by Mike Shevdon
"She said someone was trying to hurt you."
"They tried, babe, but I'm ahead of them. Listen to me, now. I want you to keep your phone switched off while you're there, OK? It doesn't work abroad, anyway."
"But it's working. It rang."
"That's why you have to switch it off, sweetheart."
"But, Dad?"
"Alex, please. This is important. I don't want anyone to know where you've gone until I've sorted things out and they might use the phone to find you, understand? You have to do this for me."
"OK, I'll switch it off."
"Give the battery to your mum for safe keeping and then it won't switch on by mistake, OK."
"It won't. It doesn't do that."
"If you give the battery to your mum, I'll buy you some credits for it when you get home. How about that?" Bribery would usually succeed where parental authority failed.
"Well, OK, I suppose."
"Thanks, babe."
"Dad, when can we come home?"
"Soon. I'll call you."
"What do we do if you don't call?"
"Your mum will know what to do, sweetheart. I'll call you. Until then, I want you to stick with your mum. She'll look after you."
"It's not me I'm worried about." She suddenly sounded like her mother.
"It'll be OK. I promise. Go and give your mum a hug and I'll call you in a day or so when this is all sorted out, all right?"
"OK."
"You take care now."
"No. You take care."
"I will."
"Bye."
I waited to see if Katherine would come back onto the line, but it beeped at me and dropped the call, leaving me looking at the phone and wishing I had some way to explain.
I put the handset back on the cradle and the phone disgorged leftover coins into the change tray with a chunking sound. I collected them and pushed out of the phone box, walking over to where Blackbird lay looking at the clouds. I sat down beside her.
"Are they safe?"
"Yes, but they had a phone call like Claire's on Alex's phone. How did they know the number?"
"Maybe they called directory enquiries?"
"I made sure it's not listed. They're not supposed to give out the number."
She rolled over so that she could lean on her elbow and look at me. "Where are they?"
"I don't know, away somewhere."
"That's probably best," she remarked. "They should be safe once the ceremony is performed with the proper knives again. It will reinforce the barrier and stop them crossing so easily."
"Will we ever be safe again?" I asked her.
She shook her head. "Never. Better get used to it."
It struck me how different she was from Katherine, how much more independent. But then Katherine was looking after our daughter, which rather put a dampener on the independence thing.
Something had changed, though. Usually when I spoke with Katherine there was a bitterness from things unsaid or things that should never have been said that our separation hadn't salved. Like an open wound, it festered between us and leaked poison into my relationship with my daughter. But this morning had been different. I found myself worrying about Katherine and Alex, their safety and welfare still forward in my thoughts, but I wasn't left with the feeling that I had failed to meet even the basic standards of fatherhood. I didn't feel bitter about what she'd said, or not said. I was just worried, scared even.
I realised I loved them both. I loved Alex, of course, she was my daughter and the centre of my world, but it was a shock to realise I still loved Katherine. I had thought all of that had been burned up in the conflagration that was our divorce. Instead I found I still cared for her and it still mattered to me that she was safe, and if possible, happy. It was like putting down a burden I hadn't realised I been carrying. Perhaps I had finally begun to heal.
I had been daydreaming and came back to myself looking down into dark green eyes full of sky. She was watching me.
"You were miles away," she said.
"I was thinking."
"What about?"
"About how a woman I've known for a little over forty-eight hours could turn my life upside down and hand it back to me."
She shoved me playfully in the chest and, unbalanced, I rolled backwards. She scrabbled to her feet and leapt on top of me landing on my stomach. Catching hold of my wrists she pinned them to the grass with unexpected strength and then pressed her lips to mine until I stopped struggling and started cooperating.
She rubbed the end of her nose against mine. Shadowed by her hair, I looked up into her eyes seeing the green spark in them rekindled.
"You're insatiable," I told her.
"Impossible," she agreed, nodding slowly and brushing my nose with hers. That look of proprietary possessiveness came back into her eyes.
"Don't say it," I told her.
She leapt to her feet and grabbed her bag in one fluid movement and was walking off across the field while I was still getting to my feet.
"You'd better get used to it," she called over her shoulder.
I trailed after her, shaking my head and wondering what on earth I had got myself into.
The lane to the farm was bright with sunshine and filled with wildlife. A fox trotted casually across our path and we saw clouds of starlings circling overhead until they wheeled away. Kestrels hovered overhead searching for tiny prey in the grass, ignored by the sheep grazing in the fields beyond the wire fences. Blackbird curled her hand in mine and I was able to pretend for a while that we were simply walking.
As we approached the farm, though, the mood became more sober. The air downwind of the farm was tainted by the smell of charcoal and the hint of iron on the air had my breath catching in the back of my throat and so I avoided breathing in the smoke that was turned, twisted and swept away by the fickle breeze.
The dogs announced our arrival with a frenzy of barking; the smaller bitch would come nowhere near us but barked from the safety of the kitchen door. Jeff Highsmith came down to the gates for us, looking tired and smudged with charcoal and soot from his labours.
"It's almost done," he told us. "Dad's just finishing grinding off the edge."
