Arcadia (30 page)

It took over a day before he found what he was afraid of. Every scrap of paper in Angela’s room, every piece of data that remained on the computers – not much, as she had done a good job of erasing it – was brought to his office, and Hanslip settled down to read through every last syllable. It was a measure of his thoroughness that he noticed the sliver of information when he read it, for it consisted only of four names, with a tick beside one of them. Gunter. That was all.

It meant nothing until he checked the lists of employees. First the scientists, then the administrators, then the support staff and finally everyone else who came and went. The only reference he could find to anyone called Gunter was to a cleaner who had walked off the job some six months ago. Curiously, the records suggested he had vanished while on the island; there was a flaw in the security system so that his last journey from Mull back to the mainland hadn’t been logged. This had caused – Hanslip now remembered – an enquiry into the monitoring systems, which had revealed no errors or malfunctions.

Now here was a piece of paper in Angela’s room with his name on it. It took six hours of interviews to get to the bottom of it, and by the end Hanslip was exhausted, worried and deeply angry.

The third technician he had brought to his office had told him everything he needed to know, after being subjected to the most severe threats. Angela, he said in a trembling voice, almost choking in fear, had conducted experiments on her own without registering them or having them approved and certainly without notifying anyone. She had brooked no interference or criticism and had refused to listen to any objections. She had selected someone from the ancillary staff who had no family or connections and who would not be missed. She had drugged him and transmitted him in her machine to see what happened.

It was getting worse and worse. ‘Did this man know what was happening to him?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What did she think she was doing?’

‘She wanted proof that her theories were correct. The idea was to transmit him a week back and a few yards away to see if he turned up in our universe or vanished. The settings were all done wrong, though. It was an accident. He was never seen again, but she got Chang to search the records and he found a possible match in the 1890s. It took some time, but Chang thought he might have become a priest deep in the Pyrenees. Angela packed him off to find out – without official permission or clearance – six months
ago. Chang found the man’s grave and tested the bones. They were a perfect match. The bones were really old. Do you want to see his report?’

‘He wrote a report as well? No one thought of giving it to me?’

The man nodded nervously and handed over some sheets of paper. Hanslip warned him of dire consequences if he said so much as a word to anyone else, waited until the door was shut, took a deep breath and began to read.

*

By the time he finished reading, his strategy for coping with the nightmare Angela had concocted for him was in tatters, as were his dreams for the future. He spent hours going through the evidence and could find no hole in it. The conclusion was unavoidable: bones, as the man said, did not lie. The cleaner had indeed ended up in the late nineteenth century, had died there and been buried there. Angela had been right. She had single-handedly overturned all the laws of physics and demonstrated that the multiple universe theory, accepted convention for nearly two hundred years, was wrong. Time travel – true time travel, not a transition to a copy – was possible. Hanslip thought carefully, then took every scrap of paper referring to the missing cleaner and incinerated them. The last thing he needed was more evidence of illegality if a search was ever made.

Why had she not said anything about this? Presumably because she thought that the experiment on the cleaner would have been used against her. Which it would have been, until Hanslip himself had disposed of Oldmanter’s most trusted aide in the same way. Although maybe she had been going to tell him; she had made an appointment, saying it was vital and urgent, the day before she vanished. Just before she’d come across Grange, in fact.

That made him stop and think. Surely that was the answer, then, to the Devil’s Handwriting? Not some bizarre and incomprehensible act of deceit; rather it must have been Grange. A
further hour’s work in what remained of the computer’s records confirmed this one as well. Grange had not come to sign a collaboration agreement but to steal it. He had broken into the computer system and helped himself. He had then gone on to offer terms he knew Hanslip could not accept.

The machine was too dangerous to use, and the data to operate it or build another one was out there, somewhere. It might be found by anyone unless More managed to fulfil his orders to the letter. If Hanslip had realised how much depended on More’s success, he would never have sent him alone. The loyalty requirement built into his contract was immensely strong, but nothing was unbreakable.

