Weave World

Part Six

I

TIME'S GONE BY

1

The people of Chariot Street had witnessed some rare scenes in recent times, but they'd re-established the status quo with admirable zeal. It was just before eight in the morning when Cal got off the bus and began the short walk to the Mooney residence, and everywhere along the street the same domestic rituals that he'd witnessed here since his childhood were being played out. Radios announced the morning's news through open windows and doors: a Parliamentarian had been found dead in his mistress' arms; bombs had been dropped in the Middle East. Slaughter and scandal, scandal and slaughter. And was the tea too weak this morning, my dear?; and did the children wash behind their ears?

He let himself into the house, turning over yet again the problem of what to tell Brendan. Anything less than the truth might beg more questions than it answered; and yet to tell the whole story ... was that even possible? Did the words exist to evoke more than an echo of the sights he'd seen, the feelings he'd felt?

The house was quiet, which was worrying. Brendan had been a dawn riser since his days working on the Docks; even during the worst of recent times he'd been up to greet his grief early.

Cal called his father's name. There was no response. He went through to the kitchen. The garden looked like a battlefield. He called again, then went to search upstairs.

His father's bedroom door was closed. He tried the handle, but the door was locked from the inside, something he'd never known happen before. He knocked lightly.

‘Dad?' he said. ‘Are you there?'

He waited several seconds, listening closely, then repeated his enquiry. This time from within came a quiet sobbing.

‘Thank God.' he breathed. ‘Dad? It's Cal.' The sobbing softened. ‘Will you let me in, Dad?'

There was a short interval; then he heard his father's footsteps as he crossed to the bedroom door. The key was turned; the door was opened a reluctant six inches.

The face on the other side was more shadow than man. Brendan looked neither to have washed nor shaved since the previous day.

‘Oh God ... Dad.'

Brendan peered at his son with naked suspicion. ‘Is it really you?'

The comment reminded Cal of how he must look: his face bloodied and bruised.

‘I'm all right, Dad,' he said, offering a smile. ‘What about you?'

‘Are all the doors closed?' Brendan wanted to know.

The doors? Yes.'

‘And the windows?'

‘Yes.'

Brendan nodded. ‘You're absolutely sure?'

‘I told you, yes. What's wrong, Dad?'

‘The rats.' said Brendan, his eyes scanning the landing behind Cal. ‘I heard them all night. They came up the stairs, they did. Sat at the top of the stairs. I heard them. Size of cats they were. They sat there waiting for me to come out.'

‘Well they're not here any longer.'

‘Got in through the fence. Off the embankment. Dozens of them.'

‘Why don't we go downstairs?' Cal suggested. ‘I can make you some breakfast.'

‘No. I'm not coming down. Not today.'

Then I'll make something and bring it up, shall I?' ‘If you like.' said Brendan.

As Cal started down the stairs again, he heard his father lock and bolt the door once more.

2

In the middle of the morning, a knock on the door. It was Mrs Vallance, whose house was opposite the Mooneys'.

‘I was just passing.' she said, this fact belied by the slippers on her feet. ‘I thought I'd see how your father was doing. He was very odd with the police, I heard. What did you do to your face?'

‘I'm all right.'

‘I had a very polite officer interview me.' .he woman said. ‘He asked me ...' she lowered her voice, ‘... if your father was unbalanced.'

Cal bit back a retort.

They wanted to talk to you too, of course.' she said.

‘Well I'm here now.' said Cal. ‘If they need me.'

‘My boy Raymond said he saw you on the railway. Running off, he said.'

‘Goodbye, Mrs Vallance.'

‘And he's got good eyes has Raymond.'

‘I said goodbye.' said Cal, and slammed the door in the woman's self-satisfied face.

3

Her visit was not the last of the day; several people called to see that all was well. There was clearly much gossip in the street about the Mooney household. Perhaps some bright spark had realized that it had been the centre of the previous day's drama.

Every time there was a knock on the door, Cal expected to see Shadwell on the step. But apparently the Salesman had more urgent concerns than finishing the job he'd begun in the ruins of Shearman's house. Or perhaps he was simply waiting for more propitious stars.

Then, just after noon, while Cal was out at the loft feeding the birds, the telephone rang.

He raced inside and snatched it up. Even before she spoke Cal knew it was Suzanna.

‘Where are you?'

