Memory Seed (34 page)
Authors: Stephen Palmer
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Cyberpunk
~
The Holists kept a continuous guard. In the back of Zinina’s mind – and, she presumed, everybody else’s – was the thought that Clodhoddle Cottage had been identified as an occupied house, and that meant perpetual danger. Also, it had been damaged and could not last.
Arrahaquen kept to herself, desperate to unravel the significance of deKray’s discoveries inside the Clocktower. Ever more intensely the Clocktower dominated her visions of green devastation and the creaking sounds of vegetable growth. She knew their future was bound up with it.
CHAPTER 28
Kray attacked relentlessly. Clodhoddle Cottage, already suffering a disintegrating roof and sinking foundations, seemed to fail like a patient too old to take medicine. Walls sucked up water as if they were made of card, paint and plaster peeled, and creaks resounded through the house; all ominous signs that never ceased. The city had taken the Holists’ home into its green fist.
Arrahaquen’s composure too began to fail. She looked pale and drawn. Dark rings circled her eyes, her lips were swollen from ulcers, her infected fingernails ached, and the green rash that she had never been able to shrug off now disfigured much of the left side of her face.
She told Zinina, ‘I seem to sense something happening from within.’
‘Within the Holists?’
‘Maybe. But I’m so taken up with trying to remember how to escape that I’ve no feel for anything else. It’s very difficult.’
Zinina nodded, aware through empathy of the strain Arrahaquen was under. ‘If we can do anything to help,’ she said.
‘Escape is so close, yet an eon away,’ Arrahaquen said, dream-like, as if Zinina had wandered off. ‘I just can’t quite remember it. DeKray has done something...?’
Zinina led Arrahaquen to her room, settled her in a comfortable chair with a goblet of dooch, then left her.
Another day passed. Torrents of rain began to sweep over Kray from the sea, and daylight hours became dark as evening. Lamps and tubes were never turned off inside Clodhoddle Cottage. The storm struck in waves; shrieking wind, whipping rain, thunder, even showers of hail. Ball lightning shot up and down the remains of city streets. The final clearance had begun.
~
On the second night after the attack of the revellers events happened that shook the Holists to their core.
Zinina’s first knowledge that something was wrong came when Qmoet woke her during the night. ‘Zin, get up quick,’ she whispered. ‘Leave deKray here. Hurry up.’
Zinina put on her gown. ‘What’s up?’
‘Bad. Very bad.’
They hurried downstairs. ‘What?’ Zinina insisted.
‘Reyl and Gishaad-lin have gone.’
‘Gone?’ said Zinina, horrified. ‘Dead?’
‘We don’t know.’
Eskhatos, Ky and Arrahaquen were standing by the hall green zone. The five robotic carriers – the bird-legged jacqana – lurked nearby. ‘Zinina,’ Eskhatos said, ‘Reyl and Gishaad-lin have departed the house. Do you know anything about it?’
‘No, Eskhatos,’ Zinina replied, letting her face show her shock. ‘Where have they gone?’
Eskhatos glanced at Arrahaquen. Arrahaquen looked exhausted – Zinina knew she suffered terrible insomnia. ‘I can’t be sure,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘It’s too cloudy in me, but I think the boats...’
Realisation struck Zinina. ‘You mean, they’ve taken to the sea?’
Eskhatos nodded.
‘We’re going down there now,’ said Ky. ‘You in with us?’
Anger bubbling, Zinina replied, ‘Yes!’
Ky, Qmoet and Zinina dressed in protectives, checked their weapons, then turned to face the others. Arrahaquen was too tired to come, Eskhatos too old. A feeling of dread stole over Zinina as she realised that, excepting her sleeping man, this might be the last remnants of the Holists: an old woman, an exhausted pythoness, and three tired commoners. Zinina, not given to speculation, suddenly perceived that this really could mark the end of everything. Including her life. Trembling with apprehension, she said, ‘Well... let’s go. Weapons charged?’
They departed the house. Cod Row was choked with vegetation, which they struggled through, but Mandrake Street, leading to the Sud Bridge under which the Holists’ boats should be bobbing, was under water for almost its entire length. The rain, warm and yellow, poured down. They had to wade along the street’s edge, climbing ruined houses occasionally, torches on full power to ensure they did not get entangled in reeds or tendrils. It was a dreadful, desolate journey.
