Марк Лэйдлоу - 400 Boys and 50 More

At last they arrived at the Cot of Concatenation, and here the Courier was privately pleased to see that word of mouth and gossip had yet to supplant the Ghost Penny Post. Not a single member of the household was expecting the arrival of the Spectral Lady and her retinue. All the Cot’s inhabitants were forcibly roused, that the Weaver could be put to work. There was some consternation due to the hour and the Weaver’s advanced age; outnumbered by the presence of so many loyal subjects, however, the complainers gained no foothold with their sleepily mutinous mutterings.

The Weaver’s frailty was a threat to the Spectral Crown’s continued existence, but it appeared both she and the Kingdom would survive another night. Her stalwart grandson, the Cotter himself, volunteered to feed the flame and boil up vapors enough to power the steam-stoked Loom, but the Queen insisted that tonight they would rely on older methods. As the Weaver sorted strands of wool, all those assembled stated their names and status in service to Spectralia. For each citizen, a thread of yarn was drawn. A tally was made also of the unrepresented citizenry, for not every subject was free to leave their home and join the Court in darkness, much as the Queen might have wished it. While the Weaver sorted, the Queen busied herself with her combing-cards, punching holes into the rectangles of thick cardstock in the patterns she had devised to represent both the open-eyed will of the Kingdom and the actions of blind fate. She handed the cards to the Weaver. The old woman fit the boards into her Loom, then set to weaving. It was slow and quiet work as the shuttle wove, and Tobianus dozed and woke several times while the Cotter made tea and offered it about with oatcakes. The Ghost Queen never nodded. Her bright red eyes watched enrapt as the blind fingers danced; as she studied the weave that gradually emerged, her expression grew solemn and skeptical. At last they reached the end of what the cards had written and the strands of wool were severed. The Queen took the length of cloth and laid it across her knees, studying the pattern writ in textiles.

“Weaver, your job is done.”

“Oh, aye, Your Majesty!”

“Hm… We chose no strand for the Inspector, and yet his presence is everywhere in this. With regard to the Kingdom, only a few of us are specifically addressed in these Motivations, our Courier chief among them.”

“Yes, my Queen,” said Tobianus.

“Tomorrow, along with your regular mail, you are to carry one letter of the Ghost Penny Post. You will receive it first but deliver it last, and deliver it only to Us. Understood?”

“Yes, my Queen.”

“The Royal Terrors shall see you have it before your departure. You will make no effort to hide it from the Inspector, but you will not permit him to touch it until your regular route is done. London’s hand in this is clear: as an agent of the competing post, this letter is for him alone to deliver. Tobianus, We will leave you to determine your own course. Your facility with the dice is almost the rival of Our own.”

“Why, thank you, Your Majesty!”

“The remainder of you shall spend the day in ordinary pursuits. At midnight, we will all reconvene at the Specter’s Seat. Tomorrow night will be as taxing as this one, We suspect. Therefore return to your homes and sleep. We release you now—all but the Terrors, of course.”

The party dispersed into the spongy, silent night, plashing through puddles, the risen moon a grinning lookout playfully dodging clouds.

As Tobianus picked his way back to the post office, he tried to slip free of his conviction that for Spectralia, all was about to be forever altered. But his Queen would surely say that change was the eternal nature of things. Change, chance, and choice. This was the very essence of the matter addressed by Concatenation.

He had a shiversome moment when he felt sure he spied a shadow skulking in the lane beyond the post office, then a flare of light from the front door of the inn picked out the silhouette of a man just entering. Recognizing the figure of Floss the innkeeper, his worries eased somewhat.

Madame Eglentine pleaded with him fruitlessly for favors as he passed her paddock and went in through the rear of the post office. He lit a lamp and stoked a very small fire in the very small stove, just enough to take off the chill. Then, settling down with a cup of cold, watery tea, he sat on the end of his rather lumpy bed, reached between his feet, and fished about until his fingers found a small box on the floor. From this he took a tattered notebook, its pages filled with columns of numbers and corresponding text. Beneath the book of tables lay a rattling half-dozen multifaceted dice. From the end of the bed, he could lean forward onto a wobbly secretary, bracing it with his elbows. He pulled the lantern closer and rolled two dice clattering across the deal surface, warped and ringed with the pale ghosts of wet saucer bottoms.

Totaled up, the pips amounted to 21.

Tobianus opened the book of correspondences, leafed to the section that looked most fitting to his situation (“Friend or Foe: When Faced With a Stranger, Some Affinities”), and ran a finger down to 21:

Bold and yet invisible, the ghosts that guard Spectralia urge substantiation. Be thou therefore like a ghost, aflit by day, and yet substantial in full dark.

Toby planted his elbows more firmly on the desk that he might hold his head in place. From the Courier, for much of the remaining night, there issued a series of low, perplexed moans.

Hewell was roused by roosters, having slept only fitfully, his dreams riddled with the weird scenes he had witnessed. His boots were still wet and he was grateful he had brought a spare coat, easy to find by touch in the dim gray light as it was one of his few remaining dry garments. Downstairs, he found Floss and his wife already about. She scowled at his muddy footwear, then muttered something about parties that thought so little of their responsibility that they felt at liberty to “run about at all hours,” speaking as if for her husband’s benefit but clearly concerned with the habits of their lodger. Hewell paid a perhaps unconvincing amount of attention to his breakfast of stout and cheese, then, with boots still damp, fled into the puddled street, escaping just as the inevitable quarrel broke out behind him.

Toby looked wan with exhaustion, but Hewell refrained from inquiring as to how he had slept. The lad spent some time sorting the mail, brewing tea, readying the morning’s deliveries, and sleepily answering Hewell’s questions, although queries and responses sounded similarly stilted. As it happened, they both awaited the arrival of a dispatch whose eventual discovery proved something of an anticlimax. Mr. Merricott announced the official start of business, discovering as he opened the door that an envelope had been shoved under it. “Unstamped and unaddressed. What are we to make of this?”

Toby plucked the letter from Merricott’s fingers and secured it in his courier’s pouch. “I’ll bring it along, sir, and see if anyone recognizes it. Mr. Hewell, if you’re ready, we can look to borrow an extra mount, but often I go on foot if there’s no great urgency.”

“The day being fairer than the night, I have no objection to a leisurely tour.”

They embarked on a route that somewhat recalled Hewell’s dank trek of the night before, except that they stopped at almost every door. The citizens of Binderwood appeared to be great correspondents, in keeping with current trends that Hewell was used to hearing pronounced “worrisome.” People no longer went visiting; so ran the complaints. They sat in their homes, both consuming and composing endless floods of correspondence. The art of conversation was a thing of the past! It was letters people wanted now and nothing else would do. They poured their meager monies into paper, ink, and postage. The post office, as Merricott had noted, benefitted thereby; stationers were in Heaven; but still somehow it was a curse on society. Nor was it only youth who were afflicted. Grown women—even men!—devoted themselves to the frivolous pastime. The fact that Victoria’s royal visage bedizened the humble Penny Black confirmed all conspiratorial fears that the monarchy was behind this epistolary threat to civilization.