The Light Ages (58 page)

The music struck up again. It was getting damnably cold now, so what else was there to do but dance? And the candles, too, were guttering. I wandered at the edge of things, watching Anna as she whirled, clapped, turned. It had been a while now since I had seen a servant, although the drink trays were still plentiful and she was one of many who, on the night of the last dance of the Age, made the most of them. It was hard to tell when the difference between a disappointing ball and something more became obvious. Many of the older guildsmen, I noticed, had gathered in groups and were talking agitatedly, and there was no sign now of any of the Passingtons, or of Greatmaster Porrett. But the music went on; every time the band tried to stop, they were shouted at to continue. Dance after dance beat down through the hours as the wings of the cherubs turned and the music grew shriller and more irregular and the lights gloomed and vanished until the ballroom was only illuminated by the snowlight of the settling moon. There were few people left now in the middle of the dancefloor. In the pauses between numbers, when the band pleaded to be allowed to rest, the unmistakable moan and yelp of the balehounds could now be heard. But Anna was still dancing. Anna would never stop.

‘Robbie!’ She grabbed me again. Her eyes were sunken and blazing, and her forehead was bone-white. ‘And the rest of you! Come
on!’

Somebody turned and muttered something. Anna, her hand digging sharply into mine, tilted her head.
‘What
was that?’

‘I only—’ But the man was jerked back and fell coughing to the floor.

‘Come on! All the rest of you …’ Grudgingly, a little afraid, a few other couples began to move. But the whispers were louder now, and people, at some point, had begun to notice the absolute bareness of Anna’s left arm.
Annasachangeling … Annasatroll …
But she swept me on, and shouted and beckoned, and the exhausted band no longer mattered, because the house itself, in slow creaks and booms, seemed to be lumbering out its own sad music. The cherub clock had stilled. Bits of plaster and gilt crackled from the ceiling.

‘What are you all afraid of?’

Anna swirled her red dress. But by now, we were all afraid. Windows around the house really were open now, or had burst, and freezing air swept in. Oriental tapestries took flight. A chandelier creaked from its rosette and exploded across the dancefloor, spraying blood and glass. Out in the main hall, the untended candles had set the great tree alight until a few enterprising guests used the foaming jets from shaken wine bottles to put it out. The tree became a corpse, dripping, smoking and stinking. The parakeets had fled from it, and were circling the ballroom when the world outside suddenly began to pale and brighten.

‘What is it!’

But even Anna stopped and looked about her now as the shadows changed. This, stalking huge and white across the glittering lawns, spearing the wrecked ballroom, was the dawn of a New Age. It flared through the trees and Walcote House groaned as a turning spear of light struck the ballroom’s windows as the edge of the sun rose, and, right to left, and one by one, the panes burst in sighing, glittering plumes.

There was a long pause, sounds of weeping and coughing, the drip of wreckage. Glances were cast again towards Anna.
Troll … Witch …
But she looked small now, flecked with plaster and glass; harmless and helpless and withered. I steadied her and helped her to stand. Her eyes were dark tunnels, and her breath was fierce and sour. She felt impossible hot and light. How could they blame her for
this?
But people were turning, moving slowly towards us with hate on their lips and the need for someone, something, to accuse.
Troll … Witch …
I dragged her back between the tables, but we were being cornered when shouts wafted through the broken windows. It was something about
The stables! The greatgrandmaster!
and the strange, sleepwalking figures blinked and turned and walked off that way as well, slowly at first, drifting out through the shattered glass and across the snow which was littered with the bright bodies of the parakeets.

Anna and I followed. People were running and the freezing air filled with the distant bark of balehounds, the smell of smoke. Walcote House, when I glanced back at it, still looked white and entire, but its windows were deep and dark; the sunken sockets of a skull. I stumbled on with Anna slowing behind me until she stopped in the dragging snow with her hands pressed against a tree, her hair dangling lank.

‘Are you all right?’

She coughed and shook her head, then nodded. ‘You go on.’

I hesitated, but the commotion ahead through the woods was growing. Guests were milling down by the stables. There came a whooshing of air. A shadow passed over me. A branchful of snow deluged over my neck. Women were screaming, people were pointing upwards from where I stood. The shadow beat again, shaping itself into giant wings. Green and heraldic, the dragon was perched on top of the steeple of a perilinden tree which shivered and swayed under its weight. The beast split its mouth and cawed, then flapped its wings and half rose and then settled again. It seemed at first to be the entire focus of all the shouting, but as I backed off, I sensed that an even more agitated crowd had gathered around its empty cage.

