“We may know where it is,” Mercer says judiciously, then holds up a hand as Mr. Long hoots again through his restricted airway. “I need to make further inquiries. But out of curiosity, what is it? Where does it come from?”
“Well, we don’t really know. Very hush-hush, we think. Mr. Jasmine, you know, was a very senior fellow. Deeply involved. Meetings with Mountbatten and even Churchill himself. Bath meetings. You are aware …”
“That Churchill took meetings in his bath. Yes.”
“Well, these were often two- or even three-tub meetings!”
“Remarkable.”
“Oh, it is, it is.”
“But you have no idea what it might actually be?”
“Well … one doesn’t wish to speculate …” He’s dying to, actually, flirting with them, daring them to ask. Mercer makes a face of utmost interest.
“There are rumours,” Long says. “Quite unsubstantiated, so one can hardly call it serious research … the book, now … we fancied that was quite special. All that code along the edges …” He looks at them hopefully: Have you seen it? Joe suppresses the urge to nod. “Well, in a way, it’s the Crown jewels for some of us, because it harks to a time when Britain was at the pinnacle of science and everyone else was just … well.” Mr. Long leans close, with the air of one imparting a tremendous secret.
“We think … it’s a command set … for the British space effort!” He smiles triumphantly. There is a long, uncomfortable pause.
“British …” Mercer says faintly.
“… Space effort!” Mr. Long repeats. “Von Braun was working for German dominance in space! We couldn’t let that happen in the long run, could we? Of course, it was all covered up later.” He puts a finger alongside his nose and shows them his septum a few times.
Mutinous glares flow in two directions while Mr. Long sips oblivious at his coffee and makes another weird little noise.
Polly rolls her eyes at her brother and perches on the arm of Joe’s chair. He does not pay attention to the way her backside compresses firmly against his arm. He listens to Mr. Long.
Mostly.
The theft was deftly accomplished. It was probably done to order. It was particularly vexing because a gentleman representing a large company had recently inquired about taking the item on loan for a substantial sum. Joe describes Rodney Titwhistle and then Arvin Cummerbund, and even the Ruskinite who visited his shop, but Mr. Long does not recognise them. Nor is he familiar with the Apprehension Engine—though the mention of an engine intrigues him, of course—or the word “Angelmaker.” Then Mercer shows him a picture of Billy Friend.
“Oh, yes, he was there, definitely. Oh, dear, is he a criminal?”
“Yes,” Mercer says, at the same time that Joe Spork says “No.”
“He’s dead,” Polly says gently.
“Oh, dear,” Mr. Long says again. “His poor mother.”
“His mother?” Mercer repeats.
“Very respectable lady! I hardly think she was involved. Rather too old to go shinning up a balcony, ahah aknuu hahaha. And who’d take care of the terrible dog?”
Joe Spork is abruptly paying very close attention. “What dog?”
“Right little monster, aknuu, yes, with pink glass eyes, if you can credit it.”
“A pug,” Joe suggests, “with only one tooth.”
“Horrible! Mind you, aknuu, you have to admire the tenacity, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I suppose you do.”
Mercer asks a few questions and then bundles Mr. Long gently out of the door with a promise of vague assistance down the line. When he has gone, his expression speaking somewhat of disappointment at their reaction to his revelation, Joe Spork introduces Mercer to the name of Edie Banister, and Bethany adds her to the list.
“To recap,” Polly Cradle says, in a tone Joe Spork finds both school-marmish and extremely sexy, “it would seem that at some time between 1945 and 1980, Joe’s grandfather and grandmother built a bee-machine which is either a rocket ship, a mobile sculpture, or a brain-melting lie detector. They were assisted in this questionable enterprise by the Order of John the Maker, at that time under licence from the British Government to create objects of philosophically and militarily efficacious art. Sadly, during the testing phase, the item in question immolated the town of Wistithiel and the project was discontinued. Subsequently, the Ruskinites were co-opted by a sinister personage determined to attract God’s attention—to wit, one Brother Sheamus—who ousted the Keeper at that time, Theodore Sholt, but was unable to lay his nasty mitts on the Apprehension Engine itself, being blocked by person or persons unknown. We shall hypothesise a combination of the aforementioned government entities and the good Keeper himself, who then removed to a greenhouse to look after the item personally until such time as Joe’s grandmother should choose to resume its purpose, which as far as we know she never did.
