Lost Acre

by Andrew Caldecott

  Ember had been paying attention. ‘Didn’t you say he was Bole?’

  ‘He was himself when he carved this room, but he was Bole when he carved the Apothecaries’ Hall. That means he was Bole when he named the street, and also Bole when Nona chose to live there.’

  Ember looked puzzled. ‘I have to ask: who – or what – is a myrmidon?’

  ‘A warrior who does whatever he’s asked, or at least that’s the modern meaning.’ Finch grimaced; the myth troubled him more. ‘Zeus fashioned the Myrmidons from a colony of ants – hence their blind obedience to a cause. They fought for Achilles in the siege of Troy.’ He drummed the table. ‘The Eleusians rework legends for their own purposes: that’s how they see the world. I really don’t like this. Persephone returned from the Underworld to rule on the first day of Spring. The Myrmidons helped capture Troy. What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘An endgame,’ Ember replied as the shadows lengthened.

  ‘Pawns against a Queen,’ muttered Finch to himself.

  ‘And what of the King?’ added Ember.

  6

  Down into the Dark

  Orelia reconsidered the backpack. The straps had been set for her. The supplies would provide at least two meals. A sleeping bag had been included and a light, despite the plethora of candles in the chapel. Find a way, Ambrose had said. Find a way out, he must have meant, and then travel. A second circuit of the chapel revealed none of the hackneyed triggers for secret doors, no moving sconces or stones.

  The problem drove her back to more basic questions: why build a chapel here? It could hardly be more remote. A concealed exit suggested some thing or some place to which access should be confined to a select few. She opened the bottle of Frackle’s cider and consumed half the sandwiches. Deconsecrated recently, Ambrose had said – but why? Lack of a priest to serve? Or . . . You can dance, he had also said. So she did what nobody would do in a consecrated church: she slipped off her boots and danced barefoot on the altar. The soles of her feet prickled, as Valourhand’s had done on the floor of Rotherweird Library – and now she understood: a tile lurked somewhere beneath the chapel.

  She lay on the stone floor like an effigy and dozed. A shadowplay flickered in her head: Ambrosia the First negotiating her price and loosening the shackle in the stone fist. She woke with a start. Only one fist had a lever, but both had cogs. She went to the leverless fist: the spiked key fitted perfectly. She turned, and turned, and slowly the altar’s contrasting sides, the red and the blue, parted in the middle to reveal steep steps leading down into the dark.

  She started to rush down, only to stop and rebuke herself for being so impulsive. She returned to the chapel, repacked the backpack, adding the red and blue cups from the altar, wound the isolarion round her neck and lit Ambrose’s travelling candle.

  The narrow tunnel accommodated her easily enough at a slight stoop. She walked for more than an hour before reaching a vaulted chamber, where the tile, in colour a mix of blue and red, had been embedded in the centre of the floor. Set around it, a mosaic of black chips read: Awake, arise or be for ever fallen.

  She decided against entering Lost Acre at night on the grounds of self-preservation. She laid out the sleeping bag and, not without hesitation, extinguished her light.

  Orelia slept fitfully. Ghosts and their captive moments laced her dreams: Hayman Salt selling the stones to her aunt, Mrs Banter’s charred body in Grove Gardens, Everthorne’s skates carving ice patterns in the frozen Rother. Imagined reconstructions came too: Elizabethan children peering through a primitive telescope in the observatory above Strimmer’s study; the same pupils, now young men and women, around the Manor’s dining table, in thrall to Wynter’s candlelit El Greco face.

  She awoke soon after dawn with a renewed sense of mission: Awake, arise or be for ever fallen! She resolved to pursue neither justice nor vengeance, for both looked backwards. She wanted only renewal, for herself and Rotherweird: a future worth living.

  She finished the food and water and left the sleeping bag rolled up against the wall with the backpack. She would face the enemy in style, not like a hitchhiker.

  With a cup in each hand, she stepped onto the tile.

  7

  A Loss Found Self-cast as a lone wolf, Valourhand still found ignorance of others’ plans deeply frustrating. Jones would not explain his absence from the school crews, Orelia had left on an undisclosed mission and Boris would not divulge the location of his flying machine.

