Harvest (21 page)

I
n the days following Slew’s departure, and to keep his mind off the machinations of Quatremayne and his colleagues, Blut had to find a way
to keep busy.

It was not difficult.

In the absence of the normal procedures of Bochum – routine daily reports, matters of Court organization, budget statements and the like – Blut was occupying himself with matters in
the City. His clerks were finding it hard to cope. No one ever asked for, let alone looked at, the kind of information the new Emperor did.

‘Put them there,’ said Blut as more dossiers arrived.

‘My Lord Emperor, there is a lot here that is really not . . .’

‘Everything,’ said Blut, ‘I like the detail.’

He felt his interviews with Quatremayne and Slew had gone well and he needed a walk, which he took upstairs to his eyrie over London. A small unseen figure viewing a vast urban landscape,
wondering.

Later he slept.

Later still he returned to his office and attended to his paperwork, piles of it.

A clerk and a scrivener stood by, impressed. The Emperor consumed paperwork as a raptor might strip carrion off red meat.

They waited; an orderly replaced the candles; the candles burnt down again.

Then suddenly he stopped and sat back, peeling his spectacles from round his ears, wiping them, putting them on.

He was frowning and thinking.

Tappity-tap, tappity-tap.

‘Something,’ he said very softly.

‘My Lord?’

He waved his hand for silence. No one moved. In the distance, high up, the sounds of London hovered, moved in waves, night or day, he didn’t know.

Something.

. . . an emotion?

. . . something he had seen but not understood in those papers?

. . . a connection he had failed to make?

‘
Something
. . .’ he said again. He had seen an opportunity. But where in all those papers? What had almost passed him by?

What would Sinistral have done?

He would have listened to the
musica
and let his mind drift.

Lacking the former, Blut stood up and did the latter.

He had missed something. A name? A place mentioned?

The connection was . . . with . . . with . . .
with
. . .

The pathways of his mind trembled as they sought a connection not quite made.

Uffington?

Where he understand the White Horse was.

Uffington!?

He smiled, relaxed, sat down once more and reached out for the right-hand pile.

It was the tenth or eleventh thing he had dealt with – or rather scanned, and found, as he thought, that there was nothing to deal with.

He riffled through the papers, pulled one out, placed it in front of him.

‘Water!’ he commanded.

The water came.

He sipped and read.

It was a report filed that morning on occupations and occupants in Building 24. Which, in hydden garrison parlance, was the Tower of London.

‘Which is, I presume, the building opposite?’

‘That is so, my Lord. On the far side of Tower Hill. But it is large.’

Blut pointed to a name on a list in the report. One of one hundred and twelve.

‘Bring that one to me. Now.’

‘
Here
, my Lord? Into your actual presence?
Now?
’

The surprise was real and reasonable. Emperors do not meet common criminals.

‘It’s as good a time and place as any for interrogation.’

‘But . . .’

‘Do it. Now. Without further reference to anyone. Understood?’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

The orderly left and Blut stood up. The long days and nights had taken a slight turn for the better. His instincts were feeling good.

‘
And hurry!
’

Arthur Foale was woken from a drifting kind of sleep by a kick to his shins and a clanking of chains.

‘Yer wanted!’

‘Ah,’ he said with grim resignation. So the moment had come. Torture was about to be his.

‘Who by?’ he asked pointlessly.

‘Shut up, get up and wise up.’

His chains were undone and he was pushed from the cell he shared with twenty others.

So far he had got off lightly, considering the nature and place of his very unfortunate arrival. Had he not smelt so badly, they might easily have applied the torch and the rack as well. As it
was, they sent him to be cleaned up, forgot about him, and he ended up in a cell in which most of the inmates had been prisoners for many years.

Well, torture and death were perhaps a better prospect than such a life.

The only question he was asked through all of this was, ‘What’s yer name?’

His only pleasure was in making up the answer, which amused him.

‘Mister Silas Uffington,’ he had replied. Not a bad alias in the circumstances. No point giving his real name: someone might know it. The Fyrd kept records and his time in Brum had
not gone unnoticed.

