The Chimes Read online

  I nod. They’re looking for Lucien, and where are we going? Straight into their stronghold.

  ‘But we should go back to the storehouse first,’ I say. ‘For supplies at least.’ I notice that my voice rises at the end.

  ‘No. We need to go now.’

  ‘And just leave the others?’ I put my hand to my upper arm, press the pain that’s still at the surface.

  Lucien studies me, patient.

  ‘In a few days they will have forgotten us, Simon.’

  And I know that he is right.

  Netty

  We are in the eaves of the entrance to the Five Rover amphitheatre. Lucien just inside the tunnelmouth. I am standing on the strand.

  ‘Camden first,’ I say. ‘Then Covent Garden. If she’s not there, I’ll go south to Barrow and then to Elephant and Castle.’ I sing Lucien the route I plan to take and he sings it back to me with a few changes.

  ‘Take the backstreets as much as possible. They’ll be looking for me foremost, but after the trade they may know what you look like too.’

  I wrinkle my brow for a beat and wonder what my description might be. I have no clear idea of what I look like. I can’t remember the last day fine enough to catch a steady glimpse in the river. What I know is that I’m skinny, ragged. My clothes shout pactrunner. It is possible, when I think of it, that I have my mother’s brown hair. My father’s green eyes. But I think of myself as nondescript, ready to fade in anyone’s memory. Is this what Lucien sees?

  ‘OK,’ I say. I repeat the bass line of the route so Lucien knows that I’ve got it.

  ‘And then what?’ I ask. ‘How will we travel to Oxford?’

  ‘Just follow the tune,’ says Lucien. ‘We’ll answer the other questions as they come. And be careful.’

  Netty is not at Camden market. I did not really expect it. I walk through the crowds that gather thick around the foodstalls. It’s mostly prentisses, because Camden’s streets are filled with music printers, all needful of quick fingers for their heavy presses. They produce the Order’s official publications – teaching materials, guildsong directories, primers for Onestory, special occasion Chimes and masses.

  It’s a young crowd in the market, muscling and hooting, dressed in the bright uniform of their trade. They group around the vendors selling vegetables and rice, hot meat pancakes, thick cacao blended with spices that will give strength to bodymemory. Music printers are well paid, and the prentisses are all strong, and the instruments they carry are rich and ornate. I stand out in my ragged jeans, my face streaked with sleeplessness and mud. I listen for neeps and tatties, but the homely tune does not come.

  From Camden to Covent Garden. When I arrive, I walk through once presto and from habit I watch for a disturbance in the fabric of the market’s music. I hear no pacts, no Lady, no trade. Just people buying food for their lunch, gossiping in duos and trios.

  It is an older group of traders here. The clothiers of Jermyn Street. The prentisses of the instrument makers, who walk along in silence in their pale uniforms. I think for a moment of Johannes’s son, Charles, and wonder if I would know him if I saw him.

  I hear oysters, and pasties. I hear melted four cheeses on granary loaf with pickle. I hear foxwhelp apples by the bag, cider by the gallon. And then under the tunes I hear, like I’ve willed it into being, a threaded humdrum melody, bubbling and impatient. Bangers and mash, neeps and tatties, bubbles and squeak.

  It is Netty.

  I walk down, not too quick, not too slow. I see the blue tarp awning, the red-painted stools, the sterno plate, all even smaller than I remember. I see an older woman with greyflecked hair, her back to me, the strings of an apron tied in an angry knot. She times her patter with the spoon’s stirring, the bubbling of the pan.

  ‘Netty,’ I say to the woman’s back. She turns and she sees me.

  Her face when she turns is arranged in a calm mask, only the watchful hooded eyes showing through. For a short second when she sees me, the mask drops and her face grows old and fragile in one half-beat. Her eyes fill with fear. But then before I blink, the flat dead look has come back.

  ‘Who’s asking?’ she says, and turns back to the skillet.

  I reach up and untie the tarp and let it drop behind me. I come in so close that I can feel the heat of the sterno raising the hairs on my bare arms.

