Oblong glanced at the rest of the post. Two fellow tenants were in receipt of a smart envelope with a heraldic device on the back –
an upright hooded weasel clasping a staff. The thickness of the card inside left little doubt. Typical, thought Oblong, locals get invitations, I get orders.
In Rotherweird you measured your communal standing by how long the Mayor kept you waiting. Oblong was finally admitted to Snorkel’s inner sanctum at 12.45 p.m. The large room exuded more money than taste. At the Mayor’s end, the furniture was antique, but no one piece fitted with another. The paintings were over-polished; the pile of the carpet so thick that your shoes all but disappeared. Incongruously, a row of plastic chairs faced Snorkel’s imposing desk. Snorkel invited Oblong to pull one up.
‘Form IV had better be behaving,’ said Snorkel gravely, ‘because you’ll shortly have a new pupil with most discerning parents. Smith will give you further instructions.’
Snorkel spoke as if he were the general, Oblong a private, and the Headmaster a lowly corporal overseeing the menial details.
‘Is that all?’ stammered Oblong.
Snorkel held up a thick, shiny cream envelope, identical to the two he had seen on the front doormat at Number 3 Artery Lane that morning.
‘When yours arrives, accept promptly, dress properly and do not let us down. Our host was most particular about inviting you. I said he was erring on the inclusive side, but then I suppose it’s a big house.’
The Mayor dismissed him with a lordly flick of the hand.
Oblong walked the streets, mulling over the cryptogram ASC 1017. He favoured a book and a page number, but knew no title with those initials – another brick wall. On his return home a creamy envelope awaited him.
*
Orelia thought she knew her fellow citizens by appearance at least, but the man in the doorway of Baubles & Relics confounded her. He cut a striking figure: tall, with an unsettling pinkish-white pallor to the face, and exotic dress – a shirt of Indian style under a heavy overcoat, hand-made brogues polished to a dazzling shine, mohair trousers with a crease as sharp as a knife and an ebony stick topped with a silver weasel’s head. She thought him elderly at first sight, but revised her assessment as he strode vigorously into the shop.
‘I was passing.’ The voice was silky.
‘There are labels for most things. Any queries – just ask.’
Her unusual visitor advanced two steps into the shop and stood stock-still. He looked high and low. His nostrils puckered. ‘You had four stones.’
‘Ah – the Rotherweird comfort stones.’
‘Comfort stones?’
‘A mediaeval parlour game.’
‘I trust you still have them?’ The voice edged higher, anxiety beneath the cool exterior.
She assumed he must be a friend of the Mayor. Outsiders hardly ever came here. She fetched the stones and he placed them in the flat of his hands and closed his eyes. Clearly this man, whoever he was, had no interest in parlour games.
Eyes snapped open. ‘Price?’
‘I’ll have to ask my aunt.’
‘Assume your aunt would say five times what you paid for them, cash preferred.’
Orelia decided she had discretion to accept generous offers. ‘Two hundred should do.’
This time the smile was fuller. He produced four immaculate fifty-guinea notes from a crocodile-skin wallet. She gave him the stones, and the label too. ‘Bag?’
He ignored the offer, glancing at the label instead. ‘“Provenance unknown” never cuts ice with me. Everything comes from somewhere or someone. Please find out.’
He placed the label on the table and reached once more into his coat pocket and produced a blank envelope. ‘Name?’
‘Orelia. Orelia Roc.’
‘As in the fabulous bird?’
‘As in the fabulous bird.’
‘Miss?’
She nodded. He wrote her name on the envelope and handed it over.
In what appeared to be a miracle of timing Mrs Banter appeared in the doorway, nose twitching in the presence of money, and outsider money at that. ‘What are you selling?’
‘The comfort stones, Aunt. This gentleman has paid most generously.’
Mrs Banter picked the label off the table. ‘It says “price on application”. That means application to me. Those stones are most unusual.’
‘He paid two hundred guineas,’ whispered Orelia, grimacing apologetically at the purchaser, who gave Mrs Banter an ambiguous, lopsided smile – dislike or amusement, or both?
