Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  ‘Tell me, Mr Wynter, how do countrysiders create such creatures?’

  ‘There is a secret, Mrs Finch.’

  ‘Fennel, always.’

  ‘With children, you can fashion mythical beings. Some may fail. But rest assured, my accumulated skills are special.’

  Fennel hesitated, although she didn’t doubt a word he said. His face had a terrible certainty. A pagan thought overwhelmed her; the kind she had never experienced with her dry-as-dust husband. She must commit to Wynter utterly. ‘I offer my son to the cause,’ she said.

  He interlaced his right hand with hers. This is indeed how to propitiate the gods: the old way and the best.

  Sacrifice.

  Old History 1693. Rotherweird town.

  Today there is naming of streets. It is an earnest process and, since the Herald’s voluntary abdication of power, democratic.

  The Mayor, the Architect, the Herald, the Master Builder and the Master Carver stoop over a town plan pinned to a trestle table in Market Square. It is a breezy late spring day. The original names are printed. The five new ones announce their presence in rose madder ink, west or southeast of Market Square.

  ‘A job well done,’ announces the Mayor.

  Four heads dip in agreement; one does not.

  ‘But unfinished,’ says the Master Carver, ‘here, here, here, here and here.’ His forefinger jabs at a tangle of anonymous alleys and snickets in The Understairs.

  ‘Fair point,’ concedes the Mayor. ‘If we don’t name them, they will, and I’m not having uncouth language loose in the streets.’

  ‘I propose a classical theme,’ says the Carver. ‘There are five to name and five of us. I go for Myrmidon Coil.’ He marks the paper accordingly. The Mayor ignores this petty breach of protocol; the Carver is rarely assertive and contributes much to the fabric of the town. The others follow: Ariadne’s Thread, Augean Alley, Jason’s Way and Grendel’s Cut.

  Later, the Mayor asks the Carver to explain his quaint choice.

  ‘A suggestion from a lady friend and it sounded good,’ he replies. On this occasion, he tells the truth. Nona has always had a way with words.

  IN TOWN

  1

  The Morning After ‘It’s from Seer,’ said Wynter, tapping the letter on the table.

  The weak and fastidious Hieronymus Seer might have evolved into the more formidable Ferensen, but his distinctive handwriting had not changed.

  ‘He offers a trade,’ added Wynter.

  ‘What for what?’

  ‘No experiments, in return for the escharion.’

  Persephone laughed. ‘Who does he think he is?’

  Wynter watched her closely. He had no idea what the escharion might be, but did Nona know? An ignorant person would surely show more interest. ‘He wants a meeting in the tower. I believe you have the keys?’

  ‘There are no keys.’

  ‘Metaphorically speaking.’ Wynter paused. ‘I need all five neodymium magnets.’ The revelation had come in sleep, after Fennel Finch had slipped from his bed.

  ‘Bole told you?’ Persephone asked.

  ‘Nobody tells me anything. I just know what he knew.’

  She disliked the edge to his voice. Was Wynter turning from her to Estella? Or was Estella turning Wynter against her? She could not be sure who was controlling whom. An encounter between Wynter and Ferensen, an enemy but the only other survivor from the first Eleusian Age, might elucidate. ‘Am I invited?’

  ‘He wishes to see me at midnight tomorrow – you may join us later, if you like.’

  ‘You know the sequence?’

  ‘I apply the magnets at the base of the tower, north face. They’ll cling to their correct positions of their own accord. Then I move them: top, bottom, second top, second bottom, middle.’

  ‘You’ll have them first thing tomorrow.’

  The magnets were in fact in her bag, but she had preparatory work to do.

  Before Wynter could reply, Sly burst in through the front door. ‘It’s all going pear-shaped,’ he spluttered.

  ‘Control yourself,’ hissed Wynter.

  ‘That countrysider escaped – despite being half-butchered by Carcasey Jack’ – Sly’s hands were dancing in disbelief – ‘then Jack goes and dies in his sleep, looking like he’s seen a ghost.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘Then—’

  ‘Then what?’ cried Wynter.

  ‘Strimmer is dead. Someone or something ripped his throat out near the river.’

  Wynter had little interest in the dispensable Strimmer, but Carcasey Jack and Tyke were a different matter. ‘How could the countrysider escape?’

