Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  Thomes licked the edge of a cake. Penelope Brown excelled her dingy sister in all departments. ‘What can we do for you?’

  ‘We need a flying machine.’

  Thomes’ napkin mopped up more spluttered coffee. ‘A what?’

  She pushed over a sheaf of papers. ‘Copy that, if you’d be so kind, and then improve it.’

  Thomes read through the confidential prototype licence application, a necessary step for testing any invention, and the supporting plans. On reaching the applicant’s name, he shook his head.

  ‘Have you ever seen a Polk prototype?’ he asked sarcastically.

  ‘This one works, and’ – she took from her bag a pencil and a tiny pot. She opened the pot and dipped the pencil. The point disappeared, but it still drew – ‘it’ll be invisible. The Apothecaries can watch the world unseen.’

  Thomes’ spirits rose. ‘I see, I see: the eye in the sky, the hawk in the dark.’

  She put pencil and pot away and rose gracefully to her feet. ‘Once you’ve downed Polk’s rival machine, of course.’

  3

  Payday

  Sly, having no wish to be seen, took a rickshaw to the prison. Wynter’s coin jangled pleasingly in his pockets. Mrs Sly would be most appreciative.

  Carcasey Jack’s legs, sprawled across the front desk, greeted him. The toecaps of his boots, crisscrossed with cuts and scrapes, had the same aura of violence as the rest of him. ‘I don’t like unemployment,’ he growled, picking his nails with a thin-bladed knife.

  ‘The pleasure of a job well done wears off,’ Sly agreed, ‘but you must wait a while.’ Sly put the success of his political slogans down to a mastery of metaphor. ‘Mr Wynter is a patient fisherman. He needs time to bait the line.’

  Jack took up the analogy. ‘So when’s he casting the next fly?’

  ‘The Unrecognisable Party is my hunch.’

  Carcasey Jack guffawed, a guttural croak like grinding stones. ‘Unrecognisable! Only I do “unrecognisable”.’

  Sly peered into the passage leading down to the cells. He knew nothing of history, but he had worked out the recipe for sustaining power long ago: carrots for those you need, stick for the rest. Snorkel had only been good at carrots, but Wynter excelled at both. Wynter would last.

  He placed Jack’s wages on the table. ‘Remember what it’s for, Mr Jack. No chitchat out of school. Be a shadow.’

  Jack flicked his legs off the table with a surprisingly agile grace and stood up, his ginger-grey stubble almost rubbing against Sly’s chin. ‘But I can talk to you, yes? I deserve a Guild all to myself, don’t I, Mr Sly? Carcasey Jack, the Master Skinner.’

  Sly mustered a strained grin and departed. Thank God he served the intelligence side of Wynter’s needs and not the physical. After five minutes with Jack, he felt in need of a long, hot bath.

  4

  None of Your Business Valourhand knocked. She received no response, although she knew he was in, for the high study window glowed in the gloom of a heavily overcast morning.

  She pounded the oak again and this time she heard a clatter of footsteps.

  Fanguin flung open the door. He looked uncharacteristically sober and alert for the hour. ‘I’m busy, Valourhand, up to my ears.’

  ‘Fanguin, I need your help.’

  ‘It’s Doctor Fanguin, actually.’

  ‘You can be the Margrave Fanguin for all I care, I still need your help.’ She opened her palm, showing the single mistletoe berry.

  ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘It’s municipal property.’

  ‘It’s toxic, and it must be here for a purpose.’

  ‘It’s unusual, certainly – and it’s under full investigation. Leave it to the experts.’

  ‘Why are the Apothecaries involved?’

  ‘It’s toxic, just as you said.’

  ‘Fanguin—’

  ‘Doctor Fanguin . . .’

  She glared at him. ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘My talents have at last been recognised. I’m the town’s new head biologist. Give me the berry and I’ll share our findings in due course.’

  Valourhand looked shocked. ‘You’re working for Wynter!’

  ‘No more than the North Tower or the school or the sanitation department,’ he parried.

  Valourhand carefully returned the berry to her pocket. ‘This will end in tears, Doctor Fanguin,’ she said, turning away.

