Wyntertide Read online

  Wyntertide

  Also by

  Also By Andrew Caldecott

  Rotherweird

  Title

  Illustrated by

  Sasha Laika

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2018 by

  Jo Fletcher Books

  an imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  Copyright © 2018 Andrew Caldecott

  Illustrations © 2018 Sasha Laika

  The moral right of Andrew Caldecott to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  HB ISBN 978 1 78429 802 9

  TPB ISBN 978 1 78648 991 3

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 801 2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  Cover design © 2018 Leo Nickolls

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Frontispiece

  Dedication

  For my mother and in memory of my father

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Outsiders from wider England

  Jonah OblongA historian

  The town of Rotherweird

  Rhombus SmithHeadmaster

  Professor Vesey BolithoAstronomer and Head of South Tower Science

  Hengest StrimmerHead of North Tower Science

  Vixen ValourhandA North Tower scientist

  Gregorius JonesHead of Physical Education

  Godfery FanguinFormer teacher

  ‘Bomber’ FanguinHis wife

  Angela TrimbleSchool Porter

  Sidney SnorkelThe Mayor

  GorhamburyThe Town Clerk

  Madge BrownAssistand Head librarian

  Hayman SaltMunicipal Head Gardener

  Marmion FinchThe Herald

  Boris and Bert PolkCo-owners of The Polk Land & Water

  Company

  Orelia RocOwner of Baubles & Relics, an antique shop

  AggsA cleaner

  Estella ScryA clairvoyant

  Gurney ThomesMaster of the Apothecaries

  Rotherweird Countrysiders

  Bill FerdyBrewer and landlord of The Journeyman’s Gist

  FerensenA nomadic close neighbour of the Ferdys

  The Elizabethan and Stuart Age

  Sir Robert OxenbridgeConstable of the Tower of London

  John FinchRotherweird’s Herald

  Geryon WynterA mystic

  Calx BoleWynter’s servant

  TykeAn enigma

  Mel

  EstellaChild prodigies

  Nona

  Sacheverell VereA wealthy bachelor

  Benedict RocMaster Carver

  Rotherweirders Abroad

  Tancred EverthorneAn artist

  Pomeny TigheA mathematician

  Old English

  Brother HilarionA monk and naturalist

  HarfootHis lay companion

  CONTENTS

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Old History

  OCTOBER:

  FIRST FORTNIGHT

  A Problem

  Deathbed

  Fliers

  Of Puddings

  Varnishing the Truth

  Two Consultations

  Fieldwork

  Eulogy Dress

  The Winter Solstice Special

  Last Rites

  Hangover

  Old History

  OCTOBER:

  SECOND FORTNIGHT

  Books, Books, Books

  Bequests and Dead Ends

  Sunday Night, Visiting Night

  Of Nightmares and Agonies

  Election Fever

  Cracking a Code

  A Reunion

  Any Other Business?

  Old History

  NOVEMBER:

  FIRST WEEK

  Of Sewage and Psephology

  The Velvet Gloves

  Old History

  NOVEMBER:

  SECOND WEEK

  The Summoned

  Matters Astronomical

  A Competition Won

  A Party Derailed

  Escutcheon Place Revisited

  Post-Mortem

  Into the Deeps

  Miss Trimble’s Bequest

  The Smart Outsmarted

  Figures of Speech

  Licking of Wounds

  Old History

  NOVEMBER:

  THIRD WEEK

  A Commission

  Dreamland

  A Warning

  Special Offer

  Just Checking

  A Bicycle Made for Two

  Solitary Confinement

  Old History

  NOVEMBER:

  FOURTH WEEK

  A Conclave of Guilds

  An Aerial Scout

  Molecular Matters

  Back to Earth

  An Unexpected Gift

  Glass to Order

  A Selection Committee

  Old Haunts and New

  Dance Moves

  Rockets and More

  Planetarium al Fresco

  Fall of the First-Born

  Recent History

  DECEMBER

  Avant Moi, le Deluge

  Of Waterworks and Rocks

  A Morning at the Pictures

  Bruma

  Paper Trail

  To Believe or Not to Believe

  Voices from the Void

  Phony War

  The Thingamajig

  Priming Prim

  Shenanigans

  Light Show for One

  Last Chance Saloon

  Treading Carefully

  An Excursion

  Desperate Measures

  Democracy’s Day

  The Rotating Sphere

  Tremor

  Straighten the Rope I

  Straighten the Rope II

  Acknowledgements

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  The Heron

  p. v

  Incus Major

  ‘Harfoot would like to bottle these clouds.