They turned off all light upon reaching the bridge. Climbing down to the river, they saw, as they peeked around the nearest brick arch, that no boats remained. Shocked, Zinina just stared. Nothing there.
‘Look,’ Ky said. ‘Bootprints.’
Zinina hurried over to the mud in which Ky stood. Two sets of bootprints showed what had occurred. The pair had divided, taking a boat each.
Horrified, all Zinina could do was mutter, ‘They’ve split. Reyl and Gishaad-lin have split.’
‘The cowards,’ Qmoet added.
Burdened by loss, they trudged back to Clodhoddle Cottage. ‘Do you think they’re at sea now?’ Zinina asked.
‘They must be,’ Qmoet replied, holding her hand.
‘I can’t believe it.’
~
Later that day, a meeting took place. Because it concerned Arrahaquen they left her to toss and turn in her own room.
A mumbling, half-asleep Eskhatos presented her case. ‘We must support Arrahaquen as much as we can. All other escape routes are closed to us. It’s a fragile hope, you know, for Arrahaquen is, well, untested, if you see what I mean.’
‘Unreliable,’ Ky supplied.
‘Arrahaquen says to us all,’ Eskhatos continued, ‘quite plainly I might add, that she is on the brink of some discovery... I must confess, I’m rather losing hope. I just like to doze, these days.’
An especially loud creak ran through the house. ‘And the house won’t last,’ Ky said. ‘The rear rooms are crumbling.’
‘Yes...’ Eskhatos murmured. To Zinina she looked half dead. It seemed a final symbol of defeat, for Eskhatos had founded the Holists and been its driving force.
‘We won’t give up,’ she said.
~
Arrahaquen remained in her room, visited by Zinina and Ky to offer water and food, and comfort. She appeared so deep inside her own thoughts that she was becoming a zombie. Zinina had to push away mental images of her becoming catatonic and dying.
Zinina talked with deKray in their room. Thunder rumbled and rain battered the roof. Tubes failed, only lightning flashes illuminating them.
‘DeKray,’ she said, ‘if it comes to it, and Arrahaquen can’t save us, I want us to die together.’
‘Do not speak so morbidly,’ deKray replied. ‘We will live through. Mayhap we will join the temple of the Goddess for a few months after all, and over-winter in their abode.’
‘No, this is the end,’ Zinina said. ‘I can feel it. Everything’s dying, everything’s splitting up. So I want us to die together. I couldn’t bear to be without you.’
‘I will not hear of it,’ deKray said.
A loud crack made them jump. ‘Was that thunder or the house?’ Zinina asked him.
‘I fear it was–’
Another crack sounded and they felt the floor of their room shift. Zinina stood, terrified. ‘Pack your stuff,’ she said.
A third crack sounded, louder than both the others, and Zinina saw the outer wall sag. ‘Run!’ she shouted.
They ran, waking Qmoet on the way. Eskhatos and Ky were already awake, and they met Arrahaquen on the stairs down.
‘Run,’ Arrahaquen cried, ‘the house is falling.’
Eskhatos was too confused to issue orders, so Ky took over. ‘Zinina,’ she said, ‘get water from the cellar, deKray get food. Qmoet, get tarpaulins then kit replacement stuff. Arrahaquen, get clothes and protectives.’
The house groaned and shifted as they ran. Into the pelting rain Zinina sped, crates of bottled water in her left hand; then she ran back, dodging slates falling from the roof, ducking as a piece of guttering slid down a wall, clattering down to the cellar then returning with more water. Ky had put Eskhatos into a chair and covered her with an umbrella; Woof she had let loose. As Zinina ran with her fourth lot of water, she saw the jacqana striding on their long legs out of the side door. Over the noise of rain and thunder she heard a rumble, a groaning crackle as of wood giving way, and then the rear of the house fell to the ground, showering rubble and dust across the rear yard. Zinina screamed as it fell.
‘Look out!’ somebody cried.
Zinina turned, unsure who had shouted.
She flinched when an object swung in front of her.
And lost consciousness when it hit.
~
Later, the Goddess’ priestesses arrived at the Holists’ camp set up at the lower end of Cod Row. But only two of them. Tashyndy told their tale.
