Swiftly: A Novel (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  ‘I shall go,’ said Bates, a sense of purpose filling him again. ‘I shall accompany your Calculator, my friend.’

  ‘Oh,’ said D’Ivoi. ‘The Calculator is incidental to you, my friend. This is not why I wish you to go.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Another gentleman will be a member of the party. It is the Dean of York. You will accompany him.’

  ‘Accompany him?’

  ‘As his aide-de-camp, if you will.’

  This sounded, to Bates, considerably less glorious. ‘To what end?’

  ‘He is a friend of France. He will lead us to a great prize in Yorkshire. The calculation machine will facilitate the use of this prize. We shall seize the prize and make use of it.’ D’Ivoi’s scrupulously unidiomatic pronunciation, bringing out the ‘r’ in every word, gave his words a queerly Scottish flavour. ‘But we do not trust him. We cannot. So we will observe him, of course. And you - sans your ribbon, my friend - you will befriend him, and act as a bridge between himself and ourselves. Do you see?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Bates. ‘And this prize?’

  ‘This prize,’ repeated D’Ivoi, in a neutral tone.

  ‘What is it?’

  D’Ivoi cast his right hand into the air, his fingers wriggling, as if the prize were the least important thing in the world. ‘It is something,’ he said folding his arms, ‘of military significance. You have heard rumours of a great military device in Yorkshire?’

  ‘I have not. In Yorkshire? I have not.’

  ‘A cannon,’ said D’Ivoi. ‘It is a cannon of great size. Constructed by the English several years ago; constructed, indeed, over many years. The great Davidowic designed and cast several of the components. But then the project languished. But after this, events in India, and the hostility of the princes of Russia, persuaded the English to proceed. The Dean of York was eager in its construction.’

  ‘He was eager?’

  ‘I mean to say he was, I mean to say that there was enthusiasm in him for the project.’

  ‘The Dean of York?’

  ‘The science of ballistics is his hobby, his hobby horse, is that the correct word? He has helped assemble the giant cannon.’

  ‘How large is this ordnance?’

  ‘A mile long, perhaps.’

  Bates gasped. ‘Impossible!’

  ‘One would say so,’ agreed D’Ivoi. ‘I have not seen it with my eyes.’

  ‘No horse could pull such a gun,’ said Bates. ‘Not even a Brobdingnagian one!’

  ‘I understand that the Giant people have indeed been involved in the construction of this device,’ said D’Ivoi. ‘I understand that it could not have been built without them, of course. But the cannon is not a motile device, or so I understand it. It is fixed against a hillside.’

  ‘And is it finished - this cannon? Ready to fire?’

  ‘So we understand it to be.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Bates, ‘that the English, that my people, did not use it against the army of France.’

  D’Ivoi shrugged. ‘Indeed. Perhaps it is not oriented in the correct direction. I believe that it has been constructed to aim shells at Afghanistan.’

  ‘I had heard of this land as a place in fable. It is beyond China, I think?’

  ‘The north of India,’ said D’Ivoi. ‘The south of Russia.’

  ‘So far? But what could launch a cannon ball so far?’

  ‘Howsoever,’ said D’Ivoi, with a brisk tone that suggested the interview was complete. ‘you will go with the party, and liaise between the Dean and the French commander, a Monsieur Larroche. You must attend to them by the Tower tomorrow, and the party will proceed from there. No later than noon.’

  Bates stood up. ‘I accept,’ he said grandly.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said D’Ivoi, his face crumpling out a smile. ‘What else would you do?’

  [2]

  At dawn the following day news came that the journey to York had been postponed. ‘By how long?’ Bates demanded of the messenger, in an agony of impatience. ‘Postponed by how long?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the boy. He was perhaps ten years of age, and was dressed in the livery of the newly created Public Servants, with the letters EFP - Employés de la Fonction Publique - printed on the tunic. Doubtless, Bates reflected, he received a portion of that same general disdain and hostility from ordinary Britons as was also served up to Bates himself. He looked fiercely at Bates, at any rate, as if outraged by his fate.

