‘My mother never gave me a guildmedal, but she gave me the song.’ And I sing it.
Netty nods for the third time. Her old face with the hard eyes has crumpled, grown soft. The blankness has gone and in its place the weakness of an old hope allowed back in. But the hope has also strengthened the bitterness, like air feeding flame. It is a strange sight to see this story on her face. Neither expression wins.
‘You look like her,’ she says.
‘I looked like her back then as well,’ I say.
‘Perhaps I should have helped you.’
‘Perhaps you should have. But there’s no point arguing that. You’ll help me now.’
I will her to find some strength better than the brittle mask, better than bitterness. I sing the first two lines of the guildsong again, as if that might convince her.
‘Sssh,’ she says, and gestures in alarm to the world outside the tarp. ‘I’ll help. I’ll help, but you must be quiet.’
Netty goes to the awning, checks outside. She ties the tarp again tight to the door poles. Then she pulls the two stools close and swings the countertop over on its hinge so it lies between us like a table.
‘Sarah Wythern’s son. Do you have a name of your own?’ she asks.
‘Simon.’
‘Simon. Tell me, then, Simon.’ She takes a breath like she’s putting her shoulder to something. ‘What do you know of Ravensguild?’
I don’t look direct at her in case she changes her mind. I pull the memories in.
‘I know they oppose the Order. They want to keep wordmemory. They know it is Chimes sends memory away and gives the shaking sickness. Their sign is the raven, which is a bird, which is an animal that died because of Chimes. And it has the meaning of memory. I know they work to share and record memories. We need to know who they are.’
‘What was your mother’s role, do you remember?’
‘My mother had the gift of seeing others’ memories. People came to her and brought memories they would forget otherwise. It was her task to remind them, to keep their memories alive.’
‘Yes, admirable,’ says Netty. ‘But there was another task also, a different way she dealt in memory. Did she tell you of that?’
Something rankles in me. Netty talks as if all the fire is gone from the task and no heat even in the coal.
‘Some memories were more important than others. My mother chose which ones and she passed them along. She sent them to you, didn’t she? Then you passed them to the next and so on, so that the meaning would spread. And so those with better memory could put them together and help us remember and understand.’
Netty studies me.
‘What do you think made certain memories important?’
‘Those that were bigger than single stories. That told people something about themselves in this time, about where they were and why.’
She nods. ‘They kept alive what Onestory left out. They told of the crimes of the Order, and the suffering of the people. These were the important memories. The ones that were meant to drive the rebellion. Those memories moved through the networks of people like your mother and me, to the strongest of Ravensguild.
‘You surprised me, boy. I didn’t expect to see you back here anytime before the next Allbreaking. But your mother was in the dark about many things. Things we had known in London for a long while.’
A sense that Netty is stretching her story for her own savour, that she is enjoying the taste of it and the knowledge she has over me.
‘And what was that?’
‘That Ravensguild is dead,’ she says. ‘It has been dying for a long while, but in our life we saw its final throes. When she died, your mother was one of very few who still transported memories to London. One by one the memory keepers had been picked off by the Order. The gift was depleted. If your mother had not come down with the shaking sickness, they would have come for her too.’
She looks over her shoulder to the market street. ‘I have been waiting for them to take me, but either I am not enough threat or they have forgotten I am here.’ She sounds almost disappointed. Like an overlooked guest waiting for an invitation.
Under my hands the woodgrain is dark with use. Elbow, knife handle, oil, sweat, shirtsleeve. The same table at which I sat to eat all those many months ago. Though how can I be the same person as him when so much has changed since and so much of myself shed? The only thing we seem to share is a name. If Netty is right, then my mother’s sacrifice and pain were for nothing. And everything I have fought to remember is for nothing. For a moment it occurs to me that if she’s right, then there’s nothing to stop me going back to the storehouse. Tomorrow I could wake as usual in the hammock. Drink tea and sound Onestory and run in the under with Clare, match her pace, wait patient for the Lady’s largesse.
‘But it’s not over, is it?’ I say. ‘If Ravensguild is no longer a threat to the Order, what’s sending them out of the Citadel to find us? They may have left you alone to rot and forget, but what we know has them searching the city. They’ve sicced poliss and pacts on us. Don’t tell me that they’re no longer afraid.’
Netty goes behind her eyes.
‘What do you mean, “we”?’ she asks. ‘Who is acting with you?’
‘Somebody who was born to the Order and left it. Someone who knows the truth and who can remember it. Who can sing us back to the Citadel if need be.’
Still in deep like she’s dredging up a thing long lost. Aggrieved to find herself back down on her hands and knees in that old mud. Then for a moment the hope behind her eyes fattens like it’s found something new to feed on. She sings a fragment of a rune or tune I do not know. ‘One to sing,’ she says. ‘One to keep the plot. One forgetting. One forgot.’ I nod, as if to encourage her. Whatever nonsense this is, if she believes me, it will be to the better.
But it’s as though the effort of remembering that snippet alone has exhausted her. She shakes her head and bodymemory pushes her face back into its bitter, flat mask. It is easier that way.
She leans forward. ‘What you’ll learn, Simon, is that people do not want to know the truth. You might think you are doing them a great favour to bring it to them. But even if you put it right on their doorstep, nobody will thank you for it. They’ll throw it away. Throw it in your face. Most people prefer to forget.’ She moves behind the counter. She mutters and it’s a stuck note. It reminds me of Harry somehow. ‘This has nothing to do with me at any rate. I left Ravensguild. After your mother died. After your father took his life. Too many deaths.’
I stand up. ‘What did you say about my father?’ I take the few steps across the stall. I grab her brittle shoulders in my hands and I shake. ‘What the hell did you say?’ I want to make her feel pain. I want to see something other than the flat, closed look on her face. Because the last picture I have of my father is him slumped at my mother’s side where she lay under the white coverlet. His hand gripping hers tight enough to stop the shaking. And she is lying again. I shake her and my face is hot and the air is hot and it is me who needs to feel the pain. I am crying for it to come now, sharp and sure. Because I don’t have any other footing. I don’t remember his death. The only thing I hold in my body is the memory of his fist, and the cold of his anger.
Then after a while I see Netty and the look on her face. I drop her shoulders and step back. ‘Who is left?’ I say. ‘You owe it to the people whose memories you took,’ I say. ‘Those memories were their lives. Who is left?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ says Netty.
I stare at her. She is scared. She looks back through the tarp again.
‘Who is left?’ I say, forte.
‘Please. All of the memory keepers we used have died or been taken,’ she says. ‘I waited, but there has been no word of new keepers to replace them.’