‘A sign of the times, alas,’ said Ferensen, looking at the weapons.
Orelia suddenly felt homesick. ‘I miss my shop,’ she said. ‘This is the Christmas season – and I’ve piles of stock to clear.’
Ferensen said gently, ‘You’re the one witness who can bring Wynter down. You wouldn’t last two minutes. They think you’re dead, which is not an advantage to throw away lightly. Better to enjoy a Witan Hall Christmas. They’re as rare as the purple emperor. We’ve done it three times in four hundred years – once for a flood, once for a great freeze and now for Wynter’s return.’
‘You’d best show me round then,’ replied Orelia. ‘And I'll try to make myself useful; not that child-minding is my forte.’
4
‘I return to my own’
To Rotherweirders facing the inexplicable, a stranger promising explanations exercised an irresistible draw. The town’s bakers, every family’s first port of call, were primed; the curfew was lifted and the Apothecaries flocked from their stronghold.
The name spread as children skipped through the streets chanting the Rotherweird ‘Winter’ nursery rhyme. The jagged caissons of ice which had so disfigured the river had lost their hard edges to the early sunshine and subsided. Even the sky, bluer than not, bestowed approval. A semblance of tranquillity had been restored.
An early morning post-Winter Solstice sightseeing trip gripped the populace, who traipsed between the vanished observatory, the tower in Market Square, the mysterious octagonal building which had replaced the church and the Hall of the Apothecaries, because Wynter was reputed to be staying there. They wondered what he looked like, this intangible presence who had filled the vacuum left by the spoiled election.
Fanguin knew The Understairs better than most, having taken a keen interest in his poorer charges when a form master. One, now a rickshaw driver, hailed him from the press outside the Hall of the Apothecaries.
‘They won’t let anyone in, Mr Fanguin.’
‘Well, there’s a surprise.’
‘It’s guarded as well as locked.’
He was right: Apothecaries stood at every entrance, although without their lightning sticks. One strode forward. ‘Doctor Fanguin, please follow me.’
His admission to the main entrance rewarded an impatient crowd with another talking point: a dismissed schoolmaster welcomed to the inner sanctum of the Apothecaries?
Scry, her back to a blazing fire, greeted Fanguin as he placed his specimen box on the table in the Great Hall.
‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘They’re not creatures of this world.’
‘Some are, some aren’t. I found porcellio scaber and several moults of oniscus asellus in a supporting beam – that’s two of our five common woodlice, so not so unusual. They suggest the tower was built here. But the fringe of the hole was not.’
‘Just the fringe?’
‘I used a fishing rod. Lower down, the ferns and moss are Rotherweird through and through. It’s as if the top of a cake has been sliced off. There are pulleys below, and vacuum devices, all of local manufacture. The opening in the ground is the exception. It’s alien.’
‘Very good, Doctor Fanguin. To your hole we can add a vanishing church and observatory.’
The door behind Scry swung open to admit an ascetic-looking man with silver hair in a dun-coloured cloak over the pied clothes of an Apothecary. Despite heavy boots, he moved like a dancer. He exuded experience. If this was Wynter, he had survived hibernation for more than four hundred years with no apparent ill effects.
Fanguin did not hold back. ‘I know who you are, and I know what you did.’
Scry, half enraged and half taken aback, glared at Fanguin, but Wynter silenced her with a raised hand.
‘You’re the victim of a false narrative which I shall shortly refute,’ he told Fanguin.
‘How false?’ responded Fanguin aggressively.
‘The inverse of the truth – call it mirror-writing.’ Wynter smiled. ‘Before long you and I will visit the other place, and like Darwin, we’ll unravel her secrets. Now do forgive me, but I’ve a gospel to deliver.’
Wynter turned on his heels and withdrew, Scry following as if attached by a lead.
Darwin? Wynter, the Elizabethan, could not possibly have absorbed so much so quickly, could he? And yet Scry’s deference appeared to authenticate his identity.
Sister Prudence’s stern voice intervened. ‘Miss Scry said to leave your finds. She’ll send further instructions later.’
‘I’d like to study them somewhere secure,’ said Fanguin, hoping to investigate the inner warrens of the Apothecaries’ Hall.
