The Keep

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6“Better than nothing,” had been Nyk’s assessment of the surveying equipment he had directed Josyff and Badr towards, but Josyff found it difficult to be too rapturous about the discovery.

While the theodolite was not without some mechanical charm, it was very old, intrinsically less accurate than the modern versions, and would be very slow to use. As Badr had remarked, it would look well in a museum, an object perhaps of some nostalgia, a passing tribute to hardier souls who had gone before, but here, in the middle of nowhere, in this mass of convoluted stonework with a difficult job to be done it was as much a taunt as an aid.

Josyff tried to keep the worst of his feelings out of his face as he looked at the instrument. He was not wholly sure about Badr yet. True, the stocky little man had shown one or two unexpected — incautious? — flashes of dark humour which had chimed with his own thinking, but caution was always advisable. Though it seemed unlikely, Josyff knew it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that this whole business was some kind of a test for him, to assess his response to situations where the New Order might appear to be at fault. These were very strange times. And too, less darkly, this was his job. Something he was good at. Something that, for the most part, he enjoyed, even though it took him from his wife, home and friends from time to time. The thought of his wife finally cleared his mind. Nothing was to be gained by communicating despondency to those in his charge and that included bemoaning the state of this fortuitously found equipment, or, for that matter, the fate of his own. He must make some kind of progress with what he had. If, after a couple of days, his equipment had still not arrived he would definitely discuss with Nyk the possibility of returning to the village to find out what had happened. That could surely invoke no rebuke.

Nyk had called the room they were in the Great Hall. Unaffected by the heating system that twisted and wound through such of the Keep as Josyff had seen so far, it prompted the two surveyors to wear their coats tightly fastened and to keep moving. However, Josyff was unsettled by more than the temperature. Two tiers of heavy stone balconies fringed three sides of the hall, and high, bleak lighting illuminated a profusion of carved figures protruding from the walls. Long-shadowed, men, women, children, animals, demons, angels, and even wilder creatures of fantasy, all stared intently down into the hall. No two were alike and there was neither consistency in their style nor apparent order or purpose to their arrangement. Except that all of them had their mouths open, as if they were speaking or crying out.

Josyff felt uncomfortable under their collective gaze.

“At least they’ll just watch,” Badr said as he followed Josyff’s uneasy glance. “They won’t go measuring their length over one of the tripod legs and wrecking a day’s work.”

Josyff grunted an appreciative chuckle by way of reply, his tongue protruding slightly as he delved amongst the long-buried memories that he hoped would enable him to set up and use the instrument.

“Well,” he announced after a few minutes, slowly rotating the telescope with a gentle forefinger, then clapping his hands briskly. “I’ve had worse trouble setting up one of these in the past. Let’s see how it measures.”

It did remarkably well, they both decided some time later, although, as they had anticipated, the work proved to be jaw-clenchingly slow, prompting Josyff to remark at one stage that he felt as though he should be carving the readings on to a stone slab. The calculations were even worse as by their nature they were particularly unforgiving, being brought low by the slightest error. At the end, it was clear to both that they could not possibly survey the whole Keep in this way.

Better than nothing the equipment was, but only just.

Normally, Josyff would have quickly established a highly accurate framework of measurements around the outside of the building and then worked inwards from this with subsidiary frameworks from which he would be able to pick up details of the building — from the large to the small, from the simple to the complex. This, however, was not possible here. The terrain, the moat, and the impenetrability of the Keep’s walls all conspired to prevent it — well over half the perimeter of the Keep was on the edge of a precipice and the rest of it, save near the path and the drawbridge, was dangerously rugged. Making matters worse, it was quite apparent that it would be difficult to set out even the less desirable alternative to fulfil the same function, namely a convenient framework within the Keep. Josyff did not yet know what route he was going to take around the building but it was obvious that the main framework would have many and short sides which meant that the work would require exceptional care and accuracy even with modern equipment.

He confided his intention to go looking for his own equipment, revising the timing of the journey to the next day if Nyk allowed it to be possible at all.

“In the meantime we can set out some internal traverses from here using this,” he concluded. “At the worst they’ll be useful as a quick check on the work when we come to do it properly.”

Badr leaned on the table they had commandeered as a desk and looked down at the large sheet covered with the much corrected calculations that represented their efforts so far. A heavily inscribed pencil ring marked out a closing error — followed by an equally heavy exclamation mark — which they had both agreed was acceptable under the circumstances. Idly he tapped the brown-edged book of mathematical tables.

