Tall Tales From Pitch End

by Nigel McDowell

  But Widows didn’t speak. Just mourned, shuffled. They dropped their umbrellas at the feet of the Trainee Elder and shuffled on into the Discussion Chamber like dry leaves coaxed by a breeze. The Trainee wrinkled his nose.

  Bruno looked back to the double doors.

  Now’s the time, he thought. Stay now or retreat? He considered, as he’d done at the base of the Clocktower, and then decided: better to know than not know. And he knew, somehow, that there were words that would be said within the Discussion Chamber that he wanted to hear. Not wanted – needed.

  A tremor ran through his bones: the sound of wood on stone, the rub of metal as the doors to the town hall were shut and sealed by Enforcers under watch of the Marshall.

  No way out. And no way in for those too slow to present themselves.

  Bruno stepped over the umbrellas, passing the Trainee Elder, and there was another rattle of the collection box as the boy told him, ‘Give money for the Elders!’

  ‘Sorry, no change,’ said Bruno, the penny Pace had given him safe in his fist.

  X

  Temperate Thomas

  Bruno stepped into the Discussion Chamber and saw a town divided. The Pitch Enders were all on long narrow benches enclosed in long narrow cages of cast iron, doors at either end. Trainee Elders were directing each arrival to their row, their place. On the stone walls of the Chamber, lightbulbs the colour of dark earwax snarled on curled brass brackets. Bruno stopped, and again thought about retreating, but before he could do anything, one of the Trainee Elders rushed forwards, had him –

  ‘What are ye?’ the boy demanded. The Trainee’s robes were too big, his sleeves folded back so his hands could be free. He looked at Bruno, dabbing the sharp point of a black pencil on his tongue and holding it, poised, over the page of a thick ledger.

  Bruno didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Do ye have a tongue in yer head?’ the Trainee Elder shouted. ‘I said – what are ye?’

  Bruno saw some in the cages nearest look over.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bruno, at last.

  ‘What does yer father do?’ asked the Trainee Elder. ‘And no lies, for I can be quickly checking.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Bruno.

  The Trainee Elder rolled his eyes, and then shook his head as though Bruno were being deliberately difficult.

  ‘What did he do before he was Forgotten?’ asked the Trainee Elder.

  ‘He was a…’

  (Rebel blazed in Bruno’s mind, sizzled on his tongue, but he bit it back.)

  ‘Lighthouse-keeper,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Trainee Elder. He scratched his forehead, chewed on his pencil and looked around (Bruno guessed) for assistance. Other Trainee Elders, only a few turns older than Bruno, were busy around the edges of the Chamber, noting names and counting heads. Bruno pictured them later that night sitting down together to deduce who’d been decent enough to present themselves, and who hadn’t bothered.

  ‘We need to keep ’em moving or he’ll not be pleased.’ Another Trainee Elder had joined the first – same pencil, same ledger, same too-big robes.

  ‘I’m trying to put this one in his rightly-proper place,’ said the first. ‘But I dunno where he goes.’

  They spoke about Bruno as though he wasn’t there. Or that he was, but had no voice of his own.

  ‘Well,’ said the second Trainee Elder, ‘let’s see.’ He turned to face Bruno with narrowed eyes. ‘Have ye Come-Of-Age yet?’ he asked.

  Bruno shook his head.

  ‘Well, that’s easy then!’ said the second Trainee Elder. ‘He’s with the other children and the teacher, first row on the right, remember? Temperate Thomas told us to put them there. Ye need to be asking the right questions.’

  A tut-tut and the second Trainee Elder moved off, leaving the first with thunder in his eyes. ‘Ye could’ve just said ye hadn’t Come-Of-Age,’ he spat at Bruno. ‘Showing me up like that. Follow me, boy.’

  Bruno followed.

