Lost Acre Read online

  Lost Acre

  Also By

  Also By Andrew Caldecott

  Rotherweird

  Wyntertide

  Title

  Illustrated by

  Sasha Laika

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2019 by Jo Fletcher Books

  an imprint of

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2019 Andrew Caldecott 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 78747 376 8

  TPB ISBN 978 1 78429 806 7

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78429 804 3

  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 © 2019 Leo Nickolls www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Frontispiece

  Dedication

  For my children

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Outsiders

  Doktor Heinrich FlascheA physicist Jonah OblongA modern historian, Master of Form IV

  Dr Obern A plastic surgeon VariaA ballerina

  The town of Rotherweird

  Rhombus SmithHeadmaster Hengest StrimmerHead of North Tower Science Vixen ValourhandA North Tower scientist Gregorius JonesHead of Physical Education, Master of Form VIB

  Godfery FanguinFormer teacher ‘Bomber’ FanguinHis wife, a fine cook Angela TrimbleSchool Porter Sidney SnorkelThe Mayor Cindy SnorkelThe Mayor’s wife GorhamburyThe Town Clerk Madge BrownAssistant Head Librarian Marmion FinchThe Herald Fennel Finch (née Croyle)His wife Percy FinchTheir son

  Bert Polk Co-owner of The Polk Land & Water Company Boris PolkCo-owner of The Polk Land & Water Company Orelia RocOwner of Baubles & Relics, an antique shop AggsA general person

  Estella ScryA clairvoyant Ember VineA sculptress Amber Vine Ember’s daughter Gurney ThomesMaster of the Apothecaries Sister PrudenceA Senior Apothecary Portly BowesThe Town Crier Horace CuttsA butcher

  Mr Jeavons The town archivist Mr Blossom Master of the Metalworkers Mr Norrington A baker

  Denzil PrimHead Gaoler of Rotherweird Gaol Bendigo Sly Snorkel’s eavesman Mors ValettThe town undertaker Former lead characters, now deceased:

  Mrs Deirdre BanterOrelia’s aunt Hayman SaltMunicipal Head Gardener Professor Vesey BolithoAstronomer and Head of South Tower Science (see Fortemain) Robert Flask A modern historian Sir Veronal SlickstoneA businessman and philanthropist Rotherweird Countrysiders

  Bill FerdyBrewer and landlord of The Journeyman’s Gist Gwen Ferdy Bill’s daughter Megan FerdyBill’s wife FerensenA nomadic close neighbour of the Ferdys’

  Carcasey Jack A torturer GabrielA woodcarver

  Rotherweirders working abroad

  Tancred EverthorneAn artist Pomeny TigheAn ambitious young woman Persephone BrownMadge Brown’s sister Elizabethans

  Sir Henry Grassal Owner of Rotherweird Manor Sir Robert OxenbridgeConstable of the Tower of London Geryon WynterA mystic

  Calx BoleWynter’s servant Hieronymus SeerSee Ferensen Morval SeerHieronymus’ sister, a chronicler and artist Thibo FortemainSee Professor Bolitho Estella See Scry

  Nona See Madge Brown

  TykeAn enigma

  Bevis VibesAn orphan

  Benedict RocA Master Carver Hubert FinchRotherweird’s first Herald The Clauds (all deceased save Ambrose XIII)

  Ambrose I Priest and poet Ambrose VIIThe Vagrant Vicar, an author Ambrosia IA dissolute of the Stuart court Ambrose XIII The Unlucky Creatures of the mixing-point

  StrixAn owl-boy

  PanjanA pigeon boy

  The ManceA dog-boy, also known as Cur Old History

  Brother HilarionA monk and naturalist Brother HarfootHis lay companion Coram Ferdy A young boy GoriusA speculator (scout) in the Roman legion XX Valeria Victrix (see Gregorius Jones) FeroxA legionary (and weaselman) Druid hedge-priests

