‘Hear, hear!’ cried the late Mayor’s caucus.
The wrist of Sly’s note-taker ached with ceaseless exercise.
‘I am a child of Rotherweird,’ said Wynter gently.
‘Children of Rotherweird go to Rotherweird School.’
‘Wanted children do.’
‘Poor Mr Wynter, abandoned like Moses in his basket!’ sneered the baker.
‘The tunnels, in fact, Mr Norrington,’ replied Wynter.
‘What tunnels?’ asked the founder of the now-defunct Coracle Technique Society.
A lady member of the Sewage Committee, for whom the mysterious tunnels held a deep fascination, rose to her feet. ‘There are many. We don’t advertise the fact, for obvious reasons.’
Oblong leaned forward. He could see where this would end.
‘We’ve not met. Do come up.’ Wynter extended an arm in invitation.
She accepted. She whispered questions; he whispered answers, with gestures for a particular twist or turn. Finally, she gave her verdict. ‘He has indeed been there, a lot.’
The debate continued to swing, Wynter weaving and counter-striking, but underneath the fencing an unspoken anxiety strengthened into a siren call. Who else is there?
The motion to grant retrospective registration passed.
8
An Unexpected Synergy
Fennel Finch hated serifs. They clogged good letters like convolvulus; they had afflicted her former husband’s script and Sir Veronal’s invitation to the Manor. By contrast, she had endowed the names on the cream-coloured card in front of her – Geryon Wynter and the Manor – with monolithic permanence. The sting lay in the bottom left-hand corner.
Dress: No admission unless unrecognisable.
She had consulted Sly. Wynter yearned to separate Rotherweird’s wheat from the chaff, and that meant garnering intelligence on everyone. This condition would serve that purpose.
As she drafted and discarded, more menial staff counted and cleaned the cellar’s contents, all bequests from Sir Veronal: crystal glasses, the finest cutlery, ornate plates, silver bowls and candelabra. Alongside them, glassmakers and metalworkers added the dark star and eradicated the weasel, an armorial putsch.
Down the passage Wynter brooded. Entertaining the populace troubled him. Opening the Manor’s doors might dissipate mystique, and Slickstone, his most colourful former pupil, would be hard to outdo. And should would-be gods be entertainers?
When Fennel’s draft arrived on a salver, he placed it beside Fanguin’s report. His forehead furrowed. Their thinking combined somehow. He sensed opportunity.
He scribbled: iron filings, aura, unrecognisable, escharion. Hunt down the last prophecy coin had been Bole’s message. It’s an intruder placed by the enemy. Bole should know, as he had minted and buried the others. But by which enemy, and to what purpose? The peculiarity of the word ‘escharion’ suggested a connection with Lost Acre.
A stratagem was forming. He summoned Fennel Finch. ‘How can our guests be unrecognisable?’ he asked.
She wore a simple pleated woollen dress belted with a shawl: the priestess look. A hooked object hung from her belt. ‘I won’t admit them unless they are.’
‘You’ll be refusing half of them – there’ll be a riot!’
‘They’ll do anything to come. You’ll see.’
‘What about their voices?’
‘The South Tower sells a distortion device. You attach it under the tongue. We’ll distribute them before arrival, so they will be unrecognisable. They’ll talk to whomever attracts them and they’ll say whatever they think. You and Mr Sly will learn much.’
‘You’ve budgeted for a single invitation.’
‘The Town Hall noticeboard addresses every adult in town.’
‘Suppose I want to reach someone out of town.’
‘You have only to ask.’ She did not fidget. Her fierceness was oddly still.
‘I want two heat-proof cylinders to hold paper versions. They must glow in a fire, declare my name.’ He paused before adding, ‘We’re after enemies as well as friends.’
‘Pique their curiosity? Oh yes, how neat.’
9
Caveat Emptor
Baubles & Relics’ New Year Sale defied expectations, despite the proprietor’s absence and despite being by the usual rules of commerce an object lesson in ‘how not to do it’.
Valourhand maintained the candour of her labelling: ‘Wonky means wonky. You’ll be sitting on a bargain or the floor.’
