Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  She never reached a conclusion for a flying creature pummelled her shoulder from behind, knocking her clear of the sill. The stiletto toppled to the ground, where it stood impaled and proud, an infant Excalibur.

  Working the pulley, she accelerated her descent, swinging from side to side, head twisting to locate her assailant.

  A flash of white over the ramparts closed at bewildering speed. Spun upside down by a second blow, strong as a flailing arm, Valourhand flapped like a beetle on its back. An owl-like creature hovered feet away with feet extended, part talons, part toes. An avian predator, but with human elements too. It’s aligning my eyes, thought Valourhand. Stripped of any means of physical counterattack or defence, she tried the only available option.

  ‘I’m a friend,’ she mouthed, still inverted.

  Not these words, Valourhand was sure, but something else stalled the intended assault. The creature circled her dangling body before darting away at the same breakneck speed.

  She righted herself, reached the ground, retrieved the stiletto and released the remote catch. The line spun round the chimney and scraped along the slate roof before falling at her feet and rewinding. She glanced up. The curtain had not changed position, nor had the light from the candle behind it.

  That moment of final inspection nearly cost Valourhand her life. Two sentries, spears levelled, sprinted from the shadows, young men, as fast as her and no less determined. She had taught them both in the past, but old bonds had sundered. Her stiletto lacked the reach for attack, so she swirled the sling-line about her and brandished her blade, knowing neither would, or indeed could, halt their charge.

  Miraculously the owl-boy, minutes earlier her attacker, now saved her, flitting between her pursuers, flapping around their faces, shrieking and diving, inducing hesitation as well as distraction. She rushed to the cabin, seized her pole and vaulted the wall. In minutes, she had reached the security of Rotherweird’s roofscape, sentries and owl-boy alike vanished from view.

  She allowed herself a moment to take stock.

  The owl-boy had saved Wynter from her, and her from the sentries. The face, though foul, had exuded intelligence, surely a creature of the mixing-point. She formulated her theory: somehow the owl-boy knew that she, like Wynter, had been to the other place and therefore that either of them might have the stones and the knowledge to unravel his tangled being. Therefore, both of them should be preserved.

  But for Wynter’s behaviour, she had no explanation. Sleepwalking rarely afflicted adults, and never in her experience did its sufferers write unconsciously. Moreover, the curt message – thy aged girls, not my – suggested a third party communicating with Wynter, not Wynter with himself.

  If Bole – who was he now? Where was he, and how was he pulling the strings? Bole had bested them at every turn so far, ever leaving dark questions with no answers in his wake.

  Below her, a solitary vehicle hurried from The Understairs towards Market Square. Valourhand had not seen the like in Rotherweird before. Painted black all over, it had four wheels, not three, solid sides and roof, with two doors and a running board at the rear. Its pace and stealth indicated the vacuum technology enjoyed by the Polks’ charabanc.

  Valourhand decided against a closer look for fear of endangering her precious cargo, the two mistletoe berries of unusual colouring.

  11

  The Dark Rickshaw

  The baker swore as he clambered out of bed. The town was going to the dogs: a usurper in power and now disrespect for the Curfew Regulations. The rattle of booted feet beneath his window gave way to the crump of a pummelling fist on the front door.

  ‘Open for the RDF,’ hissed an unfamiliar voice.

  The mantoleon had brought horror to the streets, but violence by man on man had hitherto remained a stranger in Rotherweird.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ replied Norrington, ‘look at the hour and learn the law!’

  Aggressive by nature (his chin jutted even in repose), Norrington flung the door open – to be greeted by a hefty punch to the stomach, which doubled him over. A sackcloth hood was thrust over his head and tied tight. Two men bundled him into the black rickshaw. He kicked and pummelled the walls and yelled, but mattresses affixed to the floor, sides and ceiling absorbed the blows and stifled his cries.

  ‘You going to be quiet or not?’ asked a male voice roughly when the vehicle halted and they reopened the rear doors.

  The cowled head nodded, prompting the removal of the hood. He was at the mouth of the prison. They marched him into the gloom, where another man with a bald crown and jagged teeth awaited them. He wore a leather apron and smelled of excrement and death.

