Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  ‘One at a time,’ intoned the former Town Clerk.

  A sequence of ‘after yous’ consigned the issue to the Master Mixer.

  ‘Mr Wynter stays with the Apothecaries. Miss Scry, an honorary Apothecary, spoke for him at the last meeting. He has an obvious debt. There is a glaring conflict of interest. We stand by our motion.’

  ‘Bully for you!’ cried the baker.

  Gorhambury halted Thomes with a raised finger. ‘Any amendments must be read to all, reduced to writing and placed with me for numbering. Those wishing to speak will queue by the rostrum, unless they have a point of order.’

  ‘Amendment 1: delete “except the Apothecaries”!’ boomed Thomes, plucking his goatee in rage.

  The amendment duly made its way to Gorhambury’s desk.

  Wynter watched and waited, memorising every speaker’s name, profession and stance: supporter, floater or opponent. The invitation would surely come, and it did, from the Mistress Milliner.

  ‘In an election, candidates address us on their programmes. How enlightening if Mr Wynter would do the same.’

  Lambs and lemmings, thought Wynter, unable to resist in his mind blending the more esoteric faces with birds and beasts, but he played the rules, walking to the back of the line of would-be speakers, only for those in front to make way. It was him they wanted to hear.

  ‘Men and women of Rotherweird, I shall do whatever you ask, on whatever conditions. I shall serve you all, high and low, with due humility. I shall engage both with the Council’s collective wisdom and with those without a Guild. I seek no payment, as I am a man of means. Consider it a marriage: with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’

  ‘Marriage is for life,’ growled Snorkel in his wife’s ear, earning a resigned nod by way of response.

  ‘I would welcome a neutral lodging, so as not to disturb your former Mayor in this festive season . . .’ added Wynter.

  Madge Brown, Gorhambury’s introvert Sunday evening companion, unexpectedly rose to her feet. ‘Point of order, Mr Gorhambury. As Assistant Librarian and Secretary to the Artefacts Committee, I can report that the Manor is available for Mr Wynter. On our Committee’s advice, the contract of sale with Sir Veronal stipulated that upon his absence for six consecutive calendar months, ownership would revert to the town – as it did on the Winter Solstice.’

  Strimmer clenched his fists. Sir Veronal had pledged the Manor to him.

  Snorkel, ignoring protocol, stood up. ‘How’s that for foresight?’ he asked rhetorically, with a sweep of an arm. ‘I get the Manor refurbished at Sir Veronal’s expense for your benefit!’

  The hoped-for applause did not materialise. Snorkel was yesterday’s news. Geryon Wynter had put his life on the line for the town.

  Wynter slipped in a coda, menacing only to Oblong, with his knowledge of history. ‘Where there was one monster, there may be more. As a matter of urgency, we need to improve our arms and we need a defence force.’

  Nobody dissented, and those bereaved by the mantoleon’s assault applauded. Amendment followed amendment, each approved by a forest of hands. Inside and out, heels clattered floorboards and cobbles, a drum-line beneath the chorus of ‘Wynter, Wynter’.

  Wynter repeated the mayoral oath. Miss Brown presented the Manor’s key on a velvet cushion, adding to Gorhambury’s puzzlement. There had been no meeting of the Artefacts Committee since November – and how had she acquired the key? The cushion struck him as a louche, subservient touch. Had Brown gone rogue?

  Two announcements closed the meeting.

  Wynter declared, ‘I shall address the Chamber on policy on New Year’s Day.’

  Gorhambury concluded, ‘I remind you that Mr Snorkel as retiring Mayor will make his envoi speech from the Town Hall balcony at noon on New Year’s Eve. It is customary to bring a charged glass for a concluding toast.’

  ‘Out with the old and in with the new, that’s his slogan,’ hissed Snorkel to his wife. ‘But I’m not finished yet.’

  To Scry, the cards had fallen almost too well, including the timing of the Manor’s transfer. A warning whisper chaffed like a stone in a shoe: Wynter had miraculously absorbed the town’s geography, the names and inclinations of her inhabitants and her constitutional rules. An earlier self-restoration might explain the phenomenon, but Wynter revered his own legend. He would never countenance a failed prophecy. She shelved the concern: after all, he was the most remarkable man she had ever encountered in almost five hundred years.