She was breathless, and agitated.

‘We have to get out of the city, Cal. They're after us.'

‘Shadwell?'

‘Not just Shadwell. The police.'

‘Have you got the carpet?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well then tell me where you are. I'll come and -'

‘I can't. Not on the ‘phone.'

‘It's not tapped, for God's sake.'

‘Any bets?'

‘I have to see you,' he said, somewhere between a request and a demand.

‘Yes ...' she replied, her voice softening. ‘Yes, of course ...'

‘How?'

There was a long silence. Then she said: ‘Where you made your confession.'

‘What?'

‘You remember.'

He thought about it. What confession had he ever made to her? Oh yes: I love you. How could he have forgotten that?

‘Yes?' she said.

‘Yes. When?'

‘An hour.'

‘I'll be there.'

‘We don't have much time, Cal.'

He was going to tell her he knew that, but the line was already dead.

The ache in his bruised bones improved miraculously after the conversation; his step was light as he went upstairs to check on Brendan.

‘I have to go out for a while. Dad.' ‘Have you locked all the doors?' his father asked. ‘Yes, the house is locked and bolted. Nothing can get in. Is there anything else you need?' Brendan took a moment to consider the question. ‘I'd like some whisky,' he said finally. ‘Do we have any?'

‘In the book-case,' said the old man. ‘Behind the Dickens.' Til fetch it for you.'

He was sliding the bottle from its hiding place when the door-bell rang again. He was of half a mind not to answer it, but the visitor insisted.

‘I'll be with you in a minute,' he called upstairs; then opened the door.

The man in the dark glasses said: ‘Calhoun Mooney?' ‘Yes.'

‘My name's Inspector Hobart; this is Officer Richardson. We're here to ask you some questions.' ‘Right now?' said Cal. ‘I'm just about to go out.' ‘Urgent business?' said Hobart. Wiser to say no, Cal reasoned. ‘Not exactly,' he said.

Then you won't mind us taking up some time,' said Hobart, and the two of them were inside the house in seconds.

‘Close the door,' Hobart instructed his colleague. ‘You look flustered, Mooney. Have you got something to hide?' ‘Why should .... ? No.'

‘We're in possession of information to the contrary.' From above, Brendan called for his whisky. ‘Who's that?'

‘It's my father,' said Cal. ‘He wanted a drink.' Richardson plucked the bottle from Cal's hand and crossed to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Don't go up.' said Cal. ‘You'll frighten him.'

‘Nervous family.' Richardson remarked.

‘He's not been well,' said Cal.

‘My men are like lambs,' said Hobart. ‘As long as you're within the law.'

Again, Brendan's voice drifted down:

‘Cal? Who is it?'

‘Just someone who wants a word with me. Dad,' Cal said.

There was another answer in his throat, though. One which he swallowed unsaid. A truer answer.

It's the rats. Dad. They got in after all.

4

The minutes ticked by. The question came around and around, as if on a carousel. It was apparent from Hobart's probing that he'd spoken at length with Shadwell, so outright denials from Cal were fruitless. He was obliged to tell what little part of the truth he could. Yes, he did know a woman called Suzanna Parrish. No, he knew nothing of her personal history, nor had she spoken of her political affiliations. Yes, he had seen her in the last twenty-four hours. No, he did not know where she was now.

As he answered the questions he tried not to think of her waiting for him at the river; waiting and not finding him and going away. But the more he tried to put the thought from his head, the more it returned. ‘Restless, Mooney?' ‘I'm a little hot, that's all.' ‘Got an appointment to keep, have you?' ‘No.'

‘Where is she, Mooney?' ‘I don't know.'

‘There's no sense in protecting her. She's the worst filth, Mooney. Believe me. I've seen what she can do. Things you wouldn't believe. Makes my stomach turn over to think of it.' He spoke with complete conviction. Cal didn't doubt that he meant all he said. ‘What are you, Mooney?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Are you my friend or my enemy? There's no middle way, you see. No maybe. Friend or enemy. Which?'

‘I've done nothing against the law.'

Til be the one to decide that,' said Hobart. ‘I know the Law. I know it and love it. And I won't have it spat on, Mooney. Not by you or anybody.' He took a breath. Then stated: ‘You're a liar, Mooney. I don't know how deep you're in this, or why, but I do know you're a liar.' A pause. Then: ‘So we'll start over again, shall we?'