  On her way home, she dropped in a note at 3 Artery Lane. Oblong might be the most irritating man in Rotherweird, but his feeble mind did house a gift for unravelling Elizabethan riddles.

  On the Golden Mean she caught up with Boris on his way home from the Council Meeting. He looked pale.

  ‘You heard about Norrington?’ he asked.

  Valourhand gave him a hard stare: I don’t do gossip.

  ‘The baker: he was skinned alive and dumped in the river below the prison. As Prim has been relieved of his duties and we’ve a new Head Gaoler, you may draw your own conclusions.’

  Valourhand did. She steered Boris into an alleyway before describing the house with the dead dog, the dead hens, the manacles and the skinning knives, and the centuries-old golden guinea lying on the floor.

  ‘Now you understand the perils of being caught,’ Boris said when she had finished.

  ‘Caught doing what?’ she asked.

  For the moment Boris sidestepped the question. Only Valourhand’s unique talents suited the delicate mission he had in mind, but Norrington’s fate had given him second thoughts.

  He introduced the subject obliquely. ‘The mistletoe is now in the joint custody of the Apothecaries and the North Tower. As neither of them have any known interest in botany, we can assume those berries have properties of particular use to Wynter.’

  Valourhand clenched her fists. ‘I hate to say it, but Fanguin – sorry, Doctor Fanguin – is helping them.’ She paused. ‘I have two berries and I’ve tested one. It has the oddest properties. The question is – what are they using the mistletoe for?’

  ‘We’ve done a recce,’ Boris divulged, ‘but we’ve not been very successful. The skylights are made of smoked glass. And we can’t land to open them.’

  ‘You’ve flown over the building?’ She was struggling to keep up. ‘How?’

  ‘Well, the Hoverfly has.’

  ‘What’s the Hoverfly?’

  ‘My latest prototype.’

  The Island Field had witnessed numerous test flights by Polk prototypes, most proving that da Vinci’s more inventive drawings were rarely practical.

  ‘Without being seen?’

  ‘Remember Snorkel’s bust and the invisibility paint? The Hoverfly has added stealth. But it can only land on a level surface and a rope dangling in mid-air tends to get noticed.’

  ‘Bugger Snorkel’s bust, Boris! Your bloody paint nearly killed me and our modern historian.’ She recounted the knife attack by the invisible woman on Lazarus Night. ‘They’re not stupid. They have the paint themselves, so they’ll know what you’re up to. You and the Crier are in more danger than I am.’

  ‘But the people are refusing to listen,’ Boris said plaintively. ‘We hoped a voice from the aether would do the business.’ Boris had developed an avuncular fondness for Valourhand, whose exceptional virtues outweighed her minor vices. Nonetheless he decided to take the plunge. ‘If you could get there under your own steam, open one skylight or cut a hole – and just look in. And I mean just look in, nothing else. And if you go, it has to be the night of Wynter’s party. Those thugs from the RDF will be elsewhere.’

  Valourhand had not the slightest intention of repeating her Slickstone protest, and in any case, she hated parties as all froth and no substance.

  ‘If the weather plays ball,’ she said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’

  OUT OF TOWN

  1

  Mr Fluffy

  Oblong left the Witan Hall early the following morning. Orelia wanted to join him –
‘I’m not playing the witness who’s never called’ – but in the end, she had been dissuaded. Oblong had pointed out that without Salt’s key to the hidden side door in the outer wall they would have to enter the main gate where they would be registered. The mantoleon had served its purpose by allowing Wynter to raise security levels everywhere in town. Nor was Orelia exactly inconspicuous. She would be in Wynter’s clutches in no time.

  Oblong had his own dilemma. Though desperate to help Morval recover normal speech, he also felt honour-bound to share Claud’s information with Valourhand. Her off-piste thinking might unlock the mysteries of the escharion. He had left his bicycle at the Ferdys’, so he decided to compromise by spending a night there before returning to town.

  After losing his way twice in dank weather and poor visibility, at dusk he caught the tell-tale glow of the windows and the ghostly silhouettes of the poles and strings of the hop-fields. Smoke curled from the chimney.

  He opened the front door without knocking – and froze.

  Before him stood a pantomime man-size cockerel with a wobbling crimson comb and multicoloured feathers sprouting from his rear. Beside the cockerel stood a chess-like red-purple bishop with mitre and crozier.

