CHAPTER 12
The recent imperial edict was going to take a lot of getting used to. The first thing everybody had to do in the morning was put their clocks and watches forward by two minutes; this meant they had to get up a little earlier than the day before. Soon people would be waking up in darkness. The postmen, of course, were already accustomed to rising early. All the same they didn’t take kindly to the new regime, just as Garganey had predicted. It wasn’t long before some letters began going astray for days on end, while others got lost in the post entirely. Garganey held talks with the postmen’s representatives but to no avail, and eventually he was forced to abandon his so-called efficiency measures. Accordingly, the postmen resumed their practice of having breakfast halfway through the morning. Even so, they still weren’t happy about the edict. They began to call it ‘the conspiracy of the clocks’.
‘Perhaps you should give them a pay rise,’ proposed Whimbrel.
‘I can’t do that,’ said Garganey. ‘Their wages are fixed by imperial decree.’
‘Does a decree carry the same weight as an edict?’ I asked.
‘Apparently, yes,’ said Garganey.
Whimbrel and I were on our way to see Brambling. We needed to replace our stipendiary sixpences.
‘Why don’t you come along too?’ I suggested. ‘Who knows what’s hidden in the coffers.’
We arrived at the counting house and found Brambling perusing his ledger. It was lying open at the page that dealt with stipends.
‘This is all highly irregular,’ he said, when we submitted our claims. ‘It says nothing here about a telescope.’
‘But I need it for my work as Astronomer Royal,’ objected Whimbrel.
‘Well, you’ve managed all right without it up to now,’ replied Brambling. ‘Why do you need a telescope all of a sudden?’
In this light, my own claim for a new sixpence was even more groundless. After all, I had no need for a telescope to carry out my ‘work’ as Principal Composer. On the other hand, I was entitled to my stipend by imperial statute, and Brambling knew this. As Whimbrel and I sat facing him across his desk, I became convinced that he was simply toying with us because he held the purse strings. Finally, after much prevarication, he relented. He opened the drawer of his desk, took out the tin money box and unlocked it.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Empty.’
He then went over to the iron-bound treasure chest in the corner of the room. This too was locked, and only after a further delay was the key found and the lid raised. Inside, it was full to the brim with sixpences, shillings and half-crowns. Whimbrel, Garganey and I joined Brambling in the corner and we all stood gazing down at the gleaming hoard.
‘No wonder there’s hardly any money in circulation,’ I said. ‘It’s all in here.’
‘This isn’t for circulation,’ replied Brambling. ‘This is the reserve currency.’
‘What’s it reserved for?’
‘A rainy day.’
‘But it rains half the year in Fallowfields!’
‘It can’t be helped,’ said Brambling.
He selected a sixpence each for me and Whimbrel, and then prepared to close the lid again.
‘This is preposterous,’ said Garganey suddenly. ‘My postmen are struggling to get by on a penny a day, and meanwhile there’s all this money lying unused!’
‘I wouldn’t say they were struggling,’ said Brambling. ‘They’re in the public houses every night.’
‘It’s not up to you to decide how they spend their earnings,’ retorted Garganey.
‘No,’ said Brambling, ‘but this treasure chest is my responsibility.’
‘It seems very unfair to me,’ remarked Whimbrel.
‘Unfairness is what keeps the world going round,’ announced Brambling. ‘These coins are staying firmly under lock and key.’
Brambling’s approach to money had certainly changed during the course of his tenure. Anybody would have thought that it was his own funds he was paying out, rather than the imperial coinage.
‘No more sixpences for sightseeing,’ he proclaimed, as the three of us departed.
‘Damned cheek,’ muttered Garganey. He was still clearly enraged.
‘It’s good to see you have such deep concerns for your workforce,’ observed Whimbrel. ‘After all, they can be quite troublesome at times.’
‘Oh, they’re troublesome without a doubt,’ said Garganey. ‘Nevertheless, I cannot simply abandon them to their fate. As Postmaster General I have obligations not only to the empire but also towards those who are dependent on me. I’ve come to realise that only by commanding their loyalty will I ever make the postmen more efficient.’
