‘Imbecile,’ she muttered to herself.
Severely twisted iron brackets had been piled in a corner. Dislodged masonry and plaster lay along the wainscot on the front wall. Holes in the walls marked where the damaged brackets had once been fixed. One remained intact, fixed high on the back wall. It secured another cut branch, pointing across the room.
She checked the bottle. One or both of the branches had been injected with Visceral.
Old words came to mind: Yggdrasil, Ragnarok, Doomsday. She found the experiment repugnant: injecting the juice of a vicious parasite into living tissue, not in pursuit of a cure but for destructive effect. The end objective remained elusive.
She retraced her steps and re-fixed the pane. Instinct told her not to risk another entry. She drilled a small hole in the next pane and lowered her scope through. A large craft was in the course of construction. She could make out vacuum coils, rotors and several seats. She manoeuvred the scope round to a trestle table, on which rested two tins labelled Invisibility Paint – Secret. Boris had better beware.
Fortune assisted her escape: two rickshaws from the direction of the Hall of the Apothecaries pulled up. As soon as the sentries rushed over, Valourhand vaulted back the way she had come. After changing at the Undercroft, she made her way by conventional means and a roundabout route to 3 Artery Lane to find Oblong slumped in an armchair dabbing a bruised cheek.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘But you took it like a man.’ Coming from Valourhand, the phrase did not have its usual complimentary ring. She would have laid out all three.
‘Not my finest hour,’ mumbled Oblong, but he cheered when Valourhand recounted her discoveries, even if they did little to advance an understanding of Wynter’s precise objectives.
‘That godawful party is about to kick off,’ she concluded.
‘Oddly,’ said Oblong, ‘I saw a nun walking up the Golden Mean. She had a mask, but the figure . . .’ His other cheek blushed. ‘She reminded me of Orelia.’
‘What!’
Why was Valourhand being so slow? ‘Orelia Roc?’
‘You let her go?’
‘I wasn’t sure. She was unrecognisable . . .’
‘She’s the only one who can bring Wynter down – he thinks she’s dead, but once . . .’ Valourhand paced the room, stopped dead and made an announcement. ‘Right, Oblong, you have to go. You have to look after her.’
‘Why don’t you go?’
‘I haven’t a costume.’
‘Nor have I.’
‘Well, go and find one. It’s a Manor, for God’s sake. There must be something you can wear.’
‘It’s been closed for more than four hundred years.’
‘Slickstone was dapper as a peacock and his kit’s still there. Go for it – just avoid the main streets. There’s a curfew, don’t forget.’
Oblong shook his head. Enough was enough.
‘Follow me,’ added Valourhand, not for the first time.
He took a swig of Aggs’ Ginger Grenade and gave in. ‘You’re right.’ The thought of Orelia in Wynter’s hands had reinvigorated him. He also wondered why Valourhand was holding back. After all, she had nearly paid with her life for her colourful protest against Slickstone at his party.
He decided that she must be planning a final confrontation with Wynter, but she knew this was not the time.
She led the way through a maze of alleys and cut-throughs, most of which Oblong had never noticed before, until they emerged from a tortuous back street near Aether’s Way into a small space dominated by the northwestern section of the Manor wall.
‘Right,’ she said decisively, ‘over you go.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’re not going in the front way, obviously. I squat. You stand on my shoulders. I stand up. You put one foot there, your hand there, the next foot there, and you’re in. There’s a convenient woodpile on the other side.’
Oblong resembled a daddy long-legs struggling up a pane of glass, yet he managed, albeit at the cost of grazed knees and a torn trouser leg.
Valourhand ambled half the way back to her rooms, then reconsidered. The traitor in their midst had to be reminded of his loyalties, which meant returning to the Undercroft, then another rooftop journey. As she stepped clear of a puddle with the furred-mirror look of the beginning-to-freeze, the ice-dragon came to mind, or rather, its perfection, the cause of her fatal hesitation which had cost Hayman Salt his life.
But the mixing-point did not deal in perfection. The riddle worried away at Valourhand as if it mattered.