26

Pamarchon’s encounter with the peculiar girl in the forest that afternoon had been short, inconclusive and disturbing, but at least his instincts had not let him down. The soldiers – more likely rangers – were good, quiet and knew their business, but his senses were better. The faintest crack of a twig, and he had known instantly that it was not an animal or the effect of the wind on an old branch. He had known exactly where it was coming from, how little time he had to escape and hide.

Had it been a trap set for him? Did it mean someone knew his band had arrived, and that they would now have to pack and leave? Who was that young woman who spoke so flawlessly, with an ease and assurance that suggested many years’ training? Why had she said such strange things? She had sounded like someone prepared to say anything to distract him and keep his attention while the soldiers circled.

No. It was possible, but not convincing. She was so very unusual. So oddly dressed …

Pamarchon circled back and watched as she stopped and picked things off the ground which she popped into her mouth, then came to a small clearing and let out a little cry of what sounded like disappointment. Saw her turn as the soldiers slipped in behind her. Five of them with a youth who was, perhaps, their quarry, as he was evidently a prisoner. Watched in bemusement as she berated them, gave them such a talking to in the old language that, rather than frightening her, they seemed cowed instead. Heard the captive take over the conversation. Saw her eventually walk off with them. Noted how none of the soldiers dared touch her.

He followed until he was certain she was being taken to the great house, then peeled off and hurried swiftly back into the deep forest on his horse. He had much to think about on his way back to the camp. When he arrived, he immediately sought out Antros. They had known each other for years, ever since they had lived together as children at the grand southern estates of the chieftain of Cormell, both sent there by their families for their education and training. Antros was the younger by two years, but both felt lost and alone in their new, frightening life.

Pamarchon was the better-born; Antros the son of a bookkeeper, a man who had trained to be a scholar and won some advancement until he realised he was unsuited to the life and began work on his own in a town where there were many merchants and traders. Pamarchon appointed himself the boy’s protector, beginning a friendship which had lasted years, so that when Pamarchon’s time of hardship came and he was accused of murdering his uncle, Antros without hesitation stood by him.

So he headed straight for his old friend. Pamarchon was not a reverent man, but old habits and the training of years gone by had remained and moulded him. As a boy, he had played at being the heroes of the stories, re-enacted the tales in the hills of Cormell, listened at night as their old teacher recited to them before bed, sung the songs of great deeds and terrible adventures. The words were in his soul, both for their beauty and for their association with beatings received when he had misspoken a phrase, or placed the wrong value on a word.

Now he had witnessed a girl speaking with a fluency and skill which he knew he would never be able to attain, not even with years of hard labour and the best of teachers.

He described the encounter to his friend, who listened carefully. Ordinarily Antros was of a sunny disposition, prone to making jokes about everything, especially the most serious of subjects, but he was also a man of great kindness, a sympathetic listener and consoling presence.

‘What did she look like?’

‘Ah, she was beautiful, lovely beyond words.’

‘I meant, how old?’ Antros said. ‘Was she a stranger? How was she dressed?’

‘She talked of things I didn’t understand. She seemed to know little about where she was. Clearly Lady Catherine knew of her arrival, but why greet her with armed men?’

‘You have set many riddles. I can’t solve them for you.’

Pamarchon stood up and stretched himself. ‘I know. I just wanted to make sure it would make no more sense to you than it did to me. I need to know more, and there is only one way of finding out, I think.’

‘Do you want to find the answer, or do you want to find the girl?’

Pamarchon sniffed disdainfully at the very idea, and Antros laughed and pointed his finger. ‘Aha!’ he said mockingly.

‘Not at all. I need to know precisely what is going on before we can move to take back Willdon. But I admit freely she was the most radiant creature I ever beheld in my life.’

‘Why not ask Lady Catherine herself what it is all about?’