  Nobody will believe them otherwise.’

  p. 7

  The Kraken

  ‘. . . a pantomime horror lumbers from the cave, spikes proud of

  the back like a flustered porcupine . . .’

 
p. 81

  The Tarot

  ‘Someone you knew ended badly . . .’

  p. 134

  London

  ‘Keep to the river, Fortemain had said, and you cannot miss it . . .’

  p. 149

  The Cat-Boy

  ‘. . . a grisly jigsaw of cat and boy . . .’

  p. 208

  Underground

  ‘You’re the historian: you look backwards.’

  p. 229

  The Ice-Dragon

  ‘. . . a bellowing roar and a crackle like breaking sticks . . .’

  p. 236

  Finch’s Friend

  ‘. . . a luminous stag beetle, a species unknown to him . . .’

  p. 288

  The Moleman

  ‘A giant mole – and yet, not quite . . .’

  p. 318

  The Balloon

  ‘The basket started falling as a second arrow struck the chain . . .’

  p. 371

  How to Break the Ice

  ‘Rugs, rugs and more rugs . . .’

  p. 434

  The Tower

  ‘A tower was slowly rising . . .’

  p. 464

  Old History

  63 Anno Domini. Britannia.

  Caligatae is the name they have coined for themselves – ‘footsloggers’, men who march the known world, anywhere that’s worthwhile.

  He eyes his caligae. More than a Roman soldier’s sandals, caligae are an emblem of Empire, their hobnailed soles stamping the alien earth. Yet practicalities matter too: they serve well in his homeland, and in Africa, where the sand flows through, and on any road anywhere – but in this pathless backwater of Britannia, with its midges, ticks and leeches, caligae let in the natural enemies. The woollen foot-sleeves help, but biting insects still climb the fibres to softer flesh. Here there are always quid pro quos.

  His name, once Gregorius, is now Gorius: the army needs short names, shoutable.

  He is the legion’s speculator, the lead scout. He likes the word for sounding like the role it describes: a mix of looking, hope, guesswork and working alone.

  Ferns tickle his ears; the helmet is off, lest it catch the light. He reads the land as those below will read it: the folds, the shifting skyline, the cross-hatching of bracken and earth. With his tanned skin, he blends in.

  He has been here an hour. Time drags when a scene is familiar – the standing stones, the doomed men in white robes, the primitive huts fashioned with clay, animal dung and straw. Yet the idiocy of these particular barbari defies precedent, for they abandon the island, their one defensible position – some by coracle, others filing in full view through open meadowland – to converge on a wood which rises steeply to the valley rim: a trap of their own making.

  Cavalry canter along the river, spearing the beached coracles to cut off escape by water. The infantry, dividing into three equal sections, descends from the north. The orders are short, the reaction instant.

  Gorius admires the strategy, honed by months of similar operations and the perfection of Roman manoeuvre. About the slaughter of the innocent, he is more squeamish; he looks away. To the south beyond the river, an earthy prominence dominates the flat marshland. He thinks of a burial mound, although there is no path in.

  He resumes his watch on the approaching battle. The barbari have retreated into the trees. This is child’s play: skirmishers go in first, fanning out to seal the sides. Cavalry comb the grassland for covered pits, stabbing at the ground and finding none. The legionaries leave their shields and javelins beside the wood; in the congested trees, a short sword is quicker.

  The nape of his neck tingles. Where are the cries of the women and children? He recalls the mix of unease and reverence this settlement generates in neighbouring communities. He hears only slashed undergrowth and soldiers’ oaths; orders lose certainty. The legionaries drift out, as hounds might after losing a scent.

  This is his task, Gorius with his hunter’s eyes: finding the hidden ways, forestalling ambush. He marks their vanishing point, dashes to his tethered horse and gallops down.

  ‘Now you can earn your bloody keep,’ growls his tribune, Ferox by nickname and ferox by nature.

  Gorius does not want the ground more trampled than it is. ‘Call them all out, sir – leave this to me.’

  ‘And when you find them, what then?’ Ferox follows his speculator in, sword drawn.

  Gorius pauses, points and moves on, like the dappled hunting dogs in Gaul. It is difficult translating unfamiliar ground seen from above to the place itself, but he narrows his search to a deep hollow whose upward slope is too severe to climb quickly; nobody has tried. Hobnailed caligae leave spoor, but smoother prints dominate here, bare feet. He crawls on all fours as Ferox mocks, and then he finds it: a lattice of twig and fern fronds, near invisible, held to the ground with pegs. He lifts them to reveal a white tablet, fine as any Roman marble, and incised with a flower. The workmanship is exquisite, surely beyond these savages. Ferox runs his sword across it, leaving not a scratch.

  ‘A gate,’ suggests Gorius. ‘Has to be.’