The door hung open. But someone was inside, kneeling in the floor’s sulphurous mess. It was Sadie, and her head was bowed as she cradled what I took at first to be a long lump of meat. People were murmuring, making signs as they pressed against the bars. Many of the men were weeping. No one seemed to know what to do as I stepped into the cage and stumbled towards her. Then I saw that thing which stretched from her lap had had a face. Even now, it was breathing.

‘Can’t you help me, Robert?’ I looked down as Sadie stroked the pelt of the greatgrandmaster’s black hair, which hung from his bared skull. ‘I did this, you know.’

‘You didn’t. It was my fault.’

Her fingers strayed over what was left of his eyes and nose. She kissed his torn lips. ‘I’m so sorry, Daddy,’ she murmured. ‘I was stupid and selfish. And all about some silly wedding. And now it’s too, too late I crouched beside her. I tried to look into the greatgrandmaster’s eyes. But there was nothing to see in them, and then, with a spray of blood, a wet spasm of bones, he died. I laid my hand on Sadie’s shoulder, but she shrugged me off and stood up. She looked, as many would remark later, composed and impressive as she stood inside the dragon’s cage beside her father’s body in her bloodied clothes.

‘Well …’ She wiped her hands on her frock. ‘He’s dead. You should all go back to the house.’

The guests, now entirely silent, began to drift away. ‘Where’s Anna?’ she asked me.

‘She’s back there-between the trees. People—’

‘I
know
what people were saying, Robbie. She can’t stay here now, can she? And neither can you. Are you sure she’s all right?’

We found Anna crouched against the same tree with her hands on her knees. ‘Look …’ She smiled and pointed. We watched as the dragon, with a stronger beat of its wings, lifted itself from the perilinden tree and turned and rose and diminished, flying north.

I crouched towards Anna, half lifting her up. She neither cooperated nor resisted.

‘I’d let you have that stupid car,’ Sadie said, ‘only it wouldn’t get you anywhere.’

‘We could walk.’

She shook her head.

The stables were entirely empty and peaceful as Sadie led us into the yard where, yesterday and in another Age, we had stood to be photographed. She unbolted the door which held Starlight. Big and beautiful, a sigh of light and muscle, the unicorn emerged. She embraced his huge neck.

‘I haven’t got any tackle for him. I ride him bareback, but he knows you, Anna. D’you think you’ll be all right?’

Anna, who could once have done anything, been anyone, just stood there.

‘You can’t do this,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ Sadie fanned her fingers up through the creature’s dense black mane. He nudged his nose against her. ‘Can’t you hear those balehounds? How long do you imagine Star can last here? I’d rather he just went—and took my Anna with him—before I change my mind.’

She opened the adjoining stable and the russet unicorn which had been her gift to Greatmaster Porrett whinnied and clopped out.

‘He seems like a good beast. And he’d be wasted here-always would have been, even if I had got married. So you might as well take him, Robbie.’ Walking between the two great unicorns, Sadie led them towards a stone mounting block. ‘Come on …’

I held the creature’s mane, and Sadie paused and gave Anna a wordless hug, then helped her up. Then it was my turn. It seemed ridiculously high up there, but at least the unicorn’s back was broad. Sadie looked up at us—or rather, she gazed at Anna.

‘Where will you go?’

Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We need to get back to London,’ I said, swaying and gripping the unicorn’s mane. ‘And I doubt if there’ll be trains. What about you, Sadie?’

‘What do you expect me to do? I’ll stay here. I owe it to this house, my father and my poor mother, to my guild …’

‘It won’t be like that now.’

Sadie didn’t bother to answer. ‘These creatures, they’ll go faster if you heel them, slower if you pull on their manes. Left and right’s the same—but not as hard as you’re doing, Robbie—so treat them with respect, and, above all, take care of Anna. Otherwise, I’ll come after you. And have this …’ She pressed several balled-up notes into my hand. ‘You’ll need money, if it’s still worth anything.’

I looked at Anna. ‘Are you ready?’

She nodded.

I was about to get my creature moving when Sadie tugged it back.