‘I’ll see you at the Town Hall,’ replied Sister Prudence, pointedly showing Fanguin the door.
*
Above their heads in the Master’s Chamber, Scry’s proposals fell on stony ground.
‘I do what?’ hissed Thomes.
‘It’s already organised: six Apothecaries either side of the inside entrance to the Parliament Chamber in a line.’
‘Like a guard of bloody honour?’
‘As a guard of honour.’
‘He’s done nothing for this town. He’s clever, knows some science – all right, quite a lot of science – and he’s clearly studied our history inside out, which incidentally makes him a criminal.’
‘Trust me,’ she replied, ‘it’s to your benefit.’
Scry chastised herself for overlooking a fundamental question. Worshipping Wynter’s memory had conditioned her to see his return as the crowning objective – but what thereafter was the mission for the New Age of the Eleusians? The Roman Recipe Book had been filled to the last page long ago.
Maybe his address to the town would provide enlightenment.
5
Filling a Void
The Apothecaries on duty at the Parliament Chamber were, as instructed, firm but courteous. Sister Prudence took the lead. ‘Here, Mr Snorkel, Mrs Snorkel. Pride of place goes to our former Mayor, but no interruptions, please.’
Despite smarting from his overnight incarceration, the Snorkels took their seats. His men still dominated the committees of government, and Rotherweird would not tolerate a stranger for long. Novelty wears fast in politics.
Scry showed similar politesse. ‘Mr Gorhambury, we regret your detention, but it was necessary in the interests of public order.’
‘I reserve my position,’ replied Gorhambury stiffly, but what position? The Popular Choice Regulations ended his powers on ‘Election Day’, not, regrettably, on a conclusive election result. He was the Town Clerk again: from pumpkin to gilded carriage to pumpkin, a victim of lax seventeenth-century draftsmanship.
Another provision troubled Gorhambury: ‘In time of war or crisis, where the Mayor is absent or otherwise seriously impaired, the Town Council may elect a Mayor for no less than three months and no more than a year, at the expiry of which period an election must be held.’ The Mayor was absent, in a manner of speaking. The Regulations and the return of Wynter dovetailed like a Master Carpenter’s joint. What next?
The Guild Masters, Rhombus Smith and the senior Judge were greeted and placed with Gorhambury in the front row. Fanguin, in the second row, glanced round the Chamber. Hayman Salt had perished two nights earlier, attempting to frustrate the ice-dragon, but where were Orelia Roc, Gregorius Jones, Jonah Oblong, Vixen Valourhand and Marmion Finch?
The central platform looked set for a coronation. Snorkel’s ornate chair stood alone in the centre as if awaiting a new incumbent. Apothecaries held high multiple tube-lights arranged in pleasing colour combinations around the central dais. Fashioned under Scry’s direction, they created an optimistic, almost festive, atmosphere.
And yet . . .
Wynter entered between the two lines of Apothecaries without show, but the atmosphere shifted from expectation to suspicion, even resentment. Eyes narrowed; lips curled; feet shuffled. An outsider had come to lecture Rotherweird – by what right? Even the Apothecaries, normally insensitive to
opinions other than their own, exchanged anxious glances. Had Scry’s influence led Master Thomes astray?
Wynter faced this hostile reception with his usual unfussy calm. ‘Please be at ease, ladies and gentlemen of Rotherweird. My name is Geryon Wynter and I return as a founding father to explain these threatening and unique events.’
‘You look like a stranger to me,’ hissed Mr Norrington, a baker known for his volubility over the counter, and everywhere else.
‘Hear, hear!’
‘You will find my precise likeness carved in oak on the top of the central pillar in the portico of Escutcheon Place and your future told on coins beneath your feet.’ He raised an arm slowly. ‘I am not the stranger you think I am.’
The baker’s two sons hurried out of the Chamber, their instructions predictable and predicted.
Snorkel supporters from the Town Hall now joined in wagging their fingers like disapproving parents. ‘So where’s our church gone, Mr Wynter?’
‘And what’s in its place?’
‘I cannot answer that without history,’ replied Wynter, which prompted Gorhambury to leap to his feet.
‘Then no.’
