Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  OUT OF TOWN

  1

  Winter Cleaning

  Staying true to her self-imposed sentence, Valourhand marched on towards Rotherweird Westwood. From the west a slither of angry orange-red caught the walls of a stone house set on gently rising ground. It attracted Valourhand’s attention, not for any welcoming features, for it had none, but for the unlit windows and open front door.

  She crossed a frozen tributary of the Rother and the unkempt meadow, passing a warped shed stained brown-black by creosote and supported by mushroom-shaped stones. Beside the house a lopsided kennel with a mean space in front had been fenced off with barbed wire. The corpse of a mangy dog lay in the entrance, head half out. Protruding bones pointed to starvation.

  The exterior of the house also exuded neglect: rust caked the single water butt; vertical stains from broken gutters disfigured the walls. Beyond the wide-open door, dry mud spattered the stone floor of a small bare entrance hall devoid of boots, coats or hats. A cracked saucer on a low bench held a single candle and matches.

  She lit the candle and explored. Each floor had one generous front room, with smaller rooms at the back, including a kitchen-scullery downstairs and a bathroom upstairs. Grime coated every surface. Drapes and covers had been savaged by moths.

  Valourhand loathed waste in all its forms. The windows promised a view. The downstairs fireplace had handsome cornerstones. Oak panelling skulked beneath the dirt.

  The house had recently been occupied. A cold store held a joint, almost picked clean, as well as eggs, a loaf, butter and a jug of thick yellow soup. Firewood and kindling looked freshly cut. She laid a fire and lit it.

  A Rotherweird gold guinea coin gleaming beneath the sitting room’s central table snapped Valourhand from her torpor. By law, Rotherweird guineas were collected and re-minted every fifty years, but despite the eighteenth-century date, the patina was fresh and untouched by time. Bole would have gathered money to ease Wynter’s progress to power, but what could this remote farmhouse have to offer either of them?

  At least she now had a penance worth the name: cleansing these Augean stables.

  The following morning, she buried the dog. Wheals along the back spoke of beatings. The creosote shed contained the remains of hens, also left without water or food. A rear room contained a plethora of traps and tiny manacles made for animals, of the owner’s personal design, judging by the small furnace and welding equipment. Bizarrely, a high shelf in the same room held a large English dictionary in three volumes.

  Days passed as Valourhand scrubbed and polished and burned. She slept downstairs, having no wish to use the bed of a torturer.

  UNDER TOWN

  1

  Finch Underground

  Oak on oak squeaked and grumbled as the great tower settled onto the supporting beams. Propelled on runners from sculpted apertures in the rock, they crisscrossed the shaft at the moment of ascent. Pulleys, their task done, festooned the cavern walls. Ropes snagged on projecting rocks; counterweights dotted the ground.

  Up above, the circular rim of the opening eyed Finch like a Cyclops peering into a sack. He admired the workmanship and engineering, hydraulics, vacuum-technology, carving, joinery and timing devices all perfectly calibrated to raise the tower into place at the allotted moment.

  The soles of his feet reported no aftershock, not that he had expected any: one dramatic strike on the Winter Solstice, the day allotted to Rotherweird’s election, would meet Wynter’s Messianic expectations. Bole had served his master well.

  He inspected the ropes within reach and the rock wall, but the former were too loose and the latter too sheer to climb. In any event, the gap between the tower and the opening looked uninvitingly narrow.

  He retrieved his tube-light and peered at his pocket watch. Time had flown: four o’clock had passed already, but above him Market Square was mute. He could hear no celebrations of an election result, but also no clamour of concern. Something must be seriously amiss.

  I have to investigate – but where and how?

  First decision: explore from underground. If Wynter and Bole were back, he would surely be a prime target for retribution. His ancestors had supplanted Wynter and the killings of Mrs Banter and Veronal Slickstone had demonstrated the Eleusians’ relish for vengeance.

  Second decision: try to reach the South Tower Observatory in Rotherweird School. The previous evening, on the eve of the election, he had chanced on Valourhand near Salt’s house, swathed in warm clothes with a parcel under her arm.

  ‘You’re all dressed up, Glamourhand!’

