fucked, Tay.’
‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a good man.’
‘You said we wouldn’t tell lies.’
That’s no lie. You are. You just need someone to remind you once in a while. Everybody does. Otherwise we slip back into the mud, you know?’
Gentle took tighter hold of Taylor’s hand. There was so much in him he had neither the form nor the comprehension to express. Here was Taylor pouring out his heart about love and dreams and how it was going to be when he died, and what did he, Gentle, have by way of contribution? At best, confusion and forgetfulness. Which of them was the sicker then, he found himself thinking. Taylor, who was frail but able to speak his heart? Or himself, whole but silent? Determined he wouldn’t part from this man without attempting to share something of what had happened to him, he fumbled for some words of explanation.
‘I think I found somebody,’ he said. ‘Somebody to help me … remember myself.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said, his voice gossamer. ‘I’ve seen some things in the last few weeks, Tay … things I didn’t want to believe until I had no choice. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy.’
‘Tell me …’
‘There was someone in New York who tried to kill Jude.’
‘I know. She told me about it. What about him?’ His eyes widened. ‘Is this the somebody?’ he said.
‘It’s not a he.’
‘I thought Judy said it was a man.’ ‘It’s not a man,’ Gentle said. ‘It’s not a woman, either. It’s not even human, Tay.’ ‘What is it then?’
‘Wonderful,’ he said. He hadn’t dared use a word like that, even to himself. But anything less was a lie, and lies weren’t welcome here. ‘I told you I was going crazy. But I swear if you had seen the way it changed … it was like nothing on earth.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘I think it’s dead,’ Gentle replied. ‘I wasted too long to find it. I tried to forget I’d ever set eyes on it. I was afraid of what it was stirring up in me. And then when that didn’t work I tried to paint it out of my system. But it wouldn’t go. Of course it wouldn’t go. It was part of me by that time. And then when I finally went to find it … I was too late.’
‘Are you sure?’ Taylor said. Knots of discomfort had appeared on his face as Gentle talked, and were tightening.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I want to hear the rest.’
‘There’s nothing else to hear. Maybe Pie’s out there somewhere, but I don’t know where.’
‘Is that why you want to float? Are you hoping - ’ he stopped, his breathing suddenly turning into gasps. ‘You know, maybe you should fetch Clem,’ he said.
‘Of course.’
Gentle went to the door, but before he reached it Taylor said:
‘You’ve got to understand, Gentle. Whatever the mystery is, you’ve got to see it for us both.’
With his hand on the door, and ample reason to beat a hasty retreat, Gentle knew that he could still choose silence over a reply; could take his leave of the ancient without accepting the quest. But that if he answered, and took it, he was bound.
‘I’m going to understand,’ he said, meeting Taylor’s despairing gaze. ‘We both are. I swear.’
Taylor managed to smile in response, but it was fleeting. Gentle opened the door and headed out on to the landing. Clem was waiting.
‘He needs you,’ Gentle said.
Clem stepped inside and closed the bedroom door. Feeling suddenly exiled, Gentle headed downstairs. Jude was sitting at the kitchen table, playing with a piece of rock.
‘How is he?’ she wanted to know.
‘Not good,’ Gentle said. ‘Clem’s gone in to look after him.’
‘Do you want some tea?’
‘No thanks. What I really need’s some fresh air. I think I’ll take a walk around the block.’
There was a fine drizzle falling when he stepped outside, which was welcome after the suffocating heat of the sickroom. He knew the neighbourhood scarcely at all, so he decided to stay close to the house, but his distraction soon got the better of that plan and he wandered aimlessly, lost in thought and the maze of streets. There was a freshness in the wind that made him sigh for escape. This was no place to solve mysteries. After the turn of the year everybody would be stepping up to a new round of resolutions and ambitions, plotting their futures like well-oiled farces. He wanted none of it.
As he began the trek back to the house he remembered that Jude had asked him to pick up milk and cigarettes on his journey, and that he was returning empty-handed. He turned round and went in search of both, which took him longer than he expected. When he finally rounded the corner, goods in hand, there was an ambulance outside the house. The front door was open. Jude stood on the step, watching the drizzle. She had tears on her face.
‘He’s dead,’ she said.
He stood rooted to the spot a yard from her. ‘When?’ he said, as if it mattered. ‘Just after you left.’
He didn’t want to weep; not with her watching. There was too much else that he didn’t want to stumble over in her presence. Stony, he said:
‘Where’s Clem?’
‘With him upstairs. Don’t go up. There’s already too many people.’
She spied the cigarettes in his hand, and reached for the packet. As her hand grazed his, their grief ran between them. Despite his intent, tears sprang to his eyes, and he went into her embrace, both of them sobbing freely, like enemies joined by a common loss, or lovers about to be parted. Or else souls who could not remember whether they were lovers or enemies, and were weeping at their own confusion.
1
Since the meeting at which the subject of the Tabula Rasa’s library had first been raised, Bloxham had several times planned to perform the duty he’d volunteered himself for, and go into the bowels of the Tower to check on the security of the collection. But he’d twice put off the task, telling himself that there were more urgent claims on his time: specifically, the organization of the Society’s Great Purge. He might have postponed a third time had the matter not been raised again, this in a casual aside from Charlotte Feaver, who’d been equally vociferous about the safety of the books at that first gathering, and now offered to accompany him on the investigation. Women baffled Bloxham, and the attraction they exercised