“Traverse, rather than traverses, I think,” he said simply, giving Josyff a significant look.

Josyff conceded the point. “Yes, you’re right. Getting more than one done is probably unlikely.”

Their discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Henk.

Henk was tall, thin, ponderous in his movements, and with a slouch that gave him the air of a predatory bird, an attribute further enhanced by his long face and bald head. He appeared to be a general labourer for Nyk and Qualto, though from his limited contact with the Keep’s tenders so far Josyff had noticed no particular hierarchy of command between them. Eroded by their years together in this place, he presumed.

Henk was also graced with a surly disposition which fitted his physical shape perfectly and when he spoke, which admittedly was not often, it was invariably as though he had just been disturbed in the middle of something particularly important.

He had brought the blessing of the third member of the Keep’s triumvirate — Qualto. Hot food and drink steamed appetizingly in the hall’s cold air and the sight alone cheered the two men.

It was Qualto who served as the group’s cook. In marked contrast to Henk, he was short, round, garrulous and excitable. Food was always one of the small but irksome concerns that troubled Josyff when he moved to a new place and he had been pleasantly surprised by Qualto’s efforts. Each time he sat down to eat he promised himself that he would track the scurrying little man back to his kitchen and get to know him a little better than their normal brief encounters permitted. But, like the moving of the clock, it had constantly slipped from his mind. He renewed the promise again as Henk trundled into view.

In anticipation of the arrival of the food, Josyff moved some papers to one side. Henk, however, cleared another part of the table before laying down the tray. As he did so he gave the much amended calculations a dour look then glanced around the hall. The carved multitude returned his inspection.

“These to be measured, too?” he asked with a nod towards the watchers.

“I don’t know, I haven’t been told yet,” Josyff replied, taken off guard by the question. Then, out of a long habit of making friends amongst strangers, he volunteered affably, “I hope not, there are enough problems to deal with here without having to do that.”

Henk grunted noncommittally and turned to leave.

Josyff tried again, “Do you know what any of these figures mean? Or who made them? I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

Henk was well on his way now. “No,” he replied without looking back.

“Nothing at all?”

“No, Surveyor, I just work here.”

Josyff persisted after the slowly retreating figure. “Aren’t you curious about them?”

“Not for a long time,” Henk replied. He paused and looked at the walls again. “This is a strange place, Surveyor. And full of strange places. No one knows anything about it. It gets tiring, asking. Leave the tray; I’ll pick it up later.” Then the retreat recommenced, leaving both Josyff and Badr staring after him in silence.

Badr looked at Josyff and mouthed a bewildered, “tiring?”

Josyff shrugged. “My curiosity just doubled the number of questions I had and gave me no answers.” He allowed himself some irony. “Perhaps that’s what he meant. Maybe his years here have turned him into a subtle philosopher, a spiritual guide for us.”

Badr raised doubting eyebrows. “More likely he’s just told us not to bother pestering him with any more stupid questions.” He mimicked Henk’s voice and dismal manner. “He just works here.”

This took Josyff a little nearer to Badr and he laughed softly. “While we are paid to answer our own questions.”

“So it would seem.”

They spent the rest of the day doing as Josyff had suggested, setting out and measuring a traverse along a series of corridors that eventually brought them back to the hall again to close off their work. Josyff glanced down at his notebook and shook his head doubtfully.

“Too many short sides and too many wide angles,” he said. “I’ll be surprised if we don’t have a substantial closing error on this.” He yawned and snapped the book shut. “I’ll work it out later; I’ll make too many mistakes if I start now.”

* * * *

Josyff jolted upright. For a moment he was disorientated, thinking that he was in his own private room at home. As the reality of his surroundings established itself about him, he massaged his neck, stretched his arms and legs and snarled at himself. That was the second time he had dozed off. It had been a mistake to tackle these calculations after such a painstaking and annoying day, he realized. They were far too accident prone. And he’d forgotten to speak to Nyk about returning to the village. He swore to himself.

Fresh air, he decided. Fresh air and an early night. He’d do these damned things in the morning then he’d speak to Nyk. He was still far from sanguine about what the day’s work would yield, but professional pride would carry him through to the correct conclusion, satisfactory or not.