*
Oblong staggered across the lawn at the back of the Manor, conscious of his grazed knees, bruised cheek and sore ribs. He was by now a familiar figure in town, so it was no surprise when a young woman from the kitchens hailed him. He recognised her as one of the more boisterous recent School-leavers. Her parents had optimistically christened her Serenity.
‘Mr Oblong, you’ve no costume, you’re recognisable and they won’t let you in.’
He found the glint in Serenity’s eye unnerving. Running a class had developed his sixth sense for mischief-makers.
She looked him up and down and turned solicitous. ‘I know just the thing – come with me.’ She led Oblong into the passage at the rear of the Manor. ‘Mr Sly’s down there – you’d best avoid him – but there’s your man.’
Oblong swivelled, but could see nobody to right or left.
‘Him.’ She pointed.
There, in an alcove, stood a suit of armour, complete with visor and silver-plated shoes.
She looked rather pleased with herself. ‘Nobody will know who you are – and you won’t need a voice distortion device either, not in that tin can. Just keep statue-still, all right?’
Obediently, Oblong froze, not sure whether he had been rescued or trapped. She had quick hands and in no time she had fastened on pauldrons, rerebraces, vambraces, gauntlets, greaves, tassets and sollerets.
‘Now for the pièce de résistance!’ she said with a noise which Oblong could not quite place – an exhaled breath of satisfaction or a repressed chuckle? She stood on the pedestal where the armour had been, leaned forward and placed the bassinet over his head.
‘I hope you’re pleased.’ She offered him a make-up mirror from her pocket.
Oblong made several discoveries. Armour does not enhance movement. Thank God, this isn’t a dance, he thought. His view of the world resembled that of a man immured in a postbox. Holding a glass in gauntlets would be testing, and drinking even harder. His nose had been reduced to a sharp cone-shaped protuberance with holes like a colander.
As abruptly as she had appeared, his assistant vanished.
Each step clanking, he turned with painful slowness to adjust his view – and chanced on good news: a sword rested against the wall.
He had the wherewithal to defend Orelia.
*
Morval Seer assessed her chosen section of the town wall. She translated patches of loose mortar, a buddleia stump and a protruding piece of rock into handholds, footholds and a route. At the core of her being, tiny vestiges of arachnid DNA still coiled with hers.
She scuttled up and set off along the rooftops to the Manor’s enclosing wall. Unlike Valourhand, she had no need of a pole.
5
Who’s Who?
The Precentor tapped his baton on his left kneecap and peered down from the gallery at the Great Hall. Five minutes to doors opening, ten minutes to the Mayor’s entry. Around him sat his consort, trumpets gleaming and wooden viols aglow.
From beyond the doors a peculiar hubbub grew in volume and intensity as from an aviary of metallic birds. The voice distortion devices did no credit to the musical qualities of the human voice.
Encouraged by the handsome cash advance on a generous fee, and the fact that the music on the stands before them was timeless and the main piece English – the consort had practised hard. At last they had a Mayor with taste. The acoustics – the curtains, the wood, the carpets and the
people – would do the music justice.
High across the room, almost at rafter-level, a movement caught the Precentor’s eye. An insignificant balcony with no visible means of access peeped from beneath an equally insignificant window. Spikes stuck out from the tiny balustrade like perches. He could not fathom their purpose. In disbelief he watched a slight figure in a mask and a costume which blended with the Great Hall’s mix of stone and oak ease through the window.
He rebuked himself. The conductor’s art requires immersion, not distraction. It was not for him to reason who or how or why. The great doors would shortly open. His hands, and the minions they commanded, would shortly hold the stage.
*
On the other side of the door, guests were gathering fast. The idiosyncrasy of the invitation had raised the town’s sartorial imagination to new heights.
In contrast to Sir Veronal Slickstone’s grand affair, the Mayor had set out to put them at ease. First arrivals would wait for the last before the doors opened; everyone would enter together. A marquee, warmed by a system of heaters, covered the front lawn. A quartet drawn from Rotherweird School’s best played in one corner; the School’s gymnastic elite, their skills honed by Gregorius Jones, displayed in another. Champagne cocktails loosened tongues and inhibitions.
