Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (71 page)

‘How long have I been away?’ I asked and was informed a month and a half, all told.

‘Your rescue took some planning,’ explained Mr Disvan. ‘And what with the Five Nations championship on the telly and all that, there was bound to be some delay. Don’t you worry, though. We rang up your work and said you’d had a nervous breakdown and wouldn’t be coming in for a while. They were very solicitous about you, really, in a cold sort of way. Doctor Bani-Sadr will write them a certificate, so your job will still be open... probably.’

It was hard, very hard indeed, but I somehow forced myself to say thank you.

A party of sorts developed, although I was not the life and soul of it. At its height, while sitting alone at a table and idly starring into space, a certain idea occurred to me. I tried to push it aside, to cancel and forget it but, welcome and pleasurable as a tarantula on the face, it wouldn’t sidle off. Then, at that precise moment, prompted by pity or sadism, Mr Disvan noted my isolation and came to join me.

‘What’s the matter, Mr Oakley?’ he asked. ‘You look like death warmed up.’

‘Something’s just dawned on me,’ I said levelly as Disvan followed my gaze to alight on an ancient photograph of a long-gone set of bell ringers. It was something we’d both seen and then ignored, countless times before.

‘‘Ah, yes,’ said Disvan cautiously. ‘Let me guess. You want to know if all photographs...’

‘If all photographs...’ I interrupted and then faltered.

‘If all photographs capture and preserve those depicted? If every single photo ever taken has doomed those in it to an eternity of ennui trapped in a static, sterile, pocket world. Is that what you wondered?’

I nodded weakly.

‘With particular reference,’ he went on, matter of factly, ‘to your childhood snaps, your school photos, the records of your graduation ceremony, those of all your holidays...’

Another nod.

‘I don’t know, Mr Oakley,’ he said with a friendly smile. ‘It’s possible, quite possible. Don’t gawp like that, it’s not nice.’

‘But...’

‘Exactly. You mustn’t think about it. Even if you burnt every picture of yourself that you own, there’d be plenty of others knocking about. I mean, how many times have you been caught in the corner of some tourist’s lens? How many group photos have you posed for?’

‘Oh my God!’

‘Yes, religion might well be some solace in dealing with the notion. Essentially, though, it’s just one of the horrors of life you have to deal with—or resign. It’s akin to Esther Rantzen’s popularity, just one more on the list of existential nauseas. Give in to it, though, and you’ll end up like Mr Windsor.’

He was right, in a way. It was too big and icy cold a thought to contemplate. I found I could sublimate it now, albeit with the sure and certain knowledge of its eventual return in the reaches of the night or during the tedium of train rides.

‘Talking of him,’ I said, ‘what about the photograph he showed me? I presume that was burnt as well.’

Mr Disvan looked puzzled.

‘Certainly not,’ he replied. ‘I have it safe here.’ Aand  he patted his jacket to indicate the breast pocket. I instinctively recoiled.

‘You jest!’ I gasped, but Disvan was adamant.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Why on earth dispose of something that useful?’

I didn’t really want to travel down this road but bravely felt I ought to. ‘What do you mean, useful?’

Mr Disvan put his ‘soul of sweet reason’ face on.

‘Well, think of it, Mr Oakley’ he said. ‘Think of all the irritants of modern village life. Consider the yuppies, the yobboes and the... well, I can’t think of another “y” but you know what I mean. What about the wife-beaters, the late-night car door slammers, the lager drinkers, the nosey-parkers, poison gossips and speculative developers. What about architects, for goodness sake! And pretty soon there’ll be the poll tax people...’

‘I get the picture,’ I said slowly, instantly regretting the choice of metaphor.

‘Precisely,’ said Disvan. ‘And so can they. I mean, obviously, it wouldn’t be right to actually hurt them. But if there were a nice safe, above all remote, internment camp, a long way away where they couldn’t come to harm... I mean, the photo-folk they swap with are unlikely to be any worse. They come from a more socially-cohesive era. It’d be an act of charity to release some of them. They can’t all be as bad as Biffo, can they?’

I was gawping again but didn’t care. The occasion justified it.

‘You wouldn’t,’ I said, dumbfounded.

Mr Disvan looked at me, and I found myself starring down into the pagan innocence of an older, or maybe newer, civilisation than my own.

He frowned in genuine puzzlement.

‘Why ever not?’ he said.

THE MORE IT CHANGES

(A prologue transported to where an epilogue should be.)

Somewhere south of the Thames; somewhen between ‘Britannia’ and ‘England’…

Buden reined in his horse and looked down into the valley. It seemed promising, but a lot depended on that villa he could see. While not as grand as it had clearly once been, it was still a working farm. If the occupants were the usual Weala peasants—well, they could be killed or made slaves easily enough. If, however, it was under the protection of some local tyrannos or, even worse, his private residence, it might be too much for Buden’s people to deal with.

They were standing patiently behind him, waiting on his word. In these difficult and dangerous times, the common folk could not afford to lean unto their own understanding. Circumstances dictated that they place their faith in him and their fate in his hands. So far, that faith had not been misplaced.

It was true that Buden had his many faults. His ceaseless womanising, for example, or his sly over-craftiness. Nevertheless, he had been his people’s salvation. Because of this, because of his strength in their cause, they had given him the honour name of ‘Oak’, after the mighty tree of this new land.

It was Buden the Oak who had found them service with the tyrannos Caurasius II in Cantium. It was he that extricated them from that king’s bloody fall and picked their way through the dotted settlements of Germanic mercenaries, south of Londinium. Thanks to his skill, clearing the way required only two small battles and a mere eight warrior graves on the chalk ridges.

It was a formidable achievement, worthy of a saga song should their poets survive to compose it. In truth, they had come a long way from the poverty of their own land—but even glory and adventure someday pall. Now they were tired and wished to stop their wanderings. They wished to plough and sow and reