Iain Pears - Arcadia

Rosie sniffed contemptuously. She examined the soldiers once more — they were getting back their self-confidence after the initial shock — and took a deep breath.

‘Oh, if I must,’ she said grumpily.

A man was waiting for them as they walked out of the woods and onto a straight path which led over a low hill in the middle distance. It was warm, all were hot and the soldiers were silent and unresponsive. Rosie’s behaviour had unnerved them. She was meant to be frightened, apologetic, begging for mercy. Tears would have been satisfactory. Instead she had given them a dressing down and had done it in the old language. They had not known what she said, but they had all too well understood what that meant. The girl was very much more important than they had been told.

They slowed as they saw the man in the middle of the path, carrying a white stick in his right hand. He approached and bowed deeply to them.

‘Most honoured guest, I welcome you in the name of the Lady Catherine of this domain. May you enter, and take your pleasure here.’

It was the highest level of greeting in a land which graded these things very meticulously; even a scholar generally received a lesser welcome. The soldiers looked at the Chamberlain, then at their prisoners, and wondered if they had made some terrible error. They also noted, as did Jay, that the address was in the singular, with the gestures in the female form. Rosie was most honoured. Jay wasn’t even noticed. The Chamberlain’s face gave no clues either as he snapped his fingers to dismiss them. ‘Her thanks for your assistance,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You may go.’

‘Please,’ he said, turning to Rosie and Jay, ‘would you be so kind as to accompany me? The entertainments are preparing, and the Lady wishes to greet you herself.’

‘We cannot possibly... I mean, we are not dressed,’ said Jay, who was now more frightened than when he had thought himself under arrest.

‘Do not concern yourself. Your master awaits you, and there are clothes and baths prepared.’

‘Is there any chance of something to eat?’ asked Rosie. ‘I haven’t had so much as a bite since breakfast.’

‘Of course,’ replied the Chamberlain after a long moment of thought. ‘Whatever you wish.’ He spoke as though the words were foreign to him.

‘Golly.’

They fell in step behind the Chamberlain, who walked quickly ahead, rapping his staff on the ground every few paces. The noise alerted people nearby. Men working in fields stopped, removed their caps. Women passing by put down anything they were carrying and curtsied. Their children stared.

‘Jay,’ whispered Rosie. ‘What is this? Where am I? What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ he murmured back. ‘I was threatened with dreadful punishment until you showed up. So I think it must be something to do with you.’

‘Why would anyone do this for me? How does anyone even know I’m here? What is this place? Who is this Lady?’

‘I’ll tell you later. But she is not someone to annoy.’

‘Who is this master of yours?’

Jay hushed her. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

They entered the grounds in procession, passing through small courtyards, then bigger, and finally into the great house itself. At each stage, people Rosie thought must be servants were present, and bowed deeply to the new arrivals. Jay bowed back to each group; Rosie thought she ought to follow suit. This was greeted with a faint snort from Jay.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Curtsy. They’ll think you’re making fun of them.’

‘I don’t know how to curtsy. I’ve never done it. Not in anger, so to speak.’

‘Watch everyone else. Bend your knees, extend your arms and incline your head.’

She did her best, and by the fourth courtyard was, in her opinion, getting quite good at it. Jay, however, was looking increasingly ill at ease.

‘Am I doing it wrong?’

He shook his head and did not answer.

They were led into the building itself, a room with entirely white walls and a floor of multi-coloured stone. It was cool and dark in comparison to the outside; the blue-framed windows were small and let in only a little of the brilliant sunshine.

More bowing, more silent greetings; then a double door was opened with great ceremony, and they passed through. Then another, and another, with each room more furnished, with lamps hanging from the ceiling and tapestries on the wall. Rosie looked at them; she couldn’t make out what they were about.

In the third room, Jay let out a groan of misery. This time there were four servants standing on one side of the room — they bowed and curtsied — and on the other a solitary man, dressed in cream robes.

‘Professor!’ Rosie cried with pleasure. ‘I’m so happy to see you! Why are you in those ridiculous clothes?’ She rushed up to him, ready to give him a hug.

The reaction was extraordinary. At once, two servants stepped in front of her to bar her passage; the man looked shocked, and Jay let out a strangled cry of alarm.

‘Perhaps you should introduce us?’

Jay recovered himself, bowing quickly although a little indiscriminately. ‘Of course. Certainly. It is my very great pleasure, and an honour to me and to my family, to present these two distinguished people to each other for the first time, and to be the agent of their meeting. I present to you’ — here he bowed to Rosie, then turned back — ‘Henary, son of Henary, Scholar of East College in Ossenfud, Storyteller of the first level, and my master.’

Henary in turn bowed to Jay, and then to Rosie. Jay then repeated the process in reverse.

‘It is my very great pleasure, and an honour to me and to my family, to present to you, Master, Rosie,’ here he paused, and a look of alarm spread over his face. Henary’s darkened. ‘Rosie, daughter of... ah...’

Rosie’s mouth twitched almost uncontrollably as she tried not to burst out laughing. She succeeded. But only just. ‘I’m afraid we did not have time to introduce ourselves properly,’ she said, ‘as we were arrested by soldiers and Jay here had a rope around his neck. It does cut politeness short a bit, don’t you think?’

Henary’s face had a look of the utmost astonishment on it as she spoke.

‘My name is Rosalind Wilson. I am very pleased to meet you. At least, I think I am.’

Henary glanced enquiringly at Jay and then bowed to her. ‘It is a great pleasure to make the acquaintance of a woman of such refinement and education, Lady Rosalind.’

‘Well, that’s jolly nice of you,’ Rosie said.

‘I think you and I need to talk, Jay. Do you not agree?’

Jay nodded silently. Rosie could see from his face that he wasn’t looking forward to it. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, Jay had done — it was one of the very many things she wasn’t sure of — but it must have been pretty bad.

She watched helplessly as Jay was led off. Then the procession began again.

All events displace in both temporal directions simultaneously and equally. The magnitude of displacement is in direct proportion to the mass of the event — Meerson’s second law.

I formulated this in a library in 1949, the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris, rather a pleasant place to sit and read. I had worked out some of the mathematics before I left but it was highly speculative and didn’t make much sense, even to me. While I was still stymied, I had little to do, so I spent many years reading — really reading, I mean, in libraries at a wooden desk, or curled up on a settee with a little light, holding the book in my hands, turning the pages, glass of brandy, warm fire, all of that. Anyway, I was reading La Cousine Bette by Balzac (which I also recommend) and was struck by how convincing were both the characters and the situations he described. I wondered whether Balzac had taken them from personal observation and simply amended real people and circumstance to serve his purpose.