She cajoled: ‘Madam, if someone caressed you three times, you’d expect a proposal, so I expect an offer.’
She invented: ‘That ancient bamboo landed the largest pike ever recorded. What’s a rod without a lucky reel?’
She mitigated: ‘Scratches, sir, on a tabletop, are the scars of good living. Embrace them. Who wants to live with a monk?’
She used Oblong as a minion and occasional male model. Of a moth-eaten deerstalker: ‘Relax. If it looks good on him . . .’
She even versified:
‘After the death of a Mayor,
Buy a new chair.’
She sold.
‘The place looks rather forlorn,’ observed Oblong at closing time.
Everyone had taken their purchases with them, afraid that Orelia Roc might never return and that Valourhand – who had insisted on immediate payment – might prove unreliable when it came to delivery.
The few survivors huddled together in the middle of the shop surrounded by an ocean of bare floor.
‘You mean, didn’t we do well.’ She gestured at a tall figure lurking by the front window. ‘We might be about to do better.’
Oblong gulped. ‘It’s Wynter, Geryon Wynter, the Wynter.’
‘So, let him in.’
Wynter had exchanged his Mayoral regalia for a long overcoat.
‘I don’t think I know you,’ said Valourhand frostily.
‘If memory serves, you missed all three of my addresses to the town. I’m Geryon Wynter, your new Mayor. I trust Miss Roc is well?’
‘There’s a side table, a rackety sofa, a chamber pot, a lamp in need of wiring and a stuffed infant crocodile. Take your pick.’
Wynter declined the invitation. He strode to the rear, picked up the ledger and thumbed through.
‘Hey, that’s not yours.’
‘I don’t have to own a book to browse it, Miss Valourhand.’
He was focusing, Oblong noted, on the ‘E’ entries.
‘We’re out of egg-timers,’ added Valourhand facetiously.
Wynter ignored her, shifting his attention to the shelf above Orelia’s desk with its reference books on furniture and objets d’art, again the ‘E’ entries.
‘Have either of you heard of an escharion?’
Wynter wrote the word down and gazed into their faces like an inquisitor.
Valourhand suffered a jolt of self-rebuke. She must rejoin the game. Her manner changed in a trice. ‘Why do you ask?’
Annoyingly, Oblong answered. ‘The word appears on a coin, one of several buried beneath Market Square. I don’t think Mr Wynter was expecting it. They all had his head on them, save this one.’
Valourhand tried again to draw him out. ‘Maybe it’s a book.’
Wynter shrugged. ‘It’s unknown to the British Library.’
Oblong recalled his discussion with Ember Vine about Pomeny Tighe’s room. The address in Hoy had been placed beneath a china rose. Wynter’s cryptic presence called to mind the Eleusians’ penchant for anagrams, and a realisation dawned. The letters of china rose rearranged to ‘escharion’. Calx Bole again? But if Calx Bole knew, Wynter knew, and he would not be wasting his time here. And if Scry knew, again, Wynter would know, surely. Riddles of this kind had been an Elizabethan trait throughout: fashioned by the brilliant children for amusement, they had become a favoured means of adult communication, or so Oblong reasoned.
That left a sole suspect: the third Eleusian woman, the second Fury, about whom they knew
little.
‘Guinea for your thoughts?’ asked Wynter, now staring intently at Oblong, whose expression betrayed his breakthrough.
He improvised. ‘If not a title, it can still be a character or place. I’d say Milton or Bunyan – how about a fallen angel?’
Wynter looked amused. ‘A thought, Mr Oblong. I’m obliged.’ He turned to Valourhand. ‘Talking of Paradise Lost, do you ever go to the wider world?’
‘They order, they pay, we supply. There’s no need.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Governments, factions, middlemen . . . whoever.’
‘And is what your North Tower supplies the stuff of Paradise?’
Wynter had found a loose rivet in Valourhand’s formidable armour. ‘I just do the defensive work,’ she said, defensively.
