400 Boys and 50 More (106 page)

“Glad to hear it, very glad.”

“We shall meet later, to confer,” the detective said quietly to Hewell. “I expect to have more proof by tonight, and perhaps the culprits themselves in hand. I may need your assistance. For now, betray nothing and trust no one. We will play the hand we’re dealt, and play it as two fellows well versed in bluffing.”

“You have my full confidence and you will receive whatever cooperation you need,” Hewell assured him, although he had seen no evidence whatsoever that Deakins understood even the basic principles of bluffing.

Toby waited at the bottom of the steps, visibly anxious not to fall behind with their deliveries. Hewell’s agitation suddenly became a match for the boy’s, a nervous nausea rising from the pit of his belly as if his heart were one of the dozen leeches in Dr. Merryweather’s celebrated Tempest Prognosticator, desperately throwing itself toward the minuscule hammer that sounded a warning bell. He dispelled much of the slimy dread by walking vigorously, so that by the end of the hornbeam drive he was feeling less oppressed; but the sense of an oncoming storm was still with him.

“Are you unwell, sir?” Toby inquired.

“Well enough, lad. Let’s get this over with.”

* * *

The Ghost Queen rose later than she had intended, given the importance of the day. The Terrors had left word of their successful delivery, so the first piece was in place. But Spectralia remained in grave danger and she must not lower her guard until the emergency had passed. She was
still
not entirely sure of its nature.

Although she had read the Concatenated Motivations to her subjects in a voice of supreme confidence and authority, in truth the compiled results of the Weaver’s carding were exceedingly vague and she had taken numerous liberties in her interpretation, erring always on the side of offering reassurance. The tabulations could only be precise in addressing dilemmas that admitted to bifurcation. “Shall I respond to my suitor?
Yes
or
No
?
Which fork of this road should I take?
Right
or
Left
? Should I
climb
to the attic or
descend
to the cellar?” With dice, and especially her ivory Ptolemaic of twenty facets, she could select from a much wider set of possible paths. But she had not yet discovered a foolproof way to reduce all life’s questions to such a rubric. The card technique she had devised—based on the work of Jacques “Digesting Duck” Vaucanson, coupled with her own method of mechanical compilation—allowed another approach to analysis, but it was still more suited to fabricated situations than to the tangled weft and warp presented by reality.

Fortunately, she had founded Spectralia with a poet’s sensibility, which she leaned upon in times of uncertainty. Even when a course could be determined by rolling dice, the path beyond the first few steps must be elaborated if not improvised—spelled out and developed in detail. In this, her muse had served her well.

Each day began with an hour of historiography, the fabric of Spectralia spun in careful script in the pages of her minuscule books. When the work of word-spinning and world-weaving was done, the Terrors took the volume to be thread-bound and placed alongside the myriad others that made up an ongoing illuminated history of the Kingdom. Ordinarily she would then spend the rest of the morning deciding the fates of her subjects—all those who acknowledged her dominion within the square borders of Spectralia—but today contained more urgent business. It had rained in the night and the woods would be ideal for a harvest. She called the Terrors to equip an expedition.

The day was brisk; the wind from the sea made her shrink into her wraps. The wheels of her conveyance juddered unpleasantly over every twist of root or rocky stub. Deep in the shade of the Pellapon Woods, they pushed her to and fro until she spied the purple caps and yellow veil of the ghost mushroom, growing in a fairy circle at the base of a blasted oak. The caps stained her gloves as she gathered three of the dozen or so that grew in the mold, and then the Terrors wheeled her back to her alchemical lab. Belladonna berries and other elements waited in tincture, but it was the ghost caps that exerted the key influence and she prized them for their freshness. In a mortar she made a grainy purple paste thinned with spirits and various liquors, then blended this with the other tinctures.

She set aside most of the violet solution as ink for the next special printing of Ghost Pennies, but a small flask she extended to the Terrors. Four hands reached for the purple vial, but she held it back a moment.

“You are Protector Princesses,” she said emphatically, to impress them with the gravity of their errand. “Behave like such for once. Cook will admit you and identify the portion to receive Our sacrament.”

Thus the affairs of the Kingdom kept her busy until well past nightfall.