  ‘You have displeased Mr Wynter.’ The lower lip curled down as he spoke. The voice had an unpleasant grating timbre.

  ‘Who’s this? You’re not from the town – you’re another unregistered interloper. How dare you . . .’

  The man walked a step closer. ‘The name is Carcasey Jack. I do to uppity people what others do to your bread.’ Half the upper lip curled. The hand moved to the wafer-thin blade at his waist.

  ‘I remove the crust.’

  ‘I remove the crust.’

  OUT OF TOWN

  1

  Spring Steps

  The Rotherweird Bicycle Company, despite a seasonal width of choice, could not match Oblong’s gangly physique. Thighs or knees caught the handlebars; palms rather than fingers met brake handle and gears; even the seat rubbed. Fearful of being seen by a pupil, he left early and wheeled his way until beyond the gate.

  Spectators tended to aggravate his natural clumsiness, but in their absence, toes turned out and knees pumping almost at right angles, he achieved a rhythm of sorts. He reached Hoy at noon. The Hoy Visitor’s Guide, best described as twee, identified Spring Steps as an arched passageway squeezed between two late eighteenth-century houses opposite the church. On the map it led nowhere.

  The genteel Georgian houses, all symmetry and elegance, would not have shamed a cathedral close, with their elaborate railings painted black, topiary, generous sash windows and ornate porches with fanlights shaped like the setting sun.

  The archway, flanked and almost obscured by a pair of bay trees in tubs, shaped to the last leaf, sheltered an earlier age. In the shadows behind, at the opposing corners of the arch, lurked an angel and a demon in stone, the former holding aloft a flaming sword and the latter brandishing a trident.

  Oblong squeezed past. The map had not lied: there was an alley, stone-built and little wider than Oblong himself. It turned left, right and left past gardens to which it gave no access, to end at a single iron gate festooned in padlocks. The name The Aberration wound through the iron railings. He peered through, recoiled and peered again. Beyond a modest garden, a solitary half-timbered tower-house, Rotherweird-style through and through, had been tucked in between its well-bred neighbours. Even the carvings were there, riffs on oak faces and animal grotesques.

  A post-box bore an unchallenging monogram:

  AC

  There was no bell, no knocker, and no way of announcing himself that Oblong could see. A solitary light shone from the topmost window. He had come too far to retreat now.

  ‘Hello-o?’

  No curtain twitched, no door opened, no window shifted; nothing.

  AC. A rummage in his memory summoned an alliterative title, an old book Fanguin had bought from Bevis Vibes at the Hoy Book Fair some years ago: The Vagrant Vicar. The author, a local antiquary, had the striking name Ambrose Claud – and he claimed to have visited the Rotherweird Valley.

  The memory sharpened his wits. The gate had two supporting piers, an odd mix of undressed stone, five small, perfect, light-coloured squares, others with one straightened edge. The mortar looked unconvincing. He pressed a random light stone without effect. He pressed harder and it clicked. He counted twenty-one of the straight-edged irregulars. He had vowels and consonants – but how to reset?

  Answer: a single hexagonal stone where he should have exp
ected it, between the hinges. He pressed, and then, treating the stones as tiles in alphabetical order from left to right, entered A-M-B-R-O-S-E-C-L-A-U-D.

  To his astonishment, a bell tinkled on the tower’s first floor, then the second, then the third.

  No person came, but a dog did. Unflattering words came first – mongrel, misshapen cur – but gentler ones followed swiftly: intelligent, stealthy, large. He looked, sniffed and nuzzled through the railings. Oblong could relate to dogs. They liked to be liked, not fawned over. A pat on the head was as good as a handshake.

  The dog trotted back, returning with a young man with prematurely white hair. The right shoulder hunched from time to time, the face jerking up too, almost as if he were addressing an invisible parrot. He was lean, almost handsome, eyes limpid with a tinge of anxiety or sadness.

  He smiled as he opened the gate from the side opposite the hinges. The padlocks were a mere deterrent.

  ‘Ambrose the Unlucky,’ said his host, offering a firm handshake.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Ambrose the Thirteenth – do come in.’