‘I've told you everything I know.'

‘We'll start from the beginning. How did you meet the terrorist Suzanna Parrish?'

5

After two and three quarter hours on the carousel, Hobart finally bored of the ride, and pronounced that he was finished with Cal for now. No charges would be pressed, at least not immediately, but Cal should consider himself under suspicion.

‘You made yourself two enemies today, Mooney,' Hobart said. ‘Me and the Law. You'll live to regret that.'

Then the rats left.

Cal sat in the back room for five minutes, trying to gather his thoughts, then went up to see how Brendan was faring. The old man was asleep. Leaving his father to his dreams, Cal went in search of his own.

6

She'd gone, of course; long ago.

He wandered around in the vicinity, searching amongst the warehouses, hoping she'd left some message for him, but there was none to be found.

Exhausted by all the day had brought, he headed home. As he stepped through the gate back onto the Dock Road he

caught sight of someone watching him from a parked car. One of Hobart's clan, perhaps; one of the Law-lovers. Maybe Suzanna had been nearby after all, but unable to make her presence known for fear of being spotted. The thought of her being so close, frustrating as it was, cushioned the blow of not seeing her, at least a little. When things were safe, she'd call him and arrange another rendezvous.

In the evening, the wind got up, and it gusted through the night and the following day, bringing the first chill of autumn with it. But it brought no news.

II

DESPAIR

And so it went on for a week and a half: no news, no news.

He returned to work, claiming his father's illness as reason for his absence, and took up where he'd left off amid the claim forms. At lunchtimes he came back to the house to heat up some food for Brendan - who, though he could be coaxed from his room, was painfully anxious to return to it - and to feed the birds. In the evenings he made some attempt to tidy the garden; he even patched the fence. But these tasks received only a fraction of his attention. However many diversions he put between himself and his impatience, nine out of every ten thoughts were of Suzanna and her precious burden.

But the more days that went by without word from her, the more he began to think the unthinkable: that she wasn't going to ring. Either she feared the consequences of trying to make contact or, worse, she no longer could. Towards the end of the second week, he decided to try and find the carpet by the only means available to him. He set the pigeons free.

They rose up into the air in an aerial ovation, and circled the house. The sight reminded him of that first day in Rue Street, and his spirits lifted. ‘Go on,' he willed them. ‘Go on.'

Round and round they flew, as if orienting themselves. His heart beat a little faster each time it seemed one of them was detaching itself from the flock to head off. Running shoes on, he was ready to follow.

But after all too short a time they began to tire of their liberation. One by one they fluttered down again - even 33 -some landing in the garden, others on the gutters of the house. A few even flew straight back into the loft. Their perches were cramped, and doubtless the night trains disturbed their sleep, but for most of them it was the only habitat they'd ever known.

Though there were surely winds up there to tempt them, winds that smelt of places lusher than their loft beside the railway line, they had no wish to chance their wings on such currents.

He cursed them for their lack of enterprise; and fed them; and watered them; and finally returned despondently to the house, where Brendan was talking of rats again.

III

FORGETFULNESS

1

The third week of September brought rain. Not the torrents of August, which had poured from operatic skies, but drizzles and piddlings. The days grew greyer; and so, it seemed, did Brendan. Though Cal made daily attempts to persuade his father downstairs, he would no longer come. Cal also made two or three valiant efforts to talk about what had happened a month before, but the old man was simply not interested. His eyes became glazed as soon as he sensed the drift of the conversation, and if Cal persisted he grew irritable.

The professionals judged that Brendan was suffering from senile dementia, an irreversible process which would finally make him impossible for Cal to nurse. It might be best for all concerned, they advised, if a place were found in a Nursing Home, where Brendan could be cared for twenty-four hours a day.

Cal rejected the suggestion. He was certain that Brendan's cleaving to a room he knew - one he'd shared with Eileen for so many years - was all that was keeping him from total breakdown.

He was not alone in his attempts to nurse his father. Two days after he'd failed to set the pigeons flying, Geraldine had appeared at the house. There was ten minutes of hesitant apologies and explanations, then Brendan's condition entered the exchange and Geraldine's good sense came triumphantly to the fore. Forget our differences, she said, I want to help.

Cal was not about to refuse the offer. Brendan responded to Geraldine's presence as a child to a long-lost teat. He was cosseted and indulged, and with Geraldine in the house in Eileen's place, Cal found himself falling back into the old domestic routines. The affection he felt for Geraldine was painless, which was surely the most certain sign of how slight it was. When she was there he was happy to be with her. But he seldom, if ever, missed her.

As to the Fugue, he did his best to keep his memories of it sharp, but it was by no means easy. The Kingdom had ways to induce forgetfulness so subtle and so numerous he was scarcely aware of how they dulled him.

It was only when, in the middle of a dreary day, something reminded him - a scent, a shout - that he had once been in another place, and breathed its air and met its creatures, it was only then that he realized how tentative his recall was. And the more he went in pursuit of what he was forgetting the more it eluded him.

The glories of the Fugue were becoming mere words, the reality of which he could no longer conjure. When he thought of an orchard it was less and less that extraordinary place he'd slept in (slept, and dreamt that this life he was now living was the dream) and more a commonplace stand of apple trees.

The miracles were drifting from him, and he seemed to be unable to hold onto them.

Surely dying was like this, he thought; losing things dear and unable to prevent their passing. Yes; this was a kind of dying.

2

Brendan, for his part, continued to continue. As the weeks passed, Geraldine managed to talk him into joining them downstairs, but he was interested in little but tea and television, and his conversation was now scarcely more than grunts. Sometimes Cal would watch Brendan's face as he sat slumped in front of the television - his expression unchanging whether the screen offered pundits or comedians - and wondered what had happened to the man he'd known. Was the old Brendan still in hiding somewhere, behind those addled eyes?, or had he been an illusion all along, a son's dream of his father's permanence which, like the letter from Eileen, had simply evaporated? Perhaps it was for the best, he thought, that Brendan was shielded from his pain, then drew himself up short at such a thought. Wasn't that what they said as the coffin was marched past: it was all for the best? Brendan wasn't dead yet.

As time went by, Geraldine's presence began to prove as comforting to Cal as to the old man. Her smiles were the brightest thing those dismal months could boast. She came and went, more indispensable by the day, until, in the first week of December, she suggested it might be more convenient all round if she slept at the house. It was a perfectly natural progression.

‘I don't want to marry you,' she told him quite plainly. The sorry spectacle of Theresa's marriage - five months old and already rocky - had confirmed her worst suspicions of matrimony. ‘I did want to marry you once,' she said. ‘But now I'm happy just to be with you.'

She proved easy company; down-to-earth, unsentimental: as much companion as lover. She it was who made certain the bills were paid on time, and saw that there was tea in the caddy. She it was too who suggested that Cal sell the pigeons.

‘Your father doesn't show any interest in them any longer,' she said on more than one occasion. ‘He wouldn't even notice if they were gone.'

That was certainly true. But Cal refused to contemplate the sale. Come spring and the fine weather his father might well show fresh interest in the birds.

‘You know that's not true,' she'd tell him when he put this point. ‘Why do you want to keep them so much? They're just a burden.' Then she'd let the subject drop for a few days, only to raise it again when a cue was presented.

History was repeating itself. Often in the course of these exchanges, which gradually became more heated, Cal could

hear echoes of his mother and father: the same routes were being trodden afresh. And, like his father, Cal - though malleable on almost every other issue - was immovable on this. He would not sell the birds.

The real reason for his bullishness was not, of course, hope of Brendan's rehabilitation, but the fact that the birds were his last concrete link with the events of the previous summer. 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

The 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 Pever-elli 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.

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.'

2

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.

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.

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.

3

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.'

4

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 clearer and clearer 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

These 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. Perhaps 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.

Shadwell had been brought up a Catholic; and though he'd long neglected his faith there was no forgetting the rituals he'd learned as a child. He listened to the Sanctus, his lips running with the rhythm of the words, though it was twenty years since he'd attended them. Then the Eucharistic Prayer - something short and sweet, so as not to keep the accountants from their calculations — and on to the Consecration.

... Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which will be given up for you...

Old words; old rituals. But they still made sound commercial sense.

Talk of Power and Might would always attract an audience. Lords never went out of fashion.

Lost in thought he wasn't even aware that the mass had ended until the priest appeared at his side.

‘Mr Shadwell?'

He looked up from his calf-skin gloves. The church was empty, but for the two of them.