‘You mentioned coins,’ interrupted Bendigo Sly, Snorkel’s leading eavesman. ‘Where are they?’
Scry watched and admired; Wynter danced to nobody’s tune.
He answered a different question, to hook the crowd. ‘They’re prophecy coins, to be interpreted rather than spent – they’re minted in finest gold, in keeping with their importance.’
That magic monosyllable ‘gold’ struck deep.
‘I said, where are they?’
‘You did and I heard, Mr Sly, but I prefer your interest to your avarice.’ The shift in tone of voice was faint, but discernible.
The audience wondered how a stranger could read Sly so well. ‘But as you ask,’ Wynter continued, ‘Market Square has a central hexagonal cobblestone, which I call the heart of the town. Lift it.’
Three men left with Bendigo Sly on this new mission, just as the two breathless boys returned. Relishing the attention, the baker’s sons delivered their report.
‘His face is there, on the column, just as he said.’
‘How do you mean “his face”?’ asked the baker.
‘’ere and ’ere,’ said the eldest, tapping his cheekbones and eye sockets.
‘And the ’air,’ added the other, ‘it’s that ’igh on the ’ead and swept back.’
‘Freshly carved,’ said Norrington. ‘It’s a trick.’
His two sons shook their heads. ‘It’s old wood, Pa, for real,’ said one.
‘Grey and cracked like the rest of it,’ added the other.
Across the Chamber, Mr Blossom, the portly Master of the Metalworkers, rose ponderously. ‘Perhaps you can tell us why The Thingamajig shattered?’ he asked.
‘No flash and no bang must mean no bomb,’ ventured Wynter, as if he had been there. ‘Did anything else happen at the same time?’
‘The quake!’ cried a mix of male and female voices.
‘So Nature herself is your saboteur. The forces that moved the rock under your feet shook the stones above your head, turning ballot-balls into cannonballs.’
‘More hokum,’ cried the baker. ‘Whoever heard of an airquake?’
‘He’s a fraud,’ jeered a member of Snorkel’s circle.
‘But a clever one,’ Snorkel whispered to Mrs Finch on his left.
‘You would know,’ interrupted Mrs Snorkel, irritated by her husband’s insatiable interest in Mrs Finch and her décolletage. She glanced across, but, for once, the Herald’s wife was ignoring her admirer’s attentions. She appeared transfixed by the newcomer, who was dismissing a threatening surge from the aisles with a raised right hand.
‘We also have an unexpected visitor. Mr Fanguin will explain.’
Reacting to Wynter’s informed benevolence and his own resurgence in status, Fanguin was beginning to doubt Ferensen’s narrative and the Elizabethan trial record. Perhaps Ferensen had abandoned them for fear of the truth emerging? But he remained wary; Wynter was almost too informed.
He ascended the dais, collected his specimen box from Scry and chose his words carefully. ‘I’ve never met Mr Wynter before today. But I did find a most unusual creature in the grass by the new tower in Market Square.’
Fanguin returned to his place. Wynter slid open the glass lid. A mantis-like insect, big as a fist, clambered out on stilt-like legs. It stalked the tabletop, head swivelling full circle. Momentarily, it disappeared, blending exactly, a chameleon mantis, before rejecting disguise as unnecessary.
Ooohs and aaahs swirled around the Chamber.
‘I call it a mantoleon,’ said Wynter, ‘but beware – this miniature scout may have a giant parent.’
More disbelief: an unusual creature, true, but small – Fanguin the disgraced biologist must have provided it himself. The mantoleon abruptly halted its exploration of the tabletop. Wings sprouted from its thorax and the insect took off, swooping along the rows of seats with a scissory hum. Several stood, vainly swatting at the insect with sticks and umbrellas, until it soared high into the roof and smashed through a high window. Shards of glass sprinkled the audience below. The mantoleon had taken flight.
‘That’s a troubling sign,’ said Wynter. ‘I do believe it was counting you.’
Cries of outrage greeted this analysis. Sister Prudence gave a curt hand signal to the Apothecaries surrounding the rostrum. Wynter was losing his grip.