Days of nothing followed.

Now . . . well . . . torture is torture whatever time of day it is inflicted.

‘Perhaps,’ said Arthur, in a thin voice to the guard, ‘I should explain that . . .’

‘Shut it.’

‘. . . that I still have much to offer, old though I may look . . .’

‘Now.’

‘. . . because, you see . . .’

The corridor was low, dark and narrow, the cells on either side redolent of pain and misery; distant laughter seemed to mock him; his big toe hurt.

They reached some spiral stone steps, worn by the feet of the lost. He turned one way but was roughly pushed another.

‘Up, not down.’

He had always thought that torture in the Tower was done in the basement. But, no, it seemed not.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I would prefer . . .’

If he was to have his nails drawn and his thumb screwed, he would prefer it to happen without a view. The grand vista of London might add to his pain.

‘Shut it. I said it once, I say it again. I will not say it a third time.’

Arthur shut it, his mind beginning to blank as he thought of better things, better days, happier times.

He was pushed along one corridor after another, down some stone steps, along an echoing walkway . . .

‘This is the prisoner, sir,’ said his guard.

Someone else took over.

Black leather, sleeked hair, a Fyrd.

‘Straight on.’

‘Er, yes,’ he said.

When, finally, he reached the room they had been taking him to, the light was too bright for his eyes. He stood in his prickly clothes, the candles were like suns. As his eyes adjusted he found
himself standing before a grey metal desk. Behind it a hydden sat, staring at him.

Arthur was sure he had seen him before. Dozens of times when he was a youth. In black and white. Yes, he was an actor who appeared in wartime movies, a would-be Nazi officer. Same spectacles.
Arthur was utterly lost for words.

He would begin with a smile and offered cigarettes but the next thing . . .

‘Mr Uffington?’

‘Um, I think . . . er, yes, yes indeed. Silas Uffington of, of . . . Wantage.’

Where did the rubbish he spoke come from? He had no idea.

‘I think not,’ came the reply at once.

‘Yes . . . er, no . . . um . . .’

Should he lie?

Who was this hydden in spectacles?

Arthur’s head swam.

Darkness threatened him and he reached for support, he swayed a little and then resumed full consciousness.

‘You are not Mister Uffington.’

‘Am I not?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s a place name, not a surname. So, why would you fabricate a name like that?’

Arthur had always imagined he would hold out longer, but if he was to be tortured or executed he would prefer it to be under his real name.

‘My name is Arthur Foale,’ he cried, standing up boldly, ‘do with me what you will!’

His interrogator looked taken aback and stared at him intently.

‘Foale as in F – O – A – L – E?’ he finally said.

‘The same. Not many can spell it correctly. They forget the E.’

‘Arthur Foale?’ said Blut faintly. ‘
Professor
Arthur Foale.’

‘You have the advantage of me, sir!’ said Arthur, very surprised his name would be known in such a place by such a person, who looked to him like no more than a jumped-up office
clerk.

But whatever he may have looked like to others, Blut knew all about the Professor’s excursions to the Hyddenworld in recent years and his visits to Brum. It had been his job to monitor
such intelligence on Sinistral’s behalf. Naturally he recalled Foale’s extraordinary expertise in matters cosmological. But what was he doing here? On whose side was he? Brum’s?
Quatremayne’s? His own?

Arthur found Blut’s continuing stare very unsettling.

He decided to go on the offensive.

‘I don’t know who you people think you are,’ he said, ‘but I’d be grateful if you would charge me, try me, and punish me or, even better since I have done no wrong
of which I am aware, let me go. Forthwith.’

Blut continued to stare, amazed.

Sinistral had always said that opportunities come to those who wait and here, beyond doubt, was an opportunity.

Arthur Foale! No one was better placed than he to make sense of the Earth’s destructive behaviour in the past year or so.

‘We are not going to charge or punish you,’ said Blut, standing up and reaching out a hand, ‘we welcome you!’

‘That’s all very well, my friend,’ replied Arthur, ignoring the hand now proffered in friendship and respect, ‘but I have been ill-treated and abused by the . . . by your
. . . who
are
you, by the way?’