“At some point in the recent past, it would seem that an old lady living in Hendon took it into her head to unleash the Apprehension Engine and in doing so save or possibly destroy the world. She deployed Billy Friend as a catspaw, roped Joe in to do the technical bit, and gulled poor Mr. Long out of his prize exhibit. Joe activated the machine, the bees flew, and both the Ruskinites and some shady bit of the Civil Service, possibly but probably not known as the Legacy Board, realised what was going on and pounced, acting for the moment in concert—though we should not take that to mean that they are united in their goals. They grabbed Sholt and the machine under the appearance of a fire in an old house, traced the whole thing to Billy and he got killed either under interrogation or because someone is very keen to keep this from getting out. From Billy they found Joe, and would have vanished him also without the intervention of Mercer Cradle of the old established et cetera, et cetera. And here we all are. Does anyone have anything to add?”
“Yes,” her brother says. “It’s getting a lot bigger very, very fast.”
He thumbs on the television, without the sound, and they watch as bulletins interrupt regular programming. Parliaments debate and leaders demand explanations from one another. The UN is in session, and so is NATO. Britain is on high alert; the government’s misdeeds in Congo have become painfully public. Israel and Egypt, once friendly, now nervous, are positively spitting. So are Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. A swarm of bees in Santiago has revealed secrets: excesses, debauches, and betrayals. The United States, China, India, and Pakistan have all announced their intention to destroy the bees, though what they will do—Shoot them? Nuke them?—is unclear. To the leaders of the world, though, they are bad bees. They are bees of aggression, not bees of honey and peace. They are evil bees, and cannot be tolerated.
Too much truth cannot be allowed.
In London—stung, perhaps, by the implication that all this originated here—a nasty red-topped anger is building. Bee-keepers are told they must register, must submit their hives for inspection. No, of course, these are no ordinary bees, but it pays to be safe. It helps to rule people out. Any bee-keeper, after all, might be a sympathiser, a fifth columnist. Meanwhile the people growl back at Westminster: Who is responsible? Who is answerable? Who must give back his pension? (Not that anyone ever is, or does.)
Who will be held to account?
Who did this?
Who must be thrown to the beast?
“It’s getting much bigger,” Mercer Cradle repeats.
XI
Ancient’s history;
a personal matter;
Lovelace.
Edie wakes, still cold from Cuparah’s icy salvation of decades gone. It’s earlier than she intended, and the effort of getting vertical is for the moment too much to contemplate. Her body is old, and the bones themselves have taken up a kind of muttering. Even Bastion, she sometimes thinks, is in better overall repair than she is.
She ruffles his ears gently, and he makes a sound in his belly like a lawnmower but does not wake. Almost, Edie lifts him up for a hug, but a dog must be allowed hi
s dreamtime. She refrains, and curls around him instead, hoping his hot-water-bottle body will draw her down into her own sleep. She gets, instead, the strange, meandering kaleidoscope which has recently been her mind’s recourse: the weird pageant of her life.
Alas, without many of the dirty bits.
Edie Banister could never decide if it was a dream or a nightmare, that long, strange fugue which carried her—and, incidentally, His (and then Her) Majesty’s United Kingdom—from 1946 to the end of the century. The Cold War framed everything, the great Soviet steamroller looming to the East and the plucky Yanks to the West—but Edie fought an altogether different war of her own: a long, shadowy, personal one against an enemy who somehow never went away. It did not matter how many times she beat Shem Shem Tsien. He always came back, and each defeat served only to make him more cruel.