  ‘A night out, so needs must.’ She had paused, but Finch knew that self-questioning look: should she share her intelligence? For once, she did. ‘Oblong dropped into Baubles & Relics – he showed us Bolitho’s sphere, the one you gave him to place in the mixing-point. We think it shifts the observatory to Lost Acre, so Bolitho can study the comet from there.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘We’ve underestimated Calx Bole. Every move is plotted. To have any chance, we must pool the little we know.’

  Finch would have passed on his own discoveries about Bole’s alter ego, the master carver Benedict Roc, but a raised hand silenced him. Valourhand’s current business was apparently too urgent to interrupt.

  ‘Good luck with the expedition then.’

  ‘I’ll need it. Whatever you do, don’t follow us. I mean it, Finch. You’re needed here.’

  She had awarded him a cursory hug, as uncharacteristic for her as sharing secrets.

  *

  Finch was now east of the Golden Mean and in unfamiliar territory. For several hours, he trudged on, using red wool markers to minimise repetition, but he could find no way south. He consumed his last two sandwiches, then slept.

  Waking brought a change of luck. Cold air slapped his cheek and he traced the draught to a narrow shaft above a cramped dead end. Abandoning his backpack, he tied the tube-light to his ankle and clambered up onto a narrow ledge which opened out into a huge cavern. The tube-light made little impression, but directly below he could see a monorail snaking away into the gloom. He recognised it as the track for the moleman’s railway. While wide enough to accommodate a man walking with care, the leap down looked precarious.

  He prayed to Finches past and jumped. His trailing leg caught an outcrop, but arms honed by years of heaving heavy tomes in the archivoire found and gripped the rail. He hauled himself up and peered around. The ledge was now unreachable. For better or worse, he had burned his boats.

  The rail’s narrowness made walking awkward, but he sustained an even pace until the gradient steepened. When his feet began to slip backwards, he resorted to all fours, hands clasping the edge, tube-light dangling from his neck. A small platform with room to sit down and recuperate came as a relief. He flipped a nearby lever, with no visible consequence.

  He looked up, which proved to be a mistake. The rail spun beneath him like a thread of spaghetti in boiling water, making him feel horribly exposed, a tiny firefly engulfed by darkness.

  Since the tower’s ascent, he had heard only his own breathing and movements; now the growing rumble behind him sounded as dramatic as thunder. His palms registered a vibrato in the track: he had inadvertently summoned Bolitho’s rail-car. Would it topple him into the void?

  Get a grip, he rebuked himself. It must stop here. And it did. He clambered on, leaned over and flicked the lever back to re-launch the car up the slope towards the South Tower.

  He applauded himself – prematurely. Journey’s end had not changed, but a huge purple-yellow sac now hung from the ceiling just yards from the halt. His head brushed the skin, which reformed as he passed like a balloon filled with liquid.

  Finch walked back for a closer examination. The sac was pulsing like a lung. Inside, a ghostly embryonic shape, head tucked into its body, began to twitch. Above the sac, a thin circular line marked the rock, clear as ink.

  He drew tentative conclusions: Bolitho’s observat
ory had been transported to Lost Acre. The geology of the other place must match Rotherweird’s; hence the perfect fit. On that working hypothesis, the egg-like structure had been laid in Lost Acre and made the reverse journey, which was quite a coincidence of placement and timing. And there the puzzles began. Bolitho could have no reason to import a monstrosity from Lost Acre – and why would Bole imperil his master’s new kingdom?

  Two dots of light danced up the tunnel, resolving into outsize luminous grasshoppers. Ignoring Finch, they settled on the sac, prospecting the surface while generating a high-pitched hum with their hind legs. The pulse within the sac quickened. Moving into labour, thought Finch. I have to warn the town.

  He ran back and climbed the iron rungs to the drain cover. He raised the lid gingerly and peered out, only to be dazzled by dappled noonday sunshine. The observatory had vanished, but Apothecaries were guarding the perimeter, facing outwards. Behind their backs, they held electrical devices, judging by the flashes of static. They would arrest him, or worse, but he could see no alternative. To return, he must destroy the sac, but how?