  Only the town’s modern historian watched the proceedings in horror. He shut his eyes, catching in thought a tang of salt and an offshore breeze. Dunes unfurled left and right, their slopes crisscrossed with abandoned palisades, here a sandal, there a broken javelin. The giant horse gazed longingly at the town gates, skin gold and azure blue, ears pricked, the four wheels poised to run: a gift beyond gifts.

  It was as if.

  It was as if.

  5

  The Manor Reclaimed

  After waves of applause and an occasional vulgar slap on Wynter’s back, the crowd dispersed to the ritual Boxing Day lunch of warmed-up leftovers. The Apothecaries wended their way back to their Guild Hall, Thomes at the head in his personal rickshaw, fulminating at the compromise amendment which permitted his Guild to join the Council only if its interests were directly engaged.

  *

  ‘Might Mr Wynter like a view?’ Madge Brown raised a key in each hand, like a pose from a coin, rich in symbolism. She took the lead with modest, tidy steps, in keeping with her modest, tidy appearance.

  With mounting irritation – the return to the Manor should be her moment – Scry lagged behind.

  At the outer gate, Brown halted. ‘Former glory – isn’t that what you’re here to restore, Mr Wynter?’

  She turned the key with a dainty flourish. Wynter shuffled through to be engulfed by emotion – the Manor, his palace, home to his rule, with the added spice of Nona and Estella beside him, the latter blissfully unaware of the former’s presence. Hitherto, he had felt afflicted by blandness. Now he felt himself. On a similar winter day, centuries ago, he had walked this very path to take his destiny with the earth still fresh on Sir Henry’s grave. Here too he had been marched to his trial and death sentence – all as planned. These were his memories, nobody else’s.

  Time had not turned the line of the path and Slickstone’s planting had mimicked the Elizabethan garden precisely. Only one feature disfigured the scene.

  ‘The wall is grotesque,’ Wynter cried. ‘It throws unnecessary shadow.’

  ‘Have it down then,’ replied Miss Brown, ‘but it may have its uses.’

  ‘You’re speaking to the Mayor,’ hissed Scry. ‘Give me the keys and run along.’ She added a chilly, ‘Thank you.’

  Brown did not obey immediately. She had a wry birdlike quality and an infuriating resilience. She walked on to the entrance porch. ‘The giants’ fire is lit, the kitchen provisioned and the master bedroom prepared. You will, of course, need staff.’

  She directed her remarks to Wynter as if Scry were not there.

  The giants’ fire – so the Eleusians had termed the hearth in the Great Hall with the huge stone men supporting the mantle. Brown had inadvertently snagged a memory.

  She inserted the door key, turned it and handed both keys to Wynter.

  ‘I assure you, Miss Brown, we will restore former glories,’ he said.

  Still she did not leave, instead ushering him into the Great Hall.

  ‘Sir Veronal Slickstone did not give us loyalty, but he did have taste,’ Brown said. Slickstone’s paintings and tapestries still hung in situ, the sixteenth century dominant: a traitor turned interior decorator. She added sotto voce as she turned to leave, ‘By the way, you may receive a disagreeable visitor in the very near future. But I recommend hearing him out.’

  Wynter turned to Scry the moment Brown left the room. ‘Well, Estella, we are back.’ He sounded different, his old self.

  ‘After you, Master,’ she said
with a tug on his sleeve. They wandered around the Great Hall, the setting for so many past triumphs: Scry’s childhood and the most audacious scientific household in the world.

  ‘I sat here,’ said Wynter, curling his fingers round the back of the chair.

  ‘No, no,’ intervened Scry, ‘that was Calx Bole’s chair. You were always here, dead centre.’

  ‘Of course, I was, of course – time’s tricks!’ exclaimed Wynter, unsettled by the error. ‘Let’s explore.’

  They did so, Scry noting spotless surfaces, fresh soap in the bathrooms, a generous lunch on the hob and a pair of slippers to size beside the master’s bed. The foresight of the Artefacts Committee was uncanny.

  The haunting stillness, like a school in holiday time, muted the ecstasy of their return. To break it, she led him to the attics.