  ‘Mr Fluffy,’ said the Bishop, introducing the cockerel.

  ‘Bishop Gregorius,’ responded the cockerel, genuflecting.

  In the shadows Morval was sitting beside an open chest overflowing with costumes.

  The heads came off. ‘Well,’ said Jones, ‘what do you think, Obbers?’

  ‘I’m not convinced,’ he admitted, ‘especially Finch.’

  ‘The point is,’ Jones said, ‘we’ll know who we are – but nobody else will.’

  Oblong, slow on the uptake, voiced his reservations. ‘I’m not sure you should be going – and, if you do, who’s looking after Morval?’

  ‘You are,’ they replied in unison.

  For the moment Oblong did not argue. ‘All right. You sort out your adjustments. I need time with Morval.’

  Finch, despite the absurd costume, turned serious. ‘Where have you been?’

  Oblong explained, omitting only his visit to the spiderwoman’s lair.

  Excitement greeted the news that Ferensen had entered the lists once more. ‘Did he say anything about the escharion?’ asked Jones intensely.

  ‘I didn’t mention it,’ Oblong admitted. ‘I kept it secret, as you suggested.’

  Jones relaxed and announced, ‘Come on, Finchy, time to feed the chickens.’ They ambled out.

  How the hens might react to a costumed rooster did not detain Oblong. He called Morval over to a chair by the fire. He did not mention the book from the spiderwoman’s lair, fearful of what that memory might do, opening instead with one of the lines she had marked. ‘Who’s the “fatal bellman”, Morval? Hunt in the past for me.’

  Morval’s face worked. She had memorised the words for a reason. It was the owl that shrieked the fatal bellman. She dived into her memory and stammered, ‘C-Coram Ferdy.’

  ‘The murrion flock . . .’

  ‘Winter. Yes, Wynter.’

  ‘What did Wynter do to Coram Ferdy?’

  When Morval shook her head in despair, Oblong rebuilt the fire.

  Take it slowly. ‘Wynter called him Strix, yes?’

  ‘They fed him to the sky with an owl,’ Morval replied, a complete sentence. Oblong had broken through. ‘Our friend Coram.’ She stared into the flames. ‘Words are easy like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.’

  In her face Oblong saw guilt. She and her brother must have failed to save Coram Ferdy. He took her hands in encouragement. He had never yet seen Morval in full smile; now he did, but with the unblocking of pathways came anxiety.

  Croaked more than spoken, words flooded out. ‘There’s a book wherein men may seek the light of truth. Weaving spiders come not here.’

  Oblong felt this mattered: she was mixing lines and plays and adapting them. He chastised himself for his schoolmasterly urge to unpick the references and concentrated instead on what she was trying to say.

  A book, what book? The Shakespeare?

  Morval’s hands slipped from his and she slumped in her chair, exhausted. He would have to leave it for now.

  ‘The dear repose for limbs with travel tired,’ he said, pleased at finding an apt quotation.

  She smiled again, a more intimate smile, stood up, kissed him on the forehead and walked upstairs.

  He wanted to follow, but in talent, looks and richness of experience he was but dust compared to her. Instead, he stayed by the fire and pondered Wynter’s legacy – such darkness and so little light.

  *

  Two days later, at mid-morning, Finch, Jones and Oblong sat round the Ferdys’ kitchen table, discussing the immediate future. Outside, Morval Seer was absorbed in a series of cloud studies.

  ‘Jones and I have classes to teach, and term’s about to start,’ Oblong pointed out.

  ‘Mine teach themselves mainly,’ added Jones, ‘but their physique requires constant attention.’

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ said Finch, ‘no worry. But I do have to go to this party.’

  ‘It’s a Saturday,’ said Jones. ‘Only the first class of the day is down to me. At a double-quick sprint, I can relieve Finch with plenty of time. Just do the training, Finch: get those spindly thighs pumping. I’m sorry Wynter will miss my party moves, but there we are.’

  Oblong placed the Shakespeare Folio on the table. ‘She’s on the mend,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving this behind. Study the marked passages and you’ll find conversation easier.’

  Finch, it appeared, already had. ‘Better to be king of silence than slave of your words,’ replied the Herald theatrically.