‘I may do that. It is the day of the Festivity, remember. I think I will go to the river and bathe. Then I will find my mask.’

*

Once he was bathed, Pamarchon retired to his tent and opened the rarely touched trunk which contained his treasures. There was no money, no gold, nothing like that. Like most people in Anterwold, he had little use for such things. Rather the case contained his scrolls, the extracts of the story which were particularly attached to his family line.

For Pamarchon could trace his lineage back to the travellers themselves, those people who had accompanied the leaders on the Great March which led to the foundation of Anterwold. Everybody could do so in theory, of course, but few had a documented line of succession, from mother to mother, back so many
generations. Such families could be numbered on the fingers of two hands and they occupied a high place as a result.

Position did not confer either power or wealth. Members of such families could be found in every strand of life, high and low. Some were scholars and magistrates and lawmakers, and it is true that they were disproportionately successful in gaining such places. There were also many who were artisans or labourers or tradesmen, important only because they confirmed human continuity and the Story’s truth.

The first cycle covered the leaving of the northern lands and the long journey to Anterwold, ending with the great battle that enabled the travellers to settle. Pamarchon’s ancestor Isenwar was the man who counselled that the journey continue after a difficult winter had sapped spirits and health. Many wanted to go back, but Isenwar denounced their cowardice and promised that he and his family would go on alone, bringing shame on all who did not have the courage of his four-year-old daughter, who would willingly die rather than return to a land which loved them not.

He unwrapped the text and read it once again, seeking the same courage to continue. He wanted to return to his place as the true descendant of such a man, to be no longer a nameless outcast. It was his duty to act, as Isenwar had. Willdon was his by right; he had been deprived by subterfuge. It was time to make his response, and he had waited long enough.

He dressed in a way which would make him inconspicuous, neither too elegant nor too dowdy, and tied the mask around his neck so that it could be pulled up when needed. Then, quietly, he collected his beloved horse, which he would leave half an hour’s walk outside Willdon, and began the long journey. It would, he knew, take at least a couple of hours even by a direct route. He would risk it, for no one would query too closely a well-dressed and mounted man who was obviously going to Lady Catherine’s Festivity.

It would be a simple thing to mingle with the crowd and the moment he found out enough to satisfy his curiosity about the
current state of the domain, he would slip away again, find his horse and return.

So he told himself. Nothing to do with the girl.

*

When he arrived at Willdon he slipped in unnoticed and slowed to an elegant saunter, mask in place, and strolled around for some time, studying the guests. He sighted a couple who were walking along the path. The young man was assiduously courting his companion, but clearly had little hope. He smiled; he remembered being like that himself. She was obviously far beyond her companion; he in the robes of a student and she clearly of immense position, beautiful, elegant, poised. Her long fair wig fell down her shoulders, her mask glittered with precious stones in the candlelight and her dress was a masterpiece of the dressmaker’s art. She didn’t even respond to Pamarchon’s bow, but rather stared haughtily at him through her mask, as though astonished at his presumption. He snorted. How he detested such people now, even though he had once been one of them.

He spent the next hour walking through the festivities, eating a little, exchanging toasts with strangers, making light but meaningless conversation. All was as it should be; he bowed to a lady who curtsied back, and became her companion for an hour, much to the relief of her escort. He could see why; the woman was the wife of an apothecary in the nearby town, and never stopped talking. About her husband, his business, his family, her children, the way Lady Catherine had bowed at her. So many words, but Pamarchon sensed a kindness and decency underneath.

‘Have you greeted her yet? Oh, you should see her! So beautiful! The only woman who can rival her is her guest, who must be from a great family.’

‘What guest is this?’

‘Now then,’ said his companion, who was delighted to be able to retell gossip. ‘No one knows, do they? All anyone knows is that
she was given the highest ceremony of welcome, that she has been kept close in the house ever since, and that she speaks the old language so perfectly that she has astonished everyone who has had the privilege of greeting her.’