Sleep clearly isn’t an option. With the assistance of the headboard and being careful not to disturb Bastion where he lies, Edie rises and stands naked in front of the mirror in the attic of the Pig & Poet. Not twenty any more, alas. Not even thirty or forty or fifty, or any of those comfortable landmarks which come before people call you “old.” And yet there is muscle, still, in her narrow arms, and though her joints protest, they will move, will serve, will—in absolute necessity, and on the understanding that the following day will be a world of pain—glide through the steps and swirls of the featherlight hiji waza Mrs. Sekuni recommended for senior combatants.
She brushes out her hair and trims it, then puts on her next identity: a severe grey suit and flat shoes—Sunday School Edie, complete with ugly handbag big enough to conceal Bastion and some other items she has recently cooked up.
The arrival of Mr. Biglandry at Rallhurst Court implies, of course, that Billy Friend has been interrogated, and if he gave her up he has likely also yielded the name of Joshua Joseph Spork. Assassins, though … Edie did not anticipate that. An arrest warrant, for sure—but killers, no. If Shem Shem Tsien were still alive, that would be a different matter, but age and cumulative injury have by now surely achieved what she never could. The Opium Khan would be a hundred and twenty-five this year. No. Shem is dead, and good riddance. Which implies either someone new, or that her own country’s secret service has just attempted to erase her.
She has seen the news, of course, knows that there are golden bees in the air over warships and cities and stock exchanges and homes, knows that governments are screaming blue murder. All the same, she had expected something more subtle. But perhaps she is simply sugar-coating the past. Maybe Abel Jasmine would have ordered her death: former agent launches one-woman revolution, engages doomsday device.
Edie stares back down the tunnel of the years, and feels the urge to shout advice to herself. Follow your heart, make the world you believe in. Governments promise everything, but change nothing. Beyond anything else, trust Frankie.
At last, she wakes the dog and ladles him gently into position, ignoring a burble of profound betrayal. Bastion does not approve of the handbag as a method of conveyance. Edie slips her hand between the leather straps and gentles him. Thinking about it, she realises it may not be the handbag per se, but the three or four Tupperware containers on which he sits, which smell of strange chemicals and plastic tape. Bastion most especially does not approve of Tupperware. He views it as a means to keep him from things rightfully his own, such as liver. The list of things of which he does not approve is long and complex, embracing such varied sinners as cats, thugs, wellington boots, brightly coloured umbrellas, cows, and unlicensed taxi cabs. But things which keep him from liver are near the top.
Edie catches the bus in Camden and lets it take her all the way west, then waits for the Catholic school in Goldmartin Street to disgorge its students and teachers, equally dressed in grey uniforms, so that she is suddenly just one of a great throng of severe women striding along the wide pavement. If anyone is following her, she has just made their lives almost impossibly difficult and annoying.
In the Underground she doubles back on herself and heads towards Harriet Spork’s convent. Sooner or later, she’s fairly sure, Joe will go there, and that is a calculation others will make, too.
Love causes people to do stupid things. That does not, she realises now, make them the wrong things.
The war came to an end and—as with the one before it—everyone was too exhausted to cheer. People smiled at one another not like victorious heroes but like punch-drunk prizefighters, eyes swollen shut and lips rippled and split, who do not understand why everyone is clapping. A numb silence settled over Europe from Snowdon to Ararat. Edie Banister—in the person of Commander James—was detailed to accompany Frankie from London to Calais and down to her family’s home in rural France.
“Did you win the war for us?” Edie asked her in the grim little sleeper compartment of the southbound train.
“No,” Frankie said seriously. “I would say I am responsible for no more than a few percentage points of variance in the outcome. The military men are incapable of asking a clear question. If they can only see one way of doing a thing, it follows that there is only that way. I spent six weeks working on an issue with sonar before I established that the use they proposed for the new technique was utterly …” She waved her hands in a gesture of aggravation and stared moodily out of the window. Then she looked back at Edie, and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. It was frustrating. More honestly … I do not believe this will be a pleasant journey for me. There will be pain of the soul. But … it is pleasant to see you, Commander Banister.” She reached over and grasped Edie’s hand, and smiled a wide, inviting smile. Then she drew a little closer. “More than pleasant, if I am honest.”