  *

  After lunch, Jones ran back to town, while Oblong cycled. He brought the escharion with him, having decided to hide it beneath the floorboards of his flat. He had only days to prepare a new syllabus and to complete his reports. He envied Jones his cavalier approach to Form VIB, who chose their own syllabus. Jones’ reports were famed for their brevity: a system of plus and minus signs appended to only two entries covering all subjects: Health in Body and Health in Mind. The marks for the first invariably dictated the marks for the second and alone attracted occasional additional compliments: ‘memorable back flip’, ‘genius on parallel bars’. If the unsportsmanlike tried, that’s all he asked.

  Oblong felt obliged to display his greater powers of discernment.

  A single letter awaited him at 3 Artery Lane, in Valourhand’s distinctive spare manuscript.

  In sleep Wynter holds a piece of paper. It illustrates two trees conjoined and carries the words Thy Aged Girls. Can your ferocious intellect assist?

  Oblong was too intrigued by the challenge to consider the source of Valourhand’s information. His parents had wrestled over the crossword every Saturday breakfast, exchanging clues and answers while he struggled with their pointless complexity. Yet for Elizabethans, codes and riddles threaded the language of power from Walsingham to John Dee. Elizabeth herself had had a private cipher. Coded communications had cost Mary Queen of Scots her head, and others too. Shakespeare and Ben Johnson played with the order of letters. Wynter would have relished the secrecy, but so would his acolytes, with their feverish intelligence and conceited desire for an exclusive language. No doubt Bole too had been driven to compete, even to excel.

  Oblong regarded Valourhand’s note as a living challenge from history. He climbed the stairs with letters swirling in his head, conscious of his one advantage. Unlike Valourhand, he knew from Orelia that Wynter’s drawing represented the two great trees and their shared multi-dimensional root system which governed the passageways between the Rotherweird Valley and Lost Acre.

  His ruminations stalled as he reached the landing to find his outside door ajar. Footsteps shuffled inside.

  He had no weapon. He crept into the silent gloom of the hallway, fists clenched.

  As he lit a match, a vice-like grip seize
d his left arm from behind and spun him round. ‘Gotcha!’

  The strong but bony hands fleetingly brought the Fury to mind – until a familiar voice cackled, ‘Who’s not been sleeping in his bed?’

  He turned puce. ‘I was . . . um . . . visiting.’

  ‘’Course, that’s how romance starts, with visiting.’ Aggs dug Oblong in the ribs. ‘Bravo, I say.’

  ‘I was doing a good turn.’

  ‘Aggs the super-sleuth says you bin gone at least three nights. That’s a good sign in my book.’

  Oblong dug himself ever deeper. ‘I went to Hoy on an errand.’

  ‘But did you stay the night in Hoy, you old devil?’ Aggs opened the kitchen door, revealing three jars on the sideboard. Mercifully, she changed the subject. ‘I takes you to be a dark marmalade man, chunky and reserved.’ Her fingers gripped a jar, loosened the top and twisted, but then her face transformed from bonhomie to grief.

  She put down the jar and let her arms fall, crying, ‘What’s happening to our town, Mr Oblong? And where is Mr Salt? My first client, ’e was, boy and man.’

  ‘He’s dead, Aggs,’ Oblong said quietly.

  ‘I guessed. You know from their rooms. The spirit goes a-wander.’

  ‘He fought, Aggs, as we must.’ He gave her a clumsy hug.

  ‘I also knew ’cos he sent me somat through the post, a tiny box, what he never does. There was a note . . .’ She snuffled into a duster. ‘It said, “It’s of good and bad effect, but more good than bad”.’

  ‘It?’ asked Oblong.

  ‘You knows how I like flowers.’

  He did. On their late summer journey to dine at Ferensen’s house, Salt had delighted Aggs by naming every wild flower they had passed.

  ‘Salt said it’s the seed of the Midsummer flower and rare as rubies. It’s to do with that walking tree what came at the Fair.’

  Oblong had forgotten that Aggs had been one of the privileged few to whom Ferensen had given the antidote to the Hammer. She and Fanguin had sat together watching the arrival of the Green Man during his play at the Midsummer Fair.