In the weeks after Suzanna’s disappearance he’d bought a dozen newspapers a day, scanning each page for some report of her, or the carpet, or Shadwell. But there was nothing, and eventually – unable to bear the daily disappointment – he’d stopped looking. Nor was there any further visit from Hobart or his men – which was in its way bad news. He, Cal, had become an irrelevancy. The story, if it was still being written, was running on without him.
He became so frightened he’d forget the Fugue that he took the risk of writing down all that he could remember of the night there, which, when he set himself to the task, was depressingly little. He wrote the names down too: Lemuel Lo; Apolline Dubois; Frederick Cammell …; set them all down at the back of his diary, in the section reserved for telephone numbers, except that there were no numbers for these people; nor addresses either. Just uncommon names to which he was less and less able to attach faces.
3
On some nights he had dreams, from which he would wake with tears on his face.
Geraldine consoled him as best she could, given that he claimed not to recall these dreams when he woke. That was in a sense true. He brought nothing into consciousness that words could encapsulate: only an aching sadness. She would lie beside him then, and stroke his hair, and tell him that though these were difficult times things could be much worse. She was right, of course. And by and by the dreams dwindled, until they finally ceased altogether.
4
In the last week of January, with Christmas bills still outstanding and too little money to pay them with, he sold the pigeons, with the exception of 33 and his mate. This pair he kept, though the reason why was harder and harder to remember; and by the end of the following month had been forgotten entirely.
IV
THE NOMADS
1
he passage of winter was certainly weary for Cal, but for Suzanna it held perils far worse than boredom and bad dreams.
Those perils had begun the day after the night of the Fugue, when she and the Peverelli brothers had so narrowly escaped capture by Shadwell. Her life, and Jerichau’s, with whom she’d been re-united in the street beyond Shearman’s estate, had scarcely been out of danger since.
She had been warned of this at Capra’s House, and a good deal else beside. But of all she’d learned, the subject that had left the deepest impression was the Scourge. The Councillors had grown pale talking of how close to extinction the Families had come. And though the enemies now snapping at her heels – Shadwell and Hobart – were of a different order entirely, she could not help but believe they and the Scourge sprang from the same poisonous earth. They were all, in their way, enemies of life.
And they were equally relentless. Staying one step ahead of the Salesman and his new ally was exhausting. She and Jerichau had been granted a few hours’ grace on that first day, when a false trail laid by the brothers had successfully confused the hounds, but Hobart had picked up the scent again by noon. She’d had no choice but to leave the city that afternoon, in a second-hand car she’d bought to replace the police vehicle they’d stolen. Using her own car, she knew, would be like sending up smoke signals.
One fact surprised her: there was no sign, either on the day of re-weaving, or subsequently, of Immacolata. Was it possible that the Incantatrix and her sisters had elected to stay in the carpet; or even become trapped there against their will? Perhaps that was too much to hope for. Yet the menstruum – which she was increasingly able to control and use – never carried a tremor of Immacolata’s presence.
Jerichau kept a respectful distance in those early weeks; made uneasy, perhaps, by her preoccupation with the menstruum. He could be of no use in her learning process: the force she owned was a mystery to him; his maleness feared it. But by degrees she convinced him that neither it nor she (if they could be defined as separate entities) bore him the slightest ill-will, and he grew a little easier with her powers. She was even able to talk with him about how she’d first gained access to the menstruum, and how it had subsequently delved into Cal. She was grateful for the chance to talk about these events – they’d remained locked up in her for too long, fretted over. He had few answers for her, but the very telling seemed to heal her anxieties. And the less anxious she became, the more the menstruum showed its worth. It gave her a power that proved invaluable in those weeks: a premonitory skill that showed her ghost-forms of the future. She’d see Hobart’s face on the stairs outside the room where they were hiding, and know that he’d be standing in that very spot before too long. Sometimes she saw Shadwell too, but mostly it was Hobart, his eyes desperate, his thin mouth shaping her name. That was the signal to move on, of course, whatever the time of day or night. Pack up their bags, and the carpet, and go.
She had other talents too, all rooted in the menstruum. She could see the lights Jerichau had first shown her on Lord Street; and after a surprisingly short space they became quite unremarkable to her: merely another piece of information – like the expression on a face, or the tone of a voice – that she used to read a stranger’s temperament. And there was another visionary skill she now possessed, somewhere between the premonitions and the haloes: that is, she could see the consequence of natural processes. It wasn’t just the bud she saw, but the blossom it would become in spring, and if she stretched her sight a little further, the fruit that would come after it. This grasp of potential had several consequences. For one, she gave up eating eggs. For another, she found herself fighting off a beguiling fatalism, which, if she hadn’t resisted it, might have left her adrift in a sea of inevitabilities, going whatever way the future chose to take her.
It was Jerichau who helped save her from this dangerous tide, with his boundless enthusiasm for being and doing. Though the blossom, and the withering of the blossom, were inevitable, Human and Seerkind had choices to make before death: roads to travel, roads to ignore.