  ‘My cell,’ she said, ‘where Nona and I wove the history of the Eleusians. A penance, we told Oxenbridge.’ Scry paused. Her breathing stumbled in the excitement. A dull gunmetal-grey tube hugged the wainscot. She wrenched off the lid, extracted the tapestry and rolled it out in the centre of the room. The colours shone, untouched by time, and it was Scry’s turn to be surprised by the potency of memory. She felt every dive of the needle, every tug on the thread, all those years of false repentance.

  Wynter enthused over the tapestry. ‘A penance – it’s a New Testament!’ He pored over the detail: his lunch with Sir Henry, Sir Henry’s death, the experiments, the arrest, the execution – all there, faithfully rendered by a joint venture between his two most faithful acolytes.

  ‘You shared the work, but I say this corner is you and that corner is Nona.’

  Scry found the mention of Nona’s name dispiriting. She rose to the bait. ‘How so?’

  ‘Take this Calx Bole and that Calx Bole.’ The difference was palpable, even in wool – her Bole was corpulent, a toad-like figure; Nona’s had an energetic intelligence.

  Wynter did not press the comparison. ‘Now let me share a secret with you.’ He ushered her back to the Great Hall.

  ‘This was the court room. I stood there manacled before pygmies: Sir Robert Oxenbridge, Mr Hubert Finch. Yet right beside me . . .’ Wynter walked towards the corner of the room and stood, his face close to the panelling. ‘Observe, linenfold pattern as you’d expect from dull Sir Henry; but here, we have Eleusian carvings.’ With a flamboyant gesture, he ran his fingers over a succession of monstrous heads and tails, before stooping to turn one and slide another.

  Four panels swung out to reveal a spacious cavity. They placed the contents on the table. Wynter surveyed them, satisfied but slightly puzzled: a tray bearing nine tiny glass cruets with a scroll sealed with wax, a single phial made of old glass filled to the stopper with a luminous green liquid, a book and a velvet sack with drawstrings.

  Scry recognised the cruets from Wynter’s Last Supper, when every surviving Eleusian had given blood.

  Wynter handed her the scroll. ‘The town has a blood bank, to which all adults contribute, so matching was easy.’ He smiled. ‘You’d expect our Eleusian descendants to be well represented today, and so they are.’

  On one level, she understood: the new order would honour the old. Descendants must be preferred. On another, it made no sense: Wynter had entered the Manor today for the first time in more than four hundred years. How could he have arranged all this?

  ‘I need a household, including guards. Concentrate on those in The Understairs. They’ll be more malleable.’

  ‘And the sack?’ she asked.

  ‘A childhood memento of no consequence,’ he said. ‘But this’ – he lifted the phial to the candle and then to the window – ‘I do not remember.’ The specks of light came and went like glow-worms in grass. ‘When we’ve eaten, send for Doctor Fanguin.’

  ‘And the book?’ asked Scry.

  Wynter held out the spine. The title declared its purpose: The Roman Recipe Book II. The frontispiece held the same introductory words as its predecessor: I was bound bearing mysterious recipes, an anagram of Geryon’s Precise Bestiarium, but the pages were yet to be filled.

  ‘We need our artist back,’ replied Wynter.

  ‘Rotherweird lacks artists, Master.’

  ‘I mean Morval Seer.’

  ‘But surely she—?’

  ‘She has served her time, as I have.’

  Over lunch, Wynter for the first time declared ignorance. ‘What’s in the tower?’

  ‘I assumed it was part of the plan.’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ replied Wynter, ‘and the same goes for the structure which has replaced the church.’

  ‘Both are sealed.’

  As she spoke, Scry realised such work would take centuries if done by one man. She had been excluded from so much, and even Wynter, it now appeared, was not omniscient. ‘How was it done, Master? Who managed your return?’

  ‘A mixing-point managed my return.’ Wynter cut a pear into exact slices and changed the subject. ‘You recall the man Ferdy, in the tavern?’

  ‘Everyone knows Ferdy.’

  ‘Ferdy’s ancestor harboured the changelings when they escaped, including Vibes and the beautiful boy. They have been dealt with, as has Fortemain, by you, dear Estella, but a Ferdy lives on.’

  ‘Not this Ferdy, surely?’

  ‘The sins of the fathers are the sins of the sons.’

  ‘We can destroy him whenever you want,’ said Scry.

