelligent man might be expected to achieve at the mere contemplation of the wonders contained in these works. When Bellows adopted hushed and reverent tones at the revelation of lore so potent that it might once have been reserved for kings and princes and priests and popes, Nathan heard it all, and parts of it he could understand, but mostly it was like the sound of the waves as they crashed against the Sea Wall – a hissing with no meaning, no matter how potent the cause.

  Bellows saw this in him. If Nathan drew blood on his lip, or his knuckles cracked from the presence of matters which clearly ought to mean so much but which did not, then he would turn to lighter subjects – the dress and habits of people long back in time who did things differently than they might have, or of wonders that had crumbled into dust and the foolishness of their makers for assuming something permanent might come from so meagre a source as their own intentions and efforts.

  As a week passed, though, and the books gathered half-read on the library tables, Bellows calmed in his delivery and spent more and more time examining Nathan – asking him questions. Bellows’s tone was always first one of surprise at Nathan’s ignorance, and then studiously neutral. He would come to collect him later and later, allowing Nathan more time in bed and in the playroom and its garden. Here Nathan was both happier and more occupied. There always seemed to be something that had escaped his attention, or some new use that he could put to some familiar thing.

  Nathan would return in the evening and bathe. He applied his ointment for the first few days, but it was better in no time, so he stopped. Ointment or no, he would dry himself off, dress in his nightwear, and look into the mirror. On
ce it showed him a bonfire, beside which Prissy and Gam and people Nathan did not recognise were standing. It showed him two bodies, wrapped in winding cloths, laid across the top, licked with flames, Prissy taking a firebird feather and throwing it. The feather, falling. A burst of red. White smoke, drifting on the wind.

  Another night he saw Gam and Prissy in the clubhouse. On the table: food uneaten, wine bottles still corked. Prissy turning to leave. Sirius pacing and circling, howling, then lying, his head between his paws.

  The last thing he saw was the Temple of the Athanasians in the early morning, dawn light reflected in a curtained window. The curtains drawn aside. Prissy, eyes blacked, weeping. In another window, caged, a stranger in a blue dress, feathers in her hair. ‘I am here,’ she seemed to be saying. ‘I am here.’

  The following day, the old man – Caretaker, as Nathan then knew him – came to take the mirror away.

  Then it was nothing but lessons and meals and, increasingly, play.

  LII

  One morning, when Nathan was puzzling for the hundredth time as to what precise drama the toy theatre was produced to enact – its figures and props were all half-finished, grey and amorphous – Bellows interrupted early with a call from the corridor.

  Nathan went to him, expecting nothing more unusual than the early resumption of his lessons, but Bellows was standing with a gift.

  ‘Now, boy,’ Bellows announced. ‘The Master has given you every opportunity to learn and you have expressed your willingness to do it. You have proved yourself a diligent pupil, but you will not understand what it is that the Master needs you to understand. Your illiteracy, I fear, is a disease which is hampering your development. This is a matter the Master takes most seriously, and it is one which I, in my misplaced pride, imagined I might remedy, thereby saving the Master from the effort of doing it Himself.