Was it the same sense the pigeons had possessed that he now navigated by? A dream-sense, beyond the reach of intellect or reason: a homing? That was how it felt. That he’d become a bird, orienting himself not by the stars (they were blotted by clouds), nor by the magnetic pole, but by the simple urge to go home; back to the orchard, where he’d stood in a ring of loving faces and spoken Mad Mooney’s verse.
As he drove he ransacked his head for other such fragments, so that he’d have something fresh to perform next time. Little rhymes came back from childhood, odd lines that he’d learned more for their music than their meaning.
‘Naked Heaven comes and goes,
Spits out seas and dyes the rose,
Puts on coats of wind and rain
And simply takes them off again.’
He was no more certain of what some were about now than he’d been as a child, but they came to his lips as if fresh-minted, secure in their rhythms and rhymes.
Some had a bitter sting:
‘The pestilence of families
Is not congenital disease
But feet that follow where the foot
That has proceeeded them was put.’
Others were fragments from poems which he’d either forgotten or never been taught in their entirety. One in particular kept coming back to him.
‘How I love the pie-bald horses!
Best of all, the pie-bald horses!’
That was the closing lines of something, he presumed, but of what he couldn’t remember.
There were plenty of other fragments. He recited the lines over and over as he drove, polishing his delivery, finding a new emphasis here, a fresh rhythm there.
There was no prompting from the back of his head; the poet was quite silent. Or was it that he and Mad Mooney were finally speaking with a single voice?
2
He crossed the border into Scotland about two-thirty in the morning and continued to drive North, the landscape becoming hillier and less populated as he drove. He was getting hungry, and his muscles were beginning to ache after so many hours of uninterrupted driving, but nothing short of Armageddon would have coaxed him to slow down or stop. With every mile he came nearer to Wonderland, in which a life too long delayed was waiting to be lived.
XII
RESOLUTION
1
uzanna sat beside Jerichau’s body for a long while, thinking, while trying all the time not to think. Down the hill the unweaving was still going on; the tide of the Fugue approaching her. But she couldn’t face the beauty of it, not at the moment. When the threads started to come within fifty yards of her she retreated, leaving Jerichau’s body where it lay.
Dawn was paling the clouds overhead. She decided to climb to higher ground so as to have an overview when day came. The higher she went the windier it became; a bitter wind, from the North. But it was worth the shivering, for the promontory she stood upon offered her a fine panorama, and as the day strengthened she realized just how cannily Shadwell had selected this valley. It was bounded on all sides by steep hills, whose slopes were bereft of any building, however humble. Indeed the only sign of human presence was the primitive track the convoy had followed to get here, which had most likely been used more in the last twenty-four hours than it had in its entire span hitherto.
It was on that road, as dawn brought colour to the hills, that she saw the car. It crept along the ridge of the hill a little way, then came to a halt. Its driver, minuscule from Suzanna’s vantage point, got out and surveyed the valley. It seemed the Fugue below was not visible to such a casual witness, for the driver got back into the car almost immediately as if realizing that he’d taken a wrong turning. He didn’t drive away however, as she’d expected. Instead he took the vehicle off the track, parking it out of sight amongst the gorse bushes. Then he got out again and began to walk in her direction, following a zig-zag route along the boulder-strewn hillside.
And now she began to think she recognized him; began to hope that her eyes did not deceive her, and that it was indeed Cal who was making his way towards her.
Had he seen her? It seemed not, for he was now starting to descend. She ran a little way to close the gap between them, and then climbed onto a rock and waved her arms. Her signal went unnoticed for several seconds, until by chance he glanced her way. He stopped, cupping his hand over his eyes. Then he changed directions and began to bound back up the slope towards her, and yes! it was Cal. Even then she feared some self-deception, until the sound of his raw breath reached her ears, and the squeak of his heels on the dewy grass.
He covered the last few yards between them stumbling more than running, and suddenly he was a moment away and she was crossing to meet his open arms, hugging him to her.
And this time it was she who said, ‘I love you,’ and answered his smiles with kisses and kisses.
2
They exchanged the bones of their stories as quickly as they could, leaving the meat for less urgent times.
‘Shadwell doesn’t want to sell the Fugue any longer,’ said Suzanna. ‘He wants to possess it.’
‘And play the Prophet forever?’ said Cal.
‘I doubt that. He’ll drop the pretence once he’s in control.’
‘Then we have to prevent him seizing control,’ said Cal. ‘Unmask him.’
‘Or simply kill him,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Let’s not linger then,’ he said.
They stood up and looked down at the world that now occupied the length and breadth of the valley beneath them. The unweaving was still not completed; filaments of light crept through the grass, spreading flora and fauna as they went.
Beyond the interface of Kingdom and Weaveworld the promised land gleamed. It was as if the Fugue had brought from sleep its own season, and that season was an everlasting spring.
There was a light in the shimmering trees, and in the fields, and rivers, that didn’t come from the sky overhead, which was sullen, but broke from every bud and droplet. Even the most ancient stone was remade today. Like the poems Cal had rehearsed as he’d driven. Old words, new magic.
