GrEgOrY

 

 

Glimmermonth – Sunmonth 688

 

WITHIN A FORTNIGHT of leaving the Vail Mountains, Gregory was back in Stammeldon.

His time at the hunting lodge was already starting to seem like a dream, even as he crossed the western highlands of Jarraine, heading for the lowlands. With every mile he put between him and the Vails it became easier to believe that all that had happened up there in that white and rarefied place had happened in his imagination. Had happened to someone asleep.

And that was for the best. To think of it any other way would have been too raw, too painful. A dream. And like all dreams, it had had to end. He had had to wake up to reality.

Stammeldon, four years since he had last laid eyes on it, looked much as he recalled. In the hazy light of a spring morning its red roofs glistened. The Seray, its eternal companion, was sheathed in a drifting veil of river mist. From a distance Stammeldon appeared to be the thriving provincial town it had always been, the model of a modern industrial municipality.

Once inside the town limits, however, Gregory soon saw that things had changed. It was Sixthday, and as he traced a route through the commercial district he expected to find the place abuzz with shoppers. The shops were open and shoppers were indeed out and about, but abuzz? That was hardly the description for the subdued faces he saw, the slow gait of the housewives and servants with their grocery baskets, the incurious gaze with which people eyed wares in windows. There was no enthusiasm in evidence, none of the customary Sixthday morning bustle (Freeday tomorrow, and food must be bought, and perhaps a new item of clothing, and something nice for the children).

Moving on, he found that the same mood prevailed in the lower quarter of town, and in the upper. Everybody was doing what they normally did – working, walking, meeting – but it was as if they no longer knew quite why. They were acting out of habit, going through the motions. Their expressions, he thought, were lost.

Nobody recognised him, but he wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t shaved in over two weeks, and he was taller and rangier than when anyone here last saw him. Those who did pay him any heed frowned. He knew how he must look, with his worn-out shoes and disintegrating clothes and the dust of the road seamed into his face. A vagabond. If he hadn’t been walking with such obvious purpose, no doubt several people would have invited him to hurry on out of their town as fast as possible.

Familiar streets eventually led him to Tempest’s Bane.

The house’s outer wall was besmirched with painted graffiti – ugly accusations, mostly about Tremond Brazier, a few about Mayor Bringlight. These looked relatively fresh but there were indications of older graffiti too, scorch-marks on the brickwork where other such slogans had been burned away.

Gregory tried the gate, not thinking it would be unbarred, but it was. It swung ponderously inward, and he entered the garden.

The garden, thankfully, was unchanged. The layout and general tidiness were just as he remembered and just as they should be. The lawn was green and springy as sponge, the leaves on the trees seemed new-minted, the flowers gleamed with springtime brightness.

The house itself, however, was not in such good order. He noticed holes in many of the windows – perfect circles melted out of the glass and lead – and the front door was warped and blackened. The door, in fact, was so badly damaged that he was amazed it was still hanging on its hinges. But more amazing, and more puzzling, was why it and the perforated windows had not been repaired.

He nudged the door, and it budged, grudgingly. The house was quiet and gloomy inside. He waited in the hallway, expecting someone to come. A servant. One or other of his parents. Someone must have heard him enter.

No one came.

He called out, and there was no reply, and then there was. A querulous voice from upstairs. It took him a moment to recognise it as his mother’s.

‘Who is it?’

‘Me. It’s Gregory.’

He heard what he thought was a gasp, then a rustle of activity. He went to the foot of the stairs and peered up, noting that the paint on the banisters was browned and bubbled in several places. He noted, at the same time, that a faint, acrid odour permeated the whole house: the smell of burnt things.

His mother appeared at the head of the stairs, draping a silk robe over her nightgown as she came into view. Her hair was tied back but she had not made a good job of it. Several strands hung wild. Gregory saw streaks of silver amid the auburn.

