Deep Secret (47 page)

We persuaded Dad that there was enough money to pay someone to do the cooking. Maree can’t, Dad won’t learn, and I only know spaghetti. So Dad goes and gets Mrs Fear’s sister Yvonne, because she was the last person Mum sacked from the shop. This is carrying charity too far. Yvonne cooks worse than Maree. I spend £100 a week buying food I like instead. What I mean is that there is money for things. I bought all these ready-formatted disks. I put my report on all of them and then hid the disks in all sorts of different places before Maree drove me over to Rupert’s place in her new car.

Rupert’s house is quite small, but it’s really good inside. You should just see his roomful of computers and the sound system in his living room. They’re trying to persuade my Uncle Derek (Maree calls him her as-it-were-dad these days) to move in there. Maree and Rupert want to live in the bigger house just along the road where the pond is, as soon as Maree’s qualified, but that won’t be for a while yet, and she wants Rupert to keep an eye on my as-it-were-uncle. I think Uncle Derek is too independent-minded for that. If he stays in London,
I
shall buy Rupert’s house. I really like it.

When we got there, his latest lot of quack chicks had just hatched. You couldn’t go in the kitchen for fear of treading on them. The Lady Quack always nests under the sink. Lord Quack comes in through the cat flap Rupert’s put in the back door for them, and then goes out again in a hurry when all the chicks rush at him. He came and sat in the living room with us while we had lunch. Rupert is a really good cook. I wish he’d give Yvonne some lessons.

When we’d finish eating, Rupert said, “Ready, you two?” and when we said yes he told me to have my print-out ready and to hold it in my hand. Then he said, “Whatever you may
think
happens, you must remember that you’re never really going to leave this room where we are.”

I keep wondering why he said that. I had a sort of feeling that it was what he was supposed to say to outsiders (meaning me). And I don’t believe it was true. Magids seem to have to lie quite a lot. I like that, personally. I know that when we’d finished it was hours later and my feet ached from having to stand up all that time. But we started by sitting round in three chairs facing the bookcases and the sound system.

After a while, though nothing much had changed, Rupert said “Right,” and got up and went to the bookcase. He swung a piece of it back like a door. Inside there was a foggy-looking staircase. “Follow me,” he said, and started to climb up it. It was wooden and it creaked. Maree went next. She was very nervous. You can always tell when Maree’s nervous because she looks extra fierce and gloomy and keeps pushing up her specs and blinking. I went last, and I wasn’t nervous at all at that point.

The stairs went up and up and round in a spiral for quite a long time. After about half the climb, I realised that we’d already gone higher than Rupert’s house by a long way. I got
very
interested. And the higher we climbed, the foggier the stairs got, until everything was sort of milky – or just a bit like a film negative – but the stairs were still made of wood. They still creaked. I could smell the dusty wood-smell of them and I
know
they were as real as I am. It was quite warm too, and that made the wooden smell stronger.

When I reckon we had climbed at least as high as the top of the church spire in the next village, or maybe higher, we suddenly came under an open arched doorway, on to a bare wooden floor made of very wide boards that creaked worse than the stairs. And I saw we were in the Upper Room. It was pretty big, but I never saw how big, even though I could see the walls and see that they were plain and whitewashed, because it was all the same milky, film-negative whiteness as the stairs. The people there were like that as well. There were lots of them. Half of them were sitting against the wall on benches that looked built in there, and the other half were sitting in chairs round an enormous wooden table that filled most of the room. They seemed to stretch off into the distance. I could see the ones up the other end bending forward or leaning right back in their chairs to look at us.

It was odd, with these people. You got the feeling they were from all different times and places, even though they all dressed the same. Some of them had the kind of faces you only see in very old paintings. And there were two kinds of them. I can’t describe how I knew that. It had nothing to do with where they were sitting or how they looked. I just knew that some of them had been alive once and some of them never had.

