Anna Smaill - The Chimes

‘But, my dear,’ says Mary, turning back to me, ‘you won’t think ill of the old bird if I insist on something to secure the deal? It’s not that I don’t trust you. Just that youth has its own code. If you give your word to him and your word to me, in a pinch which of them will you follow? I can’t let love get in the way of what’s rightfully mine.’

‘What do you want?’ I ask.

‘You need memories. Memories in my keeping, to forge this story of yours. The important ones.’

I nod, impatient.

‘Then you must give me some of your own in exchange,’ she says, and eyes my memory bag.

I look at her. Doubt fills me. Can I keep them alive? I know I have no choice. I nod once, without looking at Lucien.

Mary examines me, like she is tasting the quality of my agreement. Checking its balance of fear and folly.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘Come with me.’

And so we begin. Lucien enters the room with us, carrying my memory bag. He and I sit in the clearing between the shelves.

Mary looks at us both and then seems to disappear somewhere inside herself. Her eyes cloud and she stands apart. She looks like a moony, as if at any moment she might begin to make the starburst hand movements of their kind.

She is travelling, moving through the map of the memories just as Lucien navigates the map of the under. I imagine the constellations of memory pulsing out at her like nuggets of Pale.

Then her eyes sharpen and she suddenly moves forward with purpose. She ducks round the shelf to our right and after a few minutes returns. Her eyes twinkle with triumph. She is holding an old book, or what remains of it. The leather and gilt-embossed cover is charred, the edges scalloped, as if eaten by some large black worm.

‘Hot potato,’ Mary calls, and throws the book across the room to me. It flutters in the wind of its arc and I see words in formation. Code, like birds flying.

I catch the book. It is very old and has been burnt. Flakes of ash still cling, delicate as feathers, to the edges of the thin paper inside. I turn blank pages until I see code.

THE

TRAGE

OF

HAML

Prince of Denm

William Shakesp

it says.

I feel a rush of hot air hard on my face, so hot that it tightens my skin and my eyebrows stir. I go down…

I am standing in a small public square. Behind me is a low fence with black spiked railings. In front, consuming all of the surrounding air, is a huge bonfire. The smoke is fragrant. To my left and right are tall, filigreed buildings made of pale honeyed stone. The building behind the fire stands on a small, neat apron of green grass, now scorched black. The building itself is circular and self-contained, somehow confident. It makes me think of a beehive. Or a walnut. A clever casing to protect a small, hollow universe.

King of infinite space , says a voice in my head. The voice of the memory’s owner? Where am I? Not London. Nowhere I have been before, as far as I remember.

But the feeling inside the memory, that’s familiar. Because it’s one I know well. Helplessness. I look down and almost expect to see arms or legs bound. But I am standing free. Black robes hang around me. I watch.

The neat circular building is being gutted. Men and women in brown cloaks emerge from its many doors. They stream from other buildings to the left and right. They carry books. Books stacked so high on platformed arms that they can barely see the path ahead. Books laid on cloaks and pulled behind like threshers pulling hay.

One by one the cloaked figures enter the neat rectangle of the public square, bounded by the black rails I lean against. And one by one they throw their burden into the flames.

The flames leap. Sparks wriggle through the air like bright insects. The fire towers hungry in the night. And through the smoke and flames and the tread of feet, and the whump as books take their flight into fire, I hear chanting. I recognise the tune. It is Onestory.

‘Out of dischord’s ashes, harmony will rise.

Order of the Carillon.

Music of the skies.’

The voices are so beautiful. They weave in and out in complex harmony. Each cloaked man and woman sings, and their faces are lit. I feel myself rising up, pulling away.

The voices float up with me, never broken, circling and perfect.

I emerge with my face in my hands as if I am shielding myself from heat.

Lucien is next to me, his hand on my shoulder.

‘What did you see?’ he asks.

I shake my head, still half inside. ‘They were burning code,’ I say. ‘Members of the Order. At least, I think it was the Order.’

But there was something wrong with the picture. The jangling of a note out of place. The circular building so confident in the meat of its own secret. It had windows. And all of its windows were made of glass. Unbroken glass.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I say.

‘What doesn’t?’

‘None of the windows were broken.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Standing in a square watching a bonfire. There was a round building with a mettle roof.’ I think how to describe it. ‘Like the middle dome of Paul’s crosshouse in London, but just sitting by itself.’

‘And the windows were glass?’

‘Yes.’

‘There is a building like that in Oxford,’ says Lucien thoughtfully. ‘But it’s not in a square — it’s built into the East Wall as a gatehouse. And it has para windows like everywhere else.’

‘There were tall buildings around it,’ I say. ‘Tall and thin, made out of the same golden stone.’

Lucien breathes in. ‘I think it was Oxford,’ he says. ‘I think you saw Oxford before Allbreaking.’

‘But the Order were there,’ I say slowly. ‘They were wearing travelling cloaks. Brown like now. They were singing Onestory.’

I look at Lucien and see understanding reach him the same second it hits me. It fills his eyes like a wave. Huge and dark.

The Order didn’t rise up out of the ashes of dischord at all. They were there, waiting. They knew what was coming. They had already started burning code.

And then the next wave swoops in, carrying the full weight of its sickness. Allbreaking was not the end of a long conflict. It was just a necessary step. A harsh chord before their resolution of new harmony. Allbreaking was brought about by the Order.

Mary is behind us.

‘Chop, chop, lovelies. No time for talk. I’ve given you the first one, an important one at that. Now you must keep your side of the bargain.’ She points with a wrinkled finger at my memory bag, which is sitting on the floor beside me.

I nod my head lento. Waves and ripples crashing around. My own memories are distant. How will I choose what to give her? How can I trust myself to choose?

‘Here,’ she says, impatient. ‘Give it to me. Lucky dip.’

I pass the bag reluctantly. She wraps her hand in a fold of her cloak and reaches in.

She pulls out a big old burberry. Dip of mud at its hem as if it has been dragged through a puddle. The arrival in London , I hear in my head, what was it like?

‘The arrival was mud,’ I whisper.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lucien says. ‘You won’t forget. Don’t worry.’

I feel light, a bit empty. Mary wraps the burberry inside itself and places it on a shelf. For a moment I see the carter sitting heavy on the strut of his cart, his neck jerking with chimesickness as he breaks his journey to help a half-drowned farmboy. The coat was my only shelter from Chimes that first night in London.