  Flesh pressed tight to iron, Pitch End was sorted from the lowliest (any from Old Town, farmers, fishermen, lamplighters) at the back of the Discussion Chamber, to the more respectable and rightly-decent (shopkeepers, Enforcer’s spouses) at the front. Bruno marvelled at how the Pitch Enders could retain smart appearances even behind bars: ladies coiled in damp furs and wide, wind-battered hats, men squeezed into best Sunday suits. He looked closer though and saw some flaws – wellingtons under too-short trousers, cheeks smudged with flour or muck, an absent button, a split seam…

  ‘In here with ye,’ said the Trainee Elder. From amongst a clatter of keys at his belt he found one that unlocked the cage door leading to Bruno’s place: first row on the right, beside the other Hedge School children.

  Bruno hesitated. Front row was too close, too conspicuous.

  ‘In ye get and stop waiting about!’ said the Trainee Elder, and with sudden strength he shoved Bruno in beside Dennis Wire, a boy the same age as him but broader, bolder.

  Dennis acknowledged Bruno’s arrival by rising and hissing, ‘Stupid Atlas. Why do ye have to stand next to me? Ye better not start talking rubbish, right?’

  Bruno tried to ignore him.

  The door of the cage was slammed, locked.

  Both boys sank to their seats, Bruno clasping damp hands together. He wanted to reach for his father’s medallion – so much a habit now, a comfort – and had to stop himself. He sat on his hands. He shut his eyes for a moment, saw a chaos of colour, and then opened them again and looked around, hoping for sight of a friendly face – Pace, maybe? He saw no Mr Pace but noticed Sabitha McCormack in another cage, front row left. He saw the bruise on her cheek, and the memory of that morning was like someone else’s: from a different life, a different place altogether, so much had happened since that dwarfed it. Sabitha’s mother sat next to her, head boasting a vast, purple hat with a long pheasant feather. As the Marshall’s daughter and wife they were as privileged as you could be in Pitch End without being an Elder. There was less cram in their cage.

  Sabitha saw Bruno, narrowed her eyes and for a long moment offered him the tip of her pointed tongue, then withdrew it, smiled and turned away to face the front.

  Bruno looked ahead too.

  Barring the way to a raised platform at the front of the Discussion Chamber was another high cast-iron gate, small spikes ornamenting its top. No danger of it being scaled, Bruno thought. Onstage and behind the gate – not imprisoned, more protected – were seated nine of the ten Elders of Pitch End.

  Seeing them, Bruno thought how long it had been since they’d last appeared in the town. Their place was within the town hall, its sanctity and theirs inextricable. No door-knocking, no donation-seeking. Hedge School in lost years had been interrupted almost daily with Elders coming. No forewarning or word, just stalking silently into the back of the classroom; they used to send Miss Hope as much as any of the children into distress: listening and correcting where needed, suggesting answers when doubt formed a silence. Punishing when they felt it was warranted. Their dress was the same though – plum robes and tall, lopsided mitres. But all looked so much older, aged beyond known turns; all bearded and with hair so white and sparse Bruno thought a stiff breeze could’ve banished it like a row of dandelion clocks.

  Every Elder eye was shut.

  Bruno tried to guess which were deep into some ‘Rightly-Superior Thinking’, as they called it, or which might be concealing a sharp attention to what was being said (or unsaid) in the Discussion Chamber. Or which of them might’ve just dozed off.

  One last empty seat – central in their row – awaited the arrival of the Head Elder, Temperate Thomas.

  Below was overtaken by fevered Pitch Ender talk. Within the cages, no entire sentence was distinguishable; just bits, but still running together:

  ‘What if it’s those Rebels coming back? I just knew it—’

  ‘—would happen again. Told ye last week, dint I? I said—’

  ‘—something lik
e this was going to happen, felt it coming for weeks! Mountains protect us!’

  And Bruno thought there was neither sight nor shock that could’ve quietened the Pitch Enders just then, their fear so decided, speculation so intense. But when a concealed door with the appearance of stone opened up behind the Elders, silence flooded the Discussion Chamber.

  Bruno strained in his seat to see.

  All Pitch End waited.

  And then he came.

  Temperate Thomas was an Elder of different cloth. His robes might’ve been plum, same as the other Elders, but they were clean and vivid, not grubby nor worn. His mitre was straight, a proper extension of the high curve of his forehead, an extra foot of authority. As he stepped from the doorway slowly, moving in solitary procession towards his seat, careful and precise in his movement, a whisper passed along Bruno’s row, ending in Dennis Wire telling him: ‘Head down, Atlas, or he’ll have it lopped off ye.’