  Slivers of pear skin lay draped over the rim of Wynter’s plate like petals, pared to match. ‘That would be humdrum. But let us talk science.’

  And so they did, Wynter probing Scry, not vice versa, teacher turned invigilator. Particle physics and dimensional theory dominated the questions. Wynter vigorously rejected notions of multiple time dimensions, but parallel physical dimensions intrigued him. She scribbled equations and he followed suit, jabbing at the complacent armour of the latest learning. Could you leave one universe and opt for another? If you could, links must exist. Could they be severed or re-forged? More equations covered their paper napkins as they moved on to Madge Brown’s immaculate cheese selection.

  ‘Lost Acre is faithful to our time and season,’ he said hammering the table, ‘but she is locked into this valley. Why? And how can we exploit it?’

  Neither could yet offer an answer.

  6

  True or False?

  When Fanguin arrived, he found the Manor Wall gate ajar. He had walked this path just once before, to Slickstone’s party, as an unemployed has-been. But this time Scry had paid him handsomely for his work before Christmas and his presence – with his best microscope – had been requested by the new Mayor.

  But I will not succumb, so testified the scalpel taped to his right leg. This man had inflicted unimaginable horrors on orphans and his own students, so what might he do to Rotherweird? Law had passed due sentence centuries ago.

  The ornate iron door knocker rose and fell twice.

  The door swung open.

  ‘Doctor Fanguin, do follow me.’

  In the Great Hall, Wynter presented Fanguin with a stemmed glass of chilled white wine. ‘A breath of summer in winter,’ said his host. ‘I owe you a history lesson. Let’s start with a provocative question: how did we Eleusians acquire the stones?’

  Wynter’s directness stormed Fanguin’s barricades. And the question had bite. Wynter might have stumbled on the quarry of coloured rock as Oblong and Valourhand had, but how had they found the perfectly circular stones which alone could manipulate matter?

  ‘You’ve not met him, then?’ added Wynter.

  ‘Met whom?’

  ‘Lost Acre’s human ruler, who has been there since God knows when. How else could my late servant Calx Bole have learned to shapeshift?’

  Fanguin gawped, another question with bite. On reflection, the complexity of such a feat did indeed seem beyond Elizabethan capabilities.

  ‘Yes, we experimented with birds and animals – but wouldn’t you have done in our position? But shapeshifti
ng!? That was one of the hedge-priest’s blighted gifts.’

  Hedge-priest! He had seen sarsens and sculpted flowers in the passages beneath the town, and everyone knew the ancient statue of a dark druid in Grove Gardens.

  Fanguin launched a flurry of questions, all answered succinctly by the perfect witness.

  ‘Who killed Sir Henry?’

  ‘Slickstone, or rather, Master Malise. He was a psychotic child from the start.’

  ‘Who imprisoned Morval Seer in a spider’s body?’

  ‘Slickstone – she refused him.’

  ‘Who collected the orphans?’

  ‘Slickstone.’

  ‘Who led the experiments?’

  ‘Calx Bole did the human experiments in my guise, encouraged by the hedge-priest. I was unaware until too late. I don’t deny responsibility for attempting what the mixing-point did anyway, merging the local fauna.’

  ‘Your trial record portrays you as defiant,’ Fanguin pointed out.

  ‘Oxenbridge was a fool. The world experiments on living things to advance. And the mixing-point grants immortality. I did discover that for myself – with a mayfly in a box. But I did not corrupt children.’

  ‘Why should I believe in this druid of yours?’

  ‘Ask your friend Gregorius Jones.’

  ‘He’s unavailable.’

  ‘Pity – all right, try another question. As you know, when the dark star comes, the fabric of Lost Acre becomes unstable, and, believe me, the instability grows with every visit. So, who saved Lost Acre in 1017, and the millennia before that?’

  Fanguin, having no answer, changed tack. ‘What about the Furies? I mean your friend Scry, or rather your pupil, and whoever the other one is.’

  ‘Girls will be girls.’ Wynter refilled their glasses. ‘Prodigies both, each strove to outdo the other. I don’t know whether they discovered the trick for themselves, or if the hedge-priest taught them.’

  ‘Where is Bole?’

  ‘He is no more.’

  ‘What of the third woman Eleusian?’

  ‘Time caught up with her.’