Fly by Night (2 page)

From Goodman Palpitattle, He Who Keeps Flies out of Jams and Butterchurns, to Goodlady Prill, Protector of Pigs, these are the gods that the people of the Realm make their berry and bread offerings to. Days and hours are sacred to the different Beloved – babies are named according to the Beloved they are born under and people favour the Goodman or Goodlady of their choosing.

Prelude

History for the Housefly

‘But names are important!’ the nursemaid protested.

‘Yes,’ said Quillam Mye. ‘So is accuracy.’

‘What’s half an hour, though? No one will know she wasn’t born until after sunset. Just think, born on the day of Goodman Boniface, a child of the Sun. You could call her Aurora, or Solina, or Beamabeth. Lots of lovely names for a daughter of the Sun.’

‘That is true, but irrelevant. After dusk, that calendar day is sacred to Goodman Palpitattle, He Who Keeps Flies out of Jams and Butterchurns.’ Quillam Mye looked up from his desk and met the nursemaid’s gaze. ‘My child is a bluebottle,’ he said firmly.

The nursemaid’s name was Celery Dunnock. She was born on a day sacred to Cramflick, She Who Keeps the Vegetables of the Garden Crisp. Celery had every reason to feel strongly on the matter of names. Her eyes were pale, soft and moist, like skinned grapes, but at the moment they were stubborn, resolute grapes.

Quillam Mye had a most meticulous brain. His thoughts were laid out like the strands of a feather, and a single frond out of place he felt like a tear in his mind. His eyes were dark and vague, like smoked glass.

The twin grapes looked into the smoked glass and saw a mind full of nothing they could understand.

‘Call it Mosca and have done with it,’ Mye said. Mosca was rather an old-fashioned name for a fly-born, but better than Buzzletrice or Caddis. He returned his attention to the task of writing his treatise. It was a history of the times in which he, and now his infant daughter, lived. It was entitled ‘The Shattered Realm: A Full and Clear Account of Our Kingdom of Rags and Tatters’.

The door closed behind Celery, and Mye was dimly aware that the level of annoyance in the room had diminished. He was alone. But no, he was not alone.

From the wall a pair of eyes watched him. At the moment they were blue, but one of them already showed a peppery speckle which told Mye that one day they would be as black as his own.

The nursemaid had bound the baby in swaddling clothes as tight as an acorn in its cup, so that it could not learn to be wrigglesome. When the baby was nothing but a linen cocoon with a surprised little head peeking out, she had strapped it to a board to give it a nice straight back. The board was hung from a hook on the wall to keep it out of the way.

For the last month, for all the attention Mye had paid to it, the suspended baby might have been a picture hung upon the wall, albeit a picture whose eyes followed one around the room rather more convincingly than one might like. Now, however, it had a Name, and Names were important.

She
had a name.

Mye was suddenly sorry that the girl would not have green eyes, like her dead mother. If he had thought about this for another moment, he might have regretted spending so much time among his books, writing of the fates of nations, while those green eyes were still open. However, he very sensibly caught himself in time and decided to think about something else.

But what would he do, now that his sight was weakening? He had always thought that in years to come dear Jessamine would help him with his papers.

Those wide, pepper-speckled eyes, watching from the wall . . . what a pity the child was a girl, and not a boy to be schooled!

‘Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.’ Mye felt a brief qualm at the idea of turning his daughter into a freak by teaching her letters, but it could not be helped.

The baby watched as he stooped over his manuscript once more and picked up the quill. The study was so quiet and lonely, snug and sealed like a ship’s cabin against the rain-blasted world. Once, while he still lived in the city of Mandelion, Mye had longed for such quiet, an escape from the distractions of horse-clatter and hawker-cry. His exile to the remote village of Chough had left him weary of stillness and the dismal, eternal trickle of water outside his window.

Mye laid down his quill again. He had no idea how to speak to a baby, he had no stories for children, and he was embarrassed by the fact that, just for once, he wanted – or rather needed – to talk.

‘Well, I suppose if you are to be of any use to me, then I had better start putting sense into your head before foolishness can blot the page.’ Mye searched his pipe bowl for inspiration, and then thoughtfully fingered the dry wove of his manuscript. In it he had tried to make sense of the last thirty years of the Realm’s history. It was hardly a bedtime story for a child.

But perhaps, told another way . . .

‘Perhaps . . . we had better start with a story.

‘Once, in a day that some still remember, there was a king who spent a lot of time devising beautiful gardens and thinking clever thoughts about the stars. He meant very well, and ruled very badly, and in the end they cut off his head, and melted down his crown to make coins.

‘The Parliament ruled the country after that, and all the people who still thought there should be a king went into hiding, or retreated to the hills, or fled to other countries. The Parliament’s leader ruled very like a king, but no one called him a “king”, because names are important.’

Mosca, the newly named Housefly, offered no comment.

‘The dead king had a son, whom loyal servants rescued and carried abroad. The boy prince travelled afar and became a man prince. He spoke with other kings, some of whom promised to help him win back his throne. He learned the etiquette of court, and found out which princesses were worthy to be his queen. And then, while he was visiting a far-distant king in a land of burning sands, his camel unexpectedly bit off his nose. The prince took a fever and died the next day, through surprise as much as anything else.

‘Those who thought there should be a king or queen now argued among themselves. Some thought the old king’s daughter should rule, some his sister, some his cousin’s son.