Wynter also had a legend to weave. Two blackboards had been set at either end of the marquee.
One displayed drawings of the fifth and sixth prophecy coins which respectively portrayed a human figure emerging from a grate and two masked dancers. All is ordained.
A map headed The Mayor’s Lost Years had been clipped to the other blackboard. It showed in detail the subterranean world of Wynter’s supposed childhood. A parenthesis declared: Verified by the Sewage Committee. The robotic voices thrown by the distortion devices jabbered in fascination as guests, Bo Peep among them, jostled for a better view.
Fanguin wished he had Everthorne Senior’s map to hand, but the lay-out did resemble the company’s two journeys to Escutcheon Place, although, unsurprisingly, the more sensitive access points were missing, including the Library and Escutcheon Place.
An elegant figure dressed as Herne the Hunter (or Huntress) fielded questions with the aid of the tip of a bow.
‘What did he live off?’ asked a merman.
‘Fish – there are streams, here and here. He fashioned a net from discarded string.’
‘How did he see?’ asked a unicorn.
‘Good question – he had an unknown benefactress, who dropped candle ends and matches through a street grate, this one here, almost daily, for years. If you’re her, let yourself be known.’
Fanguin clicked his shepherdess’ crook on the blackboard leg. He needed a trap question. Herne had an elegant poise which did not equate with any known members of the Sewage Committee.
‘Where did Mr Wynter surface?’ Bo Peep asked.
Herne’s hesitation was fleeting, but discernible. She pointed in the approximate direction of The Journeyman’s Gist Underground.
‘Here roughly, but entry is barred for the moment. The tunnels are not only labyrinthine; they’re insecure after the recent seismic activity.’
Fanguin deduced that Herne worked closely with Wynter, knew the tunnels and could not risk a lie. He or she had chosen the entrance which was furthest from any place of significance while finding a plausible reason to keep anyone from entering.
*
Strimmer’s interest in Herne had a different focus. He had noted the strength in the calves and the grace of those legs before. Now clad in powder-blue tights, they belonged without doubt to Persephone Brown.
Strimmer’s costume had been designed as a man on the prowl: a flowing black robe had been embroidered with a line from Mephistopheles in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: I came here of mine own accord. His mask wore a lascivious grin above a rich priapic beard. Strimmer’s sexual frustration had sharpened since Pomeny Tighe’s inexplicable departure. His many other conquests bored him.
An end to his famine beckoned.
*
Scry sniffed behind her mask. The aura of Lost Acre infected the air like the odour of fresh paint – but from whom? She seethed too. These cheap and showy lies about Wynter’s childhood belittled his legend. But she had only to wait. Once an exhibitionist, always an exhibitionist: sooner or later Nona would show herself.
Orelia engaged with nobody, and nobody engaged with her. Such were the advantages of taking the veil. Guests apologised for the lightest nudge. She had last seen Wynter naked and vulnerable, offering his head for strangulation. This extrovert enterprise suggested self-confidence regained. She thought of Bole, so long a servant and now a master. She had no wish to see Wynter, but knew she must.
‘Ouch,’ gasped Oblong as a waiter bent his armoured thumb over the base of his wine glass and inserted a straw through one of the holes in his bassinet’s visor, poking an eye before finding the mouth.
Step by step he shuffled across the lawn, using his sword to prevent a fall. He held his drink high with the free hand. The din of conversation roared like tinnitus in the confines of the helmet. On turning to survey the guests, the straw abandoned the glass.
A boiled egg with velvet breeches slapped his thighs in hilarity. ‘You’ve drawn the short straw there, sir.’
‘’oove it eese,’ replied Oblong.
‘Come again, Sir Knight?’ Humpty Dumpty put his head to the bassinet, inducing near darkness.
‘’oove the ucking aw,’ replied Oblong.
Unhelpfully, Humpty Dumpty merely inserted another.
In this ark of the bizarre, he alone had achieved absurdity, but absurdity, he consoled himself, furnished the best cover. Nobody would suspect his serious intent, although even there the obstacles mounted. On his next rotation, he counted three nuns in near-identical habits. Which one should he defend?