‘We've been waiting for you,' said the priest, not waiting for confirmation that he had the right man. ‘You're most welcome.'

Shadwell got to his feet.

‘What's this about?'

‘Perhaps you'll come with me?' came the response.

Shadwell saw no reason not to comply. The priest led him across the nave, and into a wood-panelled room which smelt like a brothel, sweat and perfume mingled. At the far end of the room, a curtain, which he drew aside, and another door.

Before turning the key he said:

‘You must stay close by me, Mr Shadwell, and not approach the Shrine ...'

The Shrine? For the first time since coming here, Shadwell had an inkling of what was going on.

‘I understand,' he said.

The priest opened the door. There was a steep flight of stone steps before them, lit only by the meagre light shed from the room they were leaving. He lost count of the steps after thirty; they were descending in almost total darkness after the first ten, and he kept his hands stretched to the wall, which was dry and chilly, in order to maintain his balance.

But now below, a light. The priest glanced over his shoulder, his face a pale ball in the murk.

‘Stay by me,' he cautioned. ‘It's dangerous.'

At the bottom, the priest took hold of his arm, as though not trusting Shadwell to obey his instructions. They had arrived in the centre of a labyrinth, it seemed; galleries ran off in all directions, twisting and turning unpredictably. In some, candles burned. Others were in darkness.

It was only as the guide led him down one of these corridors that Shadwell realized they were not alone here. The walls were lined with niches, each of which contained a coffin. He shuddered. The dead were on every side; it was their dust that he could taste on his tongue. There was only one person, he knew, who would willingly keep such company.

Even as he formed this thought the priest's hand dropped from his arm, and the man withdrew down the passageway at some speed, murmuring a prayer as he went. The reason: a veiled figure, dressed from head to foot in black, approaching him down the tunnel, like a mourner who'd lost their way amongst the caskets. She did not have to speak or raise her veil for Shadwell to know that it was Immacolata.

She stood a little way from him, saying nothing. Her breath shook the folds of her veil.

Then she said: ‘Shadwell.'

Her voice was slurred: even laboured.

‘I thought you'd stayed in the Weave,' he said.

‘I was almost detained there,' she replied.

‘Detained?'

Behind him, Shadwell heard the priest's feet on the stairs as he made his exit.

‘Friend of yours?' he asked.

‘They worship me,' she told him. ‘Call me Goddess; Mother of the Night. They emasculate themselves in order to better show their adulation.' Shadwell grimaced. That's why you're not allowed in the vicinity of the Shrine. They consider it desecration. If their Goddess hadn't spoken, they would not have let you this far.'

‘Why'd you put up with them?'

‘They gave me a hiding-place, when I needed one. Somewhere to heal.'

‘Heal what?'

At this, the veil slowly lifted, untouched by Immacolata. The sight beneath was enough to make Shadwell's gorge rise. Her once exquisite features were wounded beyond recognition, a mass of raw tissue and seeping scars.

‘... how ... ?' he managed to say.

‘The Custodian's husband,' she replied, her mouth so twisted out of true it was difficult for her to form words properly. ‘He did that?'

‘He came with lions.' she said. ‘And I was careless.' Shadwell didn't want to hear any more. ‘It offends you,' she said. ‘You're a man of sensibility,' This last word was pronounced with the subtlest irony. ‘You can mask it, can't you?' he said, thinking of her skills with disguise. If she could imitate others, why not copy her perfect self?

‘Would you have me a whore?' she said to him. ‘Painting myself for vanity? No, Shadwell. I'll wear my wounds. They're more myself than beauty ever was.' She made a terrible smile. ‘Don't you think?'

Despite her defiance, her voice trembled. She was pliable, he sensed; despairing even. Fearing insanity might claim her again.

‘I've missed your company.' he said, attempting to look steadily at her face. ‘We worked well together.' ‘You've got new allies now.' she replied. ‘You heard?'

‘My sisters have been with you now and then.' The thought did not comfort him. ‘Do you trust Hobart?' ‘He serves his purpose.' ‘Which is?' ‘To find the carpet.' ‘Which he hasn't done.'

‘No. Not yet.' He tried to stare straight at her; tried to give her a loving look. ‘I miss you.' he said. ‘I need your help.' Her palate made a soft hissing sound, but she didn't reply. ‘Isn't that why you brought me here?' he said, ‘so that we could begin again?'