The only one who wasn’t sitting down was a little man with a half-bald head and rather bandy legs, who came skipping up to Rupert, grinning all over his face. He was as real as everything else. Rupert bent down and hugged him and then kissed him on both sides of his face like a European politician. I thought the little man must be French or Russian or something. Then he started speaking and I recognised the croaky voice. He was the ghost who was in Rupert’s car. Even then I wasn’t nervous, though Maree was, worse and worse. It was so warm and quiet there.

“I’ve given my evidence already, lad,” the little man croaked. “I’m staying on to confirm yours.”

“Great,” Rupert said. I thought he was a bit nervous too. “I was afraid I wasn’t going to see you again. You remember Nick and Maree, don’t you? This is Stan.”

We shook hands. It was all normal, except that Stan croaked, “Pleased to meet you face to face, if you see what I mean.”

Then Rupert sort of ushered us all forward to the end of the table. There was no one sitting at that end. It was wide enough for us all to stand in a row along it. Even in the milkiness, I could see that the table was thick black oak, and under our feet, where we were standing, the floorboards were worn in a dip from other people standing there.

And then suddenly I was nervous. It was all those faces, all looking. I could see Maree shaking. Stan patted my arm. I looked down on the top of his head, half bald, half curly grey hair, and it made me feel a bit better. But those faces. Some of them were – well, like Koryfos. Even the normal ones looked like judges do without their wigs on television. You know the way they have mouths that don’t seem to smile in the same way as normal people’s. And it made it worse that they were all rather hard to see in the milkiness.

Rupert said, “Magids and Archons of the Upper Room, may I sponsor to your presence Sempronia Marina Timosa Euranivai Koryfoides, as the latest Magid of our number?”

Now I knew why Maree was so nervous. I had noticed she was wearing smart clothes, whatever she says, but I’d thought they were just because she was meeting Rupert. She always dresses up for him. I hadn’t realised it was her day for being sponsored. She bowed.

Someone halfway up the table, a man with a dry sort of voice, asked her if she felt ready to be a Magid, and she pushed at her glasses and more or less snapped, “As ready as I’m ever going to be.”

Then they started asking her all sorts of questions. It was an oral exam really. And I can’t say anything about the questions. I heard them quite clearly at the time, but they seem to have arranged to have them all blurred in my mind when I try to think what was asked – rather like what I thought had happened over Babylon. But Maree did quite well answering. Everyone asked her things, but the chief askers were halfway up the table on both sides. I think that’s where the important ones sat.

And I can’t say anything about the next bit either, because Maree says she’ll kill me if I do. I know she
could
kill me too, but she says how to do it is a deep secret. She’ll let me say that what she had to do next was a sort of ceremony of magic, like the Tea Ceremony in Japan, and that’s all. That was because she went wrong in the middle. She had to go back three stages and do it again from there. But I was impressed at what she could do. And envious. I can’t make light in the shape of the Infinity sign float over my head. I’ve tried.

She finished properly in the end. One of the people on the benches came and gave her a bundle of robes like the ones they were all wearing, and she put them on and went all milky like they were. That frightened me. It was so like when she was stripped. Stan saw and patted my arm again. Then they told her by all her names that she was now a Magid. She stopped looking nervous and she beamed, all white and foggy.

After that it was Rupert’s turn. He was really nervous by then. He had gone stringy-faced. One of the ones in the middle of the table asked if he had made a full report “of Koryfos, the heirs of Koryfos and the matters associated”. He said he had. And he laid a thick bundle of papers on the end of the table. I couldn’t help trying to read the first page, but all I saw in the milkiness was the first line. That said: “About a year ago, I was summoned to the Empire capital, Iforion, to attend a judicial enquiry.” I think he’s done what I did and added some more later.

All the faces turned to the papers. There was a long, long thoughtful sort of pause. It was rather horrible. Rupert got out a handkerchief and wiped at his face.

Then, all at once, they seemed to know all about what he’d said in the papers, and they began asking him about it. Really hard questions. Did he know the Emperor was going to beam Timotheo? Did he even suspect it? Why had he taken such a casual attitude to the Empire and its affairs? Was he acquainted with the nature of the bush-goddess? Had he looked her up in the Magid database. On and on.

