‘Ah, Marion!’
Like two guests at a party who felt that they should know each other, there was a moment’s awkwardness as they stood together in the scented sunlight, but she managed a smile even as she noticed the greys at the edges of his hair, the dryings and draggings of his face. He was no longer the old Ralph and it was only with wry sadness that she realised they were standing on the close walk just beyond the pyrepoppies amid which they had once made ecstatic love. Falling into step, they wandered along the paths. Everything seemed quieter today, and they both agreed that there were fewer followers here now. If, indeed, that was how any of them still thought of themselves.
‘Fresh people have come to Invercombe, as well as those who have left,’ Ralph said. ‘After all, who cares about guild warning signs now? And they’re bringing the most extraordinary rumours. It’s said that all of the main reckoning engines are still working, but that they’re not in anyone’s control. And did you know a crude postal system’s been started between London and Bristol? Riders, men on foot, or with carts. Can you imagine—we’re going back three Ages!’
‘People can’t just dance and make love.’
‘They can’t, can they? And you know, I still haven’t got the faintest idea whether that’s a pity or not. For what it’s worth …’ His steps slowed beneath the green shade of the pinetum. ‘For what it’s worth, Marion, I’ve sent a letter to my wife back in London. The Elder knows whether it will ever get there, but I’ll keep writing and sending them until I get there myself to ask Helen if she wants me back.’
‘There’s little to keep you here, now, Ralph. Not unless you count your mother, and I suppose she belongs in the East as well, if she ever belongs anywhere.’
‘That isn’t what I mean, Marion. I just wanted to say … I just wanted to tell you how much I loved you.’ He laughed. ‘There!’ He stopped and turned, gesturing to the green-lit trees about them. ‘I’ve said it! And look, not one single thing about the world has been changed.’
‘That’s not true,’ Marion said. ‘I loved you as well. It’s just…’
‘Something we could never find a word for?’
Unthinkingly, neither of them seeming to lead the other but the moment happening to a will of its own, they embraced. Marion laid her head against Ralph’s shoulder. No longer with the remote bedside manner of old, but with a twinge of a sexual urge, she felt the shape of his body. They kissed, and Ralph laid his hand across her right breast. But, even in this radiant garden, it was only a ghost of their old passion, and they soon drew apart.
‘So … You’ll be leaving?’
‘No.’ Ralph shrugged. ‘Or not quite yet. The guildsmaster part of me, the husband and father part, wants to get back to London as soon as possible. But the rest of me feels that there’s still something here at Invercombe which hasn’t been done. After all, this is where the spell was sent out from. And there have been, as I say, the oddest rumours. So I think I’ll just wait here for another few days to regain my strength.’
‘Have you seen Klade?’
Some of the old greyness and worry reasserted itself over Ralph’s features as he shook his head.
Klade was difficult for Marion to find for the very reason that he was often close by, watching and following her. With so-called followers frolicking half-naked through the greenery, he found a cherishable sense of security at the edge of the quieter places where she moved, in the silences and the distant shine of her silhouette as she walked the shore, and in her startled, absent gaze when he stumbled as he followed her back towards the house through the flower-lit pathways at nightfall.
Sometimes, he watched the other followers as well, and witnessed their breathy fumblings and listened to their liquid grunts. With his mother and father—and a wasted creature who claimed to be his grandmother—so near, Klade told himself that he was no longer alone. But alone was how he felt, especially as Inver-something began to take on some of the scents and disorders of Einfell. He missed Ida. He missed the Big House and the Ironmasters. He missed the Shadow Ones. He missed their song. Really, all the comfort he had left was Marion Price, for she and he were, Klade decided as he followed her, alike in so many ways. In their wandering wonderingness. In their need, which he respected, to be alone.
Picking up her trail as she headed towards the shore by some unthinking route, tasting the dewy grass which had been shaped by her bare feet, he watched as she and the man who was his father met and talked. Their words were drowned by the sigh of the trees, but soon, he was sure, they would beckon him from the patch of shadow where he crouched. Together, they would all Laugh and Hug and Dance in the sunlight. But instead they ceased their talking and put their mouths together just like all the others. Klade watched in disappointment, and yet was saddened when they stepped apart. In his distress, Klade remained crouching in the same spot even as Marion Price walked closer to him along a turn of the path.