‘That’s a deposit, not a price – these are rare stones, if not unique.’
‘I assume by “deposit”, you mean half the price.’ The man took out his wallet and placed another two hundred guineas on the table. He did not relinquish possession of the stones. His manner brooked no argument.
‘Done,’ said Mrs Banter with a self-satisfied ‘learn from me’ look at her niece.
The stranger offered the same smile again and left.
‘I’m not sure that was wise,’ chided Orelia, but her anxiety did not touch an exultant Mrs Banter.
‘Hold your nerve, and never take the first offer. Have we ever done such a deal? A hundred guineas a bead! Anyway, didn’t you see the smile? He’s a man of the world. He respects a woman of business.’
Orelia had interpreted the smile differently, but she said nothing.
Mrs Banter pocketed a hundred guineas and breezed out with an accounting instruction: ‘Go light in the ledger and treat our little premium as a tip.’
Inside the stranger’s envelope, distinguished by a hooded weasel gripping a staff, Orelia found an imposing invitation:
Sir Veronal and Lady Slickstone
At Home
•
Saturday 27th February
Blue Lagoons and Canapés
6.30 p.m.
•
RSVP
Rotherweird Manor
•
Please bring this invitation with you
Everyone knew the Manor, a ruined Elizabethan building hitherto cordoned off from view. She had heard talk of a dodgy deal between Snorkel and a wealthy interloper. She recalled her unease with the stones and her suspicion that they combined to do something. She recalled Salt’s similar misgivings. Had Sir Veronal felt the same way? If so, why pay so generously? His manner had been peculiar, as if he sensed a significance he could not articulate.
Nonetheless they had yielded a handsome profit and an invitation, so all in all, the sale of the stones had been worth it. Only one question escaped Orelia’s attention. Mrs Banter rarely visited the shop in trading hours. How had she managed such immaculate timing?
*
Sir Veronal entered his library, an intimate room with fine panelling, locked the door behind him and placed the stones on his Renaissance desk. Against the fine marquetry they looked incongruous, beggars at a banquet. He had no inkling of what they did or where they came from, but he felt an inexplicable emotional response of piercing intensity. Half an hour of geological research had failed to identify their type, but he found the rarity encouraging.
Rotherweird had to be the place he had left all those years ago. He had come home. The next-door room would shortly be filled with his personal records; all he had to do now was retrieve his lost youth.
He pressed the frieze on the top of the desk, releasing a hidden compartment into which he deposited the stones, then turned to the last tranche of invitations lined up in their envelopes on the butler’s tray, ready for the evening post. He hunted through and removed one envelope. He had overpaid; now it was her turn. He tossed the envelope into the blazing fire and watched the name Mrs Banter curl and darken before bursting into flame.
*
Beside the Herald’s invitation to the Manor opening lay a much older letter, still sealed, which testified to his gravest duty: keeping Rotherweird from her past. He ran his index finger over the medallion of red wax, feeling the lines of the ruff, t
he pleats of the skirt, the orb and sceptre in the outstretched hands. Elizabeth I, Gloriana. The tiny face wore a no-nonsense expression, and rightly so. The Great Seal of State adorned only documents of the highest moment. The ink, though faded, retained its clarity.
To the heirs and a∫signs of Hubert Finch – only to be opened on ∫ufferance of death, when the dire∫t peril from the other place ∫talks the fief of Rotherweird.
All Finch’s ancestors had held this document, and none had opened it. His task was to ensure that remained the position.
He did not know the location of the ‘other place’, or indeed its nature. He had no inkling of the peril to which it referred. He knew only the importance of keeping both hidden from view.
The invitation had prompted him to check this ancient instruction. The reopening of the Manor disobeyed precedent and, he suspected, the Rotherweird Statute. Old houses hold the past; let them breathe and they exhale secrets – the very reason why his own house had always been off-limits to everyone save his wife and son, and the archivoire even to them. What had brought Sir Veronal to this backwater? Who was he? And the hardest question: why would a billionaire outsider choose Rotherweird of all places as his retirement venue? He sensed deeper currents and cursed Snorkel’s venality.