She looked down at him, and her haggard eyes registered disbelief. This isn’t my son. It can’t be. Then, after further scrutiny, she saw past the beard, the extra foot of height, the breadth of the shoulders, to the little boy she remembered.

She swayed and collapsed to her knees, and if Gregory had been a split-second slower off the mark when sprinting up to catch her, she might well have tumbled down the stairs.

 

 

‘I’M ALONE,’ SHE said. ‘Have been for six weeks. They’ve all gone. The servants. Cook. The gardeners. Couldn’t afford to keep them on, even if they had been willing to stay. It was Trem. Trem scared them away. When he started setting fire to things. To everything.’

Gregory had helped her back to the master bedroom. He had sat her in bed, propped up the pillows behind her, fetched her a glass of water, and tried not to be shocked by just how extensive the damage to the house was. The bedroom walls were pocked with black craters, plaster burned away to expose the brickwork beneath. The bedroom furniture, and the furniture in all the rooms he had passed through on his way to the kitchen, had been charred. Some items were worse off than others but few had escaped intact. Even the crockery and the cooking utensils in the kitchen had not been spared. He had had a hard time finding a glass that wasn’t fire-cracked or partly melted.

‘It began when Jarnley Bringlight returned from Penresford,’ his mother continued. ‘We knew already. What Jarnley had done. That awful man! How he had used everybody, manipulated everybody. How he had wiped Penresford out. The barges came back a week before he did, and everyone on them was saying that Jarnley had provoked the Penresfordians and the Penresfordians had retaliated, and then... But you must know this already.’

Gregory nodded. ‘I was there.’

‘Yes, you were. Oh, Gregory! My son. My boy.’ She began to weep, and Gregory stroked her arm till the weeping subsided. ‘But when Jarnley came back he – he just wouldn’t accept that he had done anything wrong. There were bad scenes at the town hall. Crowds gathered outside. There were placards and protests. I’ll say this, though, it wasn’t just Earth Inclined complaining, it was everyone. They wanted Jarnley impeached, they wanted his resignation, and he kept putting out statements protesting his innocence. “Only doing my job”, that sort of thing. That just served to antagonise everyone further, and it got worse when Callum Furniss came down from Charne with several other parliamentary representatives with a brief from the Prime Minister to get to the bottom of the affair. Furniss investigated, asked around, spoke to people. He even spoke to your father. And he announced his conclusions pretty quickly, and they were damning. They placed responsibility for the Battle of Penresford squarely on our mayor’s shoulders, but some of it, unfortunately, on your father’s as well. That was when that horrible graffiti started appearing on the wall outside. Every time we burned one lot off, something else would get painted on. Or even scorched on, which was worse. More of an insult, coming from our own Inclination. Your father was already in a bad way by then. Because of Willem, and you.’

‘Because I’m supposed to have killed Willem?’

‘We knew it was an accident. Not at first, admittedly. We didn’t know anything at first except that you, Willem and Reehan Bringlight were all missing. We assumed the worst, and they were hollow, awful days. We spent them doing nothing, not moving, just waiting for news. Something, anything. We hoped. We held out hope. We kept hoping. Sam was down at the telepath bureau every day, every hour almost. And slowly news started to come in, in dribs and drabs. First that Willem was dead and Reehan was alive. Then that they were hunting for you on suspicion of having killed Willem. I didn’t believe it for one minute, of course. I knew you hadn’t. I knew it must be a mistake, you would never have done such a thing, not your own brother. Trem, though... Your father didn’t know what to believe, and I could see it was tearing him apart. He kept saying it was his fault, he had done this, he had destroyed his family. I wish I could have comforted him but I couldn’t find it in me because, well, he was right. It was his fault. What I did instead was ask Sam to do down to Penresford and find out whatever he could. Sam was already half out of his mind with worry. There was still so much confusion down there and he’d heard nothing about his brother and family and he was desperate. So off he went. And while he was gone, Jarnley Bringlight paid a visit.’