‘Ah … Klade.’ There was that odd look in her eyes as he straightened up. ‘There’s something I want you to help me with.’ She used the smile he’d seen her give to Outsiders and followers when she wanted a job done. ‘It’s a bit of a grim task, but there are graves which need digging for the soldiers who died at the folly. You need have nothing to do with their bodies …’ As if Klade hadn’t seen bodies. ‘I just need some help with digging the holes.’
He followed her across an expanse of flowers and grass to a musty shed, where she found two spades. As his flat, sharp blade slid into Invercombe’s earth, it seemed to Klade they were preparing to bury the war itself. Noon passed. The day proved not quite so warm as the one which had preceded it, but it was hot work. When a hole grew deep, Marion Price, her hands warm and slippery with sweat and earth, helped him out, and Klade did the same for her. He gripped her waist as she leaned against him, and the sigh of the trees, the colour of the sky, deepened. In the golden mid-afternoon, with eight wormy spaces of shadow laid out in the greensward, he noticed that the flowers of late summer had already bloomed and would soon be dead. Striking his spade, he rested his arms and watched as Marion began to cut the next grave’s turf.
‘I’m glad we’ve done this together, Klade. It’s no recompense, but something’s always better than nothing …’ The trees chanted. Sweat had shaped and darkened her blouse. Klade knew the differences of a woman’s body from his own well enough by now, and he was puzzled by his unreasoning desire to discover the exact nature of his mother’s. ‘And I—this is a terrible thing to say, but I had a sister who took ill and died very quickly when I was young. And when I see Ralph … Well, I wonder why he was spared and she wasn’t.’ She laughed. Sensing where his gaze was settled, her fingers redid the loosened buttons on her blouse. As if I’m still expecting to find some sense in the world.’
‘There isn’t.’
Her stance altered. ‘You should ignore my rambling, Klade. You have youth, health, plenty of time. Ralph will be able to help you start a new life when he leaves Invercombe far better than I ever could. Just remember that that old woman isn’t the sweet old lady that I know she seems. It’s a—’
‘Why are you afraid of me?’
She wiped back her hair. ‘But I’m not.’
The scent of bared earth grew stronger as he walked towards her around the line of graves.
‘Klade—I don’t understand …’
But she did. After all, if his father and all the other followers could do these things, why not Klade? And he loved Marion Price. Of that much he was certain. And surely she, as his mother, must love him as well? His hands reached for her and she stumbled back, tripping over her fallen spade, and Klade stumbled with her, conscious of her resistance, but also that he was big and that she was small, and how once he’d gripped her arms and pushed her all the way down into this fragrant autumn turf, she’d be unable to escape until he had done all the things that he wanted. But surely this was not the way love was supposed to be, for she was shouting for him to let her go as she twisted this w
ay and that away from his seeking mouth, then slammed her elbow into the side of his skull. Klade shook his head, seeing stars. As his sight cleared, the vision of this fear-struck female, her eyes wide and her mouth slack with terror, made him loosen his grip. In a series of kicks and squirms and giving resistances, Marion Price crawled away from him.
Saddened, exhausted, his face pressed against the scented earth, he lay listening to the softening thud of her departing feet. His hand lolled over the meadow grass into one of the graves, and it seemed logical that he should roll the rest of the way into it. For he was the Bonny Boy, and the soft earth surrounded him. He curled up as the air cooled and it grew entirely dark. Then it began to rain.
Leaves dropped and clogged the pathways and drifted down the gullies into pools where they joined with all the petals and seeds and rotting fruit and dead insects of Invercombe’s quick seasons, causing overflows and blockages which widened into chain-mailed puddles within which wardrobes warped and paddled their lion’s feet, whilst precious tapestries leaked rainbows of dye.