  A Rotherweird-style front door led to a Rotherweird-style hall panelled in oak, Rotherweird’s building material of choice. But the eye did not rest on structural features. The walls, Rotherweird-style, held no pictures, but unlike Rotherweird, positively heaved with history. Brackets and shelves in various styles sported pots, plates, spears, fragments of mosaic, glass cases filled with coins, and much, much more. Many had notes pinned or fixed with tape or sealing wax, the script often faded to near-invisibility.

  Oblong peered at the captions as they passed: Purchased, Ambrose VI, Derbyshire; Unburied, Ambrose III, Sussex, and so on. The furniture in the hall and on the upper landing was no less burdened. He had chanced on a dynasty of jackdaws, collectors of artefacts nationwide.

  ‘The house is a beach for time’s jetsam,’ said Claud jovially. ‘Every piece has a story and the cacophony can overwhelm at first. So, let’s find a quiet space.’

  He skipped down a short passage. ‘Quiet space’ meant a tidy, unexceptional kitchen, if old-fashioned, where a fire glowed in an old cooking range.

  ‘How about a name?’ he asked.

  Oblong blushed. He had been overwhelmed by his surroundings and the unexpected warmth of the welcome. ‘I’m so sorry – how rude of me – I’m Jonah Oblong, Rotherweird School’s modern historian.’ Oblong’s head suddenly jerked around the room as he sensed an additional presence.

  ‘I feel it too,’ said Claud. ‘You’ve been to the other place, but not in the mixing-point, just like me – Cur, however, has been in both. That’s not my choice of name, I must stress, but his. Cur stands for cursed. There’s a boy in there somewhere.’

  Cur sat beside Oblong as if in affirmation.

  ‘Forgive me if I take stock,’ stuttered Oblong. ‘What on earth have you been doing in the other place?’

  ‘Every Claud goes on reaching majority. It’s our initiation, if you like. You have to bring back one example of its distinctive fauna. I chose an oversize bird’s egg. For most of us, once was enough, but Ambrose I made a habit of it.’

  ‘Ambrose I?’

  ‘Ambrose the Audacious,’ said Claud, ‘the fifteenth-century founder of the dynasty. He was a priest and built a chapel west of town. It’s still standing, but no longer in use.’ Claud moved to the range. ‘Nothing ousts chill like hot soup – all right with you? And I propose wine in the interim; it’s that kind of day.’

  He poured them each a glass, a deep ruby-red, as Oblong struggled to assimilate the flood of revelations. The current Ambrose was not an immortal from the mixing-point, but the dog was. Valourhand had mentioned a canine survivor from The Agonies which she had called the Mance.

  ‘Have you had Cur long?’

  ‘He’s a family friend, he comes and goes. Ambrose III found him, or vice versa.’

  That figures date-wise, thought Oblong. He’s one of Wynter’s creations.

  ‘But what brings you here, Mr Oblong? We like to keep our collection secret.’

  ‘The word “escharion” and a china rose.’

  Claud looked pensive but he made the link immediately. ‘So they’re at it again. Anagrams, riddles; that’s the trouble with child prodigies, they never really grow up.’ He refilled their glasses. ‘Bring your wine, you might need it. We’re moving from object clutter to literary clutter.’

  During the ascent, Claud pointed out a Saxon torc in a glass case labelled, Bought from Geryon Wynter by Ambrose III, Rotherweird Valley. ‘Wynter had no money when he first arrived.’

  The top-floor library, an archivoire in miniature, explained Claud’s knowledge of these arcane details. Events, personalities and transactions had been slavishly recorded over the centuries in chronologically ordered and numbered volumes. Oblong fleetingly felt peeved: he had fancied himself as Rotherweird’s secret chronicler, but he could never compete with the illicit records of generations of Clauds.

  ‘The escharion first appears in Ambrose I’s fifteenth-century annals,’ Claud explained, pulling down a small volume of great age. ‘He’s the priest, remember. No Chaucer, but no slouch either, despite his scansion. Here we have Caxton’s printer’s mark.’

  Cur sat down opposite them beneath the only window, head and ears cocked, as Claud opened the book and held his thumb above the verse.