She paused, recollecting the event with a curl of her lip.

‘That bastard. I could have incinerated him where he stood. Ought to have. He shambled in, and to start with he was behaving like it was just an ordinary social call, hello, how pleasant to see you, and so on, but soon he had set to work on your father. I eavesdropped outside your father’s study and Jarnley was saying things like “We have to stick together in this, Tremond” and “I have a son too, you know, and I’m worried sick about him, he’s somewhere out in the highlands, I’ve no idea where”. Your father, to his credit, sent him away pretty sharpish. And as he showed him to the door, I remember Jarnley’s parting words. All his pretence, all his arrogant showiness, had fallen away by then. I was there and I saw his face as he tried one last time to win your father over. He was pleading. Your father, he said, was his only potential ally in all the world. “They’re closing in on me,” he said. “I won’t survive this. And I have no one. No one. Even my own son has turned on me. Do you know how humiliating that is? Yes, you probably do. And the whole town is baying for my blood. Yours too. Together we could get through this. Separately, we’re both doomed. Tremond! Tremond! Help me!” And your father just closed the door on him, and put his back to the door, and for a long time stayed there, didn’t move, stared at the floor, and then finally straightened up. I could see how tempted he had been. Maybe Jarnley was right, maybe together they could have weathered out that particular storm. But your father had decided it was not to be.

‘That was the last we saw of Jarnley Bringlight. The last anyone saw. He went home and that very night... Well, the police report said it was spontaneous human combustion, but we all know what that’s a euphemism for, don’t we. Someone found him the next morning, his housekeeper I think, sprawled on his living room carpet. Most of his torso was ashes. What it must take, to do that to yourself. What you must go through.

‘Still, very hard to shed a tear for that man. It’s Reehan I feel sorry for, wherever he is. Poor boy, he has no idea that his father is dead. I wonder if he’s going to turn up soon. They say he was still looking for you when everyone else called off the search. He never found you, I take it.’

Gregory shook his head and said nothing. If you believed in a life after this one, then Reehan certainly knew his father was dead by now.

‘Then Sam came back,’ his mother resumed, ‘and the news he brought was both good and bad. He looked awful. Hollow-eyed. Pale. His brother was among the dead at Penresford. The rest of his brother’s family, however, were fine. And one of his nephews, I forget the boy’s name, had a story to tell. About Willem, and Reehan, and you.’

‘Ven?’

‘Yes, that was him.’

So Ven was all right. And Eda and Garla and the rest of the Goves.

‘And the story he had to tell... Well, I don’t need to say, do I? Again, you were there. Right there. And Gregory? For what it’s worth, I forgive you. No, not even that. That makes it sound like you did something wrong. How could you have known? You were innocent. You did the wrong thing but for all the right reasons. I love you. That’s really all that matters, all that needs to be said. I never said it often enough but I will from now on, I promise. Every day. I love you. I love you.’

Gregory fought against it; failed. For several minutes he lay in his mother’s arms, crying as he hadn’t cried since he was little. His mother cried too.

Master Ergall was wrong. You should feel. You should feel much of everything.

‘There isn’t a lot more to tell,’ his mother said eventually. ‘Since I never believed you were guilty of what they said you’d done, I felt no different about anything. Whereas your father... He hadn’t had that conviction, and he ought to have, and that – that was what finally broke him. That and the fact that Sam had gone straight back to Penresford and refused to have anything to do with him any more. And there was so much pressure on him now that Jarnley was no longer around. Someone had to be held accountable for Penresford, and with the main culprit out of the picture, the prime aider and abetter was pushed to the front. All at once it was Tremond Brazier everyone was after. Callum Furniss came back here for a second visit, and this time he was apologetic but firm. There was mention of legal proceedings. Prosecution. Furniss said that he would do everything he could to get your father off the hook but implied that the prospects weren’t good. The authorities needed to be seen to be doing something. A big sacrifice was needed to appease people. And your father took this on board. He accepted it. He seemed calm. Resigned.

