Awakening

by William Horwood

  Inside, it being Sunday, and there being Summer colds about, which had left two junior librarians with a fever in bed, Librarian Thwart and those other few who had come in to work were trying to prepare the Library for the coming day: opening doors, turning on lights, clearing things that should have been cleared the evening before, airing rooms, checking that paper was available, pencils too, and the boxes into which cards had to be put were in place.

  So much to do and too little time, for the doors must be opened on the stroke of nine, even if it meant things being left undone, or half done. The Sad Readers must be let in for, strangely, it was their existence that gave the librarians their reason for being.

  It was Thwart’s task that day to open the great doors. This meant more than just turning a key. There were bolts on both sides, above and below, and in wet weather they stuck. There was a foot mat to put out which was large and heavy; there was a rack for coats, another for portersacs, a third for hats.

  These things done and with the clock in the Library striking nine, Thwart pulled the doors open and welcomed the Sad Readers in. He knew them all by sight, some by name.

  This done he might have rushed back in to do the next and catch up with himself except that he saw a striking figure advancing across the Square, striding as if indifferent to the rain, his robes flowing out behind him, his stave as tall as he was, his hair sleeked back and streaming wet.

  It took Thwart a few moments to realize that it was Brother Slew, who he had only ever seen in the interior of the Library, modest, obliging and approachable. The figure he saw now was anything but. He was formidable, he was purposeful and Thwart’s strange instinct was to close the great doors again, shoot the bolts, seal the windows and gather his fellow librarians into an army, puny and feeble though it might be, and protect the books and documents it was their lifetime’s work to conserve and preserve from destruction.

  Why this strange fancy should so suddenly come to him he had no idea, and of course he did not act on it.

  Instead he retreated inside, as he always did, but this time with a thumping heart and sense of great unease. He passed the Sad Readers taking their familiar seats, and the Master Scrivener’s empty office, and saw his colleagues busy at their tasks, but most of all as he hurried between the stacks of books from one room to another and thence to the stairs down to the basement where he worked, he felt as someone does who has lost something but is not sure what.

  ‘A wet morning, Librarian Thwart!’ said Slew, coming down the stairs a short while later. ‘I have left my robes by the door but forgive me if I bring my stave. I value it and there have, I have heard, been thieves about.’

  The stave, like Slew’s hair, was wet.

  It looked out of place in the basement, leaning against a wall, the rain from it dripping to the old flagged floor like a flow of tears.

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  Slew approached, looming over Thwart.

  ‘It is food and drink I think that is banned, not staves! Eh!?’

  He laughed.

  Thwart felt ever more uneasy.

  The more so because the garb that Brother Slew wore beneath his robes, which he had not seen before, was of leather and black, high-quality and of a fabrication that gave it a strange and disconcerting shimmer or sheen. It was hard to quite make it out and made Slew seem in some way intimidating, so much so that Thwart did not want to stay near him.

  ‘No . . . I think . . . provided that the wet from your stave . . . I mean . . .’

  ‘I will not get it on our books,’ said Slew, all charm, taking off the leather jacket and revealing an ordinary jerkin. ‘That’s better. It’s hot down here.’

  It was better.

  Brother Slew seemed suddenly his normal self.

  ‘Well, I must get on,’ said Thwart, less eager for conversation than usual, ‘I imagine you have work to do. I daresay your time in Brum is drawing to a close?’

  Where that question came from he had no idea and nor did Slew.

  It alerted Slew to the fact that Thwart was not as happy to see him there as he normally was. Well, he could be as unhappy as he liked. Slew had no intention of lingering for much longer.

  ‘Yes, I shall soon be gone – the green road calls!’

  ‘If you need help, Brother Slew . . .’

  ‘Thank you, I shall ask. I may say the same, Thwart, for today will be a busy one I think . . . the rain . . . and Master Brief being absent, eh!?’

  Slew was good but not perfect. Even the Master of Shadows had things to learn. He should not have made his comment about Brief interrogative. Thwart might be feeble but he was not stupid.