The storm had splintered the temple and eventually crushed it. Surviving priestesses, acolytes, worshippers – a score, no more – had crawled from the wreckage. Arvendyn had perished. Led by a wounded Taziqi they had floundered south, through terrible swamps, jelly-infested lakes and barbed lianas thrashing in the wind. Most did not survive.
The group had divided after crossing the river. An acolyte had led all but six north, hoping to reach the ancient Galactic Port. Taziqi had succumbed on the way to a bladderblade in the ankle. A second had fallen inside a folding pitcher. The other two had been clawed in thigh and belly by cats.
Arrahaquen stared at them both. ‘Just you and Maharyny left?’
Tashyndy nodded. ‘We failed, Arrahaquen.’ Staring at the sky, fists white-knuckled, she continued, ‘We failed because our vision failed. What is the Goddess but a symbol of the Earth? We have been kneeling as supplicants before our own destruction, worshipping green death, death handed out impartially by a force from which consideration of humanity has long since vanished... if it was ever present. And as for the future, that, as should have been clear to us, is green. Green water, green slime, green leaves. Green grass.’
Both Maharyny and Arrahaquen were weeping.
‘Green grass. I am the final Kray Queen. If I am our symbol of fertility, am I destined to be the Goddess’s murdered daughter?’
‘I don’t know,’ Arrahaquen said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’
But she almost knew. Through watery eyes she gazed north, to where, behind banks of cloud and rain, the Clocktower lay.
~
DeKray surveyed the scene before him. It was utter desolation. Under a fifteen-foot tarpaulin erected using poles of wood lay Zinina, wrapped in battery-heated blankets, unconscious; Eskhatos sat nearby, exhausted and too bewildered to be of any help. The others sat like him at the edge of the tarpaulin, Arrahaquen gazing out to sea, Qmoet playing dice with Ky, the two priestesses sitting hand-in-hand, heads bowed. The five jacqana circled the tarpaulin as though hunting for seeds to eat. It was so dark they flitted in and out of sight. Woof sat and howled mournfully.
The rain pelted down from black clouds. Their few remaining goods lay in the jacqana baskets or in crates at the edges of the tarpaulin. Streams pouring down the alley made new rivers and rapids around them. Everything was soaked.
He wondered if this was the end. They had nothing left: their house and their security, most of the remaining supplies... and their hope. He had lost his love – for he knew Zinina could soon die in the cold. He wondered if he ought to return with her to his old house and there make an end of it.
The rain pummelled their tarpaulin. It sprayed from trees and from ruined houses to either side. Two rivers to the sides of the alley carried slime, debris, and occasionally dead animals down to the sea.
From here, deKray could see the sea; a glowing stretch was visible between the last two houses of a little alley off Cod Row. Somewhere out there floated Reyl and Gishaad-lin, unless they had drowned already.
He looked north. Out there the replica must be inutile, tied to an ancestor pole, for the revellers would have returned had they discovered the pyuton’s true nature.
He looked at Zinina’s blanched face. She had lost too much blood. They had injected her with their last syringe of nano-coagulant, but, though it had stemmed the flow, her skin and her gums were white, and she remained comatose.
Was this what his life had come to? All those books he had collected; all that knowledge he possessed? He could not believe that it would all be lost. And yet it was nothing compared to the greater loss, the loss of humanity’s knowledge, which had lain, for the most part, in electronic media under the Citadel. That tumulus now consisted of black shards hundreds of yards high.
Eight people remaining. Everything else had been washed away by Kray, and by time.
Woof howled without ceasing.
CHAPTER 29
Arrahaquen sat under the tarpaulin, gazing into Zinina’s face. They had endured a foul night after the collapse of Clodhoddle Cottage. It was early afternoon now, but dark as night under a wild sky. Arrahaquen had not slept for three consecutive days and nights.
Torrential rain swept along Cod Row. DeKray and Ky had improvised sheets at two edges of the tarpaulin to protect them from the weather coming in off the sea, but regularly these were torn away by the wind and would need resetting. Everything was soaking wet, except inside Zinina’s blanket roll, which they sealed with polythene and rubber compound from the kit spares.
DeKray sat beside Arrahaquen, pointlessly trying to light a cigarette. The others were playing dice. She turned to him. ‘You’ve told me all you can about what you did inside the Clocktower? You’ve not missed anything out?’