‘And then all this began.’ She indicated the cratered walls, the scorched furnishings, the holed windows. ‘Your father went around systematically loosing off fireballs, burning everything he could find. Within a couple of days all the staff had fled – and who can blame them? And then...’

‘Where is he now, Mum?’ Gregory asked. ‘Is he over at the brickfields?’

‘The brickfields? You should go and take a look sometime. If you think this place is bad, you should see what your father did there. The brickfields doesn’t exist any more, not in any meaningful sense. So no, he isn’t there.’

‘Where, then?’

‘Where do you think?’

 

 

FOR SEVERAL DAYS Gregory looked after his mother. There was a bit of cash in the house with which to buy food, and a bit more in the bank. His mother had some modest savings of her own which she was living off. He cooked for her and made sure she ate. She had lost weight. She had not been taking care of herself. Her only occupation – the only reason she ever got dressed – was tending the garden. She was out there almost every day, pruning, weeding, trimming, clipping, tying up. The house was beyond redemption but the garden wasn’t. Maintaining order in it maintained some order in her life too.

Meanwhile, Gregory tried to arrange to see his father. He knew it was next to impossible. The committal had been carried out in strict accordance with regulations. Three witnesses, all former members of the Tempest’s Bane domestic staff, had signed sworn, sooth-seen statements attesting to Tremond Brazier’s pyromaniacal behaviour. A tribunal had been held prior to the committal order being given. The lawyer whose services Gregory enlisted looked over the paperwork and pronounced it watertight. There wasn’t the tiniest loophole in it that might be exploited. He said, however, that Gregory could try and lodge an appeal on emotional grounds. The chances of success were infinitesimally small, but given the exceptional circumstances, the recent local turmoil, the fact that Gregory had not actually been present when his father was taken away... It was a statutory right that all family members who wished to be there should be there when someone was committed. Perhaps, the lawyer said, he could work that angle.

It took time, money, persistence, patience, money, several meetings with officials, and yet more money, but eventually, to the surprise of all, not least the lawyer, Gregory won his appeal. The lawyer, who came post-haste from the appeal hearing to convey the verdict, said a significant contributory factor had been the Brazier family’s history within the community and the good standing in which, till lately, they had been held.

On the tenth of Sprinklemonth, an overcast, rain-flecked day, Gregory took his permit of visitation rights and set off for the Stammeldon Sanatorium.

 

 

‘YOU WILL HAVE quarter of an hour,’ the chief custodian said, reeling off the regulations as he escorted Gregory along a cold, clammy corridor. ‘Not one minute more. You will be left unattended to hold a conversation with the inmate. You will sit outside the cell door on the stool provided. You will have no physical or visual contact with the inmate. If you are caught initiating such contact you will be in breach of your visitation rights and subject to severest of civil penalties. Is that understood?’

‘Absolutely,’ Gregory said, tight-lipped.

‘These conditions are imposed on you as much for your own safety as anything,’ the chief custodian added as, with a jangle of keys, he unlocked a cast-iron door and ushered Gregory into a second, colder, clammier corridor. ‘In this place, safety is paramount. We’re dealing with society’s most dangerous human beings here. Whether they mean to be dangerous or not isn’t for me to say. My job is to ensure they stay contained and segregated for the rest of their natural lives and to see to it that my staff – and the very occasional visitor – come to no harm. Now then...’

Another cast-iron door led to a staircase, which led in turn to a further corridor which was the coldest and clammiest yet. Doors were inset into either wall at regular intervals. Pipes snaked across the ceiling, some running in parallel, others intersecting at four-way junctions. They emitted a constant low gurgle. There were lanterns hung from sconces but only a couple were lit, so that the corridor was crepuscular and cave-like. Fleetingly Gregory remembered the Extraordinaries who lived in the ravine. An age ago. Part of the dream.