* * *

No sooner had Toby returned from one circuit of the district than they arrived back at the office to discover the next mound of missives waiting. Merricott cheerily handed them over, and Toby accepted his new assignment with a buoyant optimism that Hewell found exhausting, as it appeared to indicate that the lad thought he would soon come to the end of the work—an impossibility, given that the mail would never cease to flow. As a senior of the postal system, it behooved him to show no sign of impatience or fatigue, but Toby’s unstinting enthusiasm proved difficult to match. After a time, Hewell fell into a daze, following along without much attention to the particulars. He had long since memorized their route on the postal map he carried and felt he could have taken over Toby’s duties with little trouble.

It was not until sometime after nightfall that the day’s final delivery was made and they returned to the post office one last time. Merricott had long since removed himself homeward, to dinner and to bed. Toby shared a light repast of bread and cheese they had collected on the final approach. These sat poorly with the earlier meal of crab apples they had picked along the road and eaten as they walked.

Hewell made no mention of the night mail and prayed that Toby would not mention it, either. He wished to be done with this day, if only it might be done with him.

As they finished their meal, Toby said quietly, “I feel that I can trust you, sir. More,
She
has hinted that I can.”

“She?”

“In time, sir. In time. We have one last letter to deliver. Would you care to come along?”

“Something tells me that I might,” said Hewell, and he looked on in fascination as Toby opened his courier pouch and drew out the blank envelope he had secreted there that morning. It had traveled with them all day, neither of them remarking on it, but a haunting presence nonetheless. The envelope was unsealed, and Toby bowed the sides that he might reach in and retrieve a piece of folded paper. Opening this revealed a blank sheet and one loose postage stamp. It was the same Hewell had seen on the letters delivered to Pellapon Hall the prior day: violet and blotched, both regal and malignant.

“I have for you, sir, the penny stamp of our Kingdom. We call it the Ghost Penny.”

“I assume it will cost me a penny, then?”

“As you say, Mr. Hewell, and well worth it.”

Hewell handed over his solitary copper, glad that he always kept one on hand in the event of just such an emergency—one never knew when a letter might need mailing, and not even an officer of the Royal Mail could post correspondence without a stamp.

Toby accepted the coin and cupped it in his hands. He pursed his lips and puffed away the crumbs of bread and cheese from the tabletop where they had dined, then opened his hands and released not only the penny but a pair of dice. And not typical dice. One was cubic, but its pips were replaced with asymmetrical scratches, perhaps hieroglyphs. The other had more faces than Hewell could count without losing track and was marked with Greek letters. Toby examined them both closely, then took a small hand-bound volume from his breast pocket and opened it to a page on which grids were filled with marks corresponding to those on the dice.

“Very well,” Toby said to himself. He then handed the blank paper and envelope to Hewell with odd, stiff formality. “Seal this up as if you’ve written a letter to be mailed, then stamp the envelope.”

Puzzled but amused, Hewell folded the sheet several times and slipped it into the fibrous envelope. He then took up the Ghost Penny and regarded the pale visage upon it, with its single blurred red eye. The backside was sticky with a wash of gum arabic and the purple stain had bled into it.

“I require something with which to dab the stamp,” Hewell said.

“It is traditional to place the Ghost Penny on your tongue and rest it there a few moments,” Toby said. “That will be moisture enough. Like the Penny Black, it is self-adhesive.”

Hewell licked the violet stamp, surprised to discover that it tasted of those very flowers, with a sugary sweetness that barely masked an underlying bitterness. His fingers, as they smoothed the stamp in place, were all atremble.

“And now, by the ruling of the Concordance, I am to show you this.”

Toby spread out a district map. At first it appeared identical to the one Hewell carried, all its features familiar from the day’s wanderings. However, the place-names and designations were markedly different. The main street was labeled as The Row of Silent Ones. There were a Ghastly Bypass and Staring Knolls; also Tiny Gnashers—a bridge above the Ghoulfast Cataract—which he had seen himself that day and crossed repeatedly on that selfsame bridge, although he could easily have waded the so-called cataract (in truth a very small weir) without wetting his knees. Toby ran a finger along a dotted, circuitous path marked as the Ghost Road, which touched each location on the map. “This is the route I take when performing my secret post, sir. We will follow it tonight, to reach the Specter’s Seat.”

