An execution looked likely. The audience roared its approval and faced the platform expectantly.
“Lords and ladies,” Matthew proclaimed in an impresario’s drawl. He was unconvincing as a military man, Jon thought, but his manner got a laugh from the crowd. He made them quiet with a careless wave of his gun, and became serious. “You all know about the fire. Today it was a factory; tomorrow it could be your home. There’s an evil at work here in Turbulence – malcontents who would see our city burn. My troop has been entrusted with the power to keep you lot safe and I will keep you safe by any means.” Jon and Bill exchanged glances.
“You doing censor’s work now?” a man in the crowd shouted angrily. Matthew ignored him. Gilbert mouthed the heckler’s name into the ear of a militiaman.
“We caught this villain nailing bills to a wall.” Matthew hoicked the boy’s chain. The crowd booed. “He’d a pocket full of sedition. Rhetoric against the duchess, treason against the Wise Council, blasphemies against the gods. Just bits of paper, some might say, but I call it kindling – to start fires in the minds of fools.”
“Recognise the boy?” Jon whispered. Bill shook his head discreetly.
“We cannot let the fire of dissent spread. We must crush out the spark with our heels.” Peacock stomped on the stage dramatically and it boomed like a drum.
“Get on with it,” an Old Faithful yelled from the crowd. Peacock raised his arms to quell the laughter.
“I will now demonstrate how to put out a fire.”
Matthew delivered a sharp kick to the prisoner’s stomach. As the boy doubled up the Sharks grabbed the seat of his pants and plunged him headfirst into the barrel. Some men cheered, others booed. Jon thought he saw a fight breaking out on the far side of the square. The boy’s legs thrashed so hard in the air that the Sharks had to hold his ankles to stop the barrel from tumbling. Ale sloshed across the platform. Gilbert Gordon stepped back to save his shoes. Peacock’s men began to count out the time. “Thirteen, fourteen…”
A voice like tar called out from Court Lane.
“Let him go.”
The crowd turned as one. Wylde had come. A posse of his men, bearing arms and firebrands, had gathered at the entrance to the square and Wylde towered over them, his powdered face an ugly sneer. He was wearing his fighting trousers and a battle wig whose barbarous spikes hung down about his knees. Its raven locks had been waxed for the occasion and glistened in the sun.
“Let him go? Why would I do that, you ridiculous noodle?” Matthew replied, his blunderbuss slung casually across his shoulders.
“You’ve no right to be thief-taking in my territory. That boy’s one of mine.” The prisoner’s upturned legs were starting to move a little less energetically and Wylde’s men looked twitchy. Jon started to push his way towards the edge of the crowd.
“I don’t think so,” the Peacock replied sardonically. At his signal, the Sharks pulled the boy upright. Ale poured from his mouth and he spluttered weakly. Peacock grabbed his chin, turned the sodden face towards Wylde. “For starters, I don’t see any make-up. Also, his trousers aren’t around his ankles.”
Peacock let go of the boy and the Sharks plunged him back into the ale.
“I don’t care if you take him for a ranter, that boy’s street candy and he’s on my roll.” Wylde hefted a spiked mallet. Matthew shrugged. The crowd was beginning to grow nervous. The upturned legs had stopped moving and a miasma of animal fear had begun to spread. A few, seeking exit from the square, pushed against Matthew’s line of orange troopers, who locked arms to contain them. Jon figured that he was standing directly between Wylde’s men and the stage, which had to be the worst position he could imagine.
“You’re a bit of a gamester,” Matthew taunted. “How about we play jackals for him? Maybe a hand of tarot?”
“I draw first,” Wylde yelled, and raised his mallet. His men roared, presented a collection of rusty sabres, woodsman’s axes and spiked bats.
“There’s going to be a riot,” Bill said, mastering the obvious. Jon looked at the stage. Gilbert Gordon was making an inconspicuous exit, surrounded by a small bodyguard of terrifying men.
“If you want him, come and get him,” Peacock taunted.
