Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  Gorhambury in appearance embodied the essence of a town clerk. Jeavons matched his role as exactly. The short stature, beaky face and tapering fingers implied the delicate touch required for handling old municipal records. He wore a purple velvet jacket over a green waistcoat, both adorned with brass buttons embossed – for no particular reason – with hunting horns. Pince-nez sat askew on the bridge of an aquiline nose.

  ‘Make way for Jeavons, make way for Jeavons,’ he squeaked. From his pocket he produced a clutch of velvet pouches with woven silver drawstrings. He lovingly placed each coin in a separate pouch while delivering a mini-sermon on the demands of his office.

  ‘Research requires concentration; concentration requires no distractions, and no distractions means solitude. I shall post my conclusions on the Town Hall noticeboard on Christmas Eve.’

  With his anti-climactic announcement, the archivist left with the tiptoe walk of a burglar.

  Gorhambury followed close behind. In his experience, gold and foul play tended to operate in tandem.

  With more muttering than rational discussion, the Chamber dispersed.

  *

  Outside, the weather dithered, patches of blue striving to repel thickening cloud. It remained bitterly cold. Fanguin and Boris, blowing their hands between exchanges, could find no explanation for the worrying absence of their friends. They moved on to their reading of the morning’s events.

  ‘That eighth coin changed his face like a glove puppet, temperate summer to tropical storm,’ said Fanguin, noting that his wife was heading back to the Hall of the Apothecaries – to mix Elizabethan pre-prandials, presumably.

  ‘Wynter can’t have buried them,’ reflected Boris. ‘He’d been executed in the mixing-point before Market Square even existed.’

  ‘He knew . . .’ Fanguin corrected himself. ‘He thought he knew their number and their messages.’

  ‘He and Bole pre-planned it. The coins are there to ease his return to power.’ Boris paused. The coins were assuming real importance. ‘The obverse must predict what he will bring to pass. He wishes to be king and shaman.’

  ‘But who added the eighth? Ferensen never mentioned coins to me. And, assuming we believe him, he never returned to Rotherweird until Midsummer Day.’

  ‘I trust you’re not falling for this rigmarole.’

  Fanguin ignored the gentle rebuke. ‘Morval Seer, marooned in the body of a spider, is obviously out. That leaves only our good friend Fortemain, alias Bolitho.’

  Boris dissented, more on instinct than rational grounds. ‘I think Fortemain favours direct action, when not indulging in celestial science. Remember he recalled Oxenbridge to thwart Wynter and became a moleman: both practical steps. This feels more like someone on Wynter’s plane, combating his use of myth and mystery with a touch of the same.’

  Defeated by one puzzle, they moved to another.

  ‘If you’re right, Boris, the coins will tell us what Wynter’s planning. How well do you know Jeavons?’

  ‘Well enough. Leave him to me.’

  ‘I did see two of them. Number three had a hand seizing a snake; and number seven a body climbing out of a grave.’

  ‘Hardly encouraging,’ replied Boris. ‘I saw a more seasonal touch on number four: a sprig of mistletoe.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ replied Fanguin.

  6

  The Foreign Coin

  Wynter walked back to the Hall of the Apothecaries at a brisk pace. He, or rather Calx Bole, whose knowledge and experience he had absorbed, had buried the coins at dead of night, when Market Square was nearing completion, four centuries ago. Had Rotherweird allowed study of her history, citizens would have known that a Master Carver had proposed a hexagonal stone to represent the heart of the emerging town. He admired the sophistication of Bole’s planning, but Bole’s memories held no explanation for this headless intruder.

  Thomes hastened alongside. He had been in thrall to Wynter by the end of dinner the night before; now his support was wavering.

  ‘You had them and you lost them – and why release that grotesque insect? Cheap stunts never work here.’

  ‘Do you know the meaning of the word “revelation”, Master Thomes?’ Wynter spoke the word ‘Master’ as if it were the junior form of Mister.

  ‘I do believe I do,’ replied Thomes testily.

  ‘I don’t mean rabbits from hats, I mean a true Revelation: a transforming truth, a new god, a new history obliterating all that has gone before.’

  ‘I have a word for the source of such revelations,’ responded Thomes. ‘A megalomaniac.’