‘No.' she replied. ‘I'm too weary for that.' Hungry as he was to walk in the Fugue once again, the thought of picking up the chase where they'd left it - moving from city to city whenever the wind carried a rumour of the Weave - did not enthrall him either. ‘Besides ...' she said, ‘... you've changed.'

‘No.' he protested. ‘I still want the Weave.'

‘But not to sell it.' she said. ‘To rule it.'

‘Where did you get that notion from?' he protested, offering an ingenuous smile. He could not read the ruin before him well enough to know whether his pretence worked. ‘We had a pact, Goddess.' he said. ‘We were going to bring them into the dust.'

‘And you want that still?'

He hesitated, knowing that he risked everything with a lie. She knew him well - she could probably see into his skull if she chose to; he might lose more than her company if she sensed deceit in him. But then, she was changed, wasn't she? She came before him as spoiled goods. Her beauty, the one ungovernable power she had always had over him, was gone. She was the supplicant here, though she was trying to pretend otherwise. He risked the lie.

‘What I want is what I've always wanted.' he said. ‘Your enemies are my enemies.'

Then we'll lay them low.' she said. ‘Once and for all.'

Somewhere in the maze of her face a light ignited, and the human dust on the shelves at his side began to dance.

VI

THE BRITTLE MACHINE

1

On the morning of the second of February, Cal found Brendan dead in bed. He had died, the doctor reported, an hour before dawn; simply given up and slipped away in his sleep. His mental processes had begun to deteriorate rapidly, about a week before Christmas.

On some days he'd call Geraldine by his wife's name, and take Cal for his brother. The prognosis had not been good, but nobody had expected this sudden exit. No opportunity for explanations or fond farewells. One day he was here, the next he could only be mourned.

Much as Cal had loved Brendan, he found grief difficult. It was Geraldine who wept; Geraldine who had all the proper sentiments to hand out when the neighbours came to offer their condolences. Cal could only play the part of the grieving child, not feel it. All he felt was ill at ease.

That feeling grew stronger as the cremation approached. He was increasingly detached from himself, viewing his absence of emotion with a disbelieving eye. It seemed suddenly there were two Cals. One, the public mourner, dealing with the business of death as propriety demanded, the other a coruscating critic of the first, calling the bluff of every cliche and empty gesture. It was Mad Mooney's voice, this second: the scourge of liars and hypocrites. ‘You're not real at all,' the poet would whisper. ‘Look at you! Sham that you are!'

This dislocation brought strange side-effects; most significantly, the dreams that now returned to him. He dreamt himself floating in air as clear as love's eyes; dreamt trees heavy with golden fruit; dreamt animals that spoke like people, and people who roared. He dreamt of the pigeons too, several times a night, and on more than one occasion he woke certain that 33 and his mate had spoken to him, in their bird way, though he could make no sense of their advice.

The idea was still with him by day, and — though he knew the notion was laughable - he found himself quizzing the birds as he fed them their daily bread, asking them, half in jest, to give up what they knew. They just winked their eyes, and grew fat.

The funeral came and went. Eileen's relatives came across from Tyneside, and Brendan's from Belfast. There was whisky, and Guinness for Brendan's brothers, and ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and when the glasses and the plates were empty they all went home.

2

‘We should have a holiday,' Geraldine suggested a week after the funeral. ‘You haven't been sleeping well.'

He was sitting at the dining-room window, watching the garden.

‘We need to do some work on the house,' he said. ‘It's depressing me.'

‘We can always sell it,' she replied.

It was a simple solution, and one his torpid mind hadn't conceived of. That's a bloody good idea,' he said. ‘Find somewhere without a railway at the bottom of the garden.'

They started searching for another house immediately, before the better weather inflated prices. Geraldine was in her element, leading him round the properties with a seamless outpouring of observations and ideas. They found a modest terraced house in Wavertree which they both liked, and put an offer in for it, which was accepted. But the Chariot Street house proved more difficult to move. Two purchasers came to the brink of signing contracts, then withdrew. Even Geral-dine's high spirits lost buoyancy as the weeks drew on.

They lost the Wavertree house at the beginning of March, and were obliged to begin the search over again. But their enthusiasm was much depleted, and they found nothing they liked. And still, in dreams, the birds spoke. And still he couldn't interpret their wisdom.

