THAT SHIFTERM, THE WEATHER was developing a will of its own. Weatherman Ayres had noted his readings and examined the daily reports of the Bristol Meteorographic Office and scanned the forecasts in the newspapers, although that was mainly so he could chuckle over them. Mostly, and like any good weatherman, he felt it in his bones. He’d taken in his blackboard for the season—for the weather could be deflected, encouraged, even slightly delayed, but it should never be confronted, and there was no point in making promises you couldn’t keep.
What was coming was far bigger than anything of his conjuring. He’d pictured huge banks of cloud churning up over the mid-Boreal Ocean, and had sought news of Proserpine, and the processes of her fitting and loading. Then came the evening when the storm reached its arms this far from the Antillian Sea and he stood out in the electric dark on the weathertop’s outer gantry as the weather front poured in across the south of England. His skin bristled, but he knew his weather-top was earthed and aethered like nothing else in Elder’s kingdom. There was no safer place for him to be standing.
His feelings about Invercombe were now tinged with the sad and happy expectation that he and Cissy would soon be leaving. After all, they were no spring chickens, and, now that they’d finally admitted to all the years they’d wasted in avoiding their feelings, it seemed the only sensible thing to do. There was a feeling, as well, that this summer was unrepeatable. Many times, Cissy had commented on how perfectly the house had run itself in recent months. The bath water always ran hot. The floors all shone. The linen was whiter, the pans brighter—every task was easier than it had any right to be, and Weatherman Ayres had had the same feeling up here in his weathertop. Levers you tried to pull the wrong way resisted, then slid in the other direction like knives through warm oil. That time when the lad Ralph had been ill, the anemometry wheels had almost taken his hands off in their eagerness to turn. But, whatever this storm was now, he urged the Proserpine to ride the clear breezes of her aftermath towards England for her unloading. Not that they hadn’t saved, but even Cissy, who always bridled at the prospect of a big delivery taking place near Invercombe, admitted that it would be nice to have the extra cash.
It was an enticing prospect. Both of them living in a nice house in some better part of Bristol, perhaps Saint Michael’s Hill or Henbury, and she decently retired. A young lass to do the fetching and cleaning; someone for Cissy to boss and befriend. And a white balcony for them to sit out on during warm evenings. A cellar, as well, for a few bottles of the best vintage of the small trade. And jewels and dresses, too—things for her to wear when they paraded together along Boreal Avenue.
Trees silvered. Windows banged. Clouds were moving. There were no ships left out in the Bristol Channel, and he was glad for that, for this was like no other storm he’d ever witnessed. Sweat oozed from him. His teeth and eyeballs felt cold. The light was greenish, it was purple, then it was no light at all. The weatherman’s moustache began to writhe and twitch. If he’d had any hair on his head, that would be stirring as well. He wished he could chuckle at the thought, but his mind was filled with strange, uneasy calculations about just how well-earthed and magicked this weathertop really was, and what sort of weather front this was, to be stirring so far across the Boreal Ocean from its tropic origins.
He’d thought that there was no sound left in the world, but now, at its vanishing, he realised there had been one. He was so used to the water-wheel’s chanting that its stillness felt like a blindness. Suddenly, after all his years of faith, the weatherman had no confidence in his weathertop. Cissy was right; he shouldn’t be up here. But it was too late now, and the blackness was spreading. It filled his eyes and his thoughts. Then, in a roaring blast, the first thunderbolt shattered across Invercombe.