  Bates held the scrap of paper in his hands: his journey postponed, no more detail. ‘Do I,’ he asked the boy, ‘do you - expect a tip?’

  The boy scowled again. ‘You ben’t supposed to tip EFPs,’ he said. ‘We get a considered ration from the government.’ But he held his right hand out anyway, and Bates fumbled out a penny.

  After he had gone Bates fussed around his rooms. Without a man-servant (he could not, despite prolonged effort to do so, entice a servant to work for him), his lodgings were in a poor state. Paper, rinds, old clothes, all manner of litter on the floor. How long would the delay be? What was he to do? He had, mentally speaking, prepared himself for the adventure.

  Later in the day he stepped out to buy a Mercury, but it was an emaciated newssheet, shrivelled to two small pages by the strictures of war and occupation, containing nothing of any importance save official notices by the occupying forces and some town gossip. As he returned from the street vendor the rain, which had threatened for so long, finally began to fall. It came at first like a miniature artillery attack, large drops falling as shells to explode on the dusty road in starbursts of mud. The temperature dipped, and the light went dark grey. Then, as the torrent gathered vigour, a tumbling airful of heavy water came hard down upon him. Bates ducked and sprinted, but was drenched to the skin by the time he returned to his rooms.

  It rained. The rain was constant for six days, sometimes growing in intensity and sometimes diminishing, but never ceasing. Bates rarely left his room during this week, venturing out once a day to buy some hot food and a pitcher of gin, but otherwise sitting at the window in a state of torpor. He spent a great deal of time in bed with a cold and with shrunken, aching spirits. He felt as if his very soul were becoming mildewed, as if fungus were sprouting on his heart. The window leaked, and water dribbled down the walls. The furthest points of the floorboards had swollen and were starting to coil and warp like slow-living things, like tree roots or great mushrooms. The wall was slimy to the touch, its paintwork sprouting horrid-looking boils.

  It was dismal, dismal. The whole cosmos was dismal.

  Bates did nothing. He could not rouse his spirits beyond slouching to the chophouse, or plying his exhausted soul with coffee from Harman’s. He slept a great deal. He lay on his bed a great deal, like an invalid. What else was there to do?

  Then, on the seventh day, the rain stopped. Bates rose from his bed and went to the window again. The sun shone through the glass. The light came straight through, it came through the glass bright and strong. The sunlight struck his skin with such force as if it were a great jet or spout of water - fire and heat in place of water and cold, perfectly opposite to the deluge that had occupied the previous week, yet somehow akin. Bates blinked, gazed, saw the world anew. The week was almost over. Below him, mud had been washed completely over Poland Street by the water. It glistened in the sunlight like a great hide of polished leather.

  The following day Bates made his way through sunshine to St James’s. He waited on a lower functionary, and drew his salary as Ami de la France; eight pounds for the month. Some months he might be given a bonus, but he had done nothing this month to earn such a gratuité, merely danced attendance upon D’Ivoi and loitered in his rooms. Still, as he walked out into the sunshine, the coins chinking in his purse gladdened his heart. He took luncheon at one of the most expensive restaurants on Piccadilly, amongst French colonels and fawning English traders. Bates watched the waiters with a spy’s detachment. He observed them stretch smiles across the
drumskins of their faces and bow deep when serving the French. He observed them stand stiffly when serving the English.

  Bates’s stomach sang its froglike song.

  He sauntered back to Poland Street, his belly full and his heart light. An EFP boy, a different one from last week’s messenger, was waiting by the doorway. ‘To go at once, sir,’ he gabbled. ‘The party yer awaiting is press-cur.’ He hopped from foot to foot. ‘Bin waiting a hour,’ he brayed. ‘A hour I bin ere - awaitin for you to come ’ome. I shall be in trouble, lest you go straight sir. You’re to leave directly, directly, and go to the Tower.’