The Sharks tipped the barrel over and the body of the prisoner spilt limply onto the edge of the stage. His eyes were rolled back and his tongue hung loose.
The horror of the corpse panicked the crowd. Men and women bolted in all directions like startled deer. The Trained Band beat them back, trying to form a wall around the stage. Wylde’s men charged, raining rusty blows onto the heads of all who obstructed them.
“Run!” Bill shouted and disappeared into the frenzy.
Madness had taken a hold. Men were fleeing. Men were fighting. Old women and young children were being trampled. Where passage was blocked, ordinary denizens punched, kicked and threw cobbles at each other for no reason that Jon could discern.
The crowd pulled him like a riptide, drawing him towards the fighting. He recognised a shawl as Anna’s and grasped for it, pulled it from her shoulders. Grey hair, not Anna. The stranger wheeled away, her face swamped with terror, and was sucked into the crowd.
A boy crashed into Jon’s stomach and drove the wind from him, knocking him half to the ground. A torrent of scrambling knees battered at his head and sides and then a man tripped and fell across Jon’s back, pinning him down. He tried to breathe and sucked in a thin harvest of dust. A flailing fear took hold of him. He grabbed at the legs that passed in front of his face, trying to pull himself free, and succeeded only in dragging another man down. Their desperate gazes met through the copse of legs that divided them, then a hobnailed boot collided with the man’s head and he slumped, out cold. The little air left in Jon’s lungs was failing him. The world slowly darkened.
I’m dying, Jon realised. Memories came unbidden and disconnected. He saw his wedding. Anna holding his newborn. Himself as a young man, too old to be playing in the mill tower with Dahlia and Dan, but doing it anyway, the three of them smiling and laughing together. He looked down from the minstrel gallery as Father sent Dahlia and Dan to get the wine. He made one final prayer to the gods for forgiveness.
I’m sorry, I tried so hard.
“No.”
The voice inside his head was impossibly strange and loud.
“Open your eyes.”
He obeyed and saw a blurred world. The figures that encircled him were no longer human. One had talons, great and golden, the next crocodilian claws. He saw a tentacle that was fog and flesh made one. Pillars of flame and ice. Revelation. He threw back his arm to shield himself from the radiance and the weight shifted from his back.
Cold air shocked Jon’s lungs, brought his vision into focus. The feet around him were mortal. Dirty. Trying to trample him into the ground. An incredible anger exploded within him. With a screaming effort, he rolled himself free and pushed himself to his feet, roared at the heavens. Even in the pandemonium, the mob recoiled from him. He barged through the riot thinking only of reaching Anna. He guarded his head like a boxer and lashed wildly. An onrush of confused faces was beaten aside by fists like hammers, felling anyone who did not clear his way.
Open space. He clambered over a stack of benches into a side road, and ran until his lungs could not sustain him. Then sanity returned. He retched. Hot saliva drooled from his nose. He put his hands to his knees and laughed in mad exultation.
He looked back at the square. Peacock’s stage was on fire. The body of the young boy hung from its side, a blackened statue. The crowd was dispersing, but there was still some fighting and Jon could hear screaming in the distance. A few escapees ran past him, eyes cattle-dumb with fear. From the safety of the passageway, he watched a little longer. His hands hurt. He inspected them. His knuckles were ragged and his fingers flecked with other people’s blood. The sun flashed wearily from the Temple of All
-Gods. He nodded grimly and set off for the mill.
***
Jon could hear the baby screaming from half a street away. The relief of it brought a bounce to his stride; Anna was home safe. He jogged the last of the rise in a curious calm.
I was spared for a reason. What reason?
He paused before he entered the mill, wiped his torn knuckles painfully on his breeches and beat his doublet against a post to get the worst of the dust from it. The baby’s tantrum still hadn’t subsided, which troubled him a little. She was normally so calm. Something must have terrified the pickle. Anna had done well to get her home unharmed – she would need some calming too, no doubt. He touched the crescent moon above the door and went inside.
All eyes turned to him.