  ‘He got out through the cell window, then God knows what he did. It’s a lethal drop, miles down and jagged rocks below.’

  Persephone kept her peace. She knew how.

  ‘Take me there,’ barked Wynter, ‘and summon that imbecile Prim.’

  *

  Denzil Prim responded with alacrity. He had not enjoyed patrolling the town’s outer wall. After twenty years in Rotherweird’s subterranean chambers, agoraphobia had struck, leaving him to search out squints and places on the battlements where shadow lingered.

  ‘Cream always rises to the top,’ he said, bowing to Wynter as he entered his old home with Sly in tow. Sly delivered a warning glare: Tone down the humour.

  Wynter ignored Prim and turned to the under-gaoler. ‘Where was he kept?’

  ‘Cell One, your Worship.’

  ‘The deepest, the best,’ added Prim helpfully.

  ‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to,’ hissed Wynter, striding down into the gloom.

  The under-gaoler struggled to keep up.

  ‘Were you in the cell?’

  ‘Only when Mr Jack called for his implements, your Worship.’

  ‘How often was that?’

  ‘Um . . . from time to time.’ The unfortunate man had no idea of the Mayor’s position on the prisoner, so he trod carefully. ‘Not a pretty sight,’ he added.

  ‘But he survived?’

  ‘You can tell from the eyes. And he were breathing – well, just. Mr Jack wanted a scream or two, but he wouldn’t oblige.’

  ‘When did Jack stop?’

  ‘Just past midnight.’ The under-gaoler turned pale as he opened the cell door and stared in. ‘I came back later to do the clearing-up, only to find this.’

  They followed Wynter in. The central iron bar had been wrenched from the window’s brickwork and its neighbours bent sideways until they were flat to the wall. The logic appeared irrefutable: Tyke had had an accomplice.

  The under-gaoler mewed, ‘It were triple-locked, your Worship. Honest, cross my heart and hope to die.’

  Prim, judging this expression unfortunate, came to the rescue. ‘Our tools can’t bend bars like that, and bare hands neither. We’re gaolers, not circus performers.’

  ‘From the outside then,’ added Sly.

  The under-gaoler shook his head. ‘It’s a sheer drop – helluva way down.’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ commanded Wynter, tiptoeing over the bloodied flags. ‘The ground is disturbed – here, here and here.’ The Mayor knelt, pushed the earth with a finger. ‘Get me a coil of wire,’ he ordered without looking up.

  Prim pulled rank. ‘Bottom of my desk, second drawer, left,’ he barked at the under-gaoler, who hurried out.

  Rage seized Wynter. Tyke had again cheated death like a common card sharp – as in the mixing-point all those centuries ago.

  The under-gaoler returned with a coil of wire, which Wynter worked into the hole. Down, down, down it went, feet deep. His audience watched, mesmerised, although, unlike him, they could not detect the unmistakable aura from the other place.

  Wynter stood up and pointed at the corner beside the door. ‘That hole is the furthest from the window. I suggest it’s where his staff was leaning.’

  The under-gaoler gabbled in bewildered excitement, ‘It was, it was – he brought it with him and it ain’t here now. T
hat’s bloody brilliant, your Worship. But . . . um . . . how . . . ?’

  ‘It’s a living staff. It moves, roots, and moves again.’ Wynter turned to Sly. ‘So we have our narrative. The countrysider had a demon wand, which broke our common iron like a biscuit. He escaped and massacred the Head of the North Tower for revenge.’

  ‘Mr Strimmer?’ gasped the gaolers.

  Wynter ignored the question and moved to the window. ‘What was down there?’

  ‘Blood on the rocks,’ said Sly, ‘but no sign of a body.’

  ‘Have we bloodhounds, Mr Sly?’

  ‘Not even a beagle.’

  ‘This place is toothless.’ Wynter spat out a series of commands. ‘I want a likeness drawn – I want him caught, dead or alive. Include a reward. Impose a curfew from six to six. Exempt the Defence League, and the Apothecaries when on State business. Now take me to Carcasey Jack.’

  If death had come in sleep, Jack had been in the grip of nightmare. His eyes were bulging wide open and the upper teeth had torn through the lower lip. Clenched hands had frozen above his face as if warding off phantoms. The bedclothes had snared his splayed feet, but from whom or what was he trying to escape?