  ‘The Tower of London?’ asked Bates. The boy’s anxiety was infectious. ‘Now? Immediately, now?’

  He danced anxiously about his rooms as he plucked together the contents of a travelling satchel, his omnium gatherum, whilst the EFP nagged at him from the doorway. Then he was surging up Holborn and losing his breath in the effort, walking at forced-march pace down side streets and towards the river. The Tower raised its crenelated crown over the rooftops, and then Bates was at the gate.

  The EFP, who had run the whole way to keep up with Bates’s furious step, tugged the sleeve of a military officer, a Colonel. This officer turned. ‘Good day to you sir,’ he said. ‘You are Sir Bates, I think?’

  ‘I am plain Mr Bates, Abraham Bates,’ panted Bates. ‘I have been ordered to report . . .’

  ‘Indeed sir,’ said the French officer. His English was more heavily accented than that of D’Ivoi, though it seemed fluent. ‘I regret I am occupied with loading up this train.’ He gestured at three carriages, and half a dozen men hauling boxes. ‘I travel in the first. You, sir, will travel in the second. The third contains our - object of importance.’

  ‘Sir,’ gasped Bates. He was uncomfortably aware that he was perspiring. ‘If there is any way I can be of help, in preparing the . . .’

  ‘Mr Abraham Bates,’ said the Colonel, sweeping his hand round towards a tubby and black-suited man standing against the wall of the tower. He was twitching his head left to right, as if nervous. ‘I must introduce you to the Dean of York.’

  [3]

  The Dean was named Henry Oldenberg. He was, he was quick to tell Bates, descended from the celebrated Oldenberg who had helped found the Royal Society, and who had been, Bates remembered, apprehended as a spy for the Deutsch and the Dutch. The present Oldenberg inheritor did not have the look of a spy. He was a too-plump gentleman of late middle age and there was a gelatinous quality to his flesh. His whole corpus, if jolted by, for instance, the carriage bumping over an impediment, jiggled like firm-set pudding. Except when actively scowling his face carried a continual expression of vague anxiety, as if conscious of a distant but terrible fate that was certain to overtake him. The thumb’s width of skin between his eyebrows was marked with a deep vertical worry-line. His nose was fat, a yellow pear in the middle of his yellow-red face. On his upper lip he affected a carefully trimmed apex-shaped moustache; but to Bates this looked merely ridiculous, as if the delicate, almost feminine brown hairs had been blown out of his nostrils during a sneezing fit. His lips were pink as his fingernails, and his jowls sagged from the line of his chin.

  Their first meeting did not begin well. Bates walked over to the man and bade him good day. At first the Dean did not look at him. Bates coughed, discreetly.

  ‘And you, sir?’ Oldenberg demanded suddenly, with a querulous tightening of his worry lines. ‘Who are you, sir?’

  ‘Permit me to introduce myself,’ said Bates. ‘Abraham Bates. Do I take you to be the Dean of York?’

  ‘You take me?’ retorted the Dean, his voice soprano. ‘Impudence, sir? Who are you to take me, sir?’

  ‘I pray you not to be offended where no offence was intended,’ said Bates, attempting a mollifying tone.

  ‘Order me, sir?’

  ‘I beg of you, rather . . .’

  ‘Order me? Who are you to order?’

  ‘No sir, I do not so presume. I beg . . .’

  ‘No?’ the Dean squeaked. ‘No sir, you say? You contradict me? Contradict me, sir?’

  Abraham tried again. He bowed his head, lifted it and said: ‘Dean?’

  ‘What do you do here, sir?’

  ‘I believe I am to accompany this train, and yourself sir, to York.’

  The Dean pulled himself up to his full height. He was by more than a foot the shorter man. ‘You have been sent,’ he said, ‘to spy on me, sir. To spy! To pry!’

  ‘I refute the allegation,’ said Bates, startled.

  ‘Oh you refute it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You refute it?’

  Bates paused. ‘Sir . . .’ he said.