At the bottom of the map, Hewell finally spied a legend, neatly calligraphed:
Spectralia
.

Deakins was right, he realized. This was a game. And although he had never been fond of time-trivializing amusements, he found himself caring very much about the outcome—thrilled to be engaged in it.

Seeing the district annotated with unfamiliar designations, he wondered what world he had been led through all that day. This one had slumbered unseen within it—unseen by him, that is, for it occurred to him that Toby saw them both.

And the others—Binderwood’s bewildering populace—how many of them took part in this game? Last night, stalking Toby through the fields and finally to the Cotter’s hut, he had seen men, women, children—the aged and the spry—all attending to the strange cowled figure in the wheeled chair. A soft yet rough voice—feminine and ageless—few of her words had reached him. But for her audience they appeared to hold great power.

Tonight he supposed he would hear them for himself.

“You must address your letter, sir.”

“Oh, yes. To whom?”

“To yourself.”

Hewell blinked, dipped a pen, and did as he was told while Toby watched closely. He tried to pass the letter to the boy but was refused. “This one is yours to deliver.”

They set off without further delay. The Ghost Road ran parallel to the public road in many places, even crossing it on occasion. They went in silence. Hewell soon found that they did not walk it alone. From certain houses as they passed, costumed figures emerged and fell in behind them. Horns and scales, masks of textiles, claws purloined from taxidermied creatures. None spoke. The cortege added to a growing sense of immanence; the night was gravid with revelation. Obscure emotions bloomed. Inner silences, thoughts forever unvoiced, threatened to make a thunderous clap that would deafen them all. It occurred to him he ought to have felt terror. Instead he felt wild joy.

As the woods closed in, scenes of greater weirdness greeted them. Half-lit tableaux, scattered scenes of figures caught in ritual or combat or some confluence of the twain. Two haphazardly armored knights faced each other, swords and shields held high, one shouting, “I cast Bolt of Oblivion upon thee!” To which the other countered, “My Looking-Glass Greatshield repels the attack, which returns to thee in triple force!” Then a supervisory figure in a starry cloak, after shaking dice in a leather cup, intoned, “Thou’rt both struck down in the same instant!” But as the third figure spoke and the first two staggered, they noticed the passing procession. They arrested their falls, gathered their weapons, and joined the silent marchers. The wizardly one gave Hewell a nod and a wink. He recognized the innkeeper Floss beneath the overshadowing hood, although Mrs. Floss was evidently not a participant in these matters.

Pellapon Hall loomed ahead of them, and within the great house loomed a greater one, spectral and mysterious like the grinning face that hides within the moon. Turning aside, they crossed the dewy fields and descended into a crevice in the cliffs above the sea. The waves cast luminous foam, futile yet persistent, onto rocks far below. The populace of Spectralia filed in behind Hewell and Toby. A bonfire burned in the lee of the cleft, barely troubled by wind. On the far side of the fire, back in a natural hollow upon a shelf of stone, he saw the cowled figure of the previous night. Her wheeled chair was off to one side, empty, for she had been set upon the ancient seat. Within the hood, her visage was dim; yet it took no effort for Hewell’s mind to fill that void with the likeness engraved on the Ghost Penny stamp.

He studied the letter he carried, comparing the face on the stamp with the one before him. The etched engraving, with its fine crosshatches and delicate dark borders, appeared to reach beyond the boundary of the stamp, creeping over his fingers, his sleeves, flickering out through the night. He looked up and saw the entire world becoming an engraving, redrawn continually by some fluid invisible hand that gave it animation, keeping it in constant, shimmering flux. The colors of objects barely stayed within the lines that sought to contain them, as if the inks with which the world was painted were trembling, blurring, running free. Hewell’s flesh swarmed with tiny etched lozenges and diamond-shaped pores, his skin but a net of finest mesh that barely held his soul. He was surrounded by figures out of a Goya aquatint, the night a subtle intaglio printed by some mysterious process. If the fire were but artifice, then how did it emit both heat and light? An inner flame drove everything, even the dark-edged rocks, even the painted night. The sky itself was out of register, with stars no more than offset dots of purple, pink, and blazing red, just like her eyes. Her eyes . . .