Garganey’s words were still ringing in my ears as I neared the park and headed for the cake. It struck me that maybe I should try to do more for my serfs. True enough, the postmen received a penny a day for their labours and were therefore less deserving of sympathy. All the same, Garganey did his best to provide for them. When I thought of Greylag and his unpaid musicians in their threadbare coats I couldn’t help feeling a pang of guilt.
I was still pondering all this when I entered the cake through the main doorway and looked down towards the orchestra. They had evidently just finished playing. I could tell this from the way they were attending to their instruments and talking quietly amongst themselves. Meanwhile, Greylag was standing on the podium making small changes to his manuscript. All appeared to be normal, and I was about to proceed down the aisle when I noticed Wryneck sitting in one of the hard seats at the rear of the auditorium. This was the second time he’d turned up uninvited. Presumably he’d been snooping on the orchestra again and I decided to say something to that effect. When he saw me approaching, however, he waved his hand in acknowledgement.
‘This overture,’ he said, before I had a chance to speak. ‘Did you specify a particular duration?’
‘Not really,’ I replied, ‘though I expect it’ll be in the order of fifteen minutes or so.’
‘I see.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’ve just sat through it from beginning to end,’ said Wryneck, ‘and it ran to almost an hour.’
‘Well, if you didn’t like it,’ I snapped, ‘why bother staying so long?’
My raised voice must have caught the ear of some of the musicians, because they began to peer in our direction.
‘I didn’t say I didn’t like it,’ said Wryneck. ‘As a matter of fact I believe you have a work of genius on your hands.’
‘Really?’
‘Moreover, the orchestra seems to be in peak form,’ he continued. ‘I’m most impressed by the quality of their attack and decay.’
‘They practise day and night,’ I pointed out.
Wryneck nodded his approval.
‘This overture is an exceptional piece of music,’ he said, ‘and I was simply going to suggest that you should maybe consider it as a stand-alone composition, rather than a mere prelude to a play.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘yes, I’ll certainly bear your comments in mind.’
‘Thank you,’ rejoined Wryneck, ‘and congratulations.’
He rose from his seat and together we walked down to the orchestra pit. The musicians had fallen silent at the sight of Wryneck. Greylag was now occupying his former seat amongst the violins. I acknowledged him vaguely as we passed.
‘I hope you don’t mind my asking,’ said Wryneck, ‘but would it be possible for me to take a turn on the piano for a few minutes?’
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t know you played.’
‘I’m a little rusty,’ he said, ‘but I had lessons as a child.’
‘Help yourself,’ I said, indicating the piano.
He sat down and started playing without a score. I recognised the piece at once: a well-known sonata that spoke gently of romance and lost love. Wryneck was plainly an accomplished pianist. As he continued his rendition he seemed to be completely absorbed in the music, to the point of being visibly moved by it, and I realised I had made a classic mistake. I’d assumed that because Wryneck carried out his duties to the letter he somehow lacked any feelings or even personality. This was a common error in public life: people who did their jobs properly were generally thought to be heartless and uncaring. Wryneck was a prime example of such a fallacy: on the face of it he was an ambitious and unscrupulous servant of the state, bent only on executing a stream of imperial edicts, yet here he was playing the piano beautifully, as though his whole existence depended on it. Behind his official role as Pellitory-of-the-Wall he was obviously an ordinary person with ordinary desires. Clearly I had misjudged him.
Eventually, Wryneck ceased playing and turned to me.
‘This piano’, he said, ‘has seen better days.’
Just then a distant clock struck a quarter to three. Or more correctly, the clock struck a quarter to three in ‘adjusted time’ as it was now generally known.
Wryneck glanced at his watch. ‘Are you coming along to Smew’s talk?’
‘Has a fortnight passed already?’ I asked.
Indeed it had, which meant we needed to set off immediately towards the library if we wished to arrive before the talk began. Wryneck was known for his punctuality, so I knew that all I had to do was keep in step in order to avoid being late. As it was we entered the reading room with a couple of minutes to spare. None of the other officers-of-state had turned up; nor was there any sign of Gallinule, despite his fulsome bout of enthusiasm at the previous talk. For my part I was in the perfect frame of mind for some scholarly improvement, having being buoyed up by Wryneck’s praise of the new overture. It was only as I settled into my seat that it occurred to me I’d neglected to speak to Greylag.
