She hesitated – how could he know who she was, or about Baubles & Relics? Why loan a complete stranger a book of such obvious rarity and value? Why trust her? The binding was exquisite. And as for his request for research, he must know that in Rotherweird the study of history was prohibited. Something else troubled her too: MDXC meant 1590, which post-dated Wynter’s death by a good fifteen years. Flask had used Hengest Strimmer to get The Roman Recipe Book to Sir Veronal and Hayman Salt to return the stones for the mixing-point to circulation. Was she to become another victim of Calx Bole’s subterfuge? Had Straighten the Rope a hidden purpose? Vibes must know more than he was letting on.
‘No clues at all?’ she asked.
‘The monogram is Hoy, an unusual local press. Maybe some of it is in code – the Elizabethans loved them. John Dee, Nicholas Bacon, Burghley. Up to you, Miss – adventure, revelation or wasted hours? I promise nothing except you will be intrigued, challenged and enriched.’
So, Fly blind or not all was the message. ‘Why not,’ she said, sensing, for good or ill, a life-changing decision.
Vibes hastily handed over the bag as another customer approached. Speaking in triplicates, as he had to her, he started, ‘Good morrow, sir. Thackeray, trifle or treat?’
Time to go. As Orelia walked from the churchyard to the opposite side of the High Street she recalled the books on Professor Bolitho’s list – Kepler on heavenly movement, cocktails (no surprise) and plate 8 of Thorburn’s Mammals; surely Archibald Thorburn, the Scottish nature artist. She had passed just the place.
Hoy’s pet shop had been let to a dealer with a triple ‘F’ logo, for Fish, Fowl and Fauna. Books and coloured plates made uneasy neighbours, the latter born of the former’s destruction. On enquiry, they had two copies. Thorburn’s paintings and pen-and-ink drawings were sublime in line and colour, but plate 8 proved a disappointment: nothing but a commonplace mole feeding above ground. She could see the appeal to Bolitho: he and the mole were both explorers of the dark, coming up once in a while for air.
She needed a break from books. It was time to chase real ghosts – time for her alternative plan – and for that she needed Fanguin.
Fanguin, unsuccessful in his search for Rotherweird’s electoral rules, arrived in the churchyard just in time to glimpse Orelia leaving with an unfamiliar canvas bag under her arm. A glance at the barrow behind her confirmed the source.
‘How’s business, Vibes?’
‘Patchy.’
‘Today?’
‘Sunny spells.’
‘What did the lady buy?’
‘Semper discretio is our motto.’
‘Five quid says there are exceptions.’
Vibes grinned.
‘How about the Popular Choice Regulations?’
‘You refer to Rotherweird?’
‘Come on, Vibes, you know perfectly well I am.’
‘Try Nowt So Strange as Folk – halfway down off the High Street on the left.’
The shop more than lived up to the name, being a shrine to the outer reaches of human behaviour, from Inca blood rituals to witch-ducking, burial rites to fetishisms of every kind.
The proprietor had a monkish air: pink-cheeked, bald on top and overweight. ‘Your predilection, sir?’
Fanguin blushed. ‘I’m interested in odd election practices, more particularly odd local election practices.’ He removed his glasses and began to polish the glass. He felt foolish.
‘You may be in luck. I acquired some ephemera from old Claud’s attics.’ The portly bookseller crossed himself and, not without difficulty, bent down and rummaged through a box at his feet.
‘Claud – would he be anything to do with Ambrose Claud, the Vagrant Vicar?’
‘Everything to do with him, Mr . . . ?’
‘Fanguin, Godfery Fanguin, retired schoolteacher, Rotherweird School.’ He was hoping the blush he felt didn’t show; after all, he could hardly say ‘dismissed’ teacher. ‘I bought a copy of Claud’s Peregrinations from Mr Vibes at your last Book Fair. There’s a section on Rotherweird.’
‘Ambrose Claud settled in Hoy in about 1800,’ the bookseller said chattily, piling some books on one side. ‘The last of the family popped his clogs the other week. Always liked a drink and a smoke, did old Algernon.’