Near the end, positioned outside one of the doors, was the stool the chief custodian had mentioned. He directed Gregory to it, then with a frown sparked the nearest lantern into life. From the front pocket of his black overalls he took out a fob watch, consulted the dial, reminded Gregory that he had fifteen minutes only, and banged hard on the door with his fist.

‘Tremond Brazier! Your guest is here.’

No sound came from within, although there was the odd muted mutter from some of the nearby cells and a muffled, plaintive cry from the cell next door to Gregory’s father’s. Gregory waited till the chief custodian had gone, then banged on the door again. His fist drew a sharper, more reverberant ring than the other man’s had.

‘Dad,’ he said.

Still no sound. He studied the door, with its rivets, its reinforcing bands, its undeniable aura of solidity. There was a sliding hatch at floor level, double-bolted. Food went in that way, he presumed, and the empty tray back out. Once the door was closed on the inmate, only that hatch was ever opened.

‘Dad?’

After all that effort, was this a wasted journey? Would his father refuse to speak to him?

‘Gregory.’

The voice was dim and barely audible, as though it were coming from somewhere deep underground.

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘How – how did you manage this? I’m impressed.’

‘It wasn’t easy. I think it was sort of a last favour from the town to our family. I think we’ve used up whatever goodwill there was still left towards the Braziers.’

‘You sound so different. Not like I remember at all. I didn’t think it was you.’

‘It’s me.’

‘I know. But when they told me yesterday you were coming, I thought it was just a joke. I thought they were playing a trick on me. But it is you.’

‘Dad... You shouldn’t have done this.’

‘What?’

‘Pretended to be a pyromaniac. You shouldn’t have done this to yourself. Or to Mum. You should have faced them.’

‘Faced them? What for? They were going to tear me down. They were going to ruin me. I would never have got a fair hearing at any trial. This way... This way was for the best. This way I still have some dignity left. Not much, I admit, but some. But you – what have you been doing? Where have you been all these months?’

Gregory told him, keeping it as succinct as possible, aware that time was limited and precious. There were a few things he omitted. At no point, for instance, did he mention Reehan Bringlight. Why talk of death? There had been too much death, and in this place, which was kind of a living death for its inhabitants, the topic seemed more than usually inappropriate. Nor did he mention the circumstances under which he had left the hunting lodge in the Vails. How the dream had become tainted. He merely spoke of the ’Storm bringing things to an end, as the ’Storm usually did.

‘You’ve been through the mill, haven’t you,’ said his father. ‘And all thanks to me. I did this to you. And Willem, too. What happened with him. All my fault. Because I was weak and vain. Gregory, I can’t even begin to say how sorry I am.’

‘You don’t have to. There’s no need.’

‘I don’t expect you to forgive me.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive. It’s done now.’

‘Gregory...’

Soft sounds from the other side of the door. Throaty sounds, similar to the churning of the water through the pipes. Gregory said nothing; sat in the damp, ill-lit corridor; waited.

‘Gregory? Son?’

‘Yes, Dad?’

‘Two things. You’ll to take care of your mother, won’t you? I didn’t – I didn’t make provision for her before I left.’

‘Of course I will. It’s all sorted out. I know what we’re going to do. No need to worry about her.’

‘Good. Good lad.’

‘What’s the other thing?’

‘I shouldn’t ask this, but... You see the hatch. At the bottom of the door?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you...? No. Stupid idea. Don’t do it. Not worth the risk.’

Gregory cast a quick glance either way along the corridor, then got down on his knees and slowly, carefully, eased back both bolts and slid the hatch open. A moment later, his father’s hand appeared in the slot, groping outwards. Gregory reached for it.

His father’s hand was soft and small and pale, his own scarred and hardened and large. His father let his hand be cradled by Gregory’s. Gregory held it, supported it, returned its grip. For as long as he dared, he let their hands remain in contact, and then he disentangled them and, with the utmost reluctance, slid the hatch shut and bolted it.