  Contents

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Old History

  PROLOGUE

  A Town of Sorts

  OUT OF TOWN

  Valourhand Penitent

  A Historian in Waiting

  IN TOWN

  The Winter Solstice

  First Orders

  A Guest of Honour

  Decision Time

  OUT OF TOWN

  Winter Cleaning

  UNDER TOWN

  Finch Underground

  Of Household Gods

  Free Fall

  ‘I return to my own’

  Filling a Void

  The Foreign Coin

  Actions and Reactions

  A Visit to the Butcher

  IN TOWN

  Checks and Balances

  Advent Windows

  A Hollow Christmas

  A Warning Ignored

  The Manor Reclaimed

  True or False?

  Servant or Master

  Of Transport and Tears

  Without Precedent

  Old History

  IN AND OUT OF TOWN

  Keeping Up Appearances

  Wynter’s Blade

  Last Chance Saloon

  Envoi

  The Rogue Mechanicals

  Filling the Gaps

  Manifesto

  An Unexpected Synergy

  Caveat Emptor

  Midnight Ramblers

  The Dark Rickshaw

  OUT OF TOWN

  Spring Steps

  A Bard in Lost Acre

  Old History

  IN TOWN

  A Clairvoyant Looks Back

  Île Flottante

  Payday

  None of Your Business

  OUT OF TOWN

  Mr Fluffy

  The Cost of Taking the Shilling

  OUT OF TOWN

  Therapy Time

  IN TOWN

  Corps de Ballet

  Dressings Up and a Dressing Down

  Return of the Natives

  Visceral Reactions

  Who’s Who?

  Open Doors

  After the Lord Mayor’s Show

  Fly-by-Night

  A Trap to Lay

  The Fanguins Have a Dilemma

  The Pool of Mixed Intentions

  After the Hunt

  Old History

  IN TOWN

  The Morning After

  The Tower Opens

  Taking Advantage

  The Temptation of Prudence

  Of Webbed Feet

  Old History

  OUT OF TOWN

  Habits Die Hard

  Pre-emptive Bids

  The Reluctant Skipper

  Last Things

  The Double Address

  Down into the Dark

  A Loss Found

  A Gathering of Forces

  Oblong Oblivious

  ENDGAME

  A Sight to Behold

  An Ultimatum

  A Mixing of Opposites
r />   The Poisoning

  Escape by Water

  The Finishing Line

  Myrmidon

  The Tree of Good and Evil

  Two Journeys: Over Ground and Underground

  Is Ignorance Bliss?

  A Phoenix Rises

  Dead Men’s Shoes

  Absolution

  A Final View

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Marsh

  Wynter’s Arrival

  ‘A new arrival’

  Orelia Sleeping

  ‘It felt like a holy place . . .’

  Wynter/Bole

  ‘Servant or Master’

  Snorkel’s Fall

  ‘His limbs danced’

  Mistletoe

  ‘A visceral death’

  Carcasey Jack

  ‘I remove the crust.’

  Strix’s Mother

  ‘Consequences’

  Oblong Meets Persephone Brown

  ‘Oblong and Persephone’

  White Tile

  ‘The white tile’

  Strimmer

  ‘The pack had been starved’

  Scry

  ‘Part transformed’

  Gabriel’s House

  ‘The meadow turned red-orange . . .’

  The Underground Lake

  ‘Fashioned by nature’

  Morval's Easel

  ‘A final view’

  Old History

  66 million years BC (or so).

  Creatures of the deep scramble for land, so toxic is the irradiated dust. Creatures of the land seek water to cleanse their coated hides. It is noon, but the sun hides her face, as she has for months. After the blast and the pulse of radiation, darkness and ice invade: impact winter. The skeletal ribs of giant herbivores protrude through the snow like a ship’s graveyard. Everywhere photosynthesis fails.

  Alive, just, lungs labouring to expel the clogging soot, she stumbles on, dragging her spent wings behind: the last of her species. It is not the urge for survival which impels her, but the eggs she carries, hope in a shell.

  It is sudden as lightning.

  Her physical being is sundered, only to reappear in a world transformed – forests basking in sunlight, pure air, the scent of fresh water, green grass underfoot. She ignores the unfamiliar insects scissoring past and hauls her ailing body along the river line.

  This is a time without names, but later they will place her in the stars.

  Draco.

  AD 63. Lost Acre.

  Opposition roots in local ritual, not the hearts or minds of individuals: destroy their spirit by destroying their places of worship. These are Rome’s standing orders from Africa to Gaul. They even reach the legion XX Valeria Victrix in Britannia, the empire’s remotest province.

  So now auxiliaries set about destroying the stone circle on the crown of the island with mallets, fire and sour wine. Only the central stone is too deep and durable to break.

  Downriver, the legionaries face a more frustrating time, for their quarry – an entire community – has taken flight in coracles and vanished without trace into the oak woods which rise from the river.

  Gorius, the legion’s lead scout, its speculator, is tasked to observe, analyse and advise. Outside the wood, he can hear the coarse expletives of the legionaries above the scraping hiss of swords returning to scabbards. He wonders if the unexpected but perfectly sculpted tile at his feet holds the answer.

  Beside him, his tribune watches, incredulous, as Gorius’ body disintegrates on stepping forward.

  Gorius arrives in a wholly unfamiliar place. Its nature tallies with nowhere. Even the grass is different.

  Ferox joins him minutes later and snarls at the surrounding press of tribesmen.

  ‘He is mine,’ barks a hedge-priest in dark robes, pointing his staff at Ferox. Behind him, tribesmen shout, jabbing their spears skywards, women jeer and silent children glare. Their cheeks and foreheads are smeared with patterns in red and blue. A young man holds aloft a cage. Weasel heads dart in and out of the squared bars.

  Opposite stands what must be a rival faction. Their priest is in white, almost a physical twin but for the colour of his robes. He approaches without hostility while his supporters maintain a disciplined calm.

  ‘Pertines ad me,’ he says to Gorius in Latin. You belong to me. ‘Be happy. Fate has chosen for you the better path.’

  AD 409. The coast of Britannia.

  Gorius has travelled far to witness this moment of madness. He looks down on the ships bobbing in the bay as they set their sails, a hotchpotch reflecting the empire’s fading power. The occasional galley sits alongside Celtic ships with their flat bottoms and high prows and merchantmen with decks cleared for horses and ballistae. At least the Count of the Saxon Shore still knows how to organise.

  It is a brilliant day; the white cliffs dazzle; seabirds dance behind the sterns in the hope of discarded offal.

  A local, arms whorled in woad, sidles along the clifftop. Gorius’ tanned skin marks him out as one of them, a man in the know.

  ‘Are they all leaving?’ the local asks.

  ‘All the soldiers, to a man.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Their general would kill an emperor to become an emperor. Then another general will set out to kill him. This is a retreat to nowhere.’ Here, he thinks, with these natural frontiers, they could have fashioned a new empire from the ashes of the old. Instead, they limp back to a doomed homeland.

  He has had a life of sorts, drifting from camp to camp, playing the retired veteran, but now . . . now only he and Ferox, his tribune, who is still loose in the other place, remain. And five centuries or more must pass before he can fulfil his oath to the hedge-priest and repay his debt for the longest of long lives.

  He sits and watches as masts and decks merge to mere blurs and Britannia is left to her own devices.

  AD 1017. The Rotherweird Valley.

  Gorius sits on a grassy bank where meadows yield to rising beech woods. He tips his head and basks in the midsummer’s day sun, which, tiring at last, has a coppery sheen. Only the unusual leaves tumbling down the slope testify to something out of the ordinary – that, and his age. He smiles. Demigod is too strong a word; a masculine dryad, perhaps. Since his brief transformation, his hearing has been enhanced from birdsong to insects – and footsteps, too. He does not turn; the approaching aura is enough.

