The Whispering Swarm

  ‘’Tis complete! Now my model truly represents all Creation!’ Prince Rupert clapped his hands. ‘Absorbing light on one side, emitting light on the other. The fundamental model of our Creator’s cosmos! The birth and death of the universe! Over and over, ad infinitum. Ad infinitum, ladies and gentlemen. Here is a model of Eternity!’

  ‘What’s that? The sun?’ Molly frowned uncertainly. She broke a bit of ice. We all smiled.

  I knew that strange sphere could not represent the sun. But I had seen nothing like it anywhere. What it measured and mapped was something far too vast for my inexperienced mind to contemplate. It spoke suddenly to me and its voice was cold and clear. ‘There is no virtue rewarded unless by chance, for without any doubt the universe does play dice and has a very refined sense of irony.’ Prince Rupert’s voice? Lu Wing’s? We were all gathered there now, observing the bizarre instrument murmuring and humming to itself. I had it in my mind for a moment that I was hearing all the voices of the Swarm.

  Moll leant to peer at the sphere with its dark absorbing aura on one side, brilliant rays of light pouring out on the other. For one awful moment I was afraid it would draw her in. ‘Not the sun?’

  Prince Rupert roared. ‘The sun! Nothing so prosaic, Mistress Moll! No—’tis our mighty master, Time.’ He stalked around its perimeter, amazed by his own creation.

  ‘Time represented as—what, a dimension of space?’ Prince Lu Wing’s mouth widened in a smile. ‘You are audacious, my dear Rupert. What? Does each soul construct its own universe after all?’

  I was surprised. I loved a good metaphysical SF writer, like Barry Bayley or Phil Dick. I still took New Scientist, Nature and Scientific American regularly. But I couldn’t see how that object blazing over half the machine’s hemispheres represented time, in all its abstraction. Prince Rupert’s tone became more eager as he addressed that odd gathering of savants and adventurers. He grinned. He patted the head of little Tom as he continued. Tom’s face had lost none of its urgency, though by now he was in awe of the prince’s strange ‘engine’.

  ‘Most philosophers see time as a line disappearing into infinity, past, present, future.’ Prince Rupert’s eager features burned with extraordinary intensity in the red dancing light of the brands. ‘Others have it as a circle, which is much the same thing, except theoretically you return to the beginning and start all over again. All representations of time are some variation on this simple idea. But the truth is time radiates, just as light does. Let the physical world be thought a dimension of time! Once this is understood much becomes clear. There are codes to be read by instinct, ciphers and maps which can only be absorbed through the skin. Only the human soul can cross from one beam to the next and to many others, interacting with beings whose entire history is subtly, or sometimes radically, different. Even natural rays have differences, one from another. A “star” like the one at the center of our machine both absorbs and emits light.’

  Tom stretched, as if to touch the thing. Absently, the prince pressed his hand away. ‘Time is Creation. Space is time. What makes time our master is our inability to imagine it. My machine helps us in that respect, though I did not design it for the purpose. What is it, boy?’ Young Tom Tompion was tugging at his coat. ‘Your uncle will be paid, of course.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. But ’tis the redcoats, sir. I saw them in Fleet Street.’

  ‘And fine they looked, I’m sure.’

  I heard Mrs Melody’s husky, rich tones from the other side of the instrument I could only think of as some sort of super-orrery. ‘Really, Your Highness is an astonishing philosopher. Such a complex model. And what are those vibrating strings? A map? The silver roads some of our kind use, are said to walk?’

  ‘Aye. ’Tis one of their representations. Yet also it shows how the Creator drinks light and dark and all matter, and at the same moment remakes them.’

  ‘So what is this dark side of your sphere?’ asked Mrs Melody. ‘And why does it seem black enough to darken the cosmos? It drinks light, eh? Are these the Realms of Evil? While the hemisphere of light represents Good?’

  ‘Chaos and Law,’ agreed Prince Rupert. ‘As in your own religion, Freni, dear. As we understand the laws with which God governs us.’

