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Kate clustered around this same rough wooden casket in the depths of
Mawdingly & Clawtson. SHOOM
BOOM.
The pulse of it beat with the circling of Hallam Tower and the hammering of my
heart as the casket lid shuddered open. Inside were crisped, ancient
newspapers, yet the light which had dimmed that subterranean room where my
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mother had once stood was scarcely there when I lifted the strange object out;
a roughly cut lump of crystal about the size of a human head. I knew now that
such things were called chalcedonies, and that the guilds used them to store
their major spells. But this one was faint; the wyrelight at its core was
scarcely beating. Its power had exhaled long ago. SHOOM
BOOM
SHOOM
BOOM, then silence, and I was back in London, in that dusty attic.
I laid the chalcedony back amid its newspapers. I closed the casket lid. I
floated across the landings and halls. Still totally absorbed, unthinking, I
reopened the door into the Bowdly-Smarts' parlour, but inside there was light
and commotion. Mistress Bowdly-Smart was howling and sobbing and Trixie was
barking, whilst Mister Snaith still sat at the far table, the contents of his
carpetbag still spilling out around him. Mistress Bowdly-Smart, her face
streaming, let out another howl.
`I left Freddie crying,' she wailed in a broad Brownheath accent.
`It's good for babies to be left, ain't it? That's what every mother'll tell
you, and that's what my Ronald insisted. Spoil him, Hermione, he said, and
he'll grow up like a selfish little sewer rat, but let the little blighter
fend, and you'll raise yourself a fine upperguildsman. Oh, we were so bloody
happy! But you do leave them once in a while, don't you, for their own
benefit, even if they've had a wee bit of a fever otherwise, just like
Ronald says, they grow up greedy and expecting it all on a plate . . . It
wasn't a big house we had then, you understand. Just the two rooms up and
down, the way things mostly are in Brownheath. But me and my
Ronald was happy then, and I had my own sweet baby. No matter where
I was in the house, and if it wasn't for the sound of them damn engines, you
could hear him breathing. But sometimes, I left him crying for the sake of his
own good ...'
A baby was still crying in some other room in some other house, but the sound
was faint, and dulled by a distant pounding which only I
and Uppermistress Stropcock would ever have recognised. Then even that faded,
and there was a long pause. The other guildmistresses looked pale and shocked
by the transformation which had come over their hostess. This was what was not
what was supposed to happen.
But, at the same time, I could tell that Mistress Bowdly-Smart's tearful
admission of a past quite different to that which she claimed was scarcely a
surprise to them. They were used to brushing bits of their lives under the
carpet. The silver cutlery which was really thin plate. The infidelities of
their husbands. Their eyes turned instead, in anger and in blame, towards
Mister Snaith. All the hope and wonder had gone from his audience, and the
whispered words which were now exchanged over the cakestands were harsh.
Hateful creatures like him, it well, they were inhuman, mad, ungodly and
alien. They would have been burned in a better, more sensible Age, and any
God-fearing guildswoman would be happy to warm their hands on the blaze. At
the very least, he should be locked up with all the other monsters in St
Blate's. In their crackling black dresses, with their hats pulled down over
their set and angry faces and rigid hairdos, these fellow seekers reminded me
now not so much of birds but of beetles as they scuttled for their shawls and
coats.
The front door slammed as they started departing. Then it opened again.
`Some odd commotion up around Strand,' Grandmaster Bowdly-
Smart's flat voice boomed in the hall, `But what's happened here?
What's going on?' Still wearing his silk-lined coat, his wing collar, his red
cashmere scarf, he burst into the parlour.
`What is it Hermione?'
More mascara and powder than seemed possible had spread across his wife's
face. `We should never have left Bracebridge,'
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she whimpered. `We were happy there, least until little Freddie died. We
should have stayed and looked after his grave. And you Ronald
always promising something better. Sniffing around for something, finding bad
things out. That guildsman and look where it's got us!
And you've been with that tart this evening . . `Hermione how could you
think ... ?' He cradled her wet face in his arms whilst the remaining
guildmistresses made their excuses. He glared about for the source of his
wife's anguish at me, and then at Mister Snaith. He stalked across the long
parlour, pushing low tables and cakestands out of the way.
Cups flew. The glass front of a big cabinet cascaded in a glittering wave.
`You fucking troll! I'll pluck your sodding wings . . .' He hauled back the
table behind which Mister Snaith was cowering. His feet snagged on the
carpetbag. `And just what the hell is this? And this . . . ?
All this . . . !'
Bandages, rubber balls and tapers flew out. `You cheap
little fraud! You're not even ...' Mister Snaith, still wearing the coloured
side of his cloak, made no attempt to resist as Stropcock threw him against
the wall. His toupee went flying. His sleeves jetted tiny plumes of tinsel and
smoke. For a moment, Stropcock stood over him, his breath hissing. Perhaps
even he was waiting for some sign, some twist of magic.
But Mister Snaith just cowered. With a roar, Stropcock grabbed him and wrapped
both hands around his throat.
I tried to wrestle Stropcock off. But he was a strong man and determined
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