He took us across the courtyard and into the kitchen, where his wife was waiting and then left us with her to go and see how the work progressed. Meg Highsmith greeted us formally but politely in a way that made me wonder what her husband had said to her. She offered us lunch but we declined on the basis that we had so recently had breakfast.
"A cup of coffee would be most welcome, though," Blackbird suggested.
Blackbird and I sat at the kitchen table as she busied herself around the kitchen preparing lunch for her family and coffee for us.
After a few minutes Jeff, his father, and his daughter filed in.
"There," he said. "Done." He placed the newly finished knife in the centre of the table with a flourish.
Blackbird and I looked at each other. The knife sat there, inert, innocuous, unremarkable.
"Something's wrong," we said in unison.
TWENTY-ONE
We sat around the table in the kitchen, Ben, Jeff, Lisa and James opposite Blackbird and I, while Meg fussed around us.
"I still don't see the difference," Ben Highsmith repeated, scratching his head.
"Believe me," I told him, "We would not be sitting here talking like this if it was remotely like the Quick Knife."
"But we made it the same," he protested.
"And it's definitely iron," Blackbird said. "But not like the Quick Knife. Rabbit is right; we would be able to tell straight away if it was the same. We would know as soon as you brought it anywhere near us, either of us."
Our hopes of restoring the knife to this year's ceremony and reinforcing the barrier against the Seventh Court were melting away.
"Do you know anyone else, anyone you could recommend?" I hated to ask, but it was all I could think of.
Ben Highsmith blustered, but it was his son
who answered.
"There's no one else does the kind of work you need. That's why we've kept the skills alive all these generations. And there's none alive that's better with iron than Dad. Dad, sit down, he's only asking what you'd ask in his place."
Ben had stood up ready to defend his honour, but then sighed and slumped back into his seat, resting his chin in his hands. "I s'pose," he admitted.
"Are you sure there's no way of mending the old one? I mean, it's potent enough, it's just not in one piece," Blackbird asked him.
Ben answered. "No, No. It won't take a weld and it can't be braised. Melting down the metal will return it to solid iron, but not in the way you want. Broken is broken with cold iron."
We lapsed into silence again.
"Can I see the broken one?" Lisa asked.
She hadn't said a word until now, sitting close to her grandfather as if she dwelt in his shadow. He was as startled as we were that she'd spoken.
"Fetch it out for her, will you?" he asked me.
Blackbird unzipped her bag and extracted the box with the knives in it, sliding it across the table towards them. "If you don't mind, Rabbit and I will go and stand in the yard while you look at it."
They waited while we stood and trooped outside into the yard. Even then, the prickling sensation down my spine, the ache in my bones, told me the moment the box was opened.
"What are we going to do now?" I asked Blackbird.
"I don't know what we can do. Get them to make another? Is there any reason it would be better than the one they've already made? Maybe they've lost the art, in which case we can only ask them to experiment and try and regain it. Whatever happens it will be too late for this year, maybe too late for all of us. If the barrier collapses…" She let the words trail away and kicked a stone across the yard. It bounced unevenly across the concrete.
I felt the dull ache subside and knew they had finished examining the knife before Ben Highsmith emerged, his granddaughter trailing behind him, her father following her out to stand watch behind them.
"This Quick Knife is useless, right?" He questioned Blackbird, brandishing the box.
"The broken knife can't be used for the ceremony," she confirmed, "unless it can be repaired well enough to cut a hazel rod?"
"Nah, but Lisa spotted something neither Jeff nor I had seen. I'd show you but…"
"We'll take your word for it," I told him.
"The blade of the knife has been hammered after it cooled. You can see it if you hold it up to the light. Jeff and I didn't believe her at first. We didn't even look for hammer marks, but sharp-eyes here spotted it." He smiled down at her and ruffled her hair affectionately. She grinned up at him, basking in his praise.
"So why don't you hammer the new one?"
"It looks like the original has been hammered cold and we know that if you hammer cold iron, it shatters. The metal's too brittle to take it. That's why we weren't looking for hammer marks."
"Then how could it have been hammered in the first place?"
"That's what Lisa wants me to try. She wants to see if the old knife can be hammered. If it can, then that might explain the difference between the knives. Or it could just shatter."
I looked at Blackbird. She nodded. "Do it," she told him.
We followed them to the back of the farm being careful to avoid the plume of smoke being whipped off the top of the chimney by the stiffening breeze. The forge was there, the bed of coals still burning from their night's work.
"Unlike copper, iron isn't usually hammered cold," Ben told us. "The knife we made for you was heated in the forge until the iron became ductile and then it was hammered into shape. Keeping it hot and hammering it drives out the impurities so you end up with something you can work with. That's wrought iron."
He went through the low arch into the forge. Neither Blackbird nor I made any move to follow him. He raised his voice and moved about in the dimness within, donning a leather apron and collecting things together while he continued explaining, raising his voice to be heard through the open doorway of the forge.