  I recognised the name Freni as Persian. I’d done a little research into Zoroastrianism when writing The Greater Conqueror about Alexander. To be specific Freni was the name of one of Zoroaster’s daughters and it took little knowledge of comparative religions to work out what Mrs Melody’s faith was and how cheerfully she had adapted it to modern life, to a world where a dove-seller’s shop lay next to the Xerox dealership and a halal butcher’s to a video store. I had enjoyed plenty of these sights in my few trips to the Middle East and Maghreb. Why I always found that world attractive is at once obvious and subtle, a particularly interesting form of time travel. And was Lu Wing a Buddhist? Were we gathered as representatives of various religions? But no. There were too many of one belief, too few of another. Who was writing this novel?

  ‘The balance of Light and Dark,’ I began but his response was impatient.

  ‘To a degree, to a degree. Balance. Balance. I suppose so.’ I don’t think I’d offered anything original to anyone but myself. His reply was a bit condescending. Like Hinduism, Zoroastrianism predicted many of our contemporary scientific ideas. There was an aesthetic to the belief system which appealed to the physicist. I heard a distant noise, nothing I was familiar with. A vehicle of some kind going over a street. Or maybe the Tube below? The heavy silver and brass machine shook like a delicate Christmas tree. The thing made you sensitive to every sensation.

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘I have the money, Tom, thrice over. And you shall have it. Wait, that’s all I beg of thee. A few moments, lad.’

  While young Tom Tompion chomped at the bit and waited out his miserable enforced silence, Prince Rupert lifted his head to chant in what I took to be Hebrew or Arabic. Evidently a quotation which only Mrs Melody and Lu Wing understood. After a while he continued in French. ‘Out there in those spaces between the worlds, those shadowed spaces, is another kind of matter which some call “cosmic storm clouds” and others name Antimatter or Dark Matter, which is the opposite of our own and different in every respect, the Ultimate Anti-Cosmos lurking within their environment just as ours lurks within theirs. Travelling in apparently opposite directions. In Balance, these two forces also echo a human ideal, a happy mean, constant life, but in Opposition they come to Non-Existence. Non-Existence is not exactly a loss of consciousness. Consciousness without effect is the soul’s worst hell. To watch and do nothing. Nothing at all. For all eternity.’

  Prince Rupert muttered something to himself in some sort of German dialect but continued in familiar English: ‘In this curious pantomime with such high stakes, Glum Matter and Gaudy Time share between them, Rhyme for Rhyme, Creation’s Secrets, Thine and Mine. Expand that to one hemisphere at odds with another and you have this model. Two interdependent philosophies whose adherents believe the other the epitome of evil.’ He sighed. ‘Thus the civil war is always the easiest choice as well as so rarely the last resort. War in Heaven reflects the internal battles of the human mind and is represented on Earth through familiar strife!’

  I was used to the scholar prince’s musings and the idiosyncratic nature of his mental associations, yet at that moment, as he gesticulated, he seemed more than half mad. Several of his friends in the room tried to disguise their concern for him. Was Prince Rupert excited by the completion of a great astrological device or was he simply raving, unable to distinguish truth from fancy? While a prisoner in Germany he had studied for years with some of the greatest alchemists of the time, including Dee. The texts he revisited would have been profound and obscure. He was familiar with all the wisdom of his own world as well as some elements of the future! Perhaps in a limited way he travelled in time as well as space. I had already noted how he occasionally let slip his knowledge of worlds so ancient they possessed languages
and sciences only a rare few could understand. I remembered his references to Moo Uria, a world hidden underground. I therefore gave him the benefit of the doubt and listened carefully.

  I have forgotten many things in my life, perhaps because I needed to, but I can never forget that séance with Prince Rupert’s Cosmolabe. I was in the presence of authentic genius. An historic moment. If Isaac Newton, that great man on the cusp of the Age of Alchemy and the Age of Science, was the father of modern physics, what was Rupert? Had Prince Rupert’s main written works still been available to the public, he would today be regarded at very least as Newton’s equal. For a man of such great talents, he, like so many of his clan, never did have much in the way of good luck.

  Using his sword as a pointer, Prince Rupert continued to instruct us. ‘See how the dark side of the sphere appears to absorb Light and Matter and how the light side invigorates all that its brilliance touches! This is how gravity sustains her tyranny over existence. The great Darkness draws even Light to itself. Then, under intense gravity, matter is first compacted to an astonishing density and then bursts! Emitting Light and Matter and all you see, emitting weaker and weaker gravity until it reaches a moment of complete dissipation and so diffuse it is drawn back into the Darkness to begin its Voyage over again.’