  Slew watched after him as he went about his duties, stood up, and sniffed the air, glowering.

  The gem was hereabout, he could feel it, even if he could not quite smell it.

  He went over to Stort’s familiar place, at which he had never sat, and sat down.

  ‘Where have you hidden it, scholar?’ he murmured, eyeing the untidy papers and pigeonholes above Stort’s desk. ‘Where is it? Not in one of those, that’s sure. It’s behind bars, it’s in a book, though none that I have had out. Nor one in any way connected with Summer, I think. Too obvious. But it’s here. It’s down here . . .’

  He got up and paced about, eyes narrowed, looking at the metal gates, old and rusted, that barred access to the several short corridors, really no more than cellars, where the old tomes were kept. If he had met Stort he might have been better able to read his mind, to know how his thinking would have worked.

  To hide a gem . . . There was always logic behind a choice, however unlikely that logic was.

  He sat again in Stort’s chair, which was worn and frayed, and wondered which other scholars had used it down the decades, apart from Brief himself when he was young.

  Brief, Stort’s mentor.

  Brief. Now there was a thought.

  ‘Tell me, Thwart,’ he said a little later, ‘has Master Brief himself ever scrivened tomes which are held in the Library? I would like to handle one before I leave.’

  The moment he said it, it felt good.

  ‘Several, Brother Slew.’

  ‘I often think that if I ever finally wrote a tome myself,’ said Slew, ‘then I would do nothing all day long but look at it!’

  ‘Not Master Brief! That’s certain. He once said to me that the last thing a scholar wants to look at is his own work once it’s done. Reminds him too much of the toil of writing it I daresay, and when you think of it . . .’

  Thwart was happier now, his old talkative self.

  Slew gave him a lulling, encouraging smile.

  ‘. . . When you think of it, once the tome’s done what more is there to do but write another?’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Slew. ‘So, tell me what he’s scrivened and I’ll request that you fetch me one!’

  ‘Well now . . . let’s see . . .’

  Thwart consulted his cards for a minute or two, then: ‘Five in all, Brother Slew, all upstairs on the open shelves . . . no . . . four upstairs, one down here. Hmmm . . . oh yes, it is a guide . . . a catalogue of the works of ã Faroün.’

  Slew looked puzzled.

  ‘The lute player,’ said Thwart.

  ‘The architect,’ replied Slew.

  Thwart nodded. ‘The same. The Library has a great collection of ã Faroün’s works, original manuscripts and the like. It was Master Brief’s task, started when he was a junior, completed only when he was Master, to catalogue them. Ã Faroün worked in Brum for one of Lord Festoon’s forebears, who contributed the material.’

  ‘It would be an honour to examine the catalogue, I am not familiar with ã Faroün or what he did, beyond his name of course.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Thwart. ‘I’ll retrieve it here and now!’

  He did so, unlocking one of the gates, locking it behind him, and going in amongst the gloomy stacks.

  He came back only minutes later, a slim, new-looking volume in his hand.

  ‘No
t much to show for a lifetime’s work!’

  He came back into the main room and offered the volume to Slew who, feigning a general rather than particular interest, as if all he wanted to do was hold it for a little and flick through it for a short time, sat down at his table.

  ‘Hmmm, it’s a listing of . . . goodness . . . this scholar had a wide variety of interests . . . music seems a main one, mathematics . . . architecture . . .’

  His voice trailed off as his eye was caught by a subheading under a subheading.

  The main head was Architecture, the subhead Brum, and the subhead beneath sang out to him: The Chamber of Seasons.

  ‘Something of interest?’ said the ever-inquisitive Thwart.

  It took an effort for Slew to stay sounding calm and disinterested.

  ‘Not really,’ he lied, his mind racing. ‘No, just a realization . . . I have not visited the Chamber of Seasons since I came to Brum.’

  ‘Oh, you can’t do that, it’s in Lord Festoon’s residence.’