Rupert explained what he’d done and his reasons, carefully each time. Sometimes he even defended himself, but he didn’t make nearly such a good job of it as I would have done. I kept thinking of excuses he could have made. Twice I made excuses for him. Maree and I both chipped in when they asked why he had let us go after him to Thule and then Thalangia. Maree got really angry, the second time.

“We made sure he didn’t know a thing about it,” she said. “We only followed him because Rob was hurt and couldn’t take us. Damn it, how else were we going to find the way? You can’t just sit there and blame him for something
we
did!”

I expected them to get angry with her for that, but they were quite polite. Someone right down the end of the table that I couldn’t really see said, “My dear, there’s no need to get so heated. We are not
blaming
the Magid. We are trying to find out truly how and why these things happened.”

“You could have fooled me!” Maree said. Some of them even laughed.

But that didn’t stop the questions.

After a while I realised why Rupert was not making excuses. Every time he explained something truthfully, in a way that seemed to clear things up, it
was
cleared up. The pages they were asking the question about just sort of filtered away from the end of the table. I noticed it first when Stan was croaking out about some of the advice he had given Rupert. Quite a chunk of pages vanished after Stan had finished. But if the people were not satisfied, the pages stayed there. Sometimes they even spread out in a row along the end of the table. This happened when they were asking why Rupert didn’t prevent the murders on top of the hill. And I began to see that if you didn’t tell these people what happened and why, exactly honestly, you were going to have to stand there for days – weeks maybe – until you did. Around then, I started wondering if it was as much fun being a Magid as I’d thought.

The pages spread out again when they were asking about Babylon. They were
really
interested there. To begin with the questions were the important sort of things you’d expect, like, why had Rupert sent all three Empire heirs to Babylon? (you know, I hadn’t realised he had!), and, had he considered what he was doing? Did he know how few people came back? Had he attended to the rhyme, where it said this?

Rupert suddenly cracked. “No I
didn’t
!” he said. Well, he almost shouted really. “It was the only way I knew to get Maree back! I felt as if I’d just been stripped myself, if you must know!”

Nobody said anything. The pages just gathered themselves back into the pile, and they started asking other questions, much calmer, detailed sort of questions. The things they wanted to know surprised me. Had the flock of goat’s wool disappeared? Rupert went calm again and said it had, and so had the bottles of water and our clothes. And could he say more what the landscape looked like? He said he couldn’t. Then they asked about the quacks. They were really interested in them. Nothing like that had ever happened before, they said, and could Rupert account for the way the quacks came back as mature birds? He said he couldn’t, but they weren’t just mature, they were clever now. Quacks are normally rather stupid birds, he said. And Maree spoke up and said
she
thought the quacks had dimly known they were foolish and hadn’t liked the idea. But how had the quacks managed to ask for what they needed? someone along the benches wanted to know.

Maree said, “We haven’t the faintest idea. They got there long before we did. And I don’t know how that happened any more than I know why I was so long after Nick coming back.”

At that, that chunk of pages vanished, but slowly, as if the people were regretting not knowing more, and they went on to the last part and asked about when Dakros appeared. I hadn’t known Rupert was worrying about me so much. I’d have told him not to. I can get out of most things.

Then all the pages were gone. Rupert looked nervous again. A lady right near our end of the table said to him, “Didn’t you realise Charles Dodgson was a Magid? I thought that was quite generally known.”

Rupert was just going to say something to her, when a man further up the table waved at him for attention and said, “You’re not quite right about the Roman augurs, you know. They were mostly pretty stupid. I was actually the chief surveying engineer, and I often had real trouble persuading the blessed augurs to let me put the camp on the node. There were at least three sites where they forced me to miss it. It still annoys me. I wanted you to know it wasn’t my fault.”

Rupert laughed and said “Thanks!”

After that there was a bit of a pause, full of wood creaking and robes rustling. Then the dry-voiced man leant forward from his place halfway along the table and asked, “What is your assessment of your performance, Magid?”