  ‘Both Creator and Created.’ Mrs Melody was lost in thought. ‘Is this what you are modelling for us, Your Highness? The Zoroastrian cosmos?’

  ‘No, indeed, madonna. The Cosmolabe descries a cosmos common to all religions and sciences. Good and Evil, too, are represented. Law and Chaos…’

  ‘Sir! Your Majesty!’ squeaked Tom.

  ‘Highness, boy,’ corrected the prince absently. ‘This process is repeated down the aeons—a kind of tide, absorbing and erupting. We have quested after such an engine forever, of course. Modern philosophers seek the secret of perpetual motion as their ancestors sought to make gold. Well, I have the formula and I have built a model. And it is so much more! So much more!’

  ‘But, Your Grace—’

  By now I was not the only one paying closer attention to young Tom Tompion’s urgent tugging and bleating than to the prince’s wonderful machine. We all felt a tremor shake the cellar, causing the slender strings and shards to skip and twirl. Then came what was almost certainly the sound of a distant blast. And at last the prince was shaken from his euphoric address. Almost at once we heard a terrible underground booming. Long, rolling and massive, the noises suggested that some monster, powerful enough to walk through walls, was advancing upon us. The Cosmolabe shifted and swiveled. Prince Rupert stretched a hand towards it and hesitated.

  Jemmy reappeared, galloping down the shaky stair. Near the bottom he paused dramatically to point behind him. ‘Gentlemen—ladies—I beg your indulgence—but I regret to say we’re invaded! Love and Clitch brought the Intelligencer General. No doubt about it because I already heard his terrible monstrous tromblon Old Thunder explode twice. Twice, sir! That opened our gates. That’s Jake Nixer. He’s in, sir, on all sides, or nearly. He’s placed spies here long since, that’s evident. And they’ve let him in. No question. This is long planned, sir, and us not a wit in apprehension of it!’

  ‘Find one who’ll sally out, Jem, to parley terms. See if the Roundheads will agree swords and edged weapons but no guns. Because of the ladies,’ commanded Prince Rupert. ‘Civilians. At least clear the town.’ He assumed command naturally. He was a great general. Cromwell would have lost some crucial battles had the prince been in command.

  ‘They care nothing for the innocent or they would not use gunpowder on our cellars and conduits.’ Prince Rupert spoke in the cold tones I had learned to associate with deep anger.

  Up he climbed, his dog Boye at his heels, until he reached the top of the staircase where ginger-haired, tiny Sebastian Toom, the freckled landlord and part-owner of the Swan, waited, handing out weapons to those requiring them. His own favoured shotgun, big enough to bring down an elephant if filled with sufficient powder, stood against the wall. With a small charge the weapon was merely a threat. But a large charge threw steel balls and nails to pierce ancient oak. Further along the passage, near the outer door, I saw a wounded man. Perhaps he had brought the first news of the invasion. He was slowly employing a well-used, scabbarded, basket-hilted broadsword to get to his feet. As his head turned into the light I recognised my saviour from the altercation at the gates, when Love and Clitch had earlier accosted me.

  Prince Rupert pushed passed the man, taking a glance at the wound. ‘A scratch, sir, though nobly gotten.’

  ‘A scratch, your worship, true. Not one I sought when I left my door this morning,’ declared the man with a lopsided grin. He spoke in that same northeastern brogue. ‘This way, I am permitted a short sabbatical on which to contemplate the nature of human causes and why fools are prepared to die for them.’ The unwitting messenger began to stand, panting a little. ‘Assuming I live.’ Seeing the ladies, he took off his hat and bowed as best he could, his dark chestnut curls swinging. ‘Captain James St Claire, at your service.’ Standing, he was scarcely taller than Mr Toom. Handsome, saturnine, a little plump. ‘I am upon a mission to discover a means of reaching—’

  ‘You are a soldier, sir?’ said the prince.

  ‘I’ve had a little experience at soldiering, sir. Enough to dislike the trade pretty heartily.’

  ‘Are you game for another campaign?’

  ‘Is there money in it?’

  ‘Not a sou.’

  ‘Then I’ll not break the habits of a lifetime. And if we fight redcoats with purses for prizes, so much the better. ’Tis another habit I’d rather keep.’