  In fact, though his heart had leapt for a moment, Slew had already dismissed the possibility that the gem was there.

  It’s here, within yards of where I’m sitting.

  He turned the page of the catalogue and was surprised to see a great many documents and other material listed under the heading Chamber of Seasons.

  ‘I can see why it might have taken Master Brief so long . . .’

  Again he paused, for the subhead had yet another, the last of which read ‘Extraneous Matter and Drawings’.

  Slew knew he was near now, and getting nearer still.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that if one cannot get to see the Chamber with one’s own eyes then the next best thing is to look at a drawing of it? Eh?’

  He proffered the catalogue to Thwart, who took one look and said, ‘Those items can only be viewed in the presence of the Master himself and with gloves on.’

  Slew laughed.

  ‘Well, we have gloves but no Master, so who’s to know?’

  ‘I wish I . . . I wish . . .’

  Slew had stood up.

  He put on his black leather jacket again.

  He ran his hands through his mane of hair, streaked and curled by rain.

  He eyed Thwart in a way he had not before.

  Thwart retreated slightly.

  ‘Who’s to know, my dear friend? Who’s ever to know we looked at what we should not, for a moment, seeing what others may not, journeying into the shadows of the stack, a world . . .?’

  As he spoke his voice seemed to slide apart from himself and into Thwart’s mind, confusing it.

  Slew gently took up his stave.

  ‘Who’s to accuse who did not do a thing . . .?’ he asked, reaching out a hand. ‘Give me your keys and then it cannot be said that you—’

  ‘I cannot, I must not.’

  ‘Give me your keys,’ commanded Slew.

  ‘I . . . Brother Slew, please – ’

  The shadows circled Thwart’s mind, and they were cold, so cold, and Slew’s eyes were dark and glittered everywhere.

  He gave Slew the keys.

  ‘Which gate, my friend?’

  Thwart pointed.

  Slew opened the gate, ushered the librarian in, closed and locked it behind them so no one would know they were there.

  ‘Where now?’

  ‘I . . . please – ’

  It was the last vestigial resistance Thwart showed.

  He was cold, very cold, and what Slew commanded he had to do.

  ‘Show me!’

  Show him he did, leading him into the inner sanctum, that should have been accessible to no one, where the greatest collection of ã Faroün’s manuscripts and material was kept.

  ‘Now,’ said Slew, ‘let us finally begin.’

  ‘Faster!’ ordered Slew much later as Thwart pulled down one file after another marked ‘Chamber of Seasons’ and then began on a series of boxes marked the same.

  There was a table in the barred stack, and as quickly as each file or box came down Slew opened it. Most of the items were loose papers or sketch books and he riffled through these in the hope that he might find the gem, or a clue to its hiding place, among them.

  But thus far there had been nothing.

  The larger boxes were more promising, containing smaller boxes with notes in them, scrolls and other items that could not be stacked or filed like books and papers.

  But still nothing.

  ‘What’s that one – up there?’

  Thwart could not reach it, it was too high and it had been pushed too far back on the shelf.

  Slew took his stave to it and levered it forward.

  The librarian in Thwart was not yet quite dead.

  ‘Out of order,’ he muttered, seeing the number, ‘it’s in the wrong place. Lucky to find it or otherwise . . .’

  Slew relaxed.

  He knew he was close now.

  It would be the clever thing to do, to hide the gem in a box in a part of the Library inaccessible to all but a few, and then deliberately put the box in the wrong place so that it was almost impossible to find unless you knew . . . which meant that only Stort and Brief would be likely ever to find it. Thwart, shivering with cold and distress, began to snivel and weep.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t—’

  ‘Be quiet,’ snarled Slew, ‘and give me the box.’

  The box was large, its lid tied to the main part with twine through a loop of wire. The box was also tied with ribbon, running round it two ways.

  He undid the ribbon and then the string and lifted off the lid.

  He was surprised at what was inside.

  It looked like a woven blanket or perhaps a thin rug.