One of those choices was whether to stay companions or become lovers. They chose to be lovers, though it happened so naturally Suzanna could not pinpoint the moment of decision. Certainly they never talked explicitly about it; though perhaps it had been in the air since the conversation in the field outside Capra’s House. It just seemed right that they take that comfort from each other. He was a sophisticated bed-partner, responsive to subtle changes in mood; capable of raucous laughter one moment and great gravity the next.
He was also, much to her delight, a brilliant thief. Despite the vicissitudes of life on the run, they ate (and travelled) like royalty, simply because he was so light-fingered. She wasn’t certain how he managed to be so successful – whether it was some subtle rapture he employed to divert a watcher’s eye, or whether he was simply born a thief. Whatever his method, he could steal anything, large or small, and scarcely a day went by without their tasting some expensive delicacy, or indulging his new-found passion for champagne.
It made the chase easier in more practical ways too, for they were able to change cars as often as they liked, leaving a trail of abandoned vehicles along the route.
That route took them in no particular direction; they simply drove where their instincts suggested. Intentionality, Jerichau had said, was the easiest way to get caught. I never intend to steal, he explained to Suzanna one day as they drove, not until I’ve done it; so nobody ever knows what I’m up to, because I don’t either. She liked this philosophy; it appealed to her sense of humour. If she ever got back to London – to her clay and her kiln – she would see if the notion made aesthetic as well as criminal sense. Maybe letting go was the only true control. What kind of pots would she make if she didn’t try to think about it?
The trick, however, didn’t dislodge their pursuers, merely kept them at a distance. And on more than one occasion that distance narrowed uncomfortably.
2
They had been two days in Newcastle, in a small hotel on Rudyard Street. The rain had been falling steadily for a week now, and they’d been talking over the possibility of leaving the country, going somewhere sunnier
. Serious problems attended such an option however. For one, Jerichau had no passport, and any attempt to get him one would put them both under scrutiny; for another, it was possible Hobart had alerted ports and airports to their existence. And third, even if they could travel, the carpet would be more difficult to transport. They’d almost certainly be obliged to let it out of their sight, and this Suzanna was not willing to do.
The argument went back and forth while they ate their pizza and drank their champagne and the rain lashed against the window.
And then, the fluttering began in her lower belly, that she’d come to recognize as an omen. She looked towards the door, and for a sickening moment she thought the menstruum had been too late with its warning, for she saw the door open and there was Hobart, staring straight at her.
‘What is it?’ Jerichau said.
His words made her realize her error. The ghost she saw was more solid than she’d ever seen before, which probably meant the event it foreshadowed was imminent.
‘Hobart,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think we’ve got much time.’
He made a pained face, but didn’t question her authority on the matter. If she said Hobart was near, then near he was. She’d become the augurer; the witch: reading the air, and always finding bad news.
Moving was an elaborate business, because of the carpet. At each stopping-place they had to convince either the proprietor or the manager that the carpet came with them to their room. When they left, it had to be manhandled back into whichever vehicle they’d commandeered that day. All of which drew unwelcome attention. There was no alternative however. Nobody had ever promised that Heaven would be a light load to carry.
3
Less than thirty minutes later, Hobart pushed the door of the hotel suite open. The room was still warm with the woman’s breath. But she and her nigger had gone.
Again! How many times in the last months had he stood in their litter and breathed the same air she’d breathed, and seen the shape of her body left on the bed? But always too late. Always they were ahead of him, and away, and all he was left with was another haunted room.
There would be no restful nights for him, no, nor peaceful days, until she was caught and under his thumb. Her capture had become his obsession; and her punishment too.
He knew all too well that in this decadent age, when every perversion had its apologist, she would be eloquently defended once caught. That was why he came in search of her personally. he and his few, so that he might show her the true face of the Law before the liberals came pleading. She would suffer for what she’d done to his heroes. She would cry out for mercy, and he would be strong, and deaf to her pleas.
He had an ally in this of course: Shadwell.
There was not one amongst his superiors in the Force whom he trusted as he trusted that man; they were like twin souls. He took strength from that.
And, oddly, from the book too, the book of codes that he’d taken from her. He’d had the volume studied minutely; the paper and the binding, all analysed for some hidden significance. None had been found. Which left the words and the pictures. These too had been studied by experts. The stories were apparently quite straightforward faery-tales. The illustrations, like the text, also pretended innocence.
But he wasn’t fooled. The book meant something more than Once upon a time, he didn’t doubt that for an instant. When he finally had the woman to himself, he’d burn its meaning from her, and no faint-heart would stop him.
4
They’d been more cautious after the near-miss in Newcastle. Instead of visiting major cities, where the police presence was substantial, they started to find smaller communities. That had its own disadvantages, of course. The arrival of two strangers, and a carpet, aroused curiosity and questions.
But the change of tactics worked. Never staying in any place more than thirty-six hours, and moving irrationally from town to town, village to village, the trail grew colder behind them. Days free of the hounds turned to weeks, and weeks became months, and it was almost as if their pursuers had given up the chase.