The cold night air washed over him as he stepped out into the courtyard and he took a deep breath. The snow chill lit up his throat and chest and he savoured it hedonistically before releasing it back into the night noisily. The air was so fresh here, he thought, so free from the dust and stinking fumes of the city. The dragging intensity of the day’s work began to slip away from him.

The lighting was fitful, but the snow intensified what there was and Josyff could see quite well. Apart from a few random bird tracks, the courtyard was marked out with well trampled footpaths that betrayed the passage of the Keep’s occupants, old and new, through the day. He made a new one of his own towards the main gate.

Passing through the gate he stepped a little way out onto the drawbridge. The light from the courtyard illuminated only a little way ahead and his faint shadow was soon lost. He stopped and stood very still, his eyes searching into the darkness. There was nothing to be seen. No moon, no stars, no mountains, nothing. Just blackness. There would be more light dancing behind his closed eyes, he thought, but he kept them open. He did not want to risk marring this still and silent vision. After a while, he found himself reaching out with this hand as if it might be possible to touch the darkness, so solid did it seem. Then, rather self-consciously, he returned it to his pocket. Part of him was daunted utterly, but another part knew that somehow, like the cold freshness of the air, it was good that there were places like this, where nothing could be seen — where darkness, and silence, were absolute.

He stood for a long time breathing very softly, as though an incautious movement might shift some great equilibrium, and when he turned back to the courtyard it was almost reluctantly.

As he walked along his own new-trampled pathway he wondered idly about Nyk and the others. Where did they all come from? What was this Estate that employed — or used to employ — them? What did they do when they were not working? It was certainly too far to go routinely carousing down to the village. Not that any of them looked like great carousers. Did others relieve them from time to time? Let them get back to their families? Had they families? And where in the devil’s name was his brief?

He stopped in front of the door. Set deep in a recessed archway it was a stout-timbered affair, liberally studded with bolt heads, and laced about with heavy black ironwork. It was capable of resisting many strong blows, he judged. Yet, as he pulled on the handle, it opened smoothly and silently. A small but telling tribute to Nyk’s watchful maintenance, he thought. Slowly he was gaining an interesting measure of this man.

He had noted when he came out that none of the several heavy bolts that backed the door had been thrown. It was the first time he had been outside after dark and he wondered whether this was normal, or an oversight. Then he recalled hearing about how people in the country would leave their doors and windows unlocked without fear of robbery or worse. It was not so much an unsettling as an alien idea to him, born and brought up as he had been in towns and cities where the strange face rather than the familiar was the norm and where indifference to the affairs of others had been growing apace for as long as he could remember. In the end, too, as the New Order had impressed its will on the community, there had been serious violence on the streets.

Many groups had opposed the New Order in the beginning but, for the most part, they had faded away. Those that had not, however, particularly those who called themselves the Rhanen, had become first disruptive and then increasingly violent and people had been killed before they were finally cowed.

Albeit brief, that had been a bad time, Josyff reflected as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Bad and sad, for despite their descent into violence, much that the Rhanen had said about personal freedom and choice had been fine and beyond debate. He reached down out of habit to throw one of the long bolts home, then paused. Perhaps they had been too idealistic, too unwilling to accept that there was harshness in the world and that sometimes all that could be done was to bolt the doors against those who dwelt and thrived in the darkness.

He let go of the bolt and stood up. He should leave it as he found it, he decided. Nyk or one of the others might still be outside.

He did not like to dwell too much on the Rhanen and those similarly inclined. Still less did he like the twinges of sympathy he felt for their cause. If he wanted to keep what he had he must do what was required of him and do it well, leave the running of public affairs to others better suited. Much better suited.

Later, as he lay in bed, he found the unbolted door preying on his mind. It was obviously what was done out here. One bolt left undone was an oversight, but all of them indicated a normal practice. And it was not up to him to interfere. Besides, what could come through that snow-filled blackness to disturb them?

Still, he would mention it to Nyk tomorrow — casually.

He was drifting into sleep when the thought came to him, faint and distant...

...And yet the drawbridge was closed against you when you arrived.

He recalled the sight of it slowly opening and felt again the relief he had felt.

It was almost as if its opening was...

...just for you.

* * * *

He was dreaming of the darkness beyond the drawbridge. Still and silent. Hiding the mountains. Hiding everything. Everything...

Then he was awake.

And something, somewhere, was screaming.