  ‘At the gaytes of Spring,

  When trees are hoar white strewn,

  Escharion must heat the seed of winter

  Lest all men die in bitternesse.’

  Claud paused not for effect, but to weigh the consequences.

  ‘Mind if I write it down?’

  ‘By all means, but it’s for your eyes only.’ For camouflage Oblong scribbled the verse in the notebook which housed his own literary endeavours.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to see the escharion,’ Claud added.

  Rendered speechless in this house of surprises, Oblong bobbed his head. Claud took down a much larger volume entitled Ambrose Claud on Rarer Ferns. The inside pages had been hollowed out.

  Claud removed the instrument and presented it on the flat of his hands like a waiter proffering a plate.

  Oblong had never handled such an exquisite object. Despite its age, the silver held its patina, a fitting medium for the monstrous details entwined with geometric patterns of high complexity which snaked through the two pipes into the one mouthpiece.

  ‘Have you blown it?’ asked Oblong.

  Claud chuckled at the double entendre. ‘No and no,’ he said. ‘I believe it’s to be used once and once only. We Clauds did not settle in Hoy for bridge evenings, croquet and cream teas. Here we can keep an eye on the valley without your restrictions – or so we thought, but it became a dark secret, imprisoning generations. The collection, and the knowledge it holds, is too dangerous to sell and too precious to destroy.’ He paused, as if weighing the consequences of his family’s self-assumed burden, then sighed. ‘Please take it to Rotherweird.’

  ‘But the Eleusians planted that clue – that’s just what they want us to do.’

  ‘Maybe they’re less in control than they think. “Lest all men die in bitternesse.” Suppose all does mean all. If you ever pop into our family chapel, you’ll get my drift. There were, maybe still are, hedge-priests in the other place, from way, way back. One of them gave this to Ambrose I, and no doubt for a reason. Mr Wynter isn’t the only player in the game.’

  Old Oblong would have turned bashful and rejected the request, but he had changed, and Cur was watching closely. Also, he took this particular Claud to be a force for good.

  New Oblong accepted.

  Claud wrapped the escharion in a velvet bag.

  Over soup, then cheese, they discussed history, including the ifs and buts of the Roman withdrawal from Britain, a subject wholly off-limits in Rotherweird.

  At the gate, Claud delivered a last surprise. ‘What I’d really like to be is an honorary citizen of Rotherweird. But that’s a right to be
won, I suppose.’

  After watching Oblong around the first corner, he turned for home, but Cur did not follow him.

  ‘Off again,’ he said to the dog, more statement than question. Cur loped down the alley and waited, before moving off again. Claud inhaled deeply to clear his head. It was beginning to freeze again. He judged his visitor maladroit and pedantic, not unfamiliar vices in the Claud family, but with compensating qualities: decency, persistence and a willingness to take risks. Had he said too much or too little? He had held nothing back concerning the escharion, but he had omitted the friendship between his father, Ambrose XII the Astronomer, and Professor Bolitho. Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing.

  *

  Anxiety about taking the escharion to town in easy reach of Wynter and a craving for sympathetic company diverted Oblong’s descent. Unsure of the way from Hoy, he trusted to instinct and luck and veered right halfway down the escarpment. The frail beam of his front lamp bounced along the fringes of a narrow lane. Huge oaks pressed like closing sentinels, dusk drained to darkness, horizons closed in and he lost his bearings.

  Fortune more often than not abandons the brave, but tonight she stayed. Oblong swerved around a corner and joined a more generous uphill road which he instantly recognised from previous visits.

  A familiar address halted his relieved descent from the Ferdys’ front gate to the house.

  ‘Unexpected pleasure, Obbers, but may I say, you’ve a mighty peculiar silhouette on two wheels.’

  ‘Thanks, Jones – but what are you doing here?’

  The gym teacher held a churn in one hand, a sack of winter vegetables in the other. By way of reply, he placed both on the ground and steered Oblong towards a wooden outhouse shaped like a hull with gun-ports.

  ‘You have to hear this.’

  Jones prised a shutter open, crouched and listened. Oblong followed suit. Inside the hen-house a familiar voice was concluding a night-time story.