"Cold iron is harder to make," he called out to us. "A very particular ore is put though an ancient process to produce a lump of coarse iron called a bloom. The bloom is reheated and then hammered to drive out the impurities. It has to be cooled slowly enough to allow the crystals to form, but hammered enough to drive out the impurities. Hammer it too much and it'll shatter, too little and the impurities will make it brittle and it won't take the shape. Cool it too fast and it'll develop fracture lines, too slow and it'll be soft and never take an edge. It's all in the making."
He picked a hammer from a rack and hefted it, standing in the shade of the doorway. "You'd better stand back in case it shatters," he told us, picking a safety visor from a hook.
Jeff pulled his daughter away behind him, standing at an angle to the doorway. Blackbird and I moved well back behind a stone wall, well aware of what flying fragments of cold iron would do to either of us. From our position we couldn't see into the forge, but we knew when he took the broken blade of the Quick Knife from the box.
There was a long pause and then a characteristic sound
'Tink… tink… tink… tink… Thonk!'
Then a pause.
'Tink… tink… tink… tink… Thonk!'
Every time he hit the knife it made a jarring note that accented the wrongness in the metal. It was like scraping fingers down a blackboard, but a hundred times worse. By the time he was ready to stop I had a thumping headache and Blackbird looked no happier.
Jeff and his daughter crowded back into the forge to view the results. Blackbird and I had no wish to get closer to the knife or the forge, so we stayed outside. The headache had intensified and I was seeing vague images, like brief mirages, in the periphery of my vision.
I felt Blackbird's hand on my arm. "Are you well?"
I nodded, sending needles of pain through my forehead making me grimace.
"It's done now. They've finished," she reassured me.
There was an animated discussion going on between Jeff and the old man. They were arguing technicalities and sparking off each other. The argument died as quickly as it started. They put the knife back into its box and brought it back to us.
"It's still whole," Ben told us, "though the metal has started to crack. If I had continued it would have broken again."
"So is that a yes or a no?" Blackbird asked him.
"I think the lass has the right of it: it was hammered cold. Remember though, simply dropping it onto a hard floor was enough to break it in the first place."
"That was a fault in the metal," Jeff interrupted.
"Regardless, if we cold-hammered the new knife then it would crack and break."
"Not if we had the right tools," Jeff interrupted again.
"Jeff, we've been over this. The anvil would need to be enormous and specifically made for the job and the hammer would have to be tuned to the metal. Even then…" His frustration at his son evaporated as he watched the expressions on our faces change. "What?" he said.
"This anvil? How enormous would it need to be?" Blackbird asked him.
"Big. Bigger than anything we've got."
"About this long, so high?" She hopped around, miming the distances, unable to spread her arms wide enough to encompass it.
He looked askance at her theatrics, but nodded.
"We saw it," I told him. "It's in London, hidden." I described the anvil sitting on the island amid the dark water of the underground river.
"It sounds right, but without a hammer that's tuned to it, it only solves half the problem."
There was a pause while we thought it through.
"You wouldn't want to separate the hammer from the anvil, would you?" Blackbird suggested.
"No," I agreed, "But you wouldn't leave it lying around either, not where someone could appropriate it for some other purpose. It might get lost."
"Or stolen," she added. "You'd lock it away."
"Somewhere close by," I agreed.
"Somewhere safe."
"But we can't open it. It's sealed, remember?"
"Would the two of you mind telling me what on earth you're talking about?" the old man interrupted.
We described the square iron door in the wall, neither of us mentioning the two visitors that had come to inspect it while we had been there.
"But it's locked and we don't know how to unlock it," I told him.
"And you reckon there's a hammer in this lock-box?"
"Where else would you put it? It has to be there."
He scratched at his unshaven chin. "You might be able to break into it, but it sounds like you'd need heavy cutting equipment. Any idea how thick the door is?"
We both shook our heads. "The door is flush to the wall and not easy to get at. It's set in the wall above head-height over a thin ledge where it would be almost impossible to set a ladder, let alone apply any leverage once you had climbed it."
It was his turn to shake his head. "Even if there is a hammer in there, it doesn't sound like you'll be able to get at it without unlocking it."
"There must be a key." Frustration rang in Blackbird's tone.
"Are you sure the key's not with the anvil?" Jeff suggested.
"No, there's nowhere to leave it where it would be safe. Besides, why leave the key with the safe? There'd be no point in locking it if the key is with it. Are you certain you don't have a key here, handed down through generations, a family heirloom perhaps?"
"We can look," Jeff volunteered.
We followed Jeff back into the kitchen and he started pulling out drawers looking for keys.
"Jeff, I'm trying to put lunch together. Do you mind?" Meg Highsmith protested as Jeff started turning drawers out onto the kitchen table.
"It's urgent," was all he said and continued pulling things out.
Ben went into the room with the dogs, amid much snuffling and a low growl from the big dog at us. Ben emerged with a wooden box filled with bits of rusty broken tools, orphaned cutlery and old keys. He spilled the lot out onto the table. Meg folded her arms and sighed as they began sorting through the oddments.
"If you tell me what you're looking for I might be able to help," she offered.