Marion spent the night crouched and shivering on the weathertop’s iron gantry, looking out across the lightless dark. Every now and then, as the wind roared up and the rain washed more heavily against her, she felt the structure give another ominous shift. This, for the first time, was ordinary weather, brought here to Invercombe by nothing more unusual than the prevailing winds. She wondered what Ralph was waiting here for, and then if he hadn’t perhaps already gone back to his life and his family without saying goodbye. She wondered, as well, why she’d remained here for so long herself. But the world beyond, as the high gantry creaked and dripped and, in a series of triumphant rushing roars, the River Riddle began to tear the water-race far beneath her apart, still seemed empty and unformed. Going out there would be like walking into a mirror. It would be like throwing herself off this drop.
The night was long, but she found that she was still crouched on the bare wet iron, her hands blued and her jaw rattling, at the coming of dawn. Naked tree by naked tree, bare grey field by bare grey field, the warless winter landscape of Somerset revealed itself through the continuing downpour. It seemed at first to Marion that it was entirely deserted, but then she saw a stutter of yellow moving between the black hedgerows. Two lights. Yellow, unwavering. She climbed to her feet and watched as the headlights of England’s only functioning car clawed towards Invercombe.
Silver-spoked wheels crackled across the wet gravel as it pulled up beside Invercombe’s front door. Wipers stopped sweeping, headlights blinked off, and two men of military bearing, although they wore no recognisable uniform, bustled out. Suspiciously, they eyed Invercombe’s gutter-weeping frontage, its bare trees. After an exchange of nods, they opened the car’s rear door, and a figure in a dark green cloak emerged. Standing to its full height, it cast back its hood and looked around with eyes of unfathomable grey.
Silus had never been to Invercombe before, yet he felt he knew this place almost too well. In a lopsided attempt at orderliness, a few buckets had been placed inside beneath the worst drippings and leakings in the great hall, but many of them had overflowed, and loose windows banged, and the predominant smell was of wet plaster and spoiled carpets. This was much like Einfell, even down to the sense of things which needed doing, but most probably would never be done. But he could tell that the house was not merely ailing, but dying. The song, what remained of its foundation spell, was a mere whisper, easily drowned by the choppy surgings of the tides in the deep tunnels against which it had long fought. And the Shadow Ones had gone.
Silus felt that he knew these faces as well. Yes, this was the man who had once nearly died here, then taken command of much of the Eastern forces during their recent pointless war, and then nearly died again. He seemed bright enough now, although Silus could tell that the disease had weakened him, and that he would live to no great age. And this, surely, was the girl this man had once loved—Klade’s mother, the famous Marion Price who had become so much of a legend it was hard to believe that she was really standing before him, and all the more so when she looked this drenched and pale, and her thoughts were so wary and confused. Clearly, though, things had played themselves out here in a way which went back to the times when this third figure he now saw approaching, this stoop of flesh borne on a rattling stick whom he knew he should recognise but truly didn’t, had once reigned over his desires in a way which now scarcely seemed credible. Silus wanted to ask Alice and Ralph and Marion about Klade, who was surely nearby, but at the same time there was this dread darkness, a near-falling, which made him hesitate. He’d had his fill of bad news lately. And of pain. Above all, he was prepared to take his time.
It was suggested that they take what would surely be the house’s last meal in Invercombe’s gently collapsing west parlour. After some debate, Silus’s two minders, the one appointed by Bristol’s Merchant Venturers and the other by London’s Great Guilds, who distrusted each other far more than they distrusted him, agreed. The gaps in the windows were wedged with damp-swollen cushions, and candles were placed at the end of the table where the plaster had not yet fallen in. Tins of food were decanted, cold and unheated, upon harlequin plates, and there were jugs of the rainwater from the overbrimming butts to drink, and Silus was content, for this was exactly how he and poor lost Ida had once lived.