‘Any luck?’ asked Fanguin, for the moment keener on the present than the past.
‘The posh dealers always grab the best books, but they turn up their noses at boxes – you’d be amazed what turns up.’
He dragged out two more from under the table and started sifting, until with a cry of ‘Ha ha!’ he flourished a dog-eared pamphlet in a plastic envelope. He stared at it and added ‘Slightly foxed’ – a conspicuous understatement – but the title was legible despite the profusion of brown spots and water damage. ‘It’s yours for twenty quid.’
Snorkel had ended Fanguin’s teaching career for no better reason than his friendship with Flask. For the potential nuisance value to Snorkel alone, the price was a steal. As he paid, a seductive voice whispered ‘Frackle’s cider’, in Fanguin’s view the only worthwhile brew in Hoy, to be found on tap at The Blue Lion. He banished a subliminal rebuke from his wife; a sharp bicycle climb merited a fleeting visit to the local oasis.
A familiar figure downed her coffee and rose to meet him. ‘Busted,’ said Orelia.
‘Frackle’s cider – join me for a quick one,’ he blustered. ‘You won’t regret it.’
‘Your last quick one made the headlines.’
Change of tack needed, thought Fanguin. ‘Vibes gave you a book.’
‘Vibes lent me a book. I’ll show you when you’ve shown me Wynter’s house.’
No point in resisting. Fanguin had often thought of that mysterious ruin, Wynter’s home before he usurped Rotherweird Manor, later Calx Bole’s chosen campsite. He had found the skull of Ferox the weaselman, another of Bole’s victims, so what other clues might lurk there?
After buying a picnic unblessed by alcohol, at Orelia’s insistence, they set off to Hirstoak. From the station Fanguin retraced his route to the insignificant turning with its dead-end sign and, a few miles on, the skull and crossbones warning off visitors with the message ‘Polluted Ground’. The razor wire and the leylandii hedge remained impenetrable, save for the gap Bole had made, which Fanguin had used on his previous visit. After hiding their bikes away from the lane, they crawled through into the wreckage of Wynter’s garden.
Fanguin could see little change beyond the seasonal since his last visit. The dominating tree had shed its contrasting leaves, both roundish and spear-shaped. Calx Bole’s tent had half collapsed. The canvas, streaked with spiderwebs, exuded an overpowering smell of mildew. A daddy long-legs wobbled across the top like a novice tightrope walker.
‘Bole must be in Lost Acre,’ Fanguin suggested, ‘whether as Ferox or Flask or himself.’
Orelia shared Shapeshifter’s authorship of the Rotherweird Chronicle’s Winter Solstice Special.
‘That doesn’t mean much – they all use pseudonyms.’ He added, ‘He could have submitted it well in advance, or left it with allies. In truth, we haven’t a clue.’
‘We have too many clues,’ muttered Orelia.
The biologist sat beneath the tree and pondered. How did Bole’s shapeshifting work? What price did he pay? Were his reincarnations changeable at will? And what about the crosswords themselves – was he communicating with others, indulging a hobby or mocking them?
While Fanguin wrestled with Bole’s motivation, Orelia explored the garden, which must once have been imposing. Although earth spilled through breaches in the retaining walls, there were terraces to south and west. Traces of statuary included an angel-faced waterspout suffocated in grass and ivy, fed at one time by a dried-out man-made watercourse. Such elegance did not fit her picture of Wynter and she wondered who had lived here after his move to th
e Manor – and indeed, after his execution? Someone more benign, she felt.
The house proved more challenging to reconstruct. The upper floor had collapsed and the internal panelling had been stripped out, leaving only a few shattered bookshelves. It was by no means a small house, but even so, Rotherweird Manor would have been a substantial advancement. She stretched her arms across the surviving doorways, searching for the spirit of the place. She sensed the presence of layers, a more complex history than at first appeared, good and evil vying for supremacy.
She returned to Fanguin and showed him Straighten the Rope.
‘Vibes gave you this?’
‘He wants me to make sense of it – which is quite a challenge.’