  He wrenched a loose iron rung from the wall. Gelatinous liquid was already oozing from the sac onto the tunnel floor, filaments no thicker than fishing line. The attendant insects attacked him with unexpected ferocity. He swatted one away, then crushed a second – just as a claw cut through the membrane. A long leg followed: jointed and toed, with the colour and consistency of a crayfish. It felt for the floor and settled. A crab-like face pressed against what remained of the membrane; stalked eyes fixed on Finch.

  Finch ran to the rail-car and boarded as the hatchling emerged. A scything front claw dislodged the car’s braking mechanism. The chassis hurtled forward to the screech of a falling pulley, accelerating to breakneck speed in seconds and leaving his pursuer snapping at thin air.

  A reckless exuberance seized Finch. He leaned first one way then the other as the wild fairground ride swept away books, duties, estranged wife and disappointing son. Silver hair streaming, face buffeted by the rush of air, he yelled at the dark, ‘Yahoo! Yahaa!’ Rotherweird’s last Herald would be going to his Maker in style.

  Fate, or the laws of physics, decided otherwise.

  Once through the cavern and under the Rother, the rail started to climb and the rail-car slowed to a halt within feet of its platform terminus.

  Reason returned.

  The damaged chassis would surely rush back, seesawing like a pendulum before coming to rest in the darkness below, leaving him to starve or jump. He disembarked seconds before the rail-car slipped back into the gloom.

  He felt exhausted. Bookish life had not prepared him for action-packed adventure. He tried to remember his last visit. Was it up and right, or up and left? He walked to the intersection, where cracks from the quake crisscrossed the ceiling. He chose right, walking on tiptoe like a dancer, fearful that pressure of feet or sound might bring the tunnel down.

  He reached the line of levers for Bolitho’s optical instruments, but the telescopes had been removed. The door beyond opened and a familiar figure brought a schoolboy exchange of greetings.

  ‘Finch!’ said Jones.

  ‘Jones!’ said Finch.

  ‘Ssssh!’ they both said in unison as the ceiling puffed dust.

  Dried blood stained Jones’ hands and forearms. His expression was grim, his lips pursed, his fists clenching and unclenching. ‘A trap killed the moleman – steel spikes through the chest – he had no chance.’ His delivery had the clipped bluntness of a military report.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Close to your cell. Sorry, Finch. It’s not your fault – but it’s worse. On the other side there’s a rock wall. At the Solstice it opened and Orelia went in.’

  ‘Why?’ Finch was still struggling to connect this subterranean drama with events above ground.

  ‘Rotherweird has a mixing-point too. Orelia’s copy of Straighten the Rope was bound in Wynter’s skin. They came here to resurrect him.’

  That made horrible sense.

  ‘Did Orelia come out?’

  ‘I don’t know. But the wall closed again, solid as a . . . rock.’ Jones began to mumble. ‘The footprints are troubling. Two women and a man go in. A man and a woman come out – only the man coming out has different feet to the man going in, and the woman who escapes has tiny feet.’

  ‘Roc does not have tiny feet.’

  ‘No.’

  Finch shook his head. Something did not fit. Why was Jones here? Why had Orelia headed for the greater danger?

  Jones, sensing the implicit accusation, looked miserable. He had failed in gallantry, his defining virtue. ‘A woman screamed, so we divided forces – I went this way, she went over there.’ He pointed to the two routes. ‘It was a terrible scream,’ he added defensively.

  Finch shuddered. He had forgotten Morval Seer. ‘She must be distraught,’ the Herald said.

  In Jones’ considerable experience, in the presence of sudden death, banality rather than eloquence marked the decent man. Finch’s understatement wrenched him back to present priorities.

  ‘I once knew a military man who after a battle liked to say, “Tend to the living and forget the dead”. He was wrong. Tending to the dead revives the living. Follow me.’

  The moleman was lying on the dining table, arms crossed over his chest and clasping a pair of telescopes. His body had been cleaned and combed. Defying rigor mortis, the last horrified look of surprise had eased to a gentle smile. Morval Seer stood beside him, hands as stained with grime and blood as Jones’s. A large rope encircled the central pillar.

  ‘This is the king-post,’ Jones explained. ‘Once we topple it, we’ve only minutes to escape. Fortemain designed it. Perhaps he knew this is how it would end.’

  To Finch’s amazement, Morval spoke, her words, both meaningless and meaningful, emerging in fits and starts.