  Wynter had never grieved for another, but now his emotions did stretch to disappointment. Moulding the perfect servant took time. Take Bendigo Sly: he had far to go – but Carcasey Jack had come ready-made.

  ‘Mr Jack locks his door at night, and his room has no windows,’ Prim pointed out.

  There’s no aura here, thought Wynter, examining the bedlinen. Then he pointed. ‘Specks,’ he said, ‘like fine soot.’ He walked round the bed. ‘On the sheets, the pillow, the skin.’

  Even Sly, Snorkel’s assassin, shuddered. Rotherweird was descending into the abyss.

  Jack’s tools, many uncleaned, occupied a small table. Wynter picked up a tiny globe-light, shook it and peered into Jack’s mouth and nostrils before handing it to Sly. ‘As I thought: they’re the footprints of his assassins. See for yourselves,’ he said.

  Standing back, Wynter shut his eyes. In his head, a macabre scene played out: Carcasey Jack, tossing and turning, unable to settle, disturbed that the wax-faced freak had not begged for mercy as he should. At last he quietened, embracing the sleep of the almost sated . . . and then, through the keyhole and under the door, they poured with their nets and stings in their thousands. They sorted themselves: loose weavers in front of tight weavers, small preceding large, before moving along the pillow and over the blanket. Legs touched legs. Eyes swivelled and locked. Spinnerets extruded their viscous polymer.

  As the prostrate body snored and the mouth opened, the invaders had pounced.

  Wynter ground his teeth. Affinities. It could only be Morval Seer. She had rescued his enemy and killed his enforcer. She had dared to declare war.

  So be it.

  Shocked, the trio by the body spoke.

  ‘Blocked—’

  ‘Sealed—’

  ‘Silked up—’

  Wynter stepped forward and chose another implement, a handy little claw which opened and closed. Deep from Jack’s throat he extracted a grey furry plug. ‘Spiders,’ he proclaimed, deadpan. ‘Legions of them.’

  And here’s another contrast, reflected Sly: Snorkel would have thrown a tantrum. Wynter harnessed his anger. He could see him already working out his revenge. There would be an eye for an eye; of that Sly had no doubt.

  At the prison gates, Prim received the news he craved.

  ‘You’re on approval, Mr Prim. This is war and a time to be harsh.’ He turned to Sly. ‘Get Doctor Fanguin to the Manor.’

  *

  Fanguin reached the Great Hall as Wynter returned. The Mayor’s enquiry wrongfooted him.

  ‘Spiders? I confess they’re not my forte.’

  ‘You’re a biologist, aren’t you? Do they feel pain?’

  Having undertaken to work on the inside, Fanguin felt obliged to play along. ‘Yes, as a physiological response to unwelcome stimuli; probably no to pain as we feel it.’

  ‘Do they feel fear in other spiders?’

  ‘That presupposes spiders feel fear in the first place, which is hotly debated. If they do, I’d say yes. Humans smell fear, and spiders smell a damn sight better than us.’

  ‘On the ball as ever, Doctor Fanguin.’ Wynter turned to Sly. ‘Find Mrs Finch.’

  Fennel had settled into an upstairs bedroom with a fraction of her extensive wardrobe. She appeared in minutes, impeccably dressed and coiffed. She did not deign to acknowledge Fanguin.

  ‘How old is this son of yours?’ asked Wynter.

  ‘Young Percy is sixteen, but older in so many ways.’

  ‘What of his friends?’

  ‘Only the best, of course.’

  Fanguin knew Percy Finch; he had been in Form IV for a year during his tenure. He was a snobbish, cruel boy, very much the son of the mother. His parents’ arid marriage and the absence of siblings had not helped.

  ‘Doctor Fanguin wishes to conduct an experiment into the sensibilities of spiders. He wishes to use this Hall for its constant temperature. Size doesn’t matter, but he needs a serious catch and he needs them alive. Well pay a shilling a dozen. Tell the Headmaster the boys are needed for special duties.’

  Fanguin gulped. What to do? I’m the spy within, he chided himself. ‘Can’t wait,’ he mumbled, striving for a suitable facial expression to match.

  2

  The Tower Opens

  By eleven o’clock at night, the town was under curfew.

  At the Manor gates Wynter told the guards not to follow him. ‘I wish to test our security for myself,’ he said.