Amid the tick of rain and of cutlery, he attempted to explain himself. It always seemed such a difficult task in front of a human audience, but in truth there was little enough to relate, even if he used his mouth to speak. There was his so-called enlistment along with many others into the Western needs of war. There were the weary years of travel and work. Then his capture by the East. He lifted his cloak a little further from his arms to display the silvered tracks of the electrodes they had used in their questioning of him. See, I, too, now have my Mark. To Silus, it seemed a fine, rich joke, but no one else ever smiled, and they did not do so now. The fact was, he supposed, that they feared him.
‘After that, I was taken East. There were months of boredom. A tiny cell, with a single bulb was all I had left to sing to. Then came the night of the changed song, and in an instant, everything went dark. People were screaming. The guards could no longer work the locks. But it all seemed to me a small enough thing …’
But it was also large: he’d known that as soon as he’d led his captors and fellow inmates out into the chaotic London night where all the windows and streetlamps were entirely dark. He knew it now. Even if he and the other changed, Chosen—however you cared or cared not to term them—who emerged blinking and shrieking from their hiding places and their corrupted locks and broken chains had taken the task of undoing the song as some pressing debt, it would be the work of years. But Silus, who had once been a man of power, still recognised its substance when he held it in his changed hands, and step by step, tier by tier, he ascended the councils of the guilds as the city dissolved into riot in the days which followed. He explained time and again how the shift in pitch was something he and all the other Chosen could whistle, hum, sing, dance to as easily as the humblest ditty. He was presented with frozen axles. He made them turn. More tentatively, a small electric generator in one of the lesser guildhouses was produced. It, too, came to life. More warily yet, he was transported to a small reckoning engine at the relay house of one of the lesser guilds, which was of greater significance to them than those who brought him there were prepared to admit. This task he refused, until various conditions regarding the treatment of the other Chosen were met. Of course, the guildsmen could have killed him, or put him back in cheap, unaethered chains, but then where would they have been? And he had already established contact with the presence of the Shadow Ones who somehow no longer seemed to exist as flesh, but deep within the core of the country’s networks. Slowly, the Chosen were regathering, but this time they would not be bonded by any conditions other than of their own making. It was all merely a matter of patience and time. That, and a few further requests.
&
nbsp; ‘For once, Alice, I was ruthless in a way I think you would applaud and recognise. But I am also entirely content that I’ve done the right and necessary thing …’
The old woman looked at him blankly across the table, and Silus realised that her sight was poor, and that she probably found it hard to hear his lisping voice over the noise she made in eating. Of the two of them, Alice was now by far the most changed. She was like this leaking, dripping house; a lost and dying spell. Soon, he knew, he would have to rouse himself and start the process of unpicking England’s frozen note, just as he had promised the guilds of London and Bristol. But even then, even when the wheels finally started spinning and the generators began to hum, their spells would not be the ones their old masters recognised, or would ever be able to learn. On one thing, Silus explained in all frankness, he was determined. From now on, the working of aether would remain in the hands of those who had felt it and had suffered from it the most. It seemed, he suggested to the tired faces at this table, a fair exchange.
A thing of clotted mud, Klade had roused himself from the grave in which he’d been lying and crawled through the estate in the first shinings of winter dawn. One last sight of the house, he told himself, and he would be gone. Invercombe was already so empty. Most of the followers had left, driven away by this foul weather and the prospect beyond of a changed world, and every one of Inver-something’s chimneys had fallen. Still, it was with considerable surprise that he encountered the fine and purposeful machine which stretched before the front door. He touched its drop-beaded chromes and leathers and sniffed the warm salts of its engine and listened to its odd, faint song. How had it managed to get here at all, when nothing was supposed to work?
Klade saw a gleam spreading across the terraced paving from the west parlour. He heard voices through the rain, and he felt something more. Something lost. Something familiar. A presence—and a voice which was like the spitting of the rainspout above him, yet made him grind his muddy hands across his face. Klade stumbled over the squishy lawns and hunched where the rain thudded over the dead black leaves of an umbrellifer. From here, he could see through the fractured panes of the French windows, but those inside could not see him, or sense him, either—not even Silus, who sat at the head of the table making gestures which Klade recognised by now as signifying command.
The House of Storms Page 48