  ‘You’d nick it in minutes,’ he had said.

  Worst of all, by absenting herself from the Unrecognisable Party, she had missed Tyke, the Mance and Finch, all of whom had since vanished. Only a chastened Fanguin had provided useful intelligence: Wynter was leading an expedition to Westwood on the day of the Vernal Equinox.

  That left her one port of call. She arrived just before eight.

  When Oblong answered the door, hair still wet, a single epithet described his visitor’s demeanour: bristling.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said cheerily, ‘just out of the bath.’

  ‘Why apologise for having a bath?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You just did. Any info, like where on earth is Orelia?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Finch?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘Who is Boris’ chosen pilot?’

  Oblong swayed, an admission by gesture, and Valourhand ground her teeth.

  ‘Have a drink. I’m going to change.’

  ‘Good idea,’ she said, and meant it. The dressing gown hovered just above Oblong’s knees, an unflattering height for a man of his build.

  Fuming at Boris’ selection of Oblong for a role requiring derring-do, coordination and a head for heights, she drowned her irritation in a glass of Aggs’ Ginger Grenade. Her wits sharpened. The last prophecy coin, the escharion, had to be the ace in the pack, and it must be hers to play.

  Oblong emerged from his bedroom, mercifully fully dressed.

  ‘I think we should re-examine the escharion. Just a look – physicist’s honour.’ She awarded Oblong her best Cecily Sheridan smile; it had worked before – and it worked now.

  ‘Face the wall then. The fewer who know, the more secure it is.’

  ‘Prat,’ she mumbled, but obeyed. Reel him in slowly.

  She heard a sound of wood on wood, a gasp, an expletive.

  Valourhand turned around.

  ‘This can’t be! It really can’t—’ he spluttered.

  The rug had been half rolled up and a floorboard lifted. Oblong was on his knees fumbling vainly in the empty cavity below.

  Valourhand, primed for rage, slipped into uncontrollable mirth. Hands on knees she convulsed with laughter. ‘The old loose floorboard under the rug trick? Brilliant, quite brilliant! It’s like playing sardines and hiding in the nearest cupboard – who would ever have thought? You’re a phenomenon, Oblong, bloody unique. You’re floored by snowballs; your drinks get spiked; you fall off steeples; you ignite gas; you dance in armour! What’s next on the menu? An aerial prang?’

  ‘But . . . but . . . nobody ever comes here.’ Misery seized him as Valourhand dried her eyes. ‘It’s a family heirloom – it’s a priceless object.’ Oblong paused. ‘It’s not insured.’

  Valourhand suppressed a second bout of mirth and poured Oblong a drink. ‘Fuck the insurance. It’s for the best.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’d drop it or leave it on a tree stump or run it over. This way it’ll get there when it matters.’

  ‘But Ambrose gave it to me to look after—’

  ‘I wonder why?’

  ‘You don’t seriously think that – do you?’

  Valourhand put her hands on her hips and said nothing. She returned to the kitchen and poured him another drink and mustered a smidgen of kindness.‘I’ve made a discovery. The useless can be useful. You found the escharion. You discovered the murals in the church tower. You . . .’ She had run out of positives.

  ‘What w
ill you do now?’ asked a muted Oblong.

  ‘Charge the lion’s den, of course.’

  ‘The white tile will be guarded.’

  ‘It will. But I do like a gamble.’

  8

  A Gathering of Forces

  Once in Lost Acre, Gabriel ran straight to the great tree by the mixing-point. When inspecting it with Oblong a few days earlier, the buds had shown damage, but no more than the work of a heavy frost. Now, tapping the bark with his knuckle raised a hollow rattle. The whole tree had sickened. Maybe the travails of Midsummer and the turbulence of the Winter Solstice had weakened the roots and admitted disease?

  He surveyed the forest below. Lost Acre felt like a place in waiting. The dank mist still prevailed. Chrysalides hung on the limp grass. Bird calls were short and infrequent. Animals large and small had sought refuge in the forest. He found no spoor, but no fresh corpses either. The dark star had vanished. Even the mere worms had retreated underground. He sensed an urgent need for a new vitality.