  The Tower looked even more imposing in a deserted Market Square. Before his execution he and Bole had planned much, but they had never discussed a tower. He must explore before Ferensen arrived.

  He moved one of the neodymium magnets Persephone had provided across the surface of the tower’s north face until it clung unaided, then repeated the process with the other four. He then slid them in the ordained sequence, easy enough as each magnet would move in only one direction. He caught a satisfying click at each journey’s end as the inner mechanism responded. On the last, a door, hitherto invisible, swung open.

  Wynter removed a globe-light from his pocket, shook it and stepped in. Canvas fell in folds from a central hook on the ceiling, a tent-like effect. He pushed the door to without relocking it. A camp-table faced a chair with folding legs, its seat a rectangle of seasoned leather. A pottery oil-lamp on the table had its wick intact. He lit it. A javelin occupied the far corner and a helmet, distinctively Roman, rested on a second chair.

  He weighed the javelin in his right hand and found himself mumbling in Latin, as if to guards outside. Imagined campfire smoke puckered his nostrils. Outside the tent, a repair hammer chimed on a buckled shield.

  Fighting to oust these alien memories, he stumbled up the stairs to the next floor: a carver’s workshop. Bole had always planned to assimilate the talents of an expert carver. A name surfaced – Benedict Roc – but little more. Roc’s gifts must have enabled Bole to carve the prophecies in the Hall of the Apothecaries – and to assemble this very tower. Fresh wood shavings lay among the tools; recent use had streaked the sandpaper grey.

  Wynter fretted. Had he been here in sleep, or was this another coded message? At first sight, the carving on the bench, a sundered sphere, resembled work abandoned, but on closer examination, the split had been worked: a miniature wave had been cut into one face, zigzag lightning into the other.

  Wynter sensed an ambush. Ferensen could never have been here and nor would he have requested this meeting. The invitation had been a forgery. He pocketed a sharp-ended awl, just in case.

  He climbed again. The walls in the next room dazzled, the white unrelieved save for a single picture of a child’s stick person in a peculiar hat which matched his, or possibly her, quizzical expression. The character had been rendered with black paint on an orange background. This stark floor otherwise b
oasted only a stool with steel legs and a steel shelf crammed with books on multi-dimensional physics. He felt the presence of a kindred spirit, an astringent mind reaching beyond orthodox scientific frontiers.

  It irked Wynter that Bole’s various personae dominated the tower’s interior, with no tribute to him.

  He had kept an eye on the height of each room – only one floor to go. Bole’s egotistical dominance continued. He entered an exact replica of his servant’s bedroom at the Manor in the first Eleusian age. He recognised the chair, the schoolboy desk, the bed, the books. Pinched and intimate compared to the Manor’s master bedroom, this was nonetheless the tower’s inner sanctum, the holy of holies.

  Click.

  The door below had opened and the sound of heavy footsteps drifted up.

  They paused. His visitor was absorbing the first floor.

  Thereafter the steps accelerated, floor by floor. Wynter lit the candle on Bole’s desk and gripped the awl in his pocket, only to relax as a familiar figure strode in.

  ‘Dear Estella.’

  She wore black, with a bag slung over her shoulder. Her eyes blazed. She had picked up the pottery oil-lamp from the camp-table. A tongue of flame flickered in the spout. Meet a wise virgin, thought Wynter.

  ‘What have you done?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ve done nothing of moment. Yet.’

  ‘This is you, isn’t it, this tower – it’s you through and through. How could you—? Bole.’ She spat out the single syllable.

  ‘No, no, Estella, it is I – look at me.’

  ‘Geryon Wynter would have shared the truth with me. Nobody has suffered more in his cause. I carried his candle alone and unaided. But that’s nothing to you.’

  ‘Calm yourself and listen, Estella. Calx risked his life to acquire a unique and necessary gift: he became a shapeshifter for my sake. Don’t ask me how, but he did. He needed a helper, but you would never have worked with him. You called him the Potamus, remember? I had to use Calx, so I had to use Nona.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Wynter raised a restraining arm. ‘On the day of my return, who came to The Journeyman’s Gist? Who attended the First Supper at the Apothecaries? Not Nona, but you. You are my right hand. I’ve never disowned you, Estella, and I never will.’