  The children bowed, Bruno included. He knew that everywhere, all Pitch Enders were doing the same. But Bruno angled his head not so low that he couldn’t continue to watch the progress of the Temperate –

  The Head of the Elders was accompanied by his own constant Sentry, a unique kind – a cat, not brass but silver, with its surface polished to a mirror. This Cat-Sentry was perched on the tip of a tall staff, also of brightened silver, carried by the Temperate in his right hand. And as gaslight allowed a clear view of the man, Bruno noticed, amazed, how little change had come over the Temperate in ten turns. Like a rock worked upon by the sea but remaining unchanged, it was as though he had evaded the seasons, escaping the ageing that had crept in upon his fellow Elders. As this ageless man came to a stop before his empty chair, Bruno had an uneasy thought: that Temperate Thomas would survive them all, merely step across generations, enduring, always in control, ruling and dictating, defying death itself.

  The Temperate didn’t speak right away.

  Pitch End squirmed.

  ‘My fellow Pitch Enders,’ he began, finally, and the room (Bruno included) exhaled, their heads all lifting as though relieved of a communal weight. ‘What can I say, ’cept that it does my heart so much good to see ye all here tonight. I wish to extend many, many thanks for yer rightly-prompt attendance. It is, in such prosperous times as these, greatly appreciated. Especially too as we’re only days from the three-hundredth anniversary of Pitch End. It tells me much of the solidity of our fair town, of the unshakable foundations of decency and common sense that’ve become the cornerstone of our great community, that ye’ve answered the Elder’s call so quick-smart, and with such perfect diligence. For this, I am rightly-humbled. Long live our Pitch End values!’

  ‘But longer live the Elders!’ replied the townsfolk.

  Bruno forgot himself, saying only the last word in a whisper.

  Dennis glanced at him.

  The Temperate’s face twitched. ‘Indeed it gives me much faith’ (he went on) ‘and a greater courage to pursue what intentions I have here tonight.’ He paused, words trembling on his lips, and Bruno wondered, are those tears in his eyes?

  ‘Please be forgiving me,’ Temperate Thomas muttered at last, not troubling to dismiss the tears wriggling down his face. ‘But I’m so moved here, I cannot say – I just … words cannot … But,’ and he stood tall, stamped his staff on the stage, so that his Cat-Sentry had to leap to his shoulder, and shouted, ‘I must be strong, as all of Pitch End has been these past ten turns!’

  Bruno wanted to run or to look away or cover his ears, but he knew that despite want or will, the Temperate had him and all of the Pitch Enders captured. They could only remain and watch and obey.

  ‘Since I’ve taken up the post of Temperate,’ the Head Elder went on, beginning a slow crossing of the length of the stage, ‘it has been my aim always to preserve the spiritual and moral welfare of this town. Watching, but not meddling. Never telling, only advising. But now is the time, I’m most afeared, for something more than watchfulness and advice.’ Temperate Thomas paused for a tick, and then continued, his tone no less welcoming, but hardened: ‘Once again, my friends, we have malice and menace stalking our streets.’

  At this, a muffled explosion of discussion and movement, like small fires –

  ‘I knew there was trouble, I just knew it!’

  ‘Soon as I woke up this morning I felt it! Dint I tell ye?’

  ‘And on the three-hundredth anniversary too! Mountains protect us!’

  Bruno shrunk, too vulnerable where he was, suddenly afraid that he would be plucked from the crowd and called to testify about what he’d witnessed on the jetty that day. For what else was there? What else had transpired to warrant the meeting?

  Temperate Thomas remained impassive, though Bruno noticed the head of his Cat-Sentry twitch. Its eyes focused, ears flickering in the slow, painstaking act of minute recording. Bruno knew that every word, every face, every expression of every Pitch Ender was being remembered.

  The Temperate resumed his speech, and obedient silence followed.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘I know how much all of ye have been obeying the Elder Order of Forgetting. I know how diligently all of ye have banished those bothersome memories that can keep a man from sleep, worry a person, plague and destroy them: death, loss, the whole mess and mangle of bygones. But it will be, for the smallest amount of time, only necessary now to refer to that treacherous and distant land we call … The Past.’