  Oldenberg executed a strange little movement. He fluttered his feminine fingers at his chest, spun on his heel, waddled away from Bates a distance of four or five yards, turned on his heel, waddled back up to him, and repeated: ‘You refute it?’

  Bates was uncertain what to say. ‘I intend no disrespect, sir, truly not. But I must say that I think you mistake me.’

  But, startlingly, Oldenberg was now laughing, a gurgling and babyish sound. ‘With your talk of refutation, sir, you have the manner of a logician. I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon,’ he grabbed Bates hand. ‘You’ll pardon my high spirits, I hope?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bates, cautiously.

  The Dean took hold of Bates’s elbow and pulled him, almost by main force, away from the carriages. They walked towards the river. ‘You must excuse my high spirits, sir,’ he said again, standing on his toes’ ends to talk directly into Bates’s ear. ‘I am prone to high spirits, I know. But I’ll say this, young sir, I’ll say that we can both pretend an allegiance to the French at the moment - eh? - eh? What else can we do? There’s no shame in such pretence.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Bates, a little flustered.

  ‘They think I’ll help ’em,’ whispered Oldenberg. ‘But we know better. Don’t we? Don’t we? What? It’s a setback - the army, I mean - the French army, I mean, in English fields - but God will not permit it to last for ever.’ He stepped back. ‘Let us greet one another like English gentlemen. You are as handsome a young fellow as I’ve seen in a long time-a handsome face, a handsome face. I am Henry Oldenberg, Dean of York, and I am honoured to make your acquaintance, sir.’

  ‘Abraham Bates, at your disposal, sir.’

  ‘There!’ The little ritual seemed to have pumped up Oldenberg’s spirits to preposterous levels. He did an inelegant little jog on the spot, twiddling his feet. ‘There, like English gentlemen, like Marlborough, or King Richard, or Saint George.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Bates.

  ‘Though Saint George was a Turk!’ the Dean squealed, so loudly that several of the party loading the carriage stopped when they were doing and looked in the direction of the two men. ‘But let that pass! Let it pass. Come, we had best return to the carriage. The Frenchers will want us to depart soon enough. They’ll want to be away, and we’d best be away with them.’

  Another twenty minutes, and all three carriages were fully loaded. With a command, the French Colonel saw the attendant troop mount their horses, and the drivers fetch up their reins. Bates settled himself into the second carriage and the fidgeting Dean of York squirmed in the seat beside him. He seemed as giddy as a child.

  They rolled through the city, and onto the North Road. Few of the Londoners they passed deigned to notice them. ‘Their insolence is their only fight,’ said the Dean, pressing his nose against the glass. ‘Their only fight! They know no other way to tackle the French, save ill-manners. ’

  ‘I think it is so, sir,’ said Bates.

  ‘Now,’ said the Dean, rotating in his seat to face Bates directly. ‘Now we’ll talk, sir. I’ll say, to commence it, that I am sorry to have called you a spy, before.’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Bates, a little stiffly.

  ‘Oh, it’s a slur, a slur. But it’s a slur might describe us both, I think. We contrive what arrangement we must
with the French, to carry on as we must. But ’tis not that I wish to speak of. Let us establish our grounds.’

  ‘Our grounds, sir?’

  ‘You are to be my assistant?’ Oldenberg said, pronouncing the word in the French manner.

  Bates hesitated. ‘If you desire it, sir.’

  ‘But you are a gentleman, a gentleman,’ gabbled the Dean. ‘I know it, I know it. I’ll not treat you as a servant, no. But assistance will be greatly appreciated - as one gentleman to another, eh?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Then I accept your offer of assistance. And I’ll tell you something more.’ He wiggled his plump body along the seat until it was close against Bates’s, as if he would whisper again in his ear, but instead he sang out: ‘We’ll give these French the slip, we will. I have a plan. My cannon will propel us ... propel us! Clean out of their clutches. In India, we’ll be free.’