VII

TALES OF SPOOK CITY

1

Five weeks after Brendan's remains had been scattered on the Lawn of Remembrance, Cal opened the door to a man with a wry, ruddy face, sparse hair brushed ear to ear to shelter his pate, and the stub of a hefty cigar between his fingers.

‘Mr Mooney?' he said, and without waiting for confirmation, went on: ‘You don't know me. My name's Gluck.' Transferring his cigar from right to left he gripped Cal's hand and shook it vigorously. ‘Anthony Gluck,' he said. The man's face was vaguely familiar; from where, Cal wracked his brain to remember.

‘I wonder,' Gluck said, ‘if I may have a word with you?'

‘I vote Labour,' said Cal.

‘I'm not canvassing. I'm interested in the house.' ‘Oh,' said Cal, beaming. ‘Then come on in,' and he led Gluck through into the dining-room. The man was at the window in an instant, peering into the garden. ‘Ah!' he said. ‘So this is it.'

‘It's chaos at the moment,' said Cal with faint apology. ‘You left it untouched?' said Gluck. ‘Untouched?'

‘Since the events in Chariot Street.' ‘Do you really want to buy the house?' said Cal. ‘Buy?' said Gluck. ‘Oh no, I'm sorry. I didn't even realize it was for sale.' ‘You said you were interested -'

‘So I am. But not to buy. No, I'm interested in the place because it was the centre of the disturbances last August. Am I right?'

Cal had only a patchwork memory of the events of that day. Certainly he remembered the freak whirlwind that had done so much damage in Chariot Street. He remembered the interview with Hobart quite clearly too; and how it had prevented his meeting with Suzanna. But there was much else - the Rake, the death of Lilia, indeed everything that sprang from the matter of the Fugue - that his mind had eclipsed. Gluck's enthusiasm intrigued him however. ‘That was no natural event.' he said. ‘Not by a long chalk. It was a perfect example of what we in the business call anomalous phenomena.' ‘Business?'

‘You know what some people are calling Liverpool these days?' ‘No.'

‘Spook City.' ‘Spook City?'

‘And with good reason, believe me.' ‘What did you mean when you said business?' ‘In essence it's very simple. I document events that defy explanation; events that fall outside the comprehension of the scientific community, which people therefore choose not to see. Anomalous phenomena.'

‘This has always been a windy city,' Cal pointed out. ‘Believe me,' said Gluck, ‘there was more to what happened here last summer than a high wind. There was a house on the other side of the river simply reduced to rubble overnight. There were mass hallucinations that took place in broad daylight. There were lights in the sky - brilliant lights - witnessed by hundreds of people. All that and more happened in the vicinity of this city, over a two or three day time period. Does that sound like coincidence to you?' ‘No. If you're sure it all -'

‘All happened? Oh, it happened Mr Mooney. I've been collecting this kind of material for twenty years and more, collecting and collating it, and there are patterns in these phenomena.'

They don't just happen here, then?'

‘Good God, no. I get reports sent to me from all over Europe. After a while, you begin to see some kind of picture emerge.'

As Gluck spoke Cal remembered where he'd seen the man before. On a television programme, talking - if he remembered rightly - about governmental silence on visits from alien ambassadors.

‘What happened in Chariot Street,' he was saying, ‘and all over this city, is part of a pattern which is perfectly apparent to those of us who study these things.'

‘What does it mean?'

‘It means we're watched, Mr Mooney. We're scrutinized the live-long day.'

‘Who by?'

‘Creatures from another world, with a technology which beggars our own. I've only seen fragments of their artifacts, left behind by careless voyagers. But they're enough to prove we're less to them than household pets.'

‘Really?'

‘I recognize that look, Mr Mooney,' said Gluck, without irritation. ‘You're humouring me. But I've seen the evidence with my own eyes. Especially in this past year. Either they're getting more careless, or they simply don't mind if we're wise to them any longer.'

‘Which means what?'

‘That their plans for us are entering some final phase. That their installations on our planet are in place, and we'll be defeated before we begin.'

‘They mean to invade us?'

‘You may scoff -'

‘I'm not scoffing. Really I'm not. I can't say it's easy to believe, but...' He thought, for the first time in many months, of Mad Mooney.'.... I'm interested to hear what you have to say.'