 

 

IN LATE BRIGHTMONTH, with their bags packed, Gregory and his mother waited for a hired wagon to come and take them to the Stammeldon docks. Marita Brazier took one last stroll around the garden, bidding it farewell. There was no saying when she would be back to tend it. If she did come back at all, she would return to an overgrown mess, nature run riot behind the thirty-foot wall of Tempest’s Bane.

Gregory, for his part, had just one thing to do before they departed, also in the garden. He sought out the Divided Tree. There, still lodged in its fork, was the stone he had hurled at it almost exactly four years ago. The stone had been impossible to prise out then. Now, hooking his toughened index finger around it, he got it free with no effort at all.

He squatted down, dug a grave for the stone in the earth, and buried it.

 

 

PENRESFORD WAS RISING again. There wasn’t yet a town but there was the skeleton of a town. The frames of houses were in place, an intricate three-dimensional lattice of uprights and joists whose gaps would shortly be filled in with planking and roof shingles. The timber had been bought with money paid from the Stammeldon municipal coffers. These reparations had been mandated by an act of parliament, but in truth the Stammeldoners did not need to be compelled to hand over the money. They did not begrudge one leaf of it. With it went their collective guilt.

The Penresfordians had overwintered in Hallawye, crowding into every spare corner and cranny of that town. It had been a cramped and sometimes squabblesome few months, and the warmer weather had arrived not a day too soon. Now, most of them were camped in tents on the hillside to the south. The resurrection of their town was a communal effort. Every evening they would look down with pride and hope on the new Penresford taking shape on the site of the old.

Marita Brazier did not enjoy living in a tent and made no bones about it. She complained about the lack of decent sanitation, the pain her back gave her every morning after a night on hard ground, and the impossibility of keeping clothes properly laundered under such conditions. But there was in her a fiercely pragmatic streak, a willingness to make the best she could of any situation. Keeping up appearances as a wealthy man’s wife was as hard, in its way, as coping without life’s luxuries. There had always been some form of sacrifice in her life.

Moreover, she was able to make herself useful, even indispensible. Her services as an incendiary were much in demand – cooking-fires and so on – and that was why the Penresfordians were able to put up with her complaining. The fact that she was Gregory’s mother also helped.

She and Gregory shared a small section of the campsite with the Goves. She helped Garla mind the younger children during the day while the older children and Sam and Gregory were down at the town, doing their bit. She complained about the Gove offspring, of course. All that noise and rambunctiousness. But Gregory could tell she had grown fond of them, and some of the very smallest of them showed a marked preference for her over their mother. She wasn’t, for one thing, as free with the physical admonishment.

Gregory himself had established something with Eda Gove. He didn’t know yet what it was and didn’t think she did either, but there was a rapport there, a kind of understanding. It wouldn’t be able to amount to more, he felt, until the town was completely rebuilt. That was everyone’s primary goal. Outside that, other concerns had to wait. But when there was a Penresford again, then he would pursue her. He knew what to do now. There was a faint, cherished memory of an islander girl whom he had had to abandon. There was that at the back of his mind as an example and as a caution, a reason to take things as they came, a lesson in what it meant to love and be loved.

Carpentry was good work, work to which someone with an indestructible’s abilities and an indestructible’s hands was well suited. Under the guidance of wiser and more skilled people than himself, Gregory learned the correct use of saw, plane and chisel and how to peg and dovetail and tongue-and-groove. His contributions to the rebuilding were welcomed and favourably remarked on. One of those overseeing his efforts said that he would make a good carpenter’s apprentice. He had the patience, the diligence, a natural aptitude.

It could be a career for him, Gregory thought. Construction, the family trade, but not with bricks, with wood. Not using earth and fire but his own muscles, the sweat of his brow. A different kind of living for a Brazier but a no less honourable one.

Day by day, in the heat of the summer sun, Penresford re-grew.