‘First the Recipe Book, then this – isn’t it Wynter’s work? Caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly suggest rebirth and resurrection to me.’
‘It’s not him.’ She pointed out the publication date. ‘It’s eighteen years after his execution!’
‘So, it’s Bole then – but look, have you ever seen such magnificent binding!’
They thumbed through the opening pages.
‘How bizarre,’ commented Fanguin. ‘What connects this to Rotherweird?’ He moved on to the later pages, then stopped and pointed. ‘Look – there, there . . . and there!’ The ink drawings included several geological outlines of Rotherweird Island – no buildings had been marked, but the draughtsman had measured the Rother’s depth at regular intervals.
Orelia returned to a question which had brought some comfort at Ferensen’s dinner. ‘Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Wynter can return – why would he wait for centuries?’
‘I’ve been wondering about that too. Suppose the mixing-point pollutes with every use – and suppose its joinder with the Midsummer flower cleaned it somehow, so suppose now is the safest time. Suppose . . .’ Fanguin was working through his theory out loud. ‘Suppose luring Sir Veronal here was not only about revenge – suppose Bole needed someone who had already been in the mixing-point for this particular exercise to work? Suppose Wynter planned this from the very beginning – and that’s why he was harping on about revenge at his trial, to conceal his true purpose.’ He looked grim as he concluded, ‘I fear anything is possible with him.’
That was what Orelia liked about Fanguin: He might be unreliable, but he could be relied on to bring original perspectives to bear. She raised a familiar question mark on the viability of Wynter’s ambitions. ‘But that doesn’t answer Salt’s point. Wynter hasn’t lived on like Ferensen, Bole and Slickstone – if he were resurrected, he’d be a spent anachronism from the Elizabethan Age.’
‘Know your enemy,’ replied Fanguin. ‘Wynter isn’t one to overlook such an obvious handicap. He’d only come back for a purpose – something very out of the ordinary.’
They ate their picnic in silence, subdued by the edgy spirit of the place. Orelia noted how Fanguin had aged: humour still twinkled in the eyes and in the lines around his mouth, but his skin had a dull tone and he had put on weight: the work of drink and depression. She felt oppressed by the spirit of autumn – dead leaves, rotting branches, fly-ridden berries and the tang of burned stubble from neighbouring fields.
The ruins yielded no other clue, so they turned briefly to the Popular Choice Regulations, which lightened the mood. The provisions were intricate and bizarrely quaint. A host of complex formalities confronted any would-be challenger to the incumbent Mayor, obstacles which they suspected Snorkel would be eager to exploit.
‘Democracy may need our helping hand,’ announced Fanguin grandly.
*
Bypassing Hoy, they ambled back as afternoon waned. On reaching the Rotherweird escarpment, Fanguin rediscovered his brio, crying, ‘Can’t catch me!’
In younger, slimmer days, he had been quite the sprinter, and vestiges remained – the breathing, the pump of the arms, the high knees.
Orelia swore and pursued – she would not be beaten by a man twenty-five years her senior – but Fanguin’s manic energy made for a close finish.
After concealing their bicycles for retrieval later, they re-entered the town through Salt’s hidden door and parted in sober mood. Sir Veronal’s death, they agreed, had most likely been but the end of the beginning.
*
From a distant vantage point high on the edge of Rotherweird Westwood, Hayman Salt glimpsed their hectic descent without asking the whence, the whys or the wherefores. His mind focused rather on seasonal ambiguity, the senescence of leaves and the ripeness of fruit, how this gradual dying compared to the youthful explosion of spring.
As thoughts of this timbre came and went in his divided being, an uncomfortable comparison with an old friend assailed him. In Ferensen’s ancient guise as Hieronymus Seer, he had always sought refuge in nature when evil threatened. Seer had paid a terrible price for his disengagement, and Salt felt stalked by a similar doom.
But it did not change him.
A failing sun burnished the ferns at his feet. He shrugged and loped back towards Rotherweird, gathering the best acorns as he went.