‘It’s waiting for us,’ he said.
Together, they went down the hill.
Part Eight
The Return
‘You were about to tell me
something, child - but you
left off before you began.’
William Congreve
The Old Bachelor
I
STRATEGY
hadwell’s army of deliverance consisted of three main battalions.
The first, and by far the largest, was the mass of the Prophet’s followers, the converts whose fervour he had whipped to fanatical proportions, and whose devotion to him and to his promise of a new age knew no bounds. He had warned them that there would be bloodshed, and bloodshed they would have, much of it their own. But they were prepared for such sacrifice; indeed the wilder faction amongst them, chiefly Ye-me, the most hot-headed of the Families, were fairly itching to break some bones.
It was an enthusiasm Shadwell had already used – albeit discreetly – when occasional members of his congregation had called his preaching into question, and he was ready to use it again if there was any sign of softening in the ranks. He would of course do what he could to subdue the Fugue by rhetoric, but he didn’t much fancy his chances. His followers had been easily duped: their lives in the Kingdom had so immersed them in half-truths that they were ready to believe any fiction if it was properly advertised. But the Seerkind who had remained in the Fugue would not be so easily misled. That was when the truncheons and the pistols would be called into play.
The second part of his army was made up of Hobart’s confederates, choice members of the Squad Hobart had diligently prepared for a day of revolution that had never come. Shadwell had introduced them to the pleasures of his jacket, and they had all found something in the folds worth selling their souls for. Now they were his Elite, ready to defend his person to the death should circu
mstance demand.
The third and final battalion was less visible than the other two, but no less powerful for that. Its soldiers were the by-blows, the sons and daughters of the Magdalene: an unnumbered and unordered rabble whose resemblance to their fathers was usually remote, and whose natures ranged from the subtly lunatic to the beserk. Shadwell had made sure the sisters had kept their charges well hidden, as they were evidence of a corruption the Prophet could scarcely be associated with, but they were waiting, scrabbling at the veils Immacolata had flung around them, ready for release should the campaign demand such terrors.
He had planned his invasion with the precision of a Napoleon.
The first phase, which he undertook within an hour of dawn, was to go to Capra’s House, there to confront the Council of the Families before it had time to debate the situation. The approach was made as a triumphal march, with the Prophet’s car, its smoked glass windows concealing the passengers from the eyes of the inquisitive, leading a convoy of a dozen vehicles. In the back of the car Shadwell sat with Immacolata at his side. As they drove he offered his condolences on the death of the Magdalene.
‘I’m most distressed …’ he said quietly. ‘… we’ve lost a valued ally.’
Immacolata said nothing.
Shadwell took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit up. The cigarette, and the covetous way he had of smoking it, as if any moment it would be snatched from his lips, was utterly out of synch with the mask he wore, ‘I think we’re both aware of how this changes things,’ he said, his tone colourless.
‘What does it change?’ she said. How he liked the unease that was plain on her face.
‘You’re vulnerable,’ he reminded her. ‘Now more than ever. That concerns me.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ she insisted.
‘Oh but it might,’ he said softly. ‘We don’t know how much resistance we’re going to meet. It might be wise if you withdrew from the Fugue entirely.’
‘No! I want to see them burn.’
‘Understandable,’ Shadwell said. ‘But you’re going to be a target. And if we lose you, we lose access to the Magdalene’s children as well.’
Immacolata looked across at Shadwell. ‘Is that what this is about? You want the by-blows?’
‘Well… I think there’s some tactical –’
‘Have them,’ she interrupted. Take them, they’re yours. My gift to you. I don’t want to be reminded of them. I despised her appetites.’
Shadwell offered a thin smile.
‘My thanks,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome to them. Just let me watch the fires, that’s all I ask.’
‘Oh certainly. Absolutely.’
‘And I want the woman found. Suzanna. I want her found and given to me.’
‘She’s yours,’ said Shadwell, as though nothing were simpler. ‘One thing though. The children. Is there some particular word I use to bring them to me?’
‘There is.’
He drew on his cigarette. ‘I’d best have it,’ he said. ‘As they’re mine.’
‘Just call them by the names she gave them. That’ll unleash them.’
‘And what are their names?’ he said, reaching into his pocket for a pen.
He scribbled them on the back of the cigarette pack as he recited them, so as not to forget them. Then, the business concluded, they continued their drive in silence.
II
THE BURIAL PARTY
uzanna and Cal’s first duty was to locate Jerichau’s body, which took fully half an hour. The landscape of the Fugue had long since invaded the place where she’d left him, and it was more by luck than system that they found him.
Luck, and the sound of children; for Jerichau had not remained unaccompanied. Two women, and a half dozen of their offspring, from two years to seven or so, were standing (and playing) around the corpse.
‘Who is he?’ one of the women wanted to know when they approached.
‘His name is Jerichau,’ said Suzanna.
‘Was,’ one of the children corrected her.
‘Was.’
Cal posed the inevitable, and delicate, question. ‘What happens to bodies here? I mean … where do we take him?’