  In these relatively benign conditions, he risked further exploration. Balls of spiky vegetation disfigured another tree that was undeniably dead, its bark scarred by insects and drilled by birds. Nearby, a discoloured patch of grass held traces of sawdust around the edges. Gabriel deduced that the octagon had been constructed here beside the tree which now stood in Rotherweird Town, swathed in virulent mistletoe. Neither Bole nor Wynter were naturalists; other minds had been at work.

  He wandered on towards a deep pothole which his father had shown him at the forest edge on a rare visit, only to discover a curious circle of old laid stones in its place.

  If only he had Ambrose Claud to consult. His family knew the countryside, but the Clauds knew the history. The answers to these puzzles demanded knowledge of both, and the Equinox was but two nights away.

  He set up camp in the spiderwoman’s lair. Exploring the passages, he found the mosaic of Ferensen as a young man and Morval’s remarkable paintings. Familiar faces from the present stared back from settings centuries old, caught like flies in amber. He located her store of dried food, matches and a candle. With foraged roots and nuts, he made a passable supper, then slept in the kitchen beside a small fire. He hoped that one day Morval might return and complete the cycle of paintings as a warning to posterity, not forgetting the incineration of his house and work.

  The next day passed without mishap. He kept close to his new home and studied the timber. Some trees bled like veins when cut; others struck at him with their branches. In Lost Acre one made no assumptions.

  At midnight on the eve of the Spring Equinox, he woke with a start. A shadowy figure stood in the doorway. He shook his head to focus on the strong, lean profile which was as comforting as the bottle in his visitor’s right hand.

  ‘Gregorius—’

  ‘Gabriel—’

  They embraced like reunited explorers. Gabriel built up the fire while Jones plucked the cork from the bottle.

  ‘I’ve been saving it,’ he explained. ‘The last surviving bottle of St Elmo’s in the world.’ Jones paused. He had abandoned his habitual tracksuit for more traditional walking gear and looked and sounded a different person. A new gravitas overlaid the familiar jauntiness. ‘I’m so sorry, Gabriel. I loved your house, and everything in it. But that’s what happens in war.’

  ‘No matter.’

  ‘I’ve seen people burn clutching their household gods. Survival is a matter of priorities.’

  Gabriel had never heard Jones speak like this before. ‘How would you know?’

  Jones took a mouthful of Bolitho’s finest. ‘I was lead scout for the Valeria Victrix – a Roman legion, the best. First in, last out – that was me.’

  ‘You were . . .’ Gabriel did not pursue the enquiry. The enigma which was Jones had been resolved.

  ‘I was the Green Man too, the millennium before Salt. I found the Midsummer flower and walked to the Midsummer Fair, just as he did.’ The wrinkles in Jones’ face deepened and multiplied in the half-light. ‘I was captured and recruited by a hedge-priest – so was Ferox, my tribune.’ Jones bowed his head as if in memory of a fallen comrade. ‘We Romans thought ourselves invincible.’

  Gabriel cut more meat as the fire revived.

  Jones raised his glass. ‘Before a decisive battle,’ he added, ‘ask only for the company of friends.’

  They talked on, Gabriel questioning, Jones answering with extraordinary candour. He described the Roman assault on Rotherweird, his return to Britannia from the other place and Rome’s abandonment of their furthest province as witnessed from the great chalk cliffs which once had welcomed them.

  ‘This is true history,’ he said. ‘Wynter is but a footnote.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ a female voice broke in.

  The two men spun round to see Valourhand standing in the passage doorway. She had a bolus in one hand, daggers hanging at the waist and a bag slung over the shoulder.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Gabriel, for once sounding clumsy.

  ‘Vixen Valourhand – ally and friend,’ said Jones, ‘and this is Gabriel.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ Gabriel asked her.

  ‘I gambled on the black tile. As you can see, it’s active again, which means turbulence is coming.’

  Jones reverted to his old self. ‘Talking of turbulence . . .’ He handed her a glass of St Elmo’s.

