Robert Carter - Whitemantle

Willow clutched Bethe to her as she approached the gate. Gwydion walked beside her. ‘It is best not to look the wyrms in the eye,’ he said. ‘Such beasts as these have attended the gates since the time of King Ludd. They are supposed to safeguard the City against the entry of people of ill purpose, for it is said they can smell guilt in the sweat of a man like dogs can smell fear. But over the centuries their keepers have fallen into sorry disrepute. For a silver coin they will give an easy passage to any wayfarer who happens to rouse the guardian beasts to wrath – which you will see happens most often whenever a wealthy person arrives. Do you see that merchant in the blue hat? Watch how they winch the chains back so there is a wider way for him to pass. They drive the animals back with those white shields quartered in red.’

The keepers set up a loud banging on their shields, hitting them with red-painted truncheons shaped like short swords until the dragonets turned their heads aside.

‘The keepers seem careless of the danger,’ Willow said.

Gwydion surveyed the goings on in the gatehouse. ‘The colour red and the number four are held to be worrisome to the beasts. They are said to shy away from the good-hearted, but it is just the loud noise and how these rogues have trained them, for they are also the ones who give them their feed.’

Then, all of a sudden, Gwydion cast up the wing of his travelling cloak and ushered Willow and Bethe past the beasts. The nearer of the two dragonets was momentarily quieted, and Will saw in his black eyes a spirit more touched by sadness than rage. On an impulse, he put out his hand to the creature and felt its moist red tongue flicker with interest over his palm.

‘It wants for salt,’ he said, pitying it its life trapped in this acrid stall. ‘And it wishes for a run in the fields.’

‘Get on by!’ one of the keepers shouted. ‘No lingering! No loitering!’ He shoved Will through the door and spat insultingly when he saw he was not going to be offered any coin for his assistance.

‘Beggars coming through!’ the head keeper shouted. ‘Get you gone out of the City quickly again. We already have too much vagrancy here!’

‘And too little respect!’ Gwydion told him. ‘This outrageous preying upon travellers goes too far. I shall speak to the king about it!’

But seeing no staff in his hand, the keeper said, ‘Oh, my lord, so sorry! Come here and I’ll give you a kick, and you can pass that on with my compliments to his grace the king when next you see him!’ And he laughed them away with the usual welcome he kept for customers who made no donation.

‘Is everyone so rude and ruffianly here?’ Willow asked.

‘It is a game they play hereabouts.’ Gwydion gestured up at the tall dwellings that made a deep gorge of the street. ‘And is it any wonder they keep rough manners, when they must live piled one atop the other like bees in a hive? The lives of too many here are ruled by greed and false ideas about the getting of gold. You will soon see how it is.’

He hurried them on until they had passed inside the gates, and Will began to savour the curious character of the City. He reacted to it with an odd mixture of disgust and delight. The place was filled with people, yet it seemed dirty and dangerous. There seemed to be countless shining possibilities to be found at every turn, but no easy way for him to get at those possibilities without a purse full of silver. The great heap of buildings stretched as far as his eye could see in every direction. There were throngs of people, but not a tree or any splash of green. A tumbled roofscape blocked the view of the River Thamesis, which Gwydion said was also called Iesis. There was one landmark that could be plainly seen – a huge black steeple of sinister aspect that rose high above more humble rooftops and made Will’s spirits dip. The sight of the great Black Spire of Trinovant struck him with an immovable dread.

Gwydion followed his gaze. ‘No taller tower was ever made in the Realm. It stands six-score times the height of a man, and is guarded by special Fellows who dress in robes of grey and yellow. They are called Vigilants. You will see them, for we must go by that place. But first, we must go another way – not a pleasant way, for it is now the junction of two vile sewers. I knew them long ago as pretty brooks lined with willow trees. The Wall Brook drains the Moor Field. It meets with the Lang Bourne, and goes thence down into the Iesis and so carries with it all the refuse and offal and filth that the population of a city such as this cares to throw into it.’

As they walked on through the hot, close afternoon Gwydion remarked on the uneven and filthy state of the streets. ‘But you will see little of this unpleasantness about the mansions of the wealthy, for those whose task it should be to care for the City even-handedly have long since given themselves over to the far more agreeable business of supping at lordly tables, or else wrangling with one another for the privilege of doing so.’

‘I can see how the lords and those who serve them might live well here. But what of the rest? How do the poor live?’

‘As the poor always live. But here there is also a middle ground – every trade still has its guild, though their power is not as it was, and whenever things become too oppressive a great mob takes to the streets and there is a riot. Burning and looting happens more often than you might imagine. Why do you think there are no thatched roofs allowed here in Trinovant?’

Will was almost sorry he had asked. As they got deeper into the commercial heart of the City, the streets began to teem. He saw great flocks of sheep in the road, and stockmen herding cattle to the pens that stood near the shambles. He followed on in silence, watching as Gwydion stopped here and there at corners to search out strange marks that had been left chalked on posts or scratched into beams. They seemed to guide him like secret clues. Often he tasted the air for spell-working tell-tales and magical resonances. And when he found them he quietly danced, undoing the dismal tokens of bone and blood that his rival had hidden in so many nooks about the City.

‘They do much mischief,’ Gwydion said, holding up his latest find. It was a severed finger and a cockerel’s claw that had been bound together with a silken thread and put high up on a ledge. ‘This and others like it overlook many of the City’s crossroads. They power the spells that Maskull has trussed about the commerce of the streets. Six or seven of them will have to be rooted out if the stock market here is to flourish again!’

A pack of Fellows watched from a little way off. They slunk away from the wizard’s eye as he turned to face them, then dissolved among the crowds. Will was amazed to see so many Sightless Ones walking openly and almost at liberty within the City. They were always in groups of at least three, sometimes led by a sighted guide. Fellows from different chapter houses dressed in different coloured robes, and there seemed to be a certain coolness, or perhaps even rivalry, between them. Will was reminded that although called ‘Sightless Ones’, they possessed a strange, groping sense that served in place of vision, and the more he walked the City streets, the more he began to fear there were those among them who had already identified him as the defiler of Verlamion and were passing the news to a higher authority.

‘Come!’ Gwydion whispered sharply. ‘You do right to beware the Sightless Ones, Willand, for they do not forgive and they are surely hunting for you. But do not gawp so plainly at them. See how they tilt their heads at you! Mind you do not give your thoughts away so easily.’

Will did as he was told and guarded his face as the wizard took them past narrow alleys that stank ripely in the heat. There were many beggars and peddlers and barrow-men here. Gwydion said they would do well to get quickly across the Wartling, the main Slaver road that cut diagonally through the City. They passed down thronging lanes, and in time came to another market. There was much that Will had never seen before, and more for which he saw no good reason. The street sellers offered too many wares that were unneedful – dubious foods, badly made flutes, sweetmeats, vain hats, posies of wilting flowers, false charms, and little songbirds confined in tiny cages, too distraught to do anything but hop back and forth and chirrup warnings to one another.