‘With sincere honesty,’ he answered, wringing his hands, ‘I remember few details now. It was a dream for me, a bizarre experience. I handed the copper ovoid over, I watched the surgical operation, I toyed with the pyuter systems. There was nothing else.’
Arrahaquen looked into his eyes. In such dire conditions he must surely be telling the truth. She knew now that the Clocktower was the heart of Kray’s desolation, and she knew that deKray had changed the city by entering and experiencing that awful place. But how? And to what end? As she sat and pondered, the wind whipping through their makeshift tent, she decided that they must go there. They
must.
And when they were there, she might know what to do.
‘There was food and water in the tower?’ she asked for the third or fourth time.
‘Arrahaquen, believe me,’ he said, taking her by the hand, the intensity of desperation in his voice. ‘Please, please believe me. I am working with you. The place is self-sufficient. It has power. Some comestibles and water. Soap and towels, for goodness’ sake. It is surely better than this ruination.’
‘We must go there. You tell them. I dare not.’
DeKray stood up, and Arrahaquen stood at his side. ‘Holists and priestesses,’ he said. They looked up from their dice game, except Eskhatos, who was somehow managing to sleep. Woof threw him a melancholy glance without moving her muzzle. ‘Holists and priestesses,’ deKray repeated, as if unsure of what to say. He unwrapped a sweet and swallowed it. ‘Some days ago I undertook, on my own behalf, to penetrate the Clocktower.’
‘What?’ They stared at him. ‘What?’ Tashyndy and Maharyny chorused.
‘I entered–’
‘You entered that place?’ They stood and confronted him.
Arrahaquen moved forward. ‘It’s true. I remembered him doing it – before he did it. He went and explored. I believe him. Listen, Ky, Qmoet – wake Eskhatos, for the Goddess’ sake – we have to go there.’
Arrahaquen noticed black lines of cloud, blacker even than those pelting rain over them, that were piling in off the sea. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘We’re being driven out to die. We must go to the Clocktower–’
‘What about the Temple of Balloon Love?’ Ky interrupted.
Arrahaquen answered immediately, confident of her insight. ‘Wrecked. It’s no shelter and it’s too far. If anybody remains there they’ll soon be flooded out. Listen to me. I am a pythoness. We must go into the Clocktower and shelter there. DeKray’s seen abundant water and food inside.’
Eskhatos was now awake. ‘The Clocktower?’ she said.
It was essential that Eskhatos be converted; if Eskhatos refused to go there, Ky, and probably Qmoet, would refuse too. Arrahaquen knew that she must exert all her powers to lead these three people. Deep down, because of their hopelessness, they needed to be led... they
could
be led, if she was convincing enough. She alone possessed the vision.
‘Eskhatos,’ she said, ‘it’s our only chance. Where else can we go?’
‘You mean...’ Eskhatos began, and Arrahaquen had to strain to hear her faint speech above the din of the storm, ‘you mean that boy’s been in there? How?’
Arrahaquen ignored her words, saying, ‘We’re going now, Eskhatos. It’s safe and warm inside.’
‘Safe? But it’s the Clocktower. Nobody goes in there.’
‘
We
are.’ Arrahaquen stood, and told Ky, ‘Get the jacqana ready. DeKray, stow these boxes on them. Qmoet, you and I will carry Eskhatos. We’re going.’
They hesitated. Arrahaquen moved to pick up two poles that could be used to raise Eskhatos’ chair.
‘We
can’t
go inside the Clocktower,’ Ky said.
‘Why not?’
Ky fretted. Her glasses had long since been lost, and she peered myopically at Arrahaquen. ‘It’s haunted.’
‘Do you believe in superstitious stories? You, the holistic synthesist? What will it do, eat you? It’s a tower, for the Goddess’ sake.’
‘I’m not going,’ Ky said.
‘Come along Ky,’ Eskhatos said, managing to shout loud enough.
‘No.’ Ky stood firm.
‘I’m going,’ Qmoet said, choking either with emotion or from the rain slapping across her face.
‘We’ll follow you, Arrahaquen,’ said Tashyndy, taking Maharyny’s hand in hers.