  ‘It is Sarah Wythern’s son,’ I say. ‘But I am not asking.’

  Netty turns lento and this time she lets herself stare. Her lips lift as if she might smile.

  ‘How?’ she asks, and the rest of her question is silence.

  ‘How did I remember?’ I say. I don’t bother keeping the anger out. She is looking at my chest, has seen the lack of guildsign there. ‘How is it I haven’t lost my memory yet? How did I know to come back? None of it thanks to you.’

  She nods without speaking. She doesn’t take her eyes from me. I notice the slight tremor in her hands and feel a tinge of pity that she does not deserve.

  ‘I joined a pact,’ I say. ‘I found my way back to the memory of our meeting.’ I don’t mention Lucien. ‘You refused to help me. You knew who I was, but you let me go anyway, into the city. Though you knew it meant memoryloss for certain. You said you wanted a sign. Well, I’ve brought it with me now.’

  She nods.

  ‘Was it the song you wanted?’

  She nods again. ‘The song or the guildmedal.’

  ‘My mother never gave me a guildmedal, but she gave me the song.’ And I sing it.

  Netty nods for the third time. Her old face with the hard eyes has crumpled, grown soft. The blankness has gone and in its place the weakness of an old hope allowed back in. But the hope has also strengthened the bitterness, like air feeding flame. It is a strange sight to see this story on her face. Neither expression wins.

  ‘You look like her,’ she says.

  ‘I looked like her back then as well,’ I say.

  ‘Perhaps I should have helped you.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have. But there’s no point arguing that. You’ll help me now.’

  I will her to find some strength better than the brittle mask, better than bitterness. I sing the first two lines of the guildsong again, as if that might convince her.

  ‘Sssh,’ she says, and gestures in alarm to the world outside the tarp. ‘I’ll help. I’ll help, but you must be quiet.’

  Netty goes to the awning, checks outside. She ties the tarp again tight to the door poles. Then she pulls the two stools close and swings the countertop over on its hinge so it lies between us like a table.

  ‘Sarah Wythern’s son. Do you have a name of your own?’ she asks.

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘Simon. Tell me, then, Simon.’ She takes a breath like she’s putting her shoulder to something. ‘What do you know of Ravensguild?’

  I don’t look direct at her in case she changes her mind. I pull the memories in.

  ‘I know they oppose the Order. They want to keep wordmemory. They know it is Chimes sends memory away and gives the shaking sickness. Their sign is the raven, which is a bird, which is an animal that died because of Chimes. And it has the meaning of memory. I know they work to share and record memories. We need to know who they are.’

  ‘What was your mother’s role, do you remember?’

  ‘My mother had the gift of seeing others’ memories. People came to her and brought memories they would forget otherwise. It was her task to remind them, to keep their memories alive.’

  ‘Yes, admirable,’ says Netty. ‘But there was another task also, a different way she dealt in memory. Did she tell you of that?’

  Something rankles in me. Netty talks as if all the fire is gone from the task and no heat even in the coal.

  ‘Some memories were more important than others. My mother chose which ones and she passed them along. She sent them to you, didn’t she? Then you passed them to the next and so on, so that the meaning would spread. And so those with better memory could put them together and help us
remember and understand.’

  Netty studies me.

  ‘What do you think made certain memories important?’

  ‘Those that were bigger than single stories. That told people something about themselves in this time, about where they were and why.’

  She nods. ‘They kept alive what Onestory left out. They told of the crimes of the Order, and the suffering of the people. These were the important memories. The ones that were meant to drive the rebellion. Those memories moved through the networks of people like your mother and me, to the strongest of Ravensguild.

  ‘You surprised me, boy. I didn’t expect to see you back here anytime before the next Allbreaking. But your mother was in the dark about many things. Things we had known in London for a long while.’

  A sense that Netty is stretching her story for her own savour, that she is enjoying the taste of it and the knowledge she has over me.