Anna was gagged, bound to one of the dining chairs. She briefly paused in her fight against the ropes to scream a warning with her eyes. Laila stood behind her holding the wailing baby. She rocked it desperately and without tenderness. Barehill and his men flanked Anna, hands clamped on the back of her chair to stop it from toppling. In the middle of the hall lay two sacks, black and sticky with old blood. The stink of spoilt meat hung in the air.
Anna’s chair leapt forward a banging inch as she threw herself towards Jon. The baby’s wailing grew louder.
Anna cried out to him. A small froth accompanied the sound and she began to gnaw on the strap that invaded her mouth.
“What’s this?” Jon’s bellow blasted the room like a bomb.
“We was interrupted,” Dyer said, pleading against Jon’s fury with raised palms, “bringing the bags down.” He looked accusingly at Bertrand. Anna’s struggle became a frenzy. She’s going to hurt herself, Jon fretted. Barehill produced a tooth-edged knife and held it to the back of Anna’s head. He looked as calm as a butcher at the block.
“Don’t you dare touch her,” Jon said.
“I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen,” Dyer said. “She made a dash for the observation deck – started calling for the town watch.”
“It’s called a reefing stage.”
“She hasn’t been harmed,” Barehill said, and cut away Anna’s gag. She gasped twice, wiped her mouth on her shoulder and began to shake. Jon knelt at her feet and dabbed ineffectually at the tears that streaked her face. Her chest racked. He had never before seen a person cry that hard. He stood and held her head tight to his chest, glaring at Barehill. She whimpered.
“It’s alright, love. You’re safe now.”
She squeaked, “Who are these people? I thought we were being robbed. I thought they were going to hurt the baby.”
“For mercy’s sake, give her back the child.” Something in the way he said it made people rush to obey. Barehill cut Anna’s hands free and Laila pushed the baby into her red-raw arms. It was the first sensible thing anyone had done. For a second the whole of Anna’s attention was on her daughter, and then her faculties returned. She looked at Jon.
“Who are these men? Did Peacock send them?”
“No,” Jon said.
“I don’t understand. Make them go away.” Anna shut her eyes and waited, as if it was that easy, as if Jon could set things straight with a click of his fingers.
“It’s not as simple as that,” he said. Anna opened her eyes in dismay.
“It’s time to tell her, Jon,” Laila said.
Barehill’s men looked at him with an air of solemn witness, as if presiding over a harsh but necessary ordeal. Jon wished them all dead. Freeborn indeed. These false comrades. A guilty fear took him then, which quickly turned to anger. He pulled back his shoulders, rose to his full height.
“This is my house – my mill,” he boomed. “Nobody tells me what to say or do.”
Anna didn’t agree.
“Jonathan Miller,” she wailed, “what have you done?” His spirit sunk at her cold tone. Then she became shrill. “What’s in those sacks? They stink like death.” A look of horror shrouded her face.
Yes, they do, Jon thought.
The room’s eyes fell on him again, waited for his move. His eyes were only for Anna. He began to burble, to tell her all at once about the things he had done for her and the family. The excuses and explanations chased each other out of his mouth, tripped each other up.
She held up a hand. “I don’t understand.”
“I think it’s time that someone else explained,” Barehill said and went over to a sack. His fingers turned red with old blood that flaked and dusted from the flax as he worked at its knot. His men exchanged nervous glances. Too slowly, Jon moved to cover Anna’s eyes.
Barehill cast the ropes aside, pulled down the sackcloth and lifted Brother Nielsen’s putrescent head by its hair. “Your husband has taken our mark. He’s one of us now, whether he likes it or not.”
Anna wailed again. So did the baby. It was hungry.
Rabbit hole
I ought to be celebrating, not moping about the place.
Miranda tugged her rune-gloves off and slapped them onto the marble worktop. Her vexatious mood was all the more irritating for its lack of a solid explanation. It wasn’t Lavety. His first glimpse of her magnificent robes had provoked a pleasing scowl, but she hadn’t heard a word from him since his dreadful trick, though her campaign to win the support of the masters was now well known. It wasn’t the politics either; her demonstrations were going better than planned. In the last two days, she had won the support of three more with barely a hitch. Essossilam, Nirmeen and after this morning, Baldwin.
