Anna Smaill - The Chimes

We follow her through the just-waking city. Through the streets of houses and in towards the thronging silence of the Carillon.

The few people out at this hour pay little attention to us. Traders sluice the frontages of shops with buckets of water, their eyes kept low. As we enter the Lady’s silence, I begin to hear movement in the streets, a high murmuring passed from voice to voice.

We walk through the market place, past the instrument makers, down a narrow, gently curving street. We follow the curve. And then subito, like in a dream where the thing you fear is in the room with you all along, the tower rises above us at the end of the street.

The face of honey-coloured stone seems to stretch forever against the clouds. Heavy at the base and narrowed toward the top. At first glance it is blank and unified, a solid mass. But stepwise closer I see the sheer weight of it is built up from stone upon stone of different sizes. Stones broad and thick, flat and flagged, some like cobbles, some small as teeth. The honey-coloured stones of Oxford’s Allbreaking. They’re pieced together so clean and perfect that you can hardly see the gaps. The look of it fills me with dread. Power lives in it. Power and a cleverness I can’t understand.

We follow the broad foot of the wall, walking in its shadow until we round its curve and there are no streets beside us. We have entered a wide open square in which the wall stands clear and tall and proud. At its centre is the circular building of the scholar’s memory from before Allbreaking. The place where the Order started burning code. The wall cuts through the circular building, grows round it, making of it a gatehouse and the entrance to the Citadel.

We follow Martha, who walks without falter through the press of people that stand in the square. Throated murmuring of speech all around me, but I can’t make out words. When I trip on a loose cobble, Martha catches me sharp by my elbow, walks me forward.

As we reach the gatehouse, the murmuring heightens and I realise that people are craning their necks, looking up to the ramparts above. Then I feel a steady throb of Pale coming forward, nearing the wall from the other side. The pulse of silence comes forward; then it breaks into three separate points. Then the trio of silence is climbing. The crowd murmurs and subito, above, the early sun catches on white robes and pale silver.

Three members of the Order stand on the ramparts. They are magisters, members of the elect. I recognise them, the white robes, the tall proudness. But they are different, different from any I saw in London. They stand on the ramparts with their blind eyes uncovered instead of behind dark paraspecs. And their transverse flutes are not of silver as the ones they carry in London, but are made of pure palladium.

The crowd’s murmur forms a low continuo. The magisters play the announcement in unison. It carries far off into the city. Two pactrunners. Escapees. Traitors. Traced from London and a narrowboat they travelled on seized. Warning. Vigilance. Reward. Among the people standing below, the announcement is whispered, whistled, passed from voice to voice and breath to breath.

We stand in front of the rounded gatehouse. My heart is going presto as I think of Jemima and Callum and I do not look at Lucien.

Martha steps forward toward the closed doors; then she takes a short wooden baton, like the stick of a tambor that hangs there by a linen cord, and knocks a complex rhythm on the door’s mettle ring.

After a slow beat a small door within the door swings open and a man’s face looks out. He is wearing white robes and over them a garment of fine woven mettle. His expression is that of a martyr to unbearable boredom. He takes in Martha, her clothes, Lucien and me standing behind her. Then he opens his mouth. I expect a speech, but his question emerges in melody. His voice is pompous and reedy and mannered, and he sings a long interrogative phrase in which I catch only glimpses of meaning. Martha waits and then sings back. Answering phrases, clipped and stout and impatient.

The man nods with the same lazy worldweariness and then gestures at us. He asks in words, as if for our benefit, ‘And these two? What are they doing?’

Martha bows her head. ‘Kitchen prentisses for the Orkestrum, sir. Hired yesternoch and due to start training today.’

The guard narrows his eyes. ‘They look old for prentisses,’ he says.

Martha nods. ‘You’re right, sir. Yet they won’t ever be more than prentisses, either of them. This one’s slow, poor lad’ — she gestures at me — ‘and that one’s been blinded since he was small. But they’re steady workers, or so I was told. And they come at a good rate.’ She winks.

The guard turns to speak to a person behind him. Then he looks straight at Lucien and me, ignoring Martha. He studies our faces.

‘We’re looking for two young men from London,’ he says. ‘Traitors to the Order. Word is, they’ve arrived in Oxford. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

We are both silent.

He looks at Lucien. ‘You,’ he says.

Lucien keeps his head low.

‘I’m speaking to you,’ the guard says. ‘Where were you working before this?’

In the pause that follows I wonder whether there would be any point in running. Then Lucien speaks in a voice that isn’t his, a voice with low-lying muddy vowels.

‘In the kitchen of the Child,’ he says. ‘I’ve scrubbed pots there since last year’s festival Chimes.’

The guard pauses. ‘And who’s the landlord there?’

There’s another pause, but this time Martha interrupts.

‘Every man and his dog knows Annie Kerwood, sir. I have a better question for you. Who’s going to explain where the magisters’ supper is if I don’t get these two to the kitchen?’

The guard flicks his eyes over us again, but he feels he’s done his duty and the boredom has returned to his face.

‘Get them in, then.’ And he waves us through.

Martha sings and signs a few notes of respectful obeisance. They are cut short by the quarterdoor swinging back into its place. Then there is a creak as the vast wooden gates open a fraction, as if for an entrance only reluctantly allowed. Martha shoulders the door and we walk in past her.

Out of the shadow of the wall we walk.

And we are inside.

Where we are is a place of open space. Greenness. Grace. Before us are curving paths laid out between carefully pruned low hedges. Along each edge of a wide green square lie covered corridors in the same honeyed stone as the wall. The heights and proportions of the stone construction seem to follow an invisible grammar. Through the corridors, and through the patterns of light and shadow the arches cast, figures stroll in white, carrying their instruments in silence or playing them. Conversing in melodies tossed from voice to voice. Speaking together in solfege with hands that move more rapidly than I can read. They are tall, and their movements are graceful.

We proceed down the corridor and I snatch sideways glances at Lucien’s face, trying to read his expression. I try to see the buildings through his eyes, what it must be to return to their elegant proportions, the harmony of their colour and design. It twists strange in me. I wanted to hate this place for its cruelty and power, but I find the beauty working its way inside me. I want to walk straighter, as if my own rhythm has been altered in some subtle way by the austerity and calm.

Might Lucien realise his mistake in leaving this world? Would he not regret the disorder and dischord of London? And in me, what must he see? Somebody confused, rough, improbably shorn. I reach up to touch my head and its strange stubble.