At exactly three o’clock (adjusted time), Smew began his talk. Ostensibly the subject was the history of the empire, but today he had chosen to approach it from an oblique angle.
‘So here we had an empire,’ he began, ‘that considered herself to be at the centre of the civilised world; whose success depended on the willingness of other states to revolve around her, to emulate her, and to bow to her supposed superiority.’
Smew paused.
‘Or was this apparent success founded on a grand conceit?’ he asked. ‘Could it be possible that our neighbours actually took little interest in what we got up to; that they were merely playing us along to keep us quiet?’
I wasn’t sure to which ‘neighbours’ Smew was alluding here. As far as I’d gathered from his earlier talks, the realms, dominions, colonies and commonwealth were all fully acquiescent to the empire’s benign guidance. Yet now he seemed to be implying the opposite. For a moment I wondered if I hadn’t been paying attention properly. To my left I noticed Wryneck making his usual copious notes, a fact that suggested I’d missed something.
‘I’m talking about the so-called “friendly” cities in the east,’ said Smew, ‘although “friendly” is probably a misnomer: they’ve never been particularly “friendly” to each other or anyone else for that matter. They earned the name “friendly” as expressed in the term “friendly rivalry” rather than “friendly co-operation”. They were never in league with one another and remained rigorously independent. Unaffected by external spheres of influence, they were completely beyond the gravitational pull of the empire. Instead, each city followed a linear course that took it hurtling headlong towards its own destiny. They differed from us in many ways. For instance, we acquired gold by exploiting our sovereignty at sea, whereas they mined it directly out of the ground; our clocks had pendulums, while theirs employed a spring-balance mechanism; we favoured amateurs: they used professionals; we had palaces: they had castles; and so on. Our mastery of the seaways gave us command of the coast. Consequently, their people were confined many miles inland. In due course they became expert civil engineers: as well as constructing mines, they dug canals, drained the marshes, built bridges and finally developed iron railways. Our prowess at sailing meant we had no need for such innovations. We proudly carried on with our seafaring traditions, and hardly took any notice as these cities took turns to rise and fall.’
Smew paused again, and it appeared as though the talk had come to a natural conclusion, ‘rise and fall’ being a suitably ringing phrase with which to close. I was surprised, then, when he continued speaking:
‘We did not allow these cities to become entirely isolated, however. The empire’s sole concession to the east was to send her sons to one or other of their great universities. We recognised that in their struggle for improvement they had cultivated some important seats of learning. Hence, each prospective emperor enrolled at a revered institution whilst still an uncrowned princeling. The theory was that he’d study and learn thoroughly the ways of the east; then after a certain period he would return home and, following much thought and introspection, reject them. It was a tried and tested thesis, effectively put to use by generations of emperors right up to this very day.’
Now Wryneck closed his notepad and put away his pen, which told me for sure that the talk was over.
‘I never knew that,’ I said, ‘about the emperor going away to university.’
Smew said nothing in reply, but instead stood silently gazing at me from behind his lectern. Again I wondered if there was some important point that Wryneck had grasped but I clearly hadn’t. Or perhaps Smew was allowing a few more moments for it to sink in. Either way, I rose from my seat feeling somewhat bemused.
‘Like some tea?’ said Smew.
I’d decided in advance to say no if such an invitation was made, because I really ought to get back and attend to the needs of the orchestra.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’
‘Lemon curd and toasted soldiers?’
‘Even better.’
Smew pulled the tasselled cord to alert Shrike. Meanwhile, Wryneck and I settled down in the comfortable chairs by the bay window. When Smew joined us he chose the chair nearest to his desk, on top of which lay Dotterel’s box containing the ceremonial crown.
‘Shouldn’t that be locked away somewhere safe?’ I enquired.
‘It’s safe enough here in the library,’ replied Smew. ‘Either Wryneck or myself are always present.’
A few minutes later Shrike returned with a fully laden tray. As he handed us our portions of toast the clock struck five and the setting sun cast its warm rays through the window.
‘Just perfect for teatime,’ I remarked.
‘Yes,’ said Smew. ‘Marmalade for breakfast; lemon curd for tea.’