‘This outsider is behind all this!’ cried Norrington, prompting a second surge towards the platform, but Sly returned just in time and pushed his way through the crowd, followed by his three assistants, who were carrying a small chest of oak banded in iron. Sly flourished the cobblestone with a rounded hexagonal head, which he had lifted from the centre of Market Square. They placed their findings on the table beside Wynter.
‘Where you said, like you said, but the chest won’t open,’ said Sly.
Those who had left their seats stopped in their tracks. Snorkel scowled. He and his forbears had always controlled the importation of gold. By rights, he should be opening the chest, not this interloper. But the depth of Wynter’s planning troubled him. He would not be a pushover.
Wynter held up the chest like a communion chalice.
‘A most intricate and ancient lock, but as you do not accept me yet, let someone you trust describe it. Mr Gorhambury . . . ?’
Gorhambury succumbed to the compliment and examined the chest from all sides. ‘The oak is tightly fitted and the iron strong. The discolouration suggests great age. I shall ask Mr Blossom to describe the lock.’
The Master of the Metalworkers waddled up, happy to be making a second contribution. He gave Wynter a wary look, peered at the lock with a magnifying glass, applied a screwdriver for some minutes and delivered his verdict. ‘The chest is ancient and finely made, but our Guild and the Woodworkers could rustle one up with no trouble. The lock is a different matter. It is keyless, of Rotherweird manufacture, late sixteenth century. Most unusually for its time, the rotating numbers have been protected from grime and rust by a glass panel, which I shall now remove.’
After a brief pause he continued, ‘The wheels, numbers one to nine, still rotate freely.’ Mr Blossom could not resist a display of arithmetical expertise. ‘The odds of chancing on the right combination at the first attempt are, of course, one in ten thousand.’ He rolled the numbers. ‘Not my lucky day.’
‘Ask Clever Clogs,’ cried the baker, poking a finger at Wynter.
‘Yes, sound advice indeed, you should always ask me. As I said, the chest holds prophecy coins. And as I am your future, we can expect the combination to be the date of my arrival: 2-2-1-2, the day after the Winter Solstice.’ Wynter spoke with such certainty that the click of the sprung latch came as no surprise.
‘Mr Blossom, be so good as to describe the contents.’
The Master of the Metalworkers produced each coin with a flourish and lai
d them on the table in a line.
‘Unmistakably gold,’ he said, after examining one through octagonal tortoiseshell spectacles, ‘and little need for spit and polish. Eight in all, with Mr Wynter’s head on all but one.’
‘No, seven,’ replied Wynter without even looking.
‘I can count, Mr Wynter.’
Wynter’s face whipped round, the first disconcerted action in a hitherto polished performance. He flipped the coins like a croupier turning cards. There were eight, and one coin did indeed lack his likeness. He gave a dismissive aside – ‘They are for you to interpret . . .’ – and marched out.
The Apothecaries, taken by surprise, followed. Scry remained, gripped by curiosity: what stories might the prophecy coins tell?
Pandemonium ensued. The Goldsmiths claimed ownership, as did Sly for the last incumbent Mayor. The Master of the Toymakers proposed equal division between the Guilds, hardly a solution with eight coins and twelve Guilds. Rhombus Smith proposed the Herald, but a quick search revealed that Finch was neither in the Chamber nor at home.
Scry shook her head at this crude focus on ownership. She peered at every coin within reach and listened for every clue. Wynter’s face appeared in varied poses and expressions: I rule you in all my moods. The images on the obverse were more cryptic.
As physical manhandling broke out, Scry hammered the table with her fist and shrieked, ‘Silence!’ Two coins tinkled on their return to the tabletop.
‘You brought this Wynter in,’ shouted back the baker, ‘you and the Apothecaries. Why should we listen to you?’
‘You’re an oaf who should know better,’ she retorted. ‘Buildings vanish, machines explode, new buildings rise from the earth – and you dismiss the only person who offers an explanation. As to the coins, the Town Hall archivist should have custody. Do you agree, Mr Gorhambury?’
Gorhambury rose to the challenge. ‘Under paragraph 3(5)(vi)(b) of the Treasure Trove Regulations, all valuables excavated within the town precincts – other than books – belong to the Town Hall. And in terms of personal custody that means our archivist, Mr Jeavons.’
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