  Wynter would not be goaded. ‘Be useful, Master Thomes. What do you make of the coins?’

  ‘I know Jeavons. He’s a fastidious perfectionist. Most gold substitutes are magnetic; gold is not. He has age-tests for everything from bronze to paper. He’ll sniff you out in no time. We’re not stupid, Mr Wynter.’

  ‘I would never have returned here if you were. Now, best not to irritate, Master. I asked for your opinion.’

  ‘You got them there somehow.’

  ‘Did you see the coin with a name?’

  Thomes had. It made no sense. ‘Escharion.’

  ‘There’s no such word,’ muttered Wynter, for once sounding fretful.

  ‘How would you know?’ asked Thomes.

  ‘I read ancient Greek, and I speak it. I could converse with Achilles. As it’s not a real word, it must be a mix of words to describe something unique. “Eschatos” means last in Greek, and “eschatology” is the study of death or the soul or the final destiny of man.’

  ‘What about the “-arion” bit?’

  ‘Clario is Latin and Middle English for trumpet, and an organ stop with similar qualities.’

  ‘Just what I thought,’ said Thomes in a know-it-all voice. ‘Nobody would invest so much effort for a concept. It must refer to a rare and valuable object.’ A thought struck him: Wynter or an agent of his had placed the seven coins in their underground vault in Market Square. They were numbered, so the seven coins illustrated the story Wynter wished to tell about himself, no doubt with the props and supporting cast already in place. But the eighth had been an unwelcome coda, hence Wynter’s anxiety.

  He could not resist a deft prod at Wynter’s vanity. ‘Escharion will come at the end, when you least expect it,’ he added with a smirk.

  ‘At the end – at the end, Master Thomes – your parents must have neglected your prayers! A world without end – that’s what we all aspire to. Only no man or god has ever delivered such a thing.’

  Master Thomes found the reply oddly reassuring. Madmen never last.

  *

  Wynter returned to his room. Toying with the townsfolk had served his myth and his purpose: an immortal, unrecognised, returns to claim his birthright. Their scepticism would deepen to belief later. Yet a new mind in an old body demanded rest after its first outing. On the bed, Scry had laid out a white shirt and black trousers. She had measured him in the morning, down and across, as if for a coffin. She had not lost her gift for decisive action.

  After an hour of dreamless sleep, he woke. A splash of white caught his eye. A writing desk, raked like a schoolboy’s, held a single sheet of paper. The writing, its ornament as precise as a baroque trill, he recognised as Calx Bole’s. Yet Bole was dead and he, Geryon Wynter, had absorbed Bole’s knowledge and experience. The message was unsettling:

  My pen I give to you that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage.

  Escharion is an intruder, placed by the enemy, so hunt it down.

  Or had he written it – at least physically? My pen I give to you. Who else could replicate Bole’s script so exactly? The implications, layers on layers, unnerved him. The town and its denizens had held no surprises, because he had acquired from Bole a unique centuries-deep navigational guide – but had he acquired more than knowledge? What of Bole’s own will and ambitions?

  He shrugged off the concerns. Bole had been an exemplary servant in every way, hence his
self-sacrifice. Some cerebral misfire had caused this aberration. It would not happen again.

  Like a splash of rain on the forehead, dripped from an overhead tree, an image came unbidden: a cage swinging beneath the mixing-point as a lithe young woman slipped from it into the grass, naked, leaving a monstrous creature behind her.

  A desire rooted, germinated, blossomed. He must have his chronicler back.

  7

  Actions and Reactions

  That night Jeavons completed his assay on the coins. He wrote a detailed report for the files and a pithy version for popular consumption.

  A gentle knock on the door announced Madge Brown, as ever courtesy itself. ‘On behalf of the Artefacts Committee, Mr Jeavons, I’d like to draw the first coin, if I may. You might use one in your public report.’

  Normally possessive of his materials, Jeavons succumbed; if only Mrs Jeavons were so polite. Brown had brought pen and ink. She drew slowly and precisely, the contours conveyed by subtle shading.

  ‘I would release one at a time in their numerical order,’ she said. ‘You’ll get more attention that way and it’s high time your department was given due recognition. And it’ll take me time to do the lot.’

