But there was something wrong with the picture. The jangling of a note out of place. The circular building so confident in the meat of its own secret. It had windows. And all of its windows were made of glass. Unbroken glass.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I say.
‘What doesn’t?’
‘None of the windows were broken.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Standing in a square watching a bonfire. There was a round building with a mettle roof.’ I think how to describe it. ‘Like the middle dome of Paul’s crosshouse in London, but just sitting by itself.’
‘And the windows were glass?’
‘Yes.’
‘There is a building like that in Oxford,’ says Lucien thoughtfully. ‘But it’s not in a square — it’s built into the East Wall as a gatehouse. And it has para windows like everywhere else.’
‘There were tall buildings around it,’ I say. ‘Tall and thin, made out of the same golden stone.’
Lucien breathes in. ‘I think it was Oxford,’ he says. ‘I think you saw Oxford before Allbreaking.’
‘But the Order were there,’ I say slowly. ‘They were wearing travelling cloaks. Brown like now. They were singing Onestory.’
I look at Lucien and see understanding reach him the same second it hits me. It fills his eyes like a wave. Huge and dark.
The Order didn’t rise up out of the ashes of dischord at all. They were there, waiting. They knew what was coming. They had already started burning code.
And then the next wave swoops in, carrying the full weight of its sickness. Allbreaking was not the end of a long conflict. It was just a necessary step. A harsh chord before their resolution of new harmony. Allbreaking was brought about by the Order.
Mary is behind us.
‘Chop, chop, lovelies. No time for talk. I’ve given you the first one, an important one at that. Now you must keep your side of the bargain.’ She points with a wrinkled finger at my memory bag, which is sitting on the floor beside me.
I nod my head lento. Waves and ripples crashing around. My own memories are distant. How will I choose what to give her? How can I trust myself to choose?
‘Here,’ she says, impatient. ‘Give it to me. Lucky dip.’
I pass the bag reluctantly. She wraps her hand in a fold of her cloak and reaches in.
She pulls out a big old burberry. Dip of mud at its hem as if it has been dragged through a puddle. The arrival in London, I hear in my head, what was it like?
‘The arrival was mud,’ I whisper.
‘Don’t worry,’ Lucien says. ‘You won’t forget. Don’t worry.’
I feel light, a bit empty. Mary wraps the burberry inside itself and places it on a shelf. For a moment I see the carter sitting heavy on the strut of his cart, his neck jerking with chimesickness as he breaks his journey to help a half-drowned farmboy. The coat was my only shelter from Chimes that first night in London.
I force myself to look away and I flex my fingers.
‘What next?’ I ask her.
Mary moves from the corridors and back into the clearing. Forward and backward, stitching memory as she goes. And time after time I go down…
In memory, I give my name to a strange man guarding a door, sing a few notes of melody and walk into a candlelit kitchen. A group of men and women sit in a ragged circle of mismatched chairs and they shuffle back to make a place.
The circle is one of chanting. First it carries names round and round. Eyes flick back and forth as it goes. Listening, watching, nerved with mistrust. After a while stories come. A young man to my left speaks of how he came to get the name he’s called by, a long, winding tale of mistakes and lost chances. Then an old woman takes over and all she says is the list of her family as far back as she can remember till it’s a litany and a marvel and the others in the group slowly clap in rhythm as she chants. Then the next in the circle is me. And I tell of how I came to meet my wife at a winter dance in the neighbouring village, but that she died, subito, not much after. My hands shake as I tell it. How long ago now?
Afterward we share other things. Why some winters wheat rots and not others. How best to help a baby sleep. What to do when your daughter falls from a tree and breaks her leg.
The people in the circle nod. Each story and each piece of knowing is repeated back until the memories are spread like cloth that you could take up and fold into smaller squares. And I go down…
In memory I am pacing across a narrow kitchen. What’s the word for the feeling that sits heavy in my chest? Clinging as a baby. Arms of it round me so I can’t put it down. It takes all the space I have in my lungs and mind. Takes all the time I have left.
My husband holds our boy in his arms and they watch from the kitchen table as I break the butterknife trying to lever up the floorboards. Use the broken blunt hilt of it to get behind the loose bricks of our chimney. Empty the broderie box for the silver scissors and slit the linings of our wintercoats up to their armpits. Memories. All the memories. I pull them from where they’re hid and pile them in the middle of the kitchen. I see myself and what it must look like. As if I’ve taken leave of my senses. But I cannot stop because if I stop, I will never leave.
Is it wrong that I pray for forgetting after all? I don’t want to keep the picture of my husband watching me go and my baby with his face turned. When I lift the bag of memories, it is very heavy. What use are words in the end?
I kiss the two of them goodbye without ever looking once at their eyes and start walking and I go down…
In memory I leave home. I say goodbye to children, to lovers, to parents and friends. I sing journeys backward and forward. I enter new towns and villages, and I carry memories in knapsacks, in bags made of roughcloth and of stickwrap. I travel by cart and by foot and on horseback. In new villages, I convince wary strangers that I can keep their memories safe. I blend into the crowd and keep my eyes blank and forgetful as browncloaked men pass.
Lento, as I come in and out of memory, I see a web spread out across the country. The web is Ravensguild.
I go down…
In memory I am in the head of a young weatherman. Under a tree that spreads its branches wide like a tent. Lightning carves the sky and catches the rain in its path so that it could be either rising or falling. Falling or flying back upwards to whence it came.
Something is near and I cannot run. The runes are waiting to be scattered. Weather waiting to be told.
Broken code from a paraboard. Bits of lead from crosshouse windows. Fingers of leaf and other fragments.
Keening forward and back like the clapper of a bell. Forecast comes out of me whole and it whispers, ‘One to sing and one to tend the plot.’ Though what that means who can say? I say to myself as I go down…
In memory I hold a small mettle bell. I am talking to a friend, a tall woman who is standing close and smells like smoke. Another memory keeper, and the object is a tool that I am using to illustrate my point.
The bell is small and its hood curves down like a tulip, as if it wants to hold its sound close rather than let it go free. It’s threaded on a wool ribbon broidered with leaves and flowers, felted up in age. Brightly coloured like something a child would own.