‘My whisperjewel,’ she said. ‘I need it back to protect this house ..

In my pocket, I felt a surge of light, the lost music of all those endless dances. With an effort, I tossed it down to her, gleaming wyreblack. Sadie caught it. She slapped the creatures’ rears and we trotted from the stables.

‘Go for the main gates! Take Marine Drive!’

But when I looked back she had already gone from sight. And she was right about these marvellous creatures; they were far from stupid. Sensing my inexperience and Anna’s weariness, they slowed to a smooth walk across the snowy morning gardens, their horned heads nodding, their warm scent and breath wafting back over us, their heavy hooves crashing through the crusted snow.

M
ARINE DRIVE WAS EMPTY
and the loudest sound in the town of Saltfleetby came from the tide sluicing in under the pillars of the pier. The shops on the main street, which in the summer would have spilled out in carousels selling rock, postcards, novelties, buckets and spades, were shut and boarded. But, here in winter, they were probably always that way. Had the world changed? Was this the New Age? But I was cold, and Anna’s lips were blue and she was shivering, and we needed warmer clothes. I found a shop with the golden scissors of the Outfitters’ Guild dangling above it, clumsily dismounted and banged hard on the door until a man’s face, sleepy and wary, finally peered at us through the glass.

‘Do you know what time this is?’ He asked reassuringly simple questions as he pulled back the bolts. He glanced up at Anna and our mounts. ‘I wouldn’t stay long around here if I were you—you know what things are like.’

‘What are they like?’

But already he was lumbering back into the rails of his shop. He found us cloaks and warm tops, riding trousers for Anna and boots for us both. He studied one of Sadie’s twenty pound notes. ‘Don’t you have anything else?’

‘Don’t worry about the change.’

‘No … ?’ He laughed. ‘But I’ll take it. Maybe I can frame the bloody thing, show it to the kids …’

The telegraphs, I noticed, as we rode on out of the town, were black, but not wyreblack; they were simply dead.

The sun vanished. Dense white mist set in. The unicorns were slow, awkward mounts; they’d been designed for the brief speed of the chase. My legs were chafed, my back and buttocks ached, and Anna took to leaning across Starlight’s neck.

A boy ran up to us through the dim hedges. The unicorns started, but were too tired to rear.

‘Did you see it? Did you
see
it?’

‘What?’

‘The dragon! It was over there in that field.’ He pointed, his eyes alight with wonder. But all I could see was mist.

We stopped at a stables and farrier above the North Downs on the first night of our journey towards London. The stableman shook his head at the state of our mounts. What we needed were
saddles.
Just had to widen the girth. And no, he didn’t want our
money—
that stuff was for wiping your arse now. And we could sleep for free in the roofspace above the straw. That night, less asleep than unconscious from weariness, I was sure I smelled smoke, and heard shouts and screams. And the unicorns, and the other beasts in the stable below us, seemed restless. I moved closer towards Anna, but she was light and still, scarcely there. And then I was gone, too, drawn back into the blackness, although I could still hear the beasts below whinnying, snickering, an agitated panting, then the churn of a saw, until I woke up to find myself and Anna covered in dust and frost.

Down in the muddy yard, our mounts were already saddled. Starlight was trying to bite the hand of the stablelad who held him and there were wheals across his flanks. They’d tried a bridle, apparently, which the beasts wouldn’t take. Greatmaster Porrett’s russet gift was shivering and steaming as if he’d already been ridden a dozen hard miles. His forehead was a bleeding stump.

‘They’re just
horses, you
know.’ The stableman was as bland and casual as he had been yesterday. ‘The damn things fall off.’ He fixed us with a smile and a glare.

The mist was thicker still on the second day of our journey, laden with the smell of burning, and we caught glimpses of flames and wreckage. Still, no one knew quite what was happening up in London, other than that the trains weren’t running and the telegraphs were dead. The saddles were some help in keeping upright, but my mount’s shivering increased as the morning progressed and blood wouldn’t stop flowing from the stub on his forehead. It dripped in the mud and splashed back across me. The unicorn was in pain, half-blinded. I tried getting off and leading him, but in the late afternoon the creature stopped in his tracks, belched a torrent of bile, then keeled over and died. We had to leave him where he fell; it wasn’t the first carcass we’d seen at the roadside.