“Frankie,” Edie said after a long moment, “my name is Edith and I am a female person.”
Frankie Fossoyeur nodded, puzzled. “Yes,” she said, “I know. The ratio of your hips to your head is inconsistent with maleness. Also, the formation of your voice, while the note is quite deep, is not indicative of the presence of …” She waggled her fingers and then leaned closer, touching Edie’s throat at the midpoint.
“Adam’s apple,” Edie Banister said, after a moment.
“Yes! Exactly. Also the skin, the eyes, the odour of the body, the hands … these are not mathematical observations, by the way. They are qualitative …” She had not removed her fingers. Edie could feel the second one, resting on her neck just to one side of the first. If she stepped forward, she would feel the third, then the little finger and eventually the palm and the thumb, then the forearm, and then all of Frankie at once.
“Just so that we’re clear,” Edie said. She shifted her weight. Frankie’s nails grazed her skin.
“We are,” Frankie said. “Quite clear.”
How long they stood there Edie was never sure. At some point, they began to kiss, and the distance to Marseilles seemed very short. Undressing, Frankie announced sternly that she did not believe in exclusive love, which was a ludicrous construction of the Judeo-Christian Patriarchy. Edie agreed, never having thought about it, and wondered distantly whether the Judeo-Christian Patriarchy was a plot to which she should alert Abel Jasmine, or one he had perhaps created. Certainly, she wasn’t going to argue about it now.
The journey was easy, but arriving was hard. Frankie’s home was burned out. A pair of tweezers and a copper pot lay broken on her old hearth, beside a single, charred shoe. She asked about her family, her relatives, but once they knew who she was, the remaining local people would not talk to her. The young ones looked ashamed and the old ones turned away and muttered. A soldier said he thought it likely they’d been denounced as traitors to Vichy.
“They did a bit of that,” he said, looking out at the town. “Pointed the finger at those they didn’t like. People who were too rich or too pretty. All over occupied Europe, belike. Here for sure.” He shied a pebble at a man pulling a handcart. “Half the world at war with the other half and good French lads fighting in the shadows to set ’em free, French soldiers in England re
adying for the day, and these buggers down here were just settling old scores. Bollocks to ’em, is what I say. Still … they had to live somehow, I suppose.” He showed them a pile of belongings, dug up from the town dump, and Frankie moaned, clutched an ugly beaded necklace of her mother’s from the pile.
Edie walked her away from town, followed a narrow track to a tree stump on the shore of a mucky lake.
“They hate us this much …” Frankie whispered, between gulps of horror. “My people. Because we are witches. Hakote. Children of the Sea. Webbed feet and shadow. Because we see the world, my mother said.”
“I don’t understand,” Edie confessed into her lover’s hair, because she knew already that when Frankie needed to talk about human things and life, you had to give her the cues or she became convinced you weren’t listening.
Frankie swallowed. “Numbers,” she said, after a moment. “Always numbers. We are born with numbers as you are born with sight. Do you see? So we are witches.”
“Because you can count?”
“Non, not exactly. It is like that, but it is more than counting, and less. It is … Alors … Suppose I am a crude peasant girl—which I am, but suppose it is Louis XIV’s time. I see a waterwheel. I see the rotation and the angle, and I know that in thirty to forty rotations, it will wear away and collapse. I do not know why I know. How can I express periodicity when I have never learned to write? When I have never needed a word for ‘rotation’? But I run, anyway, to the miller and I say to him to stop the wheel. Now, the miller is a rich man and he did not get that way by listening to foolish girls. He does nothing. The wheel breaks and a man dies. Now I am a prophet! A witch! It is all my fault! Do you see?”
“Hakote.”
“Sorceress. Yes. So they make up stories. Lies, embellishments. And my mother’s house is a ruin and my … everyone I loved is gone. Because people are too stupid to know the simple truth when they hear it, and believe the most outrageous lies.” And then something else which Edie could not quite hear, but which sounded like: Please let them have escaped. More family, more vulnerable witches. More targets.