  Valourhand was not fooled. ‘Happily, if you tell me who you really are.’

  Jones repeated his narrative and Valourhand could only parrot back, ‘You were the Green Man a thousand years ago?’

  Jones grinned. ‘I’m in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Few can equal that.’

  Valourhand felt uneasy. Why the sudden confessional now? Also, if this was true, Jones must know far more. ‘What’s the escharion for?’ she asked.

  ‘On the day of the Midsummer Fair, the one in the Chronicle, a hedge-priest offered it to me as a gift. I refused. Nobody gives away an object like that, and I’d already been exploited once.’

  ‘It’s been taken from Oblong, the blithering idiot.’

  Jones showed little concern. ‘Why offer it to me if it matters who blows it? I suspect what matters is when.’

  Valourhand had said much the same herself to Oblong, although more as cold comfort. She mulled the probabilities. ‘Is that why you added the last prophecy coin?’

  Jones stoked the fire instead of answering and Valourhand did not press the point. The question had been rhetorical; she did not need an answer. They talked on, rich in theory but bereft of firm conclusions, until Jones called a halt.

  ‘Sleep before battle is an art. Too little and you tire; too much and you’re slow when everyone else is fresh.’

  9

  Oblong Oblivious

  Oblong left the town shortly before dusk, crossed to the Island Field and began his long trek along the riverbank towards Westwood. He had never felt so surplus to requirements, or so humiliated. He had spent most of the day in bed to build up his reserves, but it had made little difference. By the time he had passed the Pool of Mixed Intentions, where the Rother plunged underground to pick up the Winterbourne stream, he felt cold, hungry, tired and stiff in the joints. He had resolved to cadge breakfast off Gabriel, only to discover that the house had been reduced to a charred shell. The sight induced caution, luckily, as it turned out, for armed Apothecaries were loitering near the approach to the white tile.

  He had one consolation: Boris’ craft remained where he had landed it, tucked into a bend in the stream, still invisible and apparently undiscovered by the enemy.

  He found a flat, firm section of riverbank out of view and slept.

  *

  Nona alias Persephone knew the black tile had been activated. She had followed the tunnels from beneath the Manor every night for the last week to monitor progress.

  Bole had mentioned that others knew of its existence and might seek access via the library basement, but she was not concerned; ordinary morta
ls always rushed. Anyone else in the spiderwoman’s lair would be up early on the morning of the Equinox and off to the mixing-point. She felt confident of a clear run and looked forward to arriving like a true royal at curtain-up. Also, she had an ultimatum to deliver before leaving, and the Manor’s Great Hall, scene of so much else, was the right place to do it. Wynter, Sly and Sister Prudence would be assembling at the Hall of the Apothecaries, giving her free rein. Every piece fitted.

  ENDGAME

  1

  A Sight to Behold

  Wynter’s postponement of the Great Equinox Race to mid-morning yielded the hoped-for dividends: by 9.30 most of the town had emptied as coracles, crew and onlookers clogged the towpath heading for the start.

  The Mayor stood beside the craft with his fellow aeronauts, Thomes, Sly, an escort of twelve hardened Apothecaries, and Morval Seer. Her artist’s paraphernalia had been crammed into a large satchel, which threatened to overwhelm her slight frame. Since her entrapment, paralysis of speech had returned, but to Wynter’s relief, the draughtsmanship remained unimpaired.

  Bandoliers draped around the escorts’ waists and shoulders held dozens of syringes with capped needles. Racks on the sides of the craft housed crossbows of North Tower design. Nothing had been left to chance. Ropes showed the way to the invisible seats. Poles supported a canvas impregnated with invisibility paint which, when lowered, masked everyone from view. Only Thomes’ elevated seat, equal in prominence to his own, leavened Wynter’s euphoria.

  As they clambered aboard, Morval felt a familiar humiliation: she must yet again draw for Wynter to spare her brother.

  ‘Ascend,’ commanded Thomes.

  The gnarl juddered faintly in Wynter’s grasp.

  ‘When I say,’ growled Wynter.

  ‘When he says,’ echoed Sly.