2
Bequests and Dead Ends
That evening a passer-by paused outside Baubles & Relics, struck by the image of its young owner at her shop desk with an open book in front of her, stockinged feet tucked back to the side of the chair and a finger coiling her dark hair as she noted each page. These were the mannerisms of homework, not business.
Orelia scrutinised the diagrams. The four pieces on the early printed pages presumably fitted together, but she could not connect them to the contour maps. In the rear section, other maps appeared, together with more doodled pieces squeezed in among dense calculations. Most pieces had at least one curved surface.
Try as she might, progress stalled. She lacked both spatial awareness and scientific understanding, although she did catch fragments of astronomy, calendars and meteorology among the mathematical equations. Even to her untutored eye, the sums became more complex and the notations more modern as the notes progressed. Latin gave way to English; new algebraic symbols appeared, all symptomatic of a restless mind. Only the hand and the quality of paper remained constant.
Surely Vibes must have known he had entrusted her with a task she was wholly ill-equipped to execute.
On returning the book to the bag she noticed a small card sewn into the canvas. Above the name Broken Spines appeared the neat pun ‘In a bind?’ with a Hoy PO Box number. Another miniature mystery: had Broken Spines neither address nor telephone number? And that question led to another: where did Vibes store his books? Who were his binders? Their workmanship was exquisite.
She indulged in a small act of sacrilege: a paper knife removed the card to reveal two words on the back: The Agonies, the name on the sign at the valley rim.
Excitement flickered – but was she being manipulated, blessed by luck or merely a tireless investigator reaping due rewards? She laughed to herself: three alternatives, just as Vibes would have put it.
The evening post brought a slim parcel from the Delayed Action Service. ‘Courtesy of the late Professor Bolitho,’ intoned the postman deferentially, handing over the box.
Once alone, she carefully unwrapped the package to find a card in Bolitho’s ornate hand:
To Miss Orelia Roc I leave my isolarion.
She held up a piece of beige linen, two feet square and frayed at the edges, that felt paradoxically both fine and granular. ‘Isolarion’ was a word unknown to her dictionary. Baffled by such an eccentric message and bequest from someone she barely knew, she wound it round her neck. She was short of scarves.
That was quite enough mystery for one day. Time for a drink, she decided.
*
That same evening the Delayed Action Service delivered a more explicable bequest to Gregorius Jones: a battered clothbound book entitled The Rotherweird Runner – A Biped’s Year by Ambrose Claud
. Runs in the valley were classified from ‘Dawdle’ to ‘Heroic’. Maps and directions abounded, annotated with occasional nature notes. The bookplate featured crossed telescopes. Gregorius Jones beamed like a schoolboy, shed a tear and immersed himself instantly.
*
‘Success?’ asked Bomber, Fanguin’s long-suffering wife, on his return from an unexplained all-day bicycle trip. She was pleasantly surprised to note an absence of alcohol on the breath.
Fanguin fumbled with his tie. ‘I’d say fruitful – but whether it’s ripe or rotten, I couldn’t tell you,’ he said mysteriously.
‘You’re in demand – you’ve had two deliveries today.’ She handed Fanguin a parcel addressed in Bolitho’s distinctive hand and a test tube, labelled with a pithy message:
1 Do not open in company.
2 What is it?
V V
Bomber smiled. He was crippled by the tedium of his enforced retirement so any challenge for her husband amounted to medicine. ‘Supper at nine.’
The Fanguins’ tower housed his study – part laboratory, part science library, and part amateur distillery – on the third floor. The test tube took priority: Valourhand would never seek help unless baffled and troubled.
He eased the cork open – only to close it instantly, so malodorous were the contents. He placed a mask over his nose and opened the windows.
Chemical evaluation and a microscope identified the shattered metatarsals of a badger, and peptin, the principal enzyme in bird digestion, but the smell suggested human faeces. A bird of prey might take badger flesh as carrion, but not the bones.
Bomber arrived bearing a glass of Vlad’s best low-alcohol wine.
Fanguin recorked the test tube and placed it back in its stand before taking the glass as if handling a phial of nuclear waste. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, knowing full well what it was.
Wyntertide Page 9
