‘It would eat away at the foundations of all custom and authority,’ Lady Catherine said softly. ‘Who would listen to you scholars when they could listen to prophets instead?’
There was a long silence as each stared thoughtfully at the other. ‘Dangerous things indeed, Scholar Henary. We must discuss them later,’ she said briskly. ‘There is one thing, though.’
‘What?’
‘What on earth do we do if someone does show up?’
‘I suppose you will have an honoured guest on your hands.’
Catherine stood up and clapped her hands. ‘You will excuse me,’ she said as a servant appeared in response. ‘I must prepare.’
For nearly three hours, Henary had to wait in an agony of hope, despair, anticipation. Several times he reassured himself that nothing was going to happen. Bit by bit, news came in which raised his hopes, then dashed them again. Jay was in his tent. He had wandered off. The lad accompanying him was primed to send signals. Henary’s heart skipped a beat, but he had only gone to get some wood for the fire. Nothing more. His spirits rose, then fell once more as the message came through that he hadn’t returned. Then that he had crossed the boundary into the domain.
Henary rocked back and forward with impatience and anxiety. The soldiers waiting in the forest had not found him. An hour. Nothing. Catherine came in to see how he was, and he snapped at her.
Soldiers had found him. He was under arrest. ‘And?’ Henary said to the runner who had sped in with the message. ‘Anyone else?’
‘No one else,’ came the reply, and he sighed in relief. The manuscript had lied.
Then one more messenger. The last one. He was brought in by Catherine, who propelled him forward. He stood there nervous and breathless. ‘Well?’ Henary said. ‘What is it?’
‘A girl. She turned up out of nowhere.’
Henary felt his stomach turning over in panic. It could not possibly have happened. Was it a joke organised by Catherine to make fun of him? One glance at her face convinced him it was not.
‘Who is she? What’s her name? What does she have to say for herself?’
‘I don’t know, sir. But she speaks the old tongue.’
‘What about Jay? How did he react?’
‘He seemed to recognise her, sir.’
As the messenger departed, he went over to Catherine. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘What have I done?’
‘Congratulations, Scholar Henary, wisest of the wise,’ she said, pulling away and giving him a little curtsy. ‘Who would have thought?’
Henary shook his head. He could think of no words to even hint at what he thought or felt.
‘So, we have a new guest,’ Catherine went on in a practical tone. ‘I think I should give her a proper welcome, don’t you? It’s not often an emissary from the gods shows up. Is she the Herald of the last days? That would be so tiresome. You go and sit down and contemplate your own genius for a bit, and come through when you think you can stand straight.’
Henary grunted, but knew she was talking sense. He composed himself, reminding himself that he was a scholar of the first rank, a man of authority and the greatest learning. That he deserved respect and honour. It was hard.
When he was indeed ready, he walked through to the hallway and stood to one side, so that he would not ruin Catherine’s welcome. His heart was beating hard when the doors opened and the welcoming procession came in. He saw the Chamberlain, then Jay, and finally the girl he had thought about for so long, whom he had seen in his mind thousands of times.
He was disappointed. What to make of her? No spirit or fairy, certainly. Jay’s description had been a good one. She had short hair, a pretty face and a look of bemusement or even irritation. But he expected — what? What was a celestial being meant to look like? There was nothing special about her, except for her strange clothes.
The moment of study didn’t last long. The girl looked around the hall and her eyes lit on him. She grinned broadly and came bounding over. He didn’t catch the first words, they meant nothing to him, but the rest he understood. She spoke with absolute fluency and ease, as though she wasn’t even trying. ‘I’m so happy to see you! Why are you in those ridiculous clothes?’
21
Using the information available, Chang got some money and then a room in a hotel for the night. The operation shredded his nerves but he was desperate by that stage. He needed rest and shelter. He could not risk eating in public again until he had a chance of keeping the food down. He could not go into any public place if the inhalation of tobacco was going to make his head spin.
What did he need? Somewhere to sleep and eat and clean his clothes; cigarettes; wine, beer and whisky so that he could practise. Illustrated magazines and journals so that he could see how people dressed, moved and talked.
He also bought a local newspaper, which advertised accommodation to rent and in which, in due course, he could place a notice himself disclosing whether he had found Angela Meerson or not. He examined it carefully. Paper, print; he imagined men laying it all out by hand, huge presses rolling around, the paper being cut and folded, put on lorries in great stacks, taken to shops, then exchanged for money. With the money then moving back from buyer to shopkeeper, to the company, then to the workers, who went out and bought...
Extraordinary system. All that effort so that he could discover that two rooms (with bathroom available — hot water five shillings extra) were available at twenty-five shillings a week. He had no idea whether that was expensive or not, but it seemed to be well within his means now he had tested the theory of crime on the collection box of St Margaret’s Church and placed the result on Fire Boy at eighty to one in the 2.30 at Doncaster. The voice in his head told him it was a sure thing.
So he set off the following morning. He was less frightened now by the disorder of life. Everything — roads, buildings, cars and bicycles — fascinated him. He went slowly, taking an indirect route, until he came to the run-down house with a garden that looked as though it had not been tended for years. The windows were filthy, the paintwork peeling off, and it had a general air of poverty that was most evocative.
He was tired. He was unused to walking long distances, while all around people were striding along or pedalled past on bicycles. There were hundreds of them, thousands. Much of the town was on the move, and most were on bikes. Already Chang was beginning to pick out distinctions — soft caps and rough brown coats meant workers of some sort. Dark material and hard hats meant the richer sort.
Big old houses needed to be cared for, and that cost money, so many of the occupants rented out rooms. His prospective landlady was one of these. Being alone and lonely, she liked to talk. That he had not bargained for. Within a few minutes of knocking, he was deep in a conversation. His first real one, and a terrifying experience it was.
It was exceptionally difficult, not least because it became clear that different things were communicated simultaneously — negotiating the rental of a room, obviously, but also who and what you were, whether you were honest and pleasant. Were you the sort of person who could be called on to change a light bulb? What were your interests, background, tastes? Were you — and this was the most important — respectable, itself a concept that was so complicated it was impossible to define.
The subject of the room did not crop up for some time; much of it was spent telling him things he did not see why he needed to know. She showed him pictures of her grandchildren. He had, he told her, been travelling abroad after a recent illness.
‘Oh, dear! Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘No, no,’ he said casually. ‘Brain tumour.’