  They called them hedge-priests in the legion: they looked alike, with white hair falling to the shoulders, faces like arid riverbeds, spindly arms and legs coiled with sinews and veins. After such a long absence, he is unsure whether this is his captor or not, but this hedge-priest clearly knows the distant past.

  ‘Did you see your tribune?’ he asks.

  Still Gorius does not turn, though he drops his head in acknowledgement before returning it to the sun. ‘No, I avoid him, but he’s a survivor, is Ferox.’

  The hedge-priest sits down beside him and looks down the valley towards the settlement. ‘They haven’t followed you.’

  ‘The Hammer did its work. They’re scattered all over the island like soldiers after a victory.’

  ‘It took years to perfect that brew, and I was lucky in my brewer.’ The old man’s hands are stained purple by hops. ‘What now?’ he asks.

  Gorius adjusts the question and returns it. ‘I suppose there’ll be a next time after another millennium.’

  ‘There will, but you’re safe. You can’t play the Green Man twice; not you, not me.’

  Pieces fall into place: they are Green Men both. The indelible bond encourages candour.

  Gorius voices his concern. ‘A rope can lose only so many threads before it snaps. The bond between here and the other place is weakening.’

  ‘It will be worse next time,’ replies the hedge-priest, as if presenting fact, not opinion. A hand delves into his robe and emerges with an offering. ‘A token of my
gratitude,’ he says with a smile, which is slightly pinched.

  Two long tubes intertwine like the snake on a caduceus before joining in a single mouthpiece. The surface is decorated with fangs, claws and wings: exquisite workmanship in the finest silver. Letters run along the sides, an unfamiliar word: escharion.

  Gorius, ever the scout, weighs the probabilities and trusts in intuition. The pipes are too perfectly aligned for mere decoration. This is an instrument, one which plays for a purpose, not a token of gratitude, or not just that. It will initiate a new task which, for whatever reason, the hedge-priest is unwilling to specify.

  ‘Such craftsmanship is above my station, but thank you.’

  ‘Another time perhaps,’ replies the hedge-priest, the instrument vanishing back into his robes.

  Gorius replays the exchange: a token of my gratitude, the hedge-priest had said, not ours. ‘What became of your people?’ he asks.

  It is the hedge-priest’s turn to adjust a question and return it. ‘What became of Rome?’ he replies, turning back the way he had come.

  Gorius gazes across the grassland. The sun is losing intensity, its warmth now lazy, burnished and benign. He loves this valley with her fluctuating moods and colours. He will stay here, keeping fit and playing the fool when necessary.

  Far off – and this is intuition only – there will be a final mission, and that superbly wrought instrument, the escharion, will be there.

  PROLOGUE

  1

  A Town of Sorts

  How to distil the heart of a town? How to interpret first impressions, so often the most insightful? As with humankind, physique impresses before spirit: the showy places – here, Market Square dominated by the Town Hall, Parliament Chamber and the giant cowl of Doom’s Tocsin; the Golden Mean, the one street which runs straight and true; the flamboyant winding aerial walkway known as Aether’s Way.

  Then perhaps the conspicuous secrets: the forbidding (in both senses) wall enclosing the Manor and the large sign on the ornate portico of Escutcheon Place: HERALD – NO VISITORS.

  Next, the visitor’s eye might rest on the popular ports of call: the more alluring shops; The Journeyman’s Gist, the town’s single tavern; Rotherweird School; the Library, and Grove Gardens, the municipal green space. Add to these the cosmetic touches: the colourful costumes, the ubiquitous carvings in wood and stone and the multicoloured bicycle rickshaws whose silent vacuum technology highlights absentees from the wider world: no cars, no hoardings, no street signs, no road markings.