‘Which makes an aggressive technology less easy to defend against and therefore more lethal. But that’s not my question. Do they not deserve each other out there? Have they not thrown away the opportunities? Have they not failed?’ He paused. ‘Do they not deserve to be punished?’
Oblong gasped at the hypocrisy. This man had murdered and maimed innocent children. ‘And what would you have us do?’ he countered.
‘Eight of the Ten Commandments are “don’ts”.’ Wynter paused. ‘So be active. Honour the worthy, make an example of the rest.’ The smile turned luxuriant.
‘Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire . . .
‘Paradise Lost, Mr Oblong, a favourite quotation – good night to you both.’
‘Intriguing,’ said Valourhand as the door closed, ‘and not what I expected. He’s more layered than Slickstone.’
‘He’s a cold-hearted killer – and he knows about Orelia.’
Valourhand raised an eyebrow. Oblong the detective would not do; she must nip that ambition in the bud. ‘You sound very sure, but then I suppose historians are never wrong.’
‘The way he asked after her was false.’
‘I deduce that he doesn’t care; no more, no less.’
‘Why mention her at all, then?’
‘Duh! It’s her shop. He’s the Mayor and he’s ingratiating himself, that’s what Mayors do.’ She awarded him a Wynter-like stare. ‘So, what about this escharion? Your brainwaves are rare, Oblong, so best to share.’
‘You’ve withdrawn from public life, remember?’
‘Bunyan, my arse.’ Oblong gathered his coat and scarf, while Valourhand continued, ‘And another thing: we’re to believe he was resurrected ten days ago. Not only has he memorised every street and person in town, he’s read and learned Paradise Lost, which appeared a hundred years after his death. Something doesn’t fit.’
10
Midnight Ramblers
Valourhand’s declared ‘retirement’ lasted twenty-four hours. After signing off the ledger for the Baubles & Relics sale, she visited the open octagon. Torch-beams flickered in and out of the dead tree’s branches as Apothecaries harvested the swathes of mistletoe into waiting sacks. An electrified silver wire cordoned the site. Other Apothecaries rose and stooped, like waders on sand, using tweezers to pick up fallen berries.
The following morning, she walked to the Manor. Two young men clutching spears tipped with fresh steel were guarding the open gates. Another man sat in a cabin, snug to the wall, a large book on the table in front of him.
The guards were not hostile and the scripted reason for their arms was comforting enough.
‘We’re in contact with the walls and the gatehouses. Orders of the Mayor; the next creature won’t catch us by surprise.’
Less reassuring were the armbands, the acronym RDF (Rotherweird Defence Force) embroidered on their shirts, their instructions to ‘move on’ and the way they flourished their shiny new weapons.
That night, in full vaulting regalia, black balaclava and adhesive gloves, she effortlessly accomplished two demanding leaps from the school to a high gable overlooking the Golden Mean. She had added a sling-line to her repertoire to bring balconies into play when roofs could not be aligned, a common obstacle in districts dominated by towers. To her dismay, two sentries were patrolling from the Gatehouse to Market Square and another two the town walls. What had happened to the ancient freedoms? Why shouldn’t a young woman be free to cavort among the rooftops?
She re-mapped her route. Crossing the Golden Mean would be too risky, so she would tackle the octagon first. Using the sling-line as much as the pole, she made her way to a narrow alley which abutted the cemetery. By the splaying silhouette of the dead tree, two black caps bobbed together and apart: Apothecaries on guard. Of the mistletoe, there was no sign. They clearly intended to keep all berries well away from the populace. But why was this parasitical crop so valuable?
She removed from her backpack a wheeled clockwork toy-cum-firework of her own design which she called ‘The Distractor’. She released two timers, one for motion and one for ignition, and then the brake. It careered past the Apothecaries, emitting an intermittent luminous glow and an eerie low whistle.
The mantoleon had conditioned even hard-nosed Apothecaries to expect the fantastical: one pointed, the other loosed an arrow and both pursued it down the slope towards the cliff-face.
Valourhand had only a few minutes. Ignore the obvious places; they would have searched those already. She crawled around the bole and there, pinched between a root and the ground, she found two berries attached to a single stalk.
