Anna Smaill - The Chimes

‘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.

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.