  The lines on Ferox’s face map a man with little laughter, but now his eyes sparkle as he slaps his thighs, causing the leather thongs of his uniform to swing back and forth between his legs. He bellows like a bull: a gate for grown men, one metre square?

  Gorius rests the palm of his hand on the tile. The dark hairs on his wrist stand proud, prickling with energy. Tentative now, he steps forward – and disappears.

  Laughter strangling to a snarl, Ferox follows.

  977 Anno Domini. A remote monastery.

  By dint of one monk’s remarkable chronicle of events, as impartial in its treatment of saints as of pagan kings, Jarrow is still reputed to be, two centuries on, the greatest centre of learning north of Rome.

  Brother Hilarion in his humbler monastery nurses a like ambition, which brings him to his abbot’s office.

  ‘I understand you have an urge to set down like Brother Bede.’

  ‘Yes – but not the history of men.’

  ‘And what is wrong with men?’

  Brother Hilarion does not say what he thinks. If Man is made in God’s image, God must be terrible indeed.

  ‘I prefer the gentler days of Creation – flora, fauna and celestial happenings.’

  The abbot nods. ‘They say you have a gift for description, and a special eye.’

  This is true. No leaf or feather or star is quite like another to Hilarion. ‘But I fear I seek my own renown – that I have fallen prey to pride.’

  ‘Everyone talks of Jarrow, nobody of us – and who accuses Brother Bede of vanity?’ The abbot crosses himself as a sign of respect. ‘How far would you travel?’

  Brother Hilarion feels his world turn from a cell three steps square to miles and miles of forest, marsh and pasture. An epic answer comes without thinking. ‘I would journey from the southern sea to the northern wall.’

  ‘All of Britannia that is! Take two horses, supplies, whatever you need by way of paper, quills and ink. A lay assistant will join you. Young Harfoot is strong. He can bear arms – and he has worked in the scriptorium.’

  Brother Hilarion hangs his head as the abbot blesses him – a rarity reserved for the most demanding tasks. The abbot sees Hilarion to the door. ‘When you return, you will dedicate this work—’

  ‘To the monastery.’

  ‘By name only?’

  ‘I will include my humble and distinguished abbot.’

  A wave and a rare smile. He has found the right response.

  Within an hour of leaving they encounter a new butterfly: papilio.

  ‘Pliny the Elder recorded them so why shouldn’t we?’ declares the monk.

  Harfoot unpacks the instruments of record with a tidy eye. This is to
be the first entry on the first page. He records the day, the month, the orange tips to the white wings and the insect’s size by a wooden rule he has developed for the purpose. An hour passes before they move on.

  They have an instant affinity. Harfoot’s sunny disposition lightens the intensity of his master’s vision. Their journey will end forty years later with a phenomenon that will make the sweeping events in Brother Bede’s great chronicle look ordinary.

  December 1017. The Rotherweird Valley.

  Forty years on, and the mission has changed. Their early books filled too quickly with much that was commonplace and they bequeathed them to monasteries along the way. For the last decade, there has been but one book, home only to the local and the rare.

  Word of mouth brings them to this escarpment rim.

  The valley below keeps its own weather, a different degree of winter. A frozen river encircles an island, in appearance a bone necklace.

  ‘What were those local mutterings?’ asks Brother Hilarion. He is forgetful now, his voice feeble, speech an effort.

  ‘A flying serpent.’

  The monk needs only a cue. ‘Ah yes: rare rocks and butterflies with blue-white wings, if we had time to wait a season.’

  ‘And a plant that never flowers,’ adds Harfoot.

  The furrows in Brother Hilarion’s face shape to a smile. ‘Enough to hazard the journey then,’ he says, ‘even on the shortest day of the year.’

  Their two ponies, refractory and apprehensive, pick their way. A huge rock stabs the sky from the island’s summit like an accusing finger. A circular hole near the apex catches the light, suggestive of an eye. In the marshland to the southeast is a turfed prominence, apparently manmade, terra firma in the bog. Brother Hilarion feels beset by pagan images.

  He notes the grey threads in his younger companion’s hair, and the bald crown, which now matches his: Nature’s tonsure is testimony to so many cliff paths, moors and mountains traversed together, as are their feet protruding through their sandals like tuberous roots. Age has deepened the bond between them, as it has altered the dependencies. Harfoot’s tasks are multiplying. He describes for Brother Hilarion the finer details of the view, the stealthier sounds, and his vocabulary burgeons in consequence.

  On reaching the valley floor, they look skywards and Harfoot points. ‘You see the darkness in the blue, Brother.’ Their magnum opus has a page devoted to Nature’s more peculiar clouds.

  ‘How are they shaped?’