  ‘I’m here to recruit men to a noble cause.’ Prince Rupert struck a pose which doubtless meant much to soldiers on the battlefield, but precious little in the confines of a passage in a public house. Even Mrs Melody exchanged a fleeting smile with Prince Lu Wing.

  ‘Pah! There’s no such thing!’ St Claire, the wounded cynic, hobbled after us. ‘Why fight for so little advantage?’

  ‘Honour’s dead when a dream goes sour,’ said Toom, the dwarfish publican, letting the trapdoor fall and hefting his great four-barreled shotgun onto his shoulder.

  ‘We’ll challenge ’em to swords, but have firearms ready.’

  ‘Why so little trust?’ said Mrs Melody, producing a substantial twin-barreled revolver from her bag.

  ‘Experience.’ I heard an echo of sadness in Lu Wing’s old-fashioned French.

  ‘Madame DeVere would call us fatalists for parleying terms so soon.’

  ‘Fantasts, too, for thinking we can win.’

  ‘Madame DeVere had a different agenda.’

  ‘She’d know what hand to play.’

  I was intrigued, as usual, by their speaking of someone I didn’t know.

  Another throaty boom which rocked the room and threatened the balance of The Swan With Two Necks. Pieces of rotten brick and mortar fell on our heads and shoulders. Fortunately they were comparatively small. I remembered the street bomb shelters set up in Brookgate when I was little. They were no more secure than houses. People were buried in the basements of buildings all over Clerkenwell and Holborn. I began to shiver. I was disgusted with myself. How could I be frightened by nothing more than an unpleasant recollection? I caught myself addressing the deity I swore not to believe in.

  Then came a monstrous roar which deafened us all and brought down whole sheets of lathe and plaster onto our heads. Outside, slates from the roof crashed into the street. ‘Bah! The cunning brute awaited a time when his spies tell him we’re disposed elsewhere. And we are indeed sore underman’d.’ Prince Rupert reached beneath a seat and brought out a small chest which, he said, insured us some sort of passage out of this hellish pit of sedition and blasphemy should God prove to be of the Parliamentary cause that day. With it beneath his cloak, he strolled for the door, taking one last, agonized glimpse over his shoulder.

  As we inched along the passage I heard little Tom Tompion’s voic
e piping after us. ‘I told you there was soldiers, masters.’

  Carrying my weapons, which I barely knew how to use, I was a somewhat reluctant volunteer, wondering how I had been so swiftly caught up in the madness. Through the different bars of the Tavern, we rapidly gathered what forces we could, until we stood ready within the Inn, panting like feral dogs, peering through bottle-green windows, just in time to see Messrs Love and Clitch rounding the corner leading a small force of well-disciplined troopers uniformed in broad red-and-white-striped wool shirts, long leather waistcoats, steel helmets, breastpates, greaves and boots. ‘Intelligence men,’ murmured Sebastian Toom with an oath. ‘Their thrice-damned general can’t be far behind.’ These hard-looking special soldiers were armed with pikes, bowstaves and muskets. Over their shoulders were slung quivers of arrows or bandoliers of charges. At their belts were basket-hilted longswords. Their appearance was in considerable contrast to the rather ragged, uncertain and leaderless citizens of the Alsacia who faced them.

  Still another tremendous boom-boom-boom in rapid succession followed by an alarming clatter from below. Prince Rupert cursed like a Billingsgate fishwife, then paused to doff his mighty hat, muttering an apology to the ladies.

  ‘There’s a damned informer somewhere amongst us!’ swore Prince Rupert, increasing his pace. ‘Maybe more than one, as you say, Toom. Waiting until our attention—and forces—were concentrated elsewhere.’

  There came a great thump through the inside walls. Missing by inches, more bricks and plaster crashed at our feet. The very ground felt unstable. A crack appeared in the brick floor and ran all the way to the other wall. I called out for people to test where they trod. Now we feared death from below as well as above. But so far Prince Rupert’s Cosmolabe remained unharmed. Voices now called orders out there. Bullying, military bellows. Having filled up the public bar we crept softly to a door looking onto the square. ‘Gunpowder! Stripecoats!’ Lu Wing sniffed. ‘And my fighters all gone to Limehouse!’