Ky refused to budge. ‘Then we’ll leave you,’ Arrahaquen shouted, letting her anger burst out, ‘and you’ll rot forever in this dead alley! Come on, Qmoet, lift.’ They lifted Eskhatos’ chair and began to move up the alley. DeKray lifted Zinina. Woof lolloped and the jacqana skittered behind them.
Arrahaquen knew Ky would follow, but as they reached the top end of Cod Row and forged through the knee-high rapids pouring off its surface, Ky ran up to them and cursed in some foreign tongue. ‘This will never work,’ she told Arrahaquen. ‘How can we survive? It’s madness!’
Ky was close to tears, her face screwed up and red as a tomato. Arrahaquen said, in the bluntest tones she could muster, ‘Follow us or die. And if you must die, at least do it without bothering
us.
’
Ky said nothing, but helped deKray carry Zinina, and Arrahaquen knew she had for now overcome their fear of the Clocktower.
‘DeKray,’ she called, wiping the rain from her mouth. ‘DeKray, we’ll have to go around the Citadel, then up Malmsey Street. To pick up Graaff-lin.’
‘Very well,’ he shouted back. ‘And then up Ash Lane to the Clocktower?’
‘Yes.’
They struggled on. The rain beat down upon them with a ferocity Arrahaquen had never known. It was almost too dark to see, but only deKray and Ky possessed working torches. Fighting branches that whipped against them, slipping constantly in the slime and because of the torrents pouring down Mandrake Street, they moved north, until the remnants of Judico Street lay before them. To their left they could just make out the last remaining vertical promontories of the tumulus.
‘Left turn,’ Arrahaquen called.
Judico Street presented them with further obstacles. Out of the tumulus ruin acidic streams flowed, yellow rivulets laced with black, that made their boots steam. They had to follow a line of thorny bushes to the side of the street, slipping in mud and stamping down the occasional poison iris, and then climb over destroyed houses at the end of the street. The Citadel Wall stood firm in places, pincers and tentacle optics writhing, but here and there it crumbled under acid attack. The stench made Arrahaquen’s throat ache and everybody else cough.
By the time they had struggled around the tumulus and reached Malmsey Street they were exhausted. ‘Let’s rest awhile,’ Arrahaquen said. They stood under a dwarf oak, reducing a little the amount of rain that fell upon them; but the noise of thunder and rain against leaves made it difficult to converse.
‘We’ll start walking up Malmsey Street,’ Arrahaquen told them, ‘then turn into Onion Street. At Ash Lane, deKray and I are going to fetch Graaff-lin. Would you come with us, Qmoet?’
‘If I must,’ she replied.
Arrahaquen thanked the Goddess in the privacy of her mind that Qmoet was a realist. She could have been stubborn, like Ky, but perhaps experience made her more flexible. Arrahaquen turned and examined the gentle rise of Malmsey Street up ahead. Trees flailed in the wind; she could see no clear route. They would have to fight their way through. But it did not feel impossible.
‘What shall I do?’ Ky asked.
‘Keep the jacqana together and make sure nothing falls out of their baskets. Help Maharyny with Eskhatos.’
Tashyndy seemed to sense Ky’s tension. ‘We’ll do what you say,’ she said, making sure no words were lost in the thunder.
Arrahaquen felt pleased. The priestesses were her superiors in every way. Their acquiescence to her gave her confidence, and she began to believe –
really
believe – that they might yet reach the Clocktower, despite the violence of the storm opposing them. She looked out into the maelstrom of rain. Kray was making a final effort to kill them. It was eight human beings against the Earth.
She turned to Ky, who was gulping alcohol from a hip flask. Now her face was as pale as a moonflower. ‘My ability as a prophet is young,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know what’s to become of us. But Ky, I
am
the pythoness.’
With that, Arrahaquen led on, a tired Qmoet at her side. She looked back to see that deKray and Tashyndy had improvised a stretcher from a piece of door that had floated past them. DeKray was explaining that Zinina must not be jolted, because of her wound, and in response Tashyndy produced a tiny bottle, no larger than her thumb, and managed to administer most of its contents, stroking Zinina’s throat to induce the swallowing reflex. This brief act seemed to make Zinina’s survival more secure in Arrahaquen’s mind.
Slashing the serrated tops off bladderblades, they moved on. Nothing could be seen of the street’s sandstone, though a few ruins stood to either side, hidden for the most part by screens of hawthorn, wild palm and scarlet thistle. From the street itself grew strangling ivy and thorn-buckets.