  Jeavons purred.

  *

  Across the street, Snorkel, in earnest conversation with Sly, was deploying less diplomatic language. ‘Where’s that fucker Finch when you need him?’ Snorkel leaned over a long table in the study in the Mayor’s grace-and-favour apartment, voted to Snorkel by a well-packed Finance Committee within weeks of his first election. His pudgy fingers flicked out a long scroll. ‘There are no Wynters on the electoral roll in my time, or my father’s. He’s a ten-carat impostor and the coins are a set-up. It’s time we played tough, or you and I, Sly, are going to have our bums royally wrenched from the butter.’

  Snorkel summoned a flunky with the vigorous shake of a silver bell and barked, ‘Get the box from the fridge.’

  Sly offered comfort. ‘He has not done enough, Your Worship. The Guilds won’t wear him. Nor will the people. He’s an outsider, for God’s sake.’

  ‘So was that bastard Slickstone.’

  ‘You saw him off.’

  ‘Then I was Mayor, now I’m not.’

  The flunky returned and handed over a slim wooden box wrapped in a cloth which smoked like a living presence.

  ‘Keep it in your freezer until the moment juste arrives,’ Snorkel told Sly. ‘An anonymous gift. Indeed, Sly, this handover is not happening. If you’re ever asked, you were given it by the North Tower for safekeeping.’

  ‘To be deployed when?’

  ‘If and when conventional means fail. You’ll know.’

  Sly disliked the grime of negotiation, but it had to be done. ‘Your Worship, Mrs Sly has a cultured eye for fine jewellery, which requires occasional acts of munificence.’

  ‘The Snorkel Foundation supports well-chosen investment.’

  ‘Ruby earrings, to be exact, four hundred guineas.’

  Snorkel turned to the flunky, a man in his fifties, a retainer of the old school. ‘We did not hear that, did we, Dawson. Mrs Sly should set up a charity for rheumatoid fishermen.’

  *

  Sly avoided the Golden Mean as too conspicuous for a man with the future in the crook of his arm. Potential labels for his modest place in Rotherweird’s Index of Notables came and went: Henchman (see Snorkel); Fixer (see Snorkel); Eavesman (for Snorkel). He scowled. There had been material benefits, but little recognition.

  A new label caused him to lengthen his stride and stand tall: Sly the Kingmaker.

  8

  A Visit to the Butcher

  Rotherweird’s premier butchers lay west of Market Square, close to the first stairwell to Aether’s Way. Sides of beef and cured hams hung from hooks above delicacies in rows of trays – pâtés, black pudding, sweetbreads, kidney, hearts and liver, and a rich variety of sausages; a mosaic of blood and skin, each pithily described on spiked wooden tallies.

  Following the quake, a click had afflicted the refrigeration unit, as if a rotor were chaffing the mesh. Mr Cutts, for all his vigour with a cleaver, was a punctilious observer of the Meat Hygiene Regulations. He woke as its rhythm appeared to change. Would the rotor fracture? Visions of losing his stock to contamination on the very eve of Christmas assailed him.

  Twice he checked his descent on the stairs. The click had now acquired an accompaniment, a grating squeak, like a knife on glass.

  ‘Horace, what are you up to?’ muttered Mrs Cutts into her pillow.

  As his gaze rested on the shop below, Cutts froze. An unnatural grey-green triangular skull bobbed outside the shop-front window, illuminated by the gas-lamp across the street. A mask, he would have said, only this skull had eyes, flipping open and shut, and viscous saliva dripping from its jaws.

  The threat to his livelihood ousted any sense of caution. He ran down the remaining stairs, waving his arms and crying, ‘Piss off!’

  The next words tailed away as the skull acquired context. At least eight tall, spindly legs with spurred joints supported a long-ribbed body, all the colour of old bones. The monstrosity resembled the insect let loose by Wynter in the Town Hall the previous morning – but magnified beyond measure. Mesmerised, he shuffled closer. The window’s glass had been cut as if by a skater’s blade, so explaining the squeaking noise. The chiselled line formed a perfect equilateral triangle, the shape of the creature’s head.

  The realisation came too late. The skull-like face on its prehensile neck hurtled forward and decapitated the unfortunate Mr Cutts in a shower of glass, before gorging itself on this alien’s magnificent larder.