The Distractor exploded with a deafening and provocative ‘tee-hee’, the cue for Valourhand to run.
An arrow thwacked into a beam at the alley’s mouth at head-height – not a warning shot; they meant to kill. Mercifully, the Apothecaries lacked initiative as well as accuracy. Having been ordered to guard the tree, they dutifully opted to resume their previous positions while she followed a labyrinthine ground-level route to Market Square via The Understairs.
The Golden Mean sentries had a similar mindset, mechanically turning back from the mouth of Market Square, whether coming from north or south. After a quick sprint as their backs turned, she launched herself from street to balcony to roof to Aether’s Way to balcony and she was on her way again.
The Manor posed a different challenge because the wall obscured the likely line of patrol. Landing on the open lawn risked instant detention, or worse, but now her earlier reconnaissance paid off. The gardens beyond the gates lay in darkness, which meant that the cabin was presently unoccupied. She cleared the wall and landed like a cat on the cabin’s flat roof.
A single sentry following the wall faced away and soon passed from view. The front porch would be guarded, or at least the front door would be locked. She left the pole resting against the wall, zigzagged her way to a side wall, snagged her line on a drying room’s low chimney, abseiled up and repeated the process to gain the main roofline.
Finch held the Manor’s plans in the archivoire. On the night of the Herald’s abduction, she had sneaked a glance in the hope of paying Slickstone a visit when the opportunity arose. Her brief encounter with Wynter at Baubles & Relics had confirmed that anywhere other than the master bedroom would be beneath him.
Kill Wynter. She patted the stiletto strapped to her right boot. Then it would all be over and Hayman Salt avenged. She navigated the gullies until the master bedroom was directly beneath her. Sir Henry Grassal’s arms had been set in the wall above, too inaccessible or too faded for Wynter or Slickstone to trouble to efface them.
Securing her line on the nearest stack, she bounced down the wall, freezing when the sentry came into view. A small catch and pulley catered for ascent and descent, although gravity made the former exercise slower.
She bounced down to the double window. The left side was open, but obstructed by curtains of heavy damask. She had overlooked that possibility, having no time for such fripperies herself. At least the pole and
rings were wooden, less likely to rattle or squeak. In a tiny gap, candlelight flickered. She glanced down. The lavender bushes set in the patterned brickwork bed would not break a fall.
The unexpected light unsettled her. If he were awake, her prospects looked bleak, but she had no interest in retreat. She let her legs drop to bring her body flat against the window. At a stretch she could grip the curtain, but she would still lack the traction to move it. She raised a boot, extracted the stiletto and stabbed through the curtain close to the rings. This time she had the leverage. The curtain drew back.
She bit her lip to contain a scream: Wynter in a white nightgown stood two feet away, staring straight at her, motionless, save for his face, which was twitching like a dreaming dog. Inexplicably, he made no move. She might as well have been invisible.
The eyes looked, yet did not see, reminding her of a pithy missive from Rhombus Smith, introducing overnight stays for the upper forms: ‘Should you encounter a glassy-eyed pupil roaming the passages, assume he or she is a sleepwalker. They’ll think they’re somewhere else, so do not wake them; just lead the victim back to bed with kindness and stealth.’
Not this one, he’s getting steel between the ribs.
She worked out her entry: squeeze through sideways, roll forward to the floor and strike.
Then he moved, his left hand lifting a piece of paper, the right hand a pencil in a brass holder. He wrote laboriously, like a child struggling with dictation, three words only. He held the paper in front of him, so close that Valourhand could read the large, clumsy letters: Thy aged girls. If a reference to the female Eleusians, it seemed pointless: Wynter must surely know of their continued existence. Above the letters, someone had drawn two trees, one facing up and one down, with conjoined roots. The fine line was at odds with the clumsy writing.
Valourhand hesitated. Some deep mystery was playing out. Might killing Wynter make it insoluble? And, with Bole still out there somewhere, leave them more exposed rather than less? After all, riddles and deep-laid plans had hallmarked Bole’s handiwork to date.
Lost Acre Page 13