Something rumbled up ahead.
‘Was that thunder?’ Qmoet said, halting. Arrahaquen listened. Another rumble.
‘Probably,’ she replied, pulling her hood away from her ears in an effort to reduce rain noise.
‘Look out!’
Ahead, a wave of water bore down, taller than any of them, surging down the street. Arrahaquen turned to yell a warning. DeKray and Tashyndy managed to pull Zinina to a tree, but Ky and Maharyny were left exposed.
The wall of water knocked Arrahaquen off her feet. She screamed and clutched at the trunk of a sapling.
Green water poured over her. She caught glimpses of black, grey, green.
Something heavy hit her, swept down by the wave, but she managed to hold on. She heard voices.
The wave subsided. Spluttering, Arrahaquen tried to stand, but managed only to crouch on her knees. She saw Eskhatos’ chair on its side, Ky and Maharyny beside it staring down the street. Eskhatos had been washed away.
There was no time for a search. A river knee-high still swirled downhill. Some temporary dam uphill, probably a building, must have burst. Eskhatos would already be out of reach.
‘Come on!’ Arrahaquen yelled back to them, as they stood rooted to the spot with horror. ‘Come
on!
She’s dead.’
Pulling Qmoet out of the surging flood, she gesticulated to the side of the street, where, knee-deep in rapids, they were able to clamber uphill. Leaving the white water behind them, they waded through the brown rivers of upper Malmsey Street. It was then that they noticed one of the jacqana was missing – also washed away. Woof had survived however, her loose skin soaked black, her doleful face flecked with foam.
Arrahaquen blanked the shock of losing Eskhatos from her mind and tried to focus on events ahead, but it was hopeless. The struggle simply to survive took all her concentration. They fought on. Behind her, Maharyny and Ky took cases from the jacqana so that their journey was made easier.
They reached the junction with Onion Street. It was a pit of hawthorn and briar that they had no option but to climb around, balancing precariously on old walls and the remains of houses, until they stood gathered in the channel of ferns and ivy that constituted Onion Street.
Something exploded. Arrahaquen shut her eyes and grimaced automatically, then looked. One of the jacqana had blown up, red sparks flying everywhere. The effort had been too much. ‘Maybe water got into its brain,’ she said.
‘We must rest here,’ Tashyndy said.
‘Five minutes,’ Arrahaquen replied, ‘no more. This city is doing its best to kill us by attrition. The longer we wait, the more danger we’ll face.’
DeKray came close. Into her ear he said, ‘Do you think we’ll make it?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘How are you bearing up?’
‘I shall survive. The Clocktower is our goal, it must be.’
Arrahaquen nodded, patting Woof on the head as the hound trotted past. ‘You’re the only man,’ she said. ‘We need you.’
He actually laughed. ‘A fertile man in Kray. It is almost an impossible thing, is it not? Am I meant to be here?’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in destiny and all that nonsense?’
He shrugged. ‘In times like this we are reduced to our most basic selves.’
Arrahaquen chose not to answer. The others were ready to continue. They strode out into Onion Street, deKray taking over Qmoet’s hacking duties. Arrahaquen studied the black clouds overhead. Was it her imagination or was it becoming chilly?
It was hard to avoid the feeling that they were the last people alive on Earth. Arrahaquen knew that somewhere, perhaps in the Cemetery, perhaps in the remains of the Felis temple, or at the reveller encampment around the Infirmary, people might still survive. But they had no hope. Nobody unprotected could survive this. Only she, the plans of the Holists shed like superfluous skin, could find a way out.
She turned her thoughts to deKray. He was a man, perhaps the only one remaining. He was fertile. If there was any hope, perhaps it lay with him. It was he who had dared to enter the Clocktower.
She turned her thoughts to the priestesses. They represented a life she had longed for, yet had been denied. She was glad they had not decided to fight their battle inside the temple.
By the time they had completed most of the struggle to Ash Lane, a further problem presented itself. The Old Quarter – they were traversing its southerly sector – consisted around here of narrow lanes without side-alleys, many leading down from Kray’s most ancient Market Square, and these now acted as channels for mud. Ahead, Ash Lane was hidden under turbid lakes.