  *

  In a nearby alleyway, Scry restrained her posse of Apothecaries.

  Welcome to Wynter’s world: heroes against monsters and lessons learned in blood. Tonight’s gospel would be clear: you listen to the Master.

  Random barn owls apart, the markings for Rotherweird’s night music fluctuated between pianissimo and silence. The violent percussion of falling glass and Mrs Cutts’ screams woke neighbours far and wide. They emerged, took stock, retreated, and re-emerged with sticks, cricket bats, pruning shears and even frying pans.

  Still Scry waited. The Apothecaries behind her, mostly young, looked anything but heroic. She divided them into two groups of six.

  ‘Go up Plato’s Alley, where you’ll find Mr Wynter, then head down from Market Square. We move up from here. The joints are its weak spot, but be sure to leave the kill to Mr Wynter. If anyone falls, recalibrate your conductor-stick to connect with your new neighbour.’ Scry felt liberated. Delivering dry prophecies paled beside making them come good in His cause.

  Wynter heard more than he saw from the anonymity of Plato’s Alley, a narrow footpath between back-to-back houses which turned at right angles into the Golden Mean just south of Market Square. This first prophecy coin was not without risk to him and the whole enterprise, but thrones are for risk-takers. Answer the sphinx, challenge the suitors, slay the Nemean lion and whomsoever or whatsoever the great cosmic clock places in your path. Well, not quite in this instance; Bole had arranged tonight’s challenge.

  A clack on the cobblestones announced the Apothecaries trotting towards him.

  Think Argonauts, he mused, think the Geats in Beowulf’s mead hall, think Ulysses’ crew: all givers of life to gild their master’s legend.

  *

  Fanguin arrived at the Golden Mean clutching a rope, to find bodies and ripped animal carcases disfiguring the street. Around him, makeshift weapons were making little impression on the chitin-hard casing of the mantoleon’s limbs and body. Applying fired pitch to the creature’s legs did no better.

  Jones would have been Fanguin’s first choice of recruit, Valourhand the second, but neither were there, so he chose a young man from The Understairs, a former pupil. Strong and nimble, Brocas, a cobble-layer by trade, evaded the mantoleon’s lunges with a matador’s grace.

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ shouted Fanguin. ‘We wr
ap the rope round a back leg and then you run around and around, keeping it tight. Then we truss him up like Gulliver.’

  Brocas looked unconvinced.

  ‘It worked with a giraffe, according to a book I read. Just keep to one side in case it kicks.’

  The rear legs anchored the mantoleon, which helped Fanguin’s first stage as the creature could not reach directly behind, but running the rope around the forelegs in full sight was fraught with peril. However, others quickly grasped the strategy and bravely did their best to distract the beast.

  Scry scowled in disapproval. Fanguin’s ingenuity was threatening to unravel everything. She rushed her team up the Golden Mean as Wynter, looking down the road, simultaneously reached the same conclusion.

  He switched on his conductor-stick. ‘Follow me,’ he ordered, and the two groups closed, lightning arcing between their sticks to create an inescapable cordon. The crowd of jostling attackers backed away, Brocas included.

  Three Apothecaries fell, but the broken arc quickly realigned and started cutting through the creature’s joints like wire through cheese. The mantoleon threshed and shrieked, only to crumple as Wynter delivered the coup de grâce, severing its head with a single strike.

  Think of skeleton warriors born of the dragon’s teeth, think of Medusa, think of Grendel; think of Jason, Perseus and Beowulf – and think of Wynter.

  The onslaught of extremes of image, smell and experience – the monster, the violence, the horror, the fear and the excitement, the iron tang of fresh blood, a victory against the odds – found release in a deafening outburst of applause as the survivors shook their weapons and cried ‘Wynter . . . Wynter!’ Windows opened down the Golden Mean like a grotesque advent calendar as protruding women and children joined the chorus of praise.

  One figure did not cheer. She knelt by the mantoleon’s body, her half-open dressing gown revealing a white nightdress beneath, both speckled with blood, red and green. She picked up a hatchet from the cobbles and hacked two spurs off one of the creature’s legs. She walked to Wynter and offered one with both hands.