In that time Suzanna’s thoughts turned often to Cal. So much had happened since that day beside the Mersey, when he’d professed love to her. She’d often wondered how much of what he’d felt had been some unconscious knowledge of how the menstruum had touched him, entered him, and how much had been love as it was conventionally understood. Sometimes she longed to pick up the ‘phone and speak to him; indeed on several occasions she’d tried to do just that. Was it paranoia that prevented her from speaking, or was there – as her instinct intimated – another presence on the line, monitoring the call? On the fourth and fifth occasions it wasn’t even Cal who answered, but a woman who demanded to know who this was, and when Suzanna remained silent threatened to report her. She didn’t call again; it simply wasn’t worth the risk.
Jerichau had an opinion on the matter.
‘Mooney’s a Cuckoo,’ he said, when Cal’s name came up in conversation. ‘You should forget him.’
‘If you’re a Cuckoo, you’re worth nothing, is that it?’ she said. ‘What about me?’
‘You belong with us now,’ he said. ‘You’re Seerkind.’
‘There’s so much you don’t know about me,’ she said. ‘Years and years of just being an ordinary girl –’
‘You were never ordinary.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I was. Still am. Here,” She tapped her forehead. ‘Sometimes I wake up and I can’t believe what’s happened … happening … to me. When I think of the way I was.’
‘It’s no use to look back,’ said Jerichau. ‘No use thinking of what could have been.’
‘You don’t do that any more, do you? I’ve noticed. You don’t even talk about the Fugue.’
Jerichau smiled. ‘Why should I?’ he said, ‘I’m happy as I am. With you. Maybe it’ll be different tomorrow. Maybe it was different yesterday, I forget. But today, now. I’m happy. I even begin to like the Kingdom.’
She remembered him lost in the crowd on Lord Street; how he’d changed.
‘So what if you never saw the Fugue again?’
He pondered this a moment. ‘Who knows? Better not to think about it.’
It was an improbable romance. She, learning all the time from the power inside her a new vision. He, daily more seduced by the very world whose trivialities she was seeing with dearer and dearer eyes. And with that comprehension, so unlike the simplifications she’d been ruled by hitherto, she became even more certain that the carpet they carried was a last hope, while he – whose home the Weave contained – seemed increasingly indifferent to its fate, living in the moment and for the moment, touched scarcely at all by hope or regret. He talked less and less of finding a safe place for the Fugue to reside, more and more of something tantalizing he’d seen in the street or on the television.
Often now, though he stayed with her and told her she could always rely upon him, she felt she was alone.
5
And somewhere behind her, Hobart was also alone; even amongst his men, or with Shadwell, alone: dreaming of her and the scent she left to mock him, and of the brutalities he’d deliver upon her.
In these dreams his hands would be flaming, as they’d been once before, and as she fought him the flames would lick up the walls of the room, and crawl across the ceiling, until the chamber was an oven. And he’d wake with his hands in front of his face, running not with fire but sweat, glad of the Law to keep him from panic, and glad too that he was on the side of the angels.
V
OUR LADY OF THE BONES
1
hese were dark days for Shadwell.
He had emerged from the Fugue in high spirits – possessed of a new breadth of purpose – only to have the world he wished so much to rule snatched from beneath his nose. Not only that, but Immacolata, to whom he might have looked for assistance, had apparently elected to remain in the Weave. She was, after all, one of the Seerkind, even though they’d spurned her. Per
haps he shouldn’t be so surprised that once back on soil she’d once pretended to she’d been moved to remain there.
He was not completely bereft of company. Norris, the Hamburger King, was still at his beck and call, still content with servitude. And of course there was Hobart. The Inspector was probably insane, but that was all to the good. And he had one particular aspiration which Shadwell knew he might one day need to turn to his own ends. That was, to lead – as Hobart put it – a righteous crusade.
There was little use of a crusade, however, with nothing to mount it against. Five long months had passed, and every day that went by with the carpet unfound his desperation grew. Unlike others who’d stepped from the Fugue that night, he remembered the experience in the finest detail. The jacket – charged with the raptures of the realm – kept the memories fresh. All too fresh. Scarcely an hour passed without his craving to be there.
There was more to his hunger than simply the desire to possess the Fugue. In these long weeks of waiting he’d come to a yet profounder ambition. If, and when, that soil was once more his to tread, he’d do what none of the Seerkind had ever dared; he’d go into the Gyre. This notion, once conceived, tormented his every waking moment. Penalties might have to be paid for such trespass, but would they not be worth the risk? Hidden behind that mask of cloud, the Mantle, was a concentration of magic unequalled in the history of the Seerkind, and therefore, in the history of the world.
Creation held court in the Gyre. To walk there, and see its secrets for himself, would that not be a kind of Godhood?
2
And today, he had the setting to match the tenor of these thoughts: this small church dedicated to St Philomena and St Callixtus, hidden away in the concrete wasteland of the City of London. He had not come here for the good of his soul; he had been invited here, by the priest who was presently conducting the lunchtime mass for a handful of office workers. A man he’d never met, who had written saying he had important news; news Shadwell could profit by. The Salesman had come without hesitation.