Miranda picked out the masters’ names on her copy of the Convocation’s roster and put her mark against them, tallied the totals. Promises outnumbered refusals now, though both were too few for certainty, and some of the commitments tended towards vagueness. Convincing masters to support her promotion was a slow and intricate business that required research and guile. Arranging audiences was a trifle though. Anyone could see that from the pile of invitations waiting on her settle. They all wanted to see if the rumours were true, to see her new form of cunning in action. To meet its mistress.
What is it that bothers me? Maybe it was that bloody pig.
Miranda recalled a morning mired in the business of killing. She knew now that she did not enjoy creating engines of war; death and destruction were not arenas in which her creativity dwelt easily, but impressing Master Baldwin required it. He was famous for his application of cunning to military matters, which he saw as magic’s most proper use, and he held those he considered squeamish in particular contempt.
In retrospect, her first demonstration had been a bit silly. She had animated the ossified remains of an ancient reptile, unearthed on a nearby beach, making them snap and claw. The monster would terrify the native savages of the Far West, she had argued. It could not walk though, and she doubted many would be foolish enough to put their head in its mouth. Baldwin had said he liked it anyway, though Miranda did wonder exactly where he was looking as she demonstrated it halfway up a ladder.
Her second invention had been the winner. She had imbued a silver bullet with an irresistible longing for the beating of hearts. It had no greater accuracy than ordinary shot, but once lodged in flesh would burrow its way, slowly and inexorably, towards the vital organ. Before making it, she had persuaded herself that the deadly intimacy was poetic. The pig that had noisily succumbed to its malice in the testing range had put an end to that fallacy.
Why did I insist on firing the rifle myself?
Miranda relived the moment she had struck the creature in the leg. Watching the bulge of her bullet worm its way under the poor creature’s skin had been an exercise in visceral, squealing horror. Yet the pig’s misery had turned out to be a blessing in disguise; it had made her invention seem cruel. Baldwin had enjoyed the animal’s suffering almost as much as he had been amused by her poor marksmanship.
Her last exhibit, the pillow knife, had been almost an a
fterthought. An attempt to appeal to Baldwin’s idiotic sense of male superiority. She had embellished the long dagger that her governess had provided: strapped its hilt with love charms, retempered its blade with sensual oils, and invested in it a particularly spiky construct based on a painfully unresolved love of her youth. The sum of these enchantments meant that any man or woman stabbed with the weapon would fall irresistibly and profoundly in love with its wielder. She thought the effect hilariously melodramatic, like a device from a bad opera, and described it to Baldwin in romantic terms. He had barely cast a glance at the delicate, brass-hilted blade.
“A suitably womanish device,” he had declared, and made a vulgar joke.
He was a revolting man, which didn’t matter at all because she had won his support. Baldwin wanted to be chairman one day. That was obvious. He wanted voices in the Convocation who valued the military arts, but none threatening enough to be considered a rival. Miranda had played the part beautifully.
She had made him a gift of the bullet and the skeletal beast, kept the pillow knife for herself. She doubted that any of her inventions would be used in combat, and even if they were, feeling guilty would make no difference. If the memory of their creation continued to bother her, she could always put her disquiet to use. Invest it in some device and rid herself of the unwanted emotion for a modest profit.
But it wasn’t the pig that vexed her.
Her thoughts returned to Edmund and that day on the beach. She closed her eyes and imagined sand between her fingers, listened to wind in the sea grass. He had said he was going to leave soon. Was that the problem? Did she really like him that much?
She needed to tidy her mind.
***
It was early afternoon when Miranda returned to the beach. The sky was as iron-grey as her robes. A flock of sandpipers was her only company. Small dark waves washed the shingle. The wind whipped her hair about her face. Without Edmund, the shoreline felt changed – lonely and desolate.
The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy Page 27