He penned an acceptance. Time to enter the lion’s den.
*
Vixen Valourhand chose an isolated part of the Island Field to practise her unusual choice of weapon. A line of pollarded willows yielded a row of stumps, varied in circumference and height off the ground.
Now or never, she had decided on receiving her invitation: her one chance to make an impression on Rotherweird society. Everyone who was anyone would be there.
With uncanny accuracy Flask had predicted the outsider’s arrival, his wealth, the restoration of the Manor and even the holding of a party as a first step to seducing the town. He had added a layer of forbidden knowledge – the original owner had, centuries earlier, been a distinguished scientist and teacher, which only doubled the insult of giving the keys to the Manor to a plutocrat from wider England. Protest, he had suggested glibly, but that was easier said than done. Waving a placard would not do. She had to articulate an elegant demonstration and an equally elegant escape.
As to the first, she had invested much time in a costume with two linings and flat projectors between them. She had tried several different materials before achieving the desired effect. Additional features were designed to compensate for her lack of physical height. It would be a crowded room, and she must stand out.
As to the second, she expected security, hence the need for a weapon that would immobilise, but again, with style.
She kept her plan to herself. She had succumbed to Strimmer’s cold good looks for a time, but conquest achieved, Strimmer quickly moved on. Independent action was her only weapon for making a point to her controlling former tutor.
Her thoughts returned to Flask and his delicate speciality, history, and how it worked the past to reveal the future. She reflected too on the price, for his discoveries had been quickly followed by his disappearance.
The light began to fail as she picked up the small device on the ground by her feet, cocked her wrist and aimed for the left hand stump, its profile not unlike a human leg.
*
Bill Ferdy’s working day began with his arrival soon after dawn in a mobile market stall – the Ferdys shared one with other countrysiders as an outlet for their excess farm produce – through the North Gate and down the Golden Mean to Market Square, followed by the walk to The Journeyman’s Gist. Countrysiders freely gave each other lifts in and out, for not everyone sold in town every day. Winter, Ferdy felt, gave the pub added worth and purpose, a counterbalance to the elements and the season for Feisty Peculiar, his most potent brew.
The letter on the doormat could only have been delivered by hand, for no ordinary post ever preceded his arrival. That in itself was troubling.
On heavy-duty official paper beneath the date and the arms of the Rotherweird Town Hall it read:
Dear Mr Ferdy,
We write to inform you that on November 1st of last year your licence to sell liquor and foodstuffs expired by effluxion of time. No application to renew has been received by the Licensing Office. Accordingly your continuing trade since that date has been in breach of the law.
Further, on December 26th two packets of mixed nuts (hazel and walnuts) were sold one day past their sell-by date.
Your tenancy is hereby terminated on twenty-one days’ notice pursuant to Clause 14(3)(x)(ii) of the Lease.
Provided all fittings and chattels are removed within twenty-eight days of today’s date, and in view of your past service to the community of Rotherweird, no further action will be taken. If this offer is not complied with, you may expect to suffer the full rigour of the law.
Yours sincerely,
Secretary to the Licensing Committee
(Chair: S Snorkel Esq, Mayor & Chief Magistrate)
The charge was strictly true, but the authorities had accommodated Bill Ferdy’s laxity in administrative matters for twenty-one years, sending a reminder two weeks after the expiry date, and Ferdy had always then complied. This year there had been no reminder.
His generosity of spirit brought slowness in joining up the dots of the dark intrigues of others. Only on reading the letter a second time did he register the change in tone and the unusual inclusion of Snorkel’s name at the end. Then he remembered Slickstone’s visit, and the brutal reality dawned: this time there would be no clemency.
He hit the bar with his fist and let out a single cry, that of an animal in pain.