The woman grinned, displaying an impressive absence of teeth.
‘Leave him here,’ she said. ‘He’s not going to mind, is he? Bury him.’
She looked down lovingly on her smallest boy, who was naked and filthy, his hair full of leaves.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him.
He took his thumb from his mouth, and shouted: Bury him!’ – a chant which was immediately taken up by the other children. ‘Bury him! Bury him!’ they yelled, and instantly one of them fell to her knees and began to dig at the earth like a mongrel in search of a bone.
‘Surely there must be some formalities,’ Cal said.
‘Are you a Cuckoo then?’ one of the mothers enquired.
‘Yes.’
‘And him?’ She pointed to Jerichau.
‘No,’ said Suzanna. ‘He was a Babu; and a great friend.’
The children had all taken to digging now, laughing and throwing handfuls of earth at each other as they laboured.
‘Seems to me he was about ready to die.’ said the woman to Suzanna. ‘Judging by the look of him.’
She murmured: ‘He was.’
‘Then you should put him in the ground and be done with it,’ came the response. They’re just bones.’
Cal winced at this, but Suzanna seemed moved by the woman’s words.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I do know.’
‘The children’ll help you dig a hole. They like to dig.’
‘Is this right?’ said Cal.
‘Yes,’ said Suzanna with a sudden certainty: ‘Yes it is,’ and she and Cal went down on their knees alongside the children and dug.
It was not easy work. The earth was heavy, and damp; they were both quickly muddied. But the sheer sweat of it, and the fact of getting to grips with the dirt they were going to put Jerichau’s body beneath, made for healthy, and strangely rewarding, labour. It took a long time, during which the women watched, supervising the children and sharing a pipe of pungent tobacco as they did so.
As they worked Cal mused on how often the Fugue and its peoples had confounded his expectations. Here they were on their knees digging a grave with a gaggle of children: it was not what his dreams of being here had prepared him for. But in its way it was more real than he’d ever dared hope – dirt under the fingernails and a snotty-nosed child at his side blithely eating a worm. Not a dream at all, but an awakening.
When the hole was deep enough for Jerichau to be decently concealed, they set about moving him. At this point Cal could no longer countenance the children’s involvement. He told them to stand away as they went to assist in lifting the corpse.
‘Let them help,’ one of the women chided him. They’re enjoying themselves.’
Cal looked up at the row of children, who were mud-people by now. They were clearly itching to be pall-bearers, all except for the worm-eater, who was still sitting on the lip of the grave, his feet dangling into the hole.
‘This isn’t any business for kids,’ Cal said. He was faintly repulsed by the mothers’ indifference to their off-springs’ morbidity.
‘Is it not?’ said one of the women, refilling the pipe for the umpteenth time. ‘You know something more about it than they do, then?’
He looked at her hard.
‘Go on,’ she challenged him. Tell them what you know.’
‘Nothing,’ he conceded reluctantly.
‘Then what’s to fear?’ she enquired gently, if there’s nothing to fear, why not let them play?’
‘Maybe she’s right, Cal,’ said Suzanna, laying her hand on his. ‘And I think he’d like it,’ she said. ‘He was never one for solemnity.’
Cal wasn’t convinced, but this was no time to argue. He shrugged, and the children lent their small hands to
the task of lifting Jerichau’s body and laying it in the grave. As it was, they showed a sweet tenderness in the act, untainted by formality or custom. One of the girls brushed some dirt from the dead man’s face, her touch feather-light, while her siblings straightened his limbs in the bed of earth. Then they withdrew without a word, leaving Suzanna to lay a kiss on Jerichau’s lips. It was only then, at the very last, that she let go a small sob.
Cal picked up a handful of soil and threw it down into the grave. At this the children took their cue, and began to cover the body up. It was quickly done. Even the mothers came to the graveside and pitched a handful of earth in, as a gesture of farewell to this fellow they’d only known as a subject of debate.
Cal thought of Brendan’s funeral, of the coffin shunted off through faded curtains while a pallid young priest led a threadbare hymn. This was a better end, no doubt of it, and the children’s smiles had been in their way more appropriate than prayers and platitudes.
When it was all done, Suzanna found her voice, thanking both the grave-diggers and their mothers.
‘After all that digging,’ said the eldest of the girls, ‘I just hope he grows.’
‘He will,’ said her mother, with no trace of indulgence. ‘They always do.’
On that unlikely remark, Cal and Suzanna went on their way, with directions to Capra’s House. Where, had they but known it, the flies were soon to be feasting.
III
THE HORSE UNHARNESSED
1
orris the Hamburger Billionaire had long ago forgotten what it was like to be treated as a man. Shadwell had other uses for him. First, of course, during the Weave’s first waking, as his horse. Then, when man and mount returned to the Kingdom and Shadwell took on the mantle of Prophet, as footstool, foodtaster and fool, the butt of the Salesman’s every humiliating whim. To this, Norris put up no resistance. As long as he was in thrall to the raptures of Shadwell’s jacket he was utterly dead to himself.