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘That Ravensguild is dead,’ she says. ‘It has been dying for a long while, but in our life we saw its final throes. When she died, your mother was one of very few who still transported mem­­ories to London. One by one the memory keepers had been picked off by the Order. The gift was depleted. If your mother had not come down with the shaking sickness, they would have come for her too.’

  She looks over her shoulder to the market street. ‘I have been waiting for them to take me, but either I am not enough threat or they have forgotten I am here.’ She sounds almost disappointed. Like an overlooked guest waiting for an invitation.

  Under my hands the woodgrain is dark with use. Elbow, knife handle, oil, sweat, shirtsleeve. The same table at which I sat to eat all those many months ago. Though how can I be the same person as him when so much has changed since and so much of myself shed? The only thing we seem to share is a name. If Netty is right, then my mother’s sacrifice and pain were for nothing. And everything I have fought to remember is for nothing. For a moment it occurs to me that if she’s right, then there’s nothing to stop me going back to the storehouse. Tomorrow I could wake as usual in the hammock. Drink tea and sound Onestory and run in the under with Clare, match her pace, wait patient for the Lady’s largesse.

  ‘But it’s not over, is it?’ I say. ‘If Ravensguild is no longer a threat to the Order, what’s sending them out of the Citadel to find us? They may have left you alone to rot and forget, but what we know has them searching the city. They’ve sicced poliss and pacts on us. Don’t tell me that they’re no longer afraid.’

  Netty goes behind her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean, “we”?’ she asks. ‘Who is acting with you?’

  ‘Somebody who was born to the Order and left it. Someone who knows the truth and who can remember it. Who can sing us back to the Citadel if need be.’

  Still in deep like she’s dredging up a thing long lost. Aggrieved to find herself back down on her hands and knees in that old mud. Then for a moment the hope behind her eyes fattens like it’s found something new to feed on. She sings a fragment of a rune or tune I do not know. ‘One to sing,’ she says. ‘One to keep the plot. One forgetting. One forgot.’ I nod, as if to encourage her. Whatever nonsense this is, if she believes me, it will be to the better.

  But it’s as though the effort of remembering that snippet alone has exhausted her. She shakes her head and bodymemory pushes her face back into its bitter, flat mask. It is easier that way.

  She leans forward. ‘What you’ll learn, Simon, is that people do not want to know the truth. You might think you are doing them a great favour to bring it to them. But even if you put it right on their doorstep, nobody will thank you for it. They’ll throw it away. Throw it in your face. Most people prefer to forget.’ She moves behind the counter. She mutters and it’s a stuck note. It reminds me of Harry somehow. ‘This has nothing to do with me at any rate. I left Ravensguild. After your mother died. After your father took his life. Too many deaths.’

  I stand up. ‘What did you say about my father?’ I take the few steps across the stall. I grab her brittle shoulders in my hands and I shake. ‘What the hell did you say?’ I want to make her feel pain. I want to see something other than the flat, closed look on her face. Because the last picture I have of my father is him slumped at my mother’s side where she lay under the white coverlet. His hand gripping hers tight enough to stop the shaking. And she is lying again. I shake her and my face is hot and the air is hot and it is me who needs to feel the pain. I am crying for it to come now, sharp and sure. Because I don’t have any other footing. I don’t remember his death. The only thing I hold in my body is the memory of his fist, and the cold of his anger.

  Then after a while I see Netty and the look on her face. I drop her shoulders and step back. ‘Who is left?’ I say. ‘You owe it to the people whose memories you took,’ I say. ‘Those memories were their lives. Who is left?’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ says Netty.

  I stare at her. She is scared. She looks back through the tarp again.

  ‘Who is left?’ I say, forte.

  ‘Please. All of the memory keepers we used have died or been taken,’ she says. ‘I waited, but there has been no word of new keepers to replace them.’

  I step closer again. She is holding something back. I see the glint of it in her eyes, and I want to see the fear in there again.

  ‘Who is left?’ My voice is so loud that I hear footfalls beyond the tarp come to a halt.