*
The office of the Town Clerk, Gorhambury, lurked in a byway off the grander passages of the Mayoral Suite on the first floor of the Town Hall. Municipal staff theorised that Gorhambury – no one knew his first name, if ever he had one – had swallowed in infancy the twenty-eight volumes of the collected Rotherweird Regulations and had been digesting them ever since. He could recite from memory tracts of clauses and cross-references on subjects as diverse as planning and fireworks, transport and highwire entertainment. Snorkel might make the political decisions, but Gorhambury gave them life, for it was he who regulated the intricate machinery of the town’s administration.
He looked the part: slight of build, with an incipient stoop, skin the colour of faded paper and a gaunt face whose expressions inhabited a narrow range between mild concern and deep anxiety. He wore three-piece suits (jettisoning his waistcoat only at weekends), white shirts, dark navy blue ties unspoilt by any hint of decoration and brogues as shiny as liquorice. His work absorbed all his energies, leaving no appetite for love, fine food or the social whirl. He never complained, despite being taken for granted by the Mayor, and he brought to his interpretation of the law a firm sense of fairness and decency.
Files, immaculately ordered, filled shelves on the walls and cardboard drums with green plastic tops that dotted the floor like mushrooms. Lines of paper clips, colour-coded for different subjects, stood in serried ranks, awaiting commitment to the fray. Staples hindered efficient updating, in Gorhambury’s expert opinion.
He did not have a lunch hour, but the Town Hall emptied between one and two, so providing a window for quiet study or off-the-record meetings – not that Mrs Banter’s entry suggested any wish for discretion.
She swept in. ‘Well – have you remedied this injustice?’
‘Slow down, Mrs Banter.’
‘You got my letter – they lost my invitation.’
‘You were on the list.’
‘Of course I was.’
‘Only . . .’
‘Only what?’
Gorhambury pushed Sir Veronal’s short letter across the table:
We appreciate your list as an advisory aid, but the party is mine. Whatever your shortcomings, I do not make clerical mistakes – the unasked are not asked. Arrange security, as you know the faces, and deliver quotations including hourly rates
well in advance.
The peremptory style and the detailed eye in money matters added to Mrs Banter’s frustration. She and Sir Veronal had qualities in common; they would surely blossom in each other’s company.
‘You did mention me?’
‘That would have been indelicate. I suggested the possibility of an “accidental omission” from the list we provided.’ Gorhambury had no reason not to attribute Mrs Banter’s omission to a clerical slip. She was a staple of Snorkel’s evening soirées and surely a shoe-in for such a party.
He had rarely seen such misery on a human face. Parties in his view flourished while true civilisation burned, show-pieces for wastrels and torture for the diligent. This jaundiced view was coloured by self-interest, for who would talk to him? He did not do jokes. He did small talk about regulations. To date he had kept his invitation to himself. Mrs Banter’s facial expression sealed it.
‘Have mine.’ He pushed the stiff white card across the desk. Mrs Banter ran her thumb over the embossed weasels, such class. ‘I’ve security to organise – I’ll be there anyway,’ he added.
Mrs Banter’s scruples evaporated. Snatching the invitation, she managed no more than a ‘dear Gorhambury’ before rushing out, lest her benefactor change his mind. The fresh air tickled her conscience. At the Rotherweird Bank she transferred a paltry three guineas to the Town Clerk’s personal account. He was only a clerk, after all. The gift went unnoticed. Gorhambury had little time for his own affairs.
Uplifted, all senses heightened, Mrs Banter passed the queues at Farthingales and Titfertat and headed for her dressmaker.
5
The Black Tile Opens
Lost Acre’s fauna divided into three kinds: the pure species, untouched by the mixing-point, the random constructs from species that entered the mixing-point at the same time and the few creatures fashioned by her human visitors. Ferox was aware of two bouts of activity by humans – the one that created him, around the time of the Roman invasion, and the second, centuries later but still centuries ago, when they wore leather and velvet with ruffs around their necks. The man-made creations had mostly failed or been hunted down. Only he from the first period, and the cat and the monstrous creature in the forest lair from the second, had survived, so far as he knew.
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