‘Twenty years passed in this way, and the Parliament fell out with one another as well. They were too busy squabbling to notice their power being stolen away by a clever new enemy.’

Mye hesitated. Like everyone else who had lived through that time, he carried his share of terrible memories and once again he felt them stir, like the breath of a tiger against the back of his neck.

‘A Bad Time came upon the Realm. For ten years . . .’ Mye halted, looking up into his infant daughter’s face. There was still a great deal of blue in her eyes. A fancy struck him that if he spoke aloud of the tortures, the mass gibbets, the screams from the pyres, he would see inkiness flood his daughter’s eyes, to leave them as black as his own.

‘Perhaps I . . . will wait until you are older before I talk to you about the Years of the Birdcatchers.

‘But the Birdcatchers were overthrown and the Bad Time did pass. Afterwards, the monarchists and the Parliamentarians resumed their struggle for power. Each group of Royalists gathered an army and prepared to snatch the throne for their monarch of choice. Parliament was frightened and prepared their own armies for war.

‘And then one day, to their surprise, the leaders of the Parliament found themselves drinking tea with a group of quietly insistent men in very clean but well-used overalls who explained to them that they were not going to do anything of the sort. The Parliament were surprised, for these men were the heads of the guilds, the leaders of the watchmakers and locksmiths and stationers, and other skilled working men.’ Mentioning the Stationers, Mye felt a tiny sting of bitterness, but he continued, ‘“If you go to war,” said the guild heads, “you will suddenly find that there are no boots or coats for your troops. You will find that there are no flints for your pistols and no shot for your muskets.”

‘“No matter,” said the leaders of the Parliament. “Our troops will be so inspired by their cause that they will fight in their shirts and their socks, and will use swords and stones if they cannot have guns.” “Perhaps,” said the guild heads. “But in the meantime even you will have no tea or marmalade for your breakfast tables, and no tailors to darn your robes of office when they tear.” And so the leaders of the Parliament went pale and asked for time to think about it.

‘Meanwhile, on their own lands, the Royalist supporters prepared to march on the Capital. But each and every one found themselves, one day, talking to a group of quietly insistent men in very clean but well-used overalls who explained to them that they would do nothing of the sort. “You will promise loyalty to the Parliament,” said the guild heads, “or your cityfolk will have no flour for their bread or slate for their roofs.”

‘“Our cause is so just,” said the Royalist leaders, “that our people will hold out against a siege even if they are hungry and the snow piles up in their beds.” “Perhaps,” said the guild heads. “But in the meantime no one will set your wives’ hair into ringlets, and your horses will be ungroomed.” And so the Royalist leaders trembled, and said they would give an answer next day.

‘The next day, the Parliament said that a monarch would be no bad thing, and set up a Committee in the Capital to look into it. One by one, the Royalist leaders came to join the Parliament, and waited to find out who was destined to take up the crown and return the nation to its remembered glory.

‘That,’ said Quillam Mye to his daughter, ‘was seven years ago. Today the Realm still awaits the Committee’s Decision. Shall I tell you what has happened since then? I will show you our nation. It is . . .’ He reached for his supper plate. ‘It is
this biscuit
.’

The Housefly stared at the biscuit obediently, perhaps trying to imagine that the ground beneath her was crunchy and full of almonds.

‘Our “kingdom” is like
this
.’ Mye brought his fist down sharply on the biscuit, fracturing it. ‘See? It still looks like a whole biscuit, but it is cracked beyond repair. Every fragment flies a flag to a different king or queen. You see this?’ He picked out a butter-browned fragment. ‘
This
chunk is the Capital and its lands. And this piece –’ a piece crested with a large nut – ‘is Galdspar.
This
is Mandelion, and
this
is the counties of Amblevetch. But there is no biscuit any more. The biscuit where we once lived is dying . . .’

Familiar pains were throbbing behind his eyes, and he paused to let them pass. Little pale points came and went before his sight, as if a giant cat were kneading the tapestry of the world and letting its claw tips show through the cloth. He sighed, swept away the crumbs and dipped his quill to continue with his writing, then looked up at the baby one last time, as if she had said something to interrupt him.

‘Well, if you are to help me with my work, you had better get used to stories without endings. True stories seldom have endings.’

Quillam Mye’s great treatise on The Shattered Realm was never given an ending. Eight years later the historian Quillam Mye was dead, and his books had been burned. Twelve years after the night she was named, his daughter could be found hiding inside a dovecote, with a goose tucked under one arm.

A is for Arson

It was often said that only divine flame could persuade anything to burn in Chough. Many joked that the villagers cooked their dinners over marsh-lights.

Chough could be found by straying as far as possible from anywhere comfortable or significant, and following the smell of damp. The village had long since surrendered to a seeping, creeping rot. The buildings rotted from the bottom upwards. The trees rotted from the inside out. The carrots and turnips rotted from the outside in, and were pale and pulpy when they were dug out.

Around and through the village, water seethed down the breakneck hillside in a thousand winding streamlets. They hissed and gleamed through dark miles of pine forest above the village, chafing the white rocks and learning a strange milkiness. Chough itself was more a tumble than a town, the houses scattered down the incline as if stranded there after a violent flood.

By day the villagers fought a losing battle against the damp. By night they slept and dreamed sodden, unimaginative dreams. On this particular night their dreams were a little ruffled by the unusual excitement of the day, but already the water that seeped into every soul was smoothing their minds back to placidity, like a duck’s bill glossing its plumage.