  ‘Just one,’ she says. ‘She was my keeper, but she is mad. It has been years since I sent her anything.’

  ‘Where is she?’ I ask.

  ‘In a place called Reading. Between here and the Citadel.’

  ‘Sing it,’ I order.

  ‘Mary has gone mad. She will not help you.’

  But before I leave her, Netty sings me the way to find the last memory keeper.

  Upriver

  Lily Bolero

  We are on the towpath. Matins came and went, and Lucien and I walked through the early morning city, keeping to the empty backstreets. Just the occasional people up that early – bakers, coffee sellers, a few traders. Lucien had his dark paraspecs on and we moved quickly, curling past Euston, past Morning Town and through the old market to the first lock.

  The stone of the path is cracked, and the bank leans over us on the side, covered in moss and small ferns. There’s mist coming flat across the water. I walk in front, but it’s Lucien setting the pace, a presto stride to eat up the distance and go unremarked by any watchers. At Primrose Hill we hear the lone notes of a muted French horn coming across the water and I see a bundled-up figure, short enough for a kid, standing at the bottom of one of the gardens whose lawns fold right down to the canal. The hornplayer strolls back and forth, and the horn gets slowly flatter in the cold. The muffled arpeggios repeat over and over: major, minor, first inversion, second inversion. The morning light reflects off the chill pale gold of the instrument whenever the player turns. Nothing else moves, though, and we’re past, listening to the notes stepping strange and relentless up and down.

  More houses with lawns, each with a boatshed and jetty at the bottom, a dinghy, some mossy terracotta flowerpots, the habitual pair of para boots. Windchimes hang from one tree. A rope swing is knotted to another. In me, there’s an ache of something that is missing. I do not think I have been down here before. These are homes – homes of the wealthy, the successful traders and the lauded instrument makers, those whose children go to the top schools, and maybe even audition for the Order. In the houses, both parents are alive, alive and getting their children out of bed for morning practice at first light, shoring away memory even before Chimes tolls for Onestory. The windows are tall and golden, and they look down on us as we walk past through the misty dark.

  The waterway gets wider and the road above us higher and we can’t be seen. Lucien moves us into a jog. We go past old cages with their signs and pictures of animals. One of the cages is arched high and has fine netting, and the branches of the t
rees inside are covered with chalky white splashes.

  I can feel a headache coming. I need to stop, to wait and to think. I need to remember. The thought of leaving London is full of dread – dark water that rushes in to break connection. I am not ready for a journey. I whistle to get Lucien’s attention. He wheels round, sharp.

  ‘What?’ His voice is harsh, but it is worry, not anger. I wait. ‘What?’ he asks again. He is not happy being in unfamiliar territory in the daylight. For a short while I feel sorry for him.

  ‘I need to stop and wait for a time,’ I say. And for some reason, this is awkward to say. ‘I need to think. To remember.’

  ‘I know a good place. Come with me.’

  We walk further up the towpath and cross a road, and we’re back on the canal. Old abandoned buildings grow high above us. Pipes break into the concrete walls, leaving rust on the concrete where the stormwater flows down.

  After a while the canal widens again, and there is a broad tunnel in front of a low estate. We leave the path and walk upward past a fenced place with mettle towers inside. Signs hang on the mettle fencing, their code eroded. A picture survives, of red lightning striking a child’s climbing figure. Lucien leads us between mettle rails that let us pass one at a time, and then round the side of the building with its empty windows. There’s a thick hedge at the end of the overgrown lawn. Lucien gestures to me and I come up close.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Through here,’ he says. ‘Can you see anything?’

  ‘I can’t see a thing. There’s a hedge.’

  ‘No, beyond that. We need to go through.’

  I get up close and use my elbows to make a small gap in the piney branches. Through it is a small grassy space that was once a kept garden. The bushes and trees are wild and overgrown with ivy and twining flowers. There’s a small, open-roofed circle hut at one end. No one around.

  ‘It’s clear,’ I say. ‘How do we get through?’