  ‘You mustn’t . . .’ said Thwart again, ‘and you could still get out and no one would know because I wouldn’t . . .’

  Slew looked at Thwart and his long patience finally snapped.

  He curled his hand into a hard fist and smashed the defenceless librarian so hard that he fell back, blood streaming from his face.

  ‘You . . . I . . . please don’t hurt anything . . .’

  Even now, weak though he was, and in the power of a hydden more powerful than most, Thwart tried to defend those things it was his job to defend.

  Slew hit him again, harder now, and kicked him for good measure.

  ‘Be quiet now,’ he said softly, blood seeping from the fallen librarian’s right ear, ‘say no more.’

  Thwart shivered briefly and stilled, his face pale in the semi-dark, his life dangerously near its end, his world broken about him, his mind unable to comprehend why he felt so cold and why . . .

  ‘Be still,’ commanded Slew, kicking him hard again, and Thwart was still.

  Slew saw that what he now held in his hands was a very large cloth, enough to cover a table or more, heavily worked with embroidery, appliqué and lustrous sequins and stones. Even in the ill-lit stacks its colours were vibrant, beautiful. But close-to it was impossible to make out the overall pattern.

  He swept the files and boxes off the table, sending ã Faroün’s precious documents flying in all directions.

  He laid the embroidered cloth on the table, opened it out as fully as he could and stepped back. His heart nearly stopped when a small leather pouch, caught in its folds, tumbled to the floor. It was empty. Had it held the gem? Was it placed there to be deliberately misleading? He had no idea.

  He saw at once that the cloth was exquisite, but still could not quite work out what it was. He looked at it more until it suddenly dawned on him what he was looking at.

  It was a succession of scenes, first of Spring and then of Summer and so on through Autumn to Winter, which was dark and brooding. The colours were astonishing, the images of trees and birds, mountains and rivers, sky and earth, very beautiful, so much so that Slew found that he was drawn into it, as if the embroidery held within its stitches the magic of each of the four seasons it depicted.

  ‘My Lord would like to
possess this, I think,’ murmured Slew. ‘But I have not yet found what I came for . . . Now let us examine Spring . . .’

  He was guessing that Stort had in some way tucked the gem under the stitching, or within an appliquéd piece of cloth, but the whole thing was large and complex, full of bumps and hollows any one of which might hold a small gem, or be a place to hide it. The cloth’s many colours served as camouflage as well, for no one colour stood out and a gem of any colour might easily be hidden within. He looked, he ran his fingers over it, and he looked again.

  No sign of it.

  He looked at Summer, thinking that Stort had chosen not to do the obvious thing. Then at Autumn and Winter. Running his fingers over the beautiful thing, examining each part, holding it up to the light from the main room in the hope that the gem, assuming it was there, would glint or in some way show itself.

  Nothing.

  But he could feel it was there somewhere, entangled with the seasons, hidden by them, protected from him by them.

  ‘Where are you?’ he whispered. ‘Talk to me . . .’

  Then he began looking more closely still.

  Mister Pike had had a bad night and a worse morning.

  He had slept hardly at all, the stave fight on the quay by the Muggy Duck between the monk and the Norsener nagging at him into the small hours. He could not work out how it was that an ordinary monk should be able to fight like that unless he was an extraordinary one; and if he was, which Pike suspected, then what was he doing in Brum?

  Master Brief had been able to identify him as a Brother Slew, a wandering scholar of no great interest who, like many pilgrims who came to Brum in the Summer, liked to spend time in the Library.

  ‘They do no harm and they have as much right as anyone else to consult our books. Scholars can be rather too protective and precious about their own world and all its works. It’s there to share with others, not covet for oneself !’

  This was a worthy sentiment but Pike smelt trouble and danger.

  He had not asked the obvious further question concerning Slew, which was what he was studying in the Library, because it had not seemed of such importance as what he might be doing outside it. His enquiries very soon established the pattern of Slew’s day, from which no conclusion could be drawn out of the ordinary except that his visits to the Library were regular and extended.