  ‘Life . . . thin air . . . vision melted . . . solemn pageant . . . great globe of a man . . . dissolve . . . a dream.’ Her expression eased. She had said her piece.

  ‘The shock restored her voice,’ whispered Jones, ‘but the words just tumble out.’

  Finch felt the need for a positive response. ‘We have a text too, don’t we, Jones, for saying now . . .’

  He and Jones bowed their heads and uttered Fortemain’s self-penned epitaph:

  ‘Earth to sky and sky to earth

  Matter matters in rebirth,

  Sky to earth and earth to sky,

  Life’s mutations do not die.’

  *

  Morval, having found a modicum of closure, kissed the mole man on the forehead and slung a sack of her belongings over her shoulder.

  ‘Not the tunnels,’ said Finch. ‘There’s a monstrosity from Lost Acre back there and it doesn’t like Heralds.’

  Morval, walking to the far doorway, summoned Finch with a crooked finger.

  Jones coiled the rope around his waist. Feet set as for a tug-of-war, he leaned back and pulled. The king-post stood firm at first, then juddered, then fell. Above their heads, the entire complex of rooms began to creak like a labouring ship in a storm.

  Morval hurried them into a shaft with rungs set into one side. Behind them, the sounds of falling earth and sundering timber declared the final entombment of Vesey Bolitho, alias Fortemain, and his inseparable talpid companion, telescopes across their shared torso, in a barrow fit for a king.

  They climbed out to find twilight and Venus conspicuous overhead. The surface of the marsh betrayed no sign of the disturbance below.

  They crossed themselves.

  Jones broke a long silence. ‘The town gates are closed.’

  ‘And the marsh is impenetrable,’ added Finch.

  ‘Not with Morval to guide us,’ replied Jones, ‘and with my galumphing footsteps to follow. But we’ve no key to get in.’

  They looked at each other. Morval really needed a dose of familial warmth.

  ‘The Ferdys,’ they said in unison.

  2


  Of Household Gods They trudged on, stars coming and going in a ragged sky. Morval Seer knew the way and walked with pace and directness. Trees were down. A dead sheep lay in the lee of a hedge. Beside her, Finch caught fragments of nonsense – ‘soul’s light . . . bescreening night . . . confining prison . . .’ – but she led them unerringly to the Ferdys’ house, where the hoped-for welcome did not materialise. Shuttered and plunged in darkness, the house offered only her front door, obligingly unlocked.

  The essentials had been left as if for strangers on a short-term let: linen on the beds and enough crockery and cutlery for six people. There were basic provisions, including firewood and a store of root vegetables in a shed behind the house, but anything of value, artistic, material or sentimental, had been removed.

  Shortly after their arrival, Morval Seer turned feverish.

  ‘Exhaustion,’ suggested Jones.

  ‘Grief,’ added Finch.

  Wear and tear of every kind was their final common diagnosis. Jones laid and lit a fire as Finch tended the daughter he had never had. Her disconnected word-chains hinted at meaningful origins, but not even Finch, no ordinary speaker himself, could find the key. He took notes by her bedside as she rambled on, delirious.

  Jones tracked down medicinal leaves and roots. He had run through these meadows long before this house existed. He knew every stand of trees and every stream, and Man’s contribution, for good or ill. He could not fathom his role, but despite his natural humility, he sensed that he mattered in some way, and that like the silver double-pipe with its single mouthpiece, the escharion, he too would be there at the end.

  3

  Free Fall

  Orelia Roc had lost her energy. She had followed Jones through the heaving ice and then across the marsh. She had been felled by Nona’s vicious blow. She had been stricken with grief at Everthorne’s loss and left in shock by the dark brilliance of Bole’s strategy. Pillowing her head against the great subterranean tree, she slept, but it was not a restorative slumber, for images from the past assailed her: Salt’s bubble whirling through the wormhole on Midsummer’s Eve, Slickstone holding forth in The Journeyman’s Gist, Everthorne whispering, ‘Rugs, rugs and more rugs!’ moments before making love to her, the catboy on the roof of her aunt’s burning house, spitting the words, ‘Where is the book, child?’ A cast of ghosts, all dead now.