  Gasps, nods and many Pitch Ender’s hands working to bless themselves.

  Bruno’s hand crawled to his chest, to rest over his father’s medallion. He thought of Pace’s words and told himself, don’t give anything away. Don’t be so rightly-easy to see through and into. He lowered his hand.

  ‘Now fortunately,’ said the Temperate, perching on the very brink of the stage, ‘I have remembered all things. And there is nothing, my dear Pitch Enders, which endures in the mind like pain. And the remembrance of the past in our fair town is most painful, and a burden I bear for all of ye. It is for this reason that I have asked that you all Forget! Forget, letting me shoulder the pain, as any rightly-proper leader must. And I have remembered all in perfect detail, so let me tell ye what rightly-happened, without any gossip or hearsay, just the right-real truth of it.

  ‘Ten turns ago, during the Ever-Winter of +290, Pitch End was under siege. For a period of no more than a week, things got … nasty. Our town was going to be overcome by what we may describe best as Indecent Forces.’ Bruno turned and saw the words echoed mutely on lips throughout the Chamber. ‘This is the period known as the Single Season War where a group of individuals who had christened themselves the “Rebels”’ (here, the Temperate gave a short and mirthless breath of laughter) ‘so-called because they believed they were rebelling against some imaginary power in Pitch End which they saw as their duty to defeat – launched an attack on nothing less than our very way of life. A way of life that had hitherto been so very peaceful, so rightly-respectful. A group of criminals and miscreants lead by a man called Dr Jonathan Bloom.’

  And suddenly, like well-practised children, one-footed ravens in the rafters began to crow:

  ‘Jonathan Bloom,

  Jonathan Bloom,

  If he came in the room,

  Would go to his doom!’

  Bruno began to shiver, wanted to shut his eyes, shut it out – the Chamber bounced the name back and forth – Jonathan Bloom! Jonathan Bloom! Jonathan Bloom! – and the cover of Tall Tales from Pitch End was sharp before his eyes.

  The ravens continued, though in a lower key, as the Temperate resumed:

  ‘After the Rebels were defeated, our Enforcers (led by our redoubtable Marshall) rounded up all but a handful of the remainder. Most were keen to turn themselves in without fuss – notice how they lacked the true loyalty and resolve we have built since! But others managed to evade us. Now, there is no criminal in Pitch End who our great Enforcers couldn’t catch, I’m rightly-convinced of this. And so it gives us no choice, my fellow Pitch
Enders, than to surmise that the likes of Dr Jonathan Bloom, Nicholas M. Delby, and their followers who managed to escape retribution did so only by utilising …’ Here a suitable pause, a search for a weighty (but unfamiliar enough, Bruno thought) word to baffle and awe the Pitch Enders. ‘Nefarious means. Means that have only today come fully to our light.’

  The Temperate wet his lips, shut his eyes, and said, ‘I ask now … No – I demand now – that one amongst us present themselves, so that they might rightly-enlighten us all on these subjects.’

  A final pause, and Bruno knew what was next. Knew, and could do not a thing.

  ‘I call to the Elder platform,’ said Temperate Thomas, ‘Master Bruno Atlas.’

  XI

  The Book of Black & White

  Bruno didn’t move. If he moved or spoke, then it would all be real, so if he didn’t then –

  ‘Bruno Atlas to the platform!’ cried Temperate Thomas.

  ‘He’s there in that cage with them other children! The one on the end with the shifty look about him!’ Sabitha McCormack had stood and pointed with a smart hand at Bruno. ‘I knew he was bad news all along,’ she added. Her mother took her outstretched hand and pulled her back to sitting.

  Bruno looked to his feet and wondered how fast they could run.

  The snap of the lock, the groan of the cage door and he looked up to face the Marshall. ‘Out,’ said he. Without waiting, the Marshall took Bruno in the same iron grip as outside the town hall and brought him towards the platform. Bruno knew then why the Temperate had ordered that the children be put in the front row. Knew he should’ve realised earlier. The door of his cage was shut, and then the whispering –