‘Well,' said Gluck, his fierce expression mellowing. That makes a refreshing change. I'm usually thought of as comic

relief. But let me tell you: I'm scrupulous in my researches.' ‘I believe it.'

‘I've no need to massage the truth.' he said proudly. ‘It's quite convincing enough as it is.'

He talked on, of his recent investigations, and what they'd turned up. Britain, it seemed, was alive from end to end with events prodigious and bizarre. Had Cal heard, he enquired, of the rain of deep-sea fish that had fallen on Halifax?; or the village in Wiltshire that boasted its own Borealis?; or of the three-year-old in Blackpool whose grasp of hieroglyphics had been picture-perfect since birth? All true stories, he claimed; all verifiable. And they were the least of it. The island seemed to be ankle-deep in miracles to which most of its inhabitants turned a blind eye.

‘The truth's in front of our noses,' said Gluck. ‘If we could only see it. The visitors are here. In England.'

It was an attractive notion - an apocalypse of fishes and wise children, to turn England inside out; and nonsensical as the facts appeared, Gluck's conviction was powerfully persuasive. But there was something wrong with his thesis. Cal couldn't work out what - and he certainly wasn't in any position to argue the point - but his gut told him that somewhere along the road Gluck had taken a wrong turning. What was so unsettling was the process this fabulous litany had begun in his head; a scrabbling for some fact he'd once possessed and now forgotten. Just beyond his fingertips.

‘Of course, there's been an official cover-up,' Gluck was saying, ‘here in Spook City.' ‘Cover-up?'

‘Certainly. It wasn't just houses that disappeared. People went too. Lured here, at least that's what my information suggests. Moneyed people; people with important friends, who came here and never left. Or at least not of their own accord.'

‘Extraordinary.'

‘Oh, I could tell you tales that would make the disappearance of a plutocrat seem small beer.' Gluck re-kindled his cigar, which had died each time he'd taken off on some fresh tack.

He puffed on it until he was veiled in smoke. ‘But we know so little,' he said. ‘That's why I keep searching, keep asking. I would have been on your doorstep a lot earlier, but that things have been so hectic.'

‘I don't think there's much I can tell you,' said Cal. ‘That whole period's sort of vague -'

‘Yes,' said Gluck. ‘It would be. I've had this happen repeatedly. Witnesses simply forgetting. I believe it's something our friends -' he pointed the wet end of his cigar skyward,'- are able to induce: this forgetfulness. Was there anybody else in the house that day?'

‘My father. I think.'

He couldn't even be perfectly certain of that.

‘Might I have a word with him?'

‘He's dead. He died last month.'

‘Oh. My condolences. Was it sudden?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're selling the house then. Leaving Liverpool to its own devices?'

Cal shrugged. ‘I don't think so,' he said. Gluck peered at him out of the smoke. ‘I just can't seem to make up my mind about much these days,' Cal confessed. ‘It's like I'm living in a dream.'

You never spoke a truer word, said a voice at the back of his head.

‘I understand.' said Gluck. Truly I do.'

He unbuttoned his jacket, and opened it. Cal's heartbeat unaccountably quickened, but all the man was doing was fishing in his inside pocket for his visiting card.

‘Here.' he said. ‘Please. Take it.'

A. V. Gluck, the card announced, and below the Birmingham address a phrase, in red ink:

What is now proved was once only imagined.

‘Who's the quote from?'

‘William Blake.' said Gluck. ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Would you keep the card? If anything should occur to you; anything ... anomalous ... I'd like to hear from you.'

Til keep it in mind,' Cal said. He looked at the card again. ‘What does V. stand for?' he asked.

‘Virgil,' Gluck confided. ‘Well,' he said, ‘everybody should have some little secret, don't you think?'

2

Cal kept the card, more as a keepsake of the encounter than in the expectation of using it. He'd enjoyed the man's company, in its off-beat way, but it was probably a performance best enjoyed once only. Twice might stale its eccentric charm.

When Geraldine got back he began to tell her about the visit, then thought better of it, and diverted the conversation to another subject entirely. He knew she'd laugh at his giving the fellow a minute of his attention, and, outlandish as Gluck and his theories were, he didn't want to hear the man mocked, however gently.

Maybe the man had taken the wrong turning, but at least he'd travelled some extraordinary roads. Though Cal could no longer remember why, he had the suspicion that they had that in common.