As his consternation grew, Oblong grew hotter and hotter, until runnels of sweat ran from forehead to cheeks to torso. He felt like a turkey baking in foil.
He reached for an inaccessible handkerchief to wipe his inaccessible brow and panic took hold, raising his body temperature still further.
Would he be trapped for life like the man in the iron mask?
6
Open Doors
The Precentor had a double door cue: the opposing entrances to the Great Hall and the gallery above.
As the former opened, a quartet within the consort – three viols and a harpsichord as basso continuo – played Pachelbel’s Canon, a piece of dignified restraint. It induced a modicum of silence, even wonder.
On the other side of the gallery door, Gorhambury strained to keep track of the music. Behind him stood the Guild Masters, excepting the Master Fireworker and the Master of the Apothecaries, in full fig, with the Mayor at the rear. As the Pachelbel subsided, Gorhambury opened the doors. The stately motion of the Precentor’s baton came to rest, but fleetingly. A rhythmic accompaniment from strings, oboes and recorders filled the Hall, to be joined at the moment of Wynter’s entry by the trumpets with a blazing welcome which could only be described as royal.
Chests puffed with civic pride. The counter-tenors entered next, their high notes pure as glass.
‘Sound the trumpet, till around
You make the list’ning shores rebound . . .’
Purcell’s short anthem gave time enough to create a stage for the Mayor. He stood dead centre of the gallery, fingers clasping the balustrade.
‘Welcome, ladies, gentlemen and whoever else. This Manor preceded the town. It is the source of our independence and greatness.’
Wynter’s nostrils twitched with self-satisfaction. He recognised the auras of Scry and Nona-Persephone, but complex cross-currents implied the presence of more guests with experience of the other place. He had baited his line well – but whom had he hooked, and which were they? If Sly had done his job, answers would come soon enough.
‘Circulate, speak your mind, explore and learn,’ he continued, ‘and above all: enj
oy yourselves!’
As he sat down, Wynter saw a slight figure on the high balcony installed centuries ago as a roost for the Eleusians’ fliers. The head dipped, rose and dipped as hands pale against the camouflage of the costume moved up, down and across. An artist at work. He tilted back his head in a moment of ecstasy: his chronicler was back. How Morval Seer could have managed the ascent did not matter; her feat bore testimony to his enduring fascination, even for his enemies.
He summoned a waiter. ‘Place a man outside beneath that balcony and don’t let her escape.’
The waiter hurried out, puzzled as to how the Mayor could read gender through disguise and at such a distance.
Orelia watched Wynter, mesmerised. She had stowed away so much, burying deep the pain and visual images from the platform in the great tree underground. Now she saw once more Everthorne disappearing before her eyes and becoming Wynter.
She turned her face to the wall.
Sly’s backroom rivalled the Great Hall for hubbub and concentration of people. Data engulfed his hard-pressed deputy.
‘Two bishops, a highwayman and a wine bottle.’
‘Someone in robes with a whip and a dagger.’
‘A devil.’
‘Two gondoliers.’
‘Slow down,’ shouted the deputy. ‘I have to cross-refer.’
He flourished the rickshaw drivers’ list to make good the point.
‘A nun.’
‘And a Mother Superior.’
‘Make that two nuns.’
‘And two jesters.’
‘No, one’s a clown.’
‘Fuck!’ exclaimed Sly. His elaborate system had a flaw. They had three lists, two of which – Fennel Finch’s and the rickshaw drivers’ – were complete, but their descriptions differed. One man’s ghost was another man’s senator. ‘Have we any certainties?’
‘A giant cockerel.’
‘One old geezer in a sheepskin waistcoat with a stick – he’s not on any list that I’ve seen,’ added another.
‘Maybe he’s the wizard.’
‘No, he’s got a starry conical hat.’
‘If he’s an old man with a stick, he’s recognisable and shouldn’t be here,’ hissed Sly. He had never liked the idea of an Unrecognisable Party and liked it even less now.
Lost Acre Page 22