‘Niklas Blut,’ said Blut.

‘And your role here is?’ said Arthur dismissively. He felt this was a battle of wills and that he was winning it. Welcome, indeed! He felt he now had the upper hand and what he now
wanted, and intended to press for, was an apology and his freedom.

‘Mr Blut,’ he continued, ‘take me to your superior at once.’

‘That will not be possible, Professor.’

‘And why not?’

‘Because I am . . . as it were . . . the superior. There is no authority higher than myself.’

Arthur gaped at him. Obviously he had landed up in a world of madness peopled by deluded bureaucrats like the one before him.

‘Really!’ cried Arthur dubiously.

‘Yes, really,’ said Blut, ‘I am the Emperor of the Hyddenworld.’

‘Really?’ said Arthur after a long silence.

‘
Really
,’ repeated Blut.

Arthur gasped and it took a long time for him to be persuaded that it was so. When he finally was, all he could do was shake his head in wonderment. The last thing he had thought of when using
the henge portal into the Hyddenworld was about finding the gem of Autumn and clearly this strange and unexpected meeting was part of what the hydden called his wyrd, which was in its turn a part
of the wyrd of everything.

‘You,’ said Blut impulsively, ‘are the first human I have ever met.’

‘And you, sir, are the first Emperor
I
have ever met.’

They stood facing each other like explorers whose paths cross in a vast desert and who wish to preserve the proprieties.

Then they shook hands and first Blut and then Arthur began to laugh.

‘It seems,’ said Blut, ‘that miracles do happen.’

‘It seems,’ replied Arthur, ‘that they do.’

I
t was a Sunday, which the hydden always observed as a day of rest, following the pattern set by humans. But this was the day of the Brum harvest
festival, the second Sunday of September, midway through the season.

The work of the early harvests was done and the last and greatest festival, that of Samhain, was but six weeks off. It was the time when folk let their hair down, celebrated a good deal and got
a second wind for the hard work yet to come in field and city, from where so much produce came.

It was therefore as well that the boats carrying Stort and the others did not finally arrive at the Muggy Duck until the early hours of that day. Had Arnold Mallarkhi, the best boatyboy that
Brum had ever known, been alone, he could have done the trip in half the time. But the craft was laden with passengers, Old Mallarkhi steered awry here and there and the condition of Meister Laud
was so weak that they had to stop three times to tend to him.

But Ma’Shuqa, the redoubtable landlady of the Duck, mother of Arnold, daughter-in-law of his grandfather, was ready and waiting just as Jack had asked her to be.

Jack’s own journey in to get help had been troublesome, hence his delay, but he had been able to report the condition of the party, its size and his concerns about its oldest member.

‘We need the best goodwife Brum has,’ he said.

‘There’s none better than my friend Cluckett, Mister Stort’s housekeeper. What she don’t know about keeping old dodderers alive ain’t worth the knowing!
She’ll be ready and waiting.’

‘Tell no one else,’ warned Jack, without much hope of the secret being kept. ‘Now – we need two craft.’

‘I’ve sent for my boy and Pa’s risen from his bed o’ pain to lend a hand, Mirror help you all. There’ll be no stopping ’im and he knows them nasty Sparky
waterways and filthy folk better than he should.’

She raised an eyebrow and smoothed her silk dress over her ample hips and tossed her ribboned hair in a disapproving way.

‘He were young once, was Pa, and he were errant. That’s why he knows them waterways of wickedness!’

So it was that when the exhausted party hove into view hours later in the early morning, some strong lads were ready to hoist Meister Laud out and get him inside the Duck for
Cluckett’s fierce attention.

‘Steady!’ she cried. ‘He’ll die on the spot if you shake him like that. Easy! And I’ll have his habit and drawers off in a trice.’

Whatever nightmare Meister Laud now thought he was in could not have been worse than what was actually to come – as Stort and Jack both knew, themselves having fallen prey to
Cluckett’s stern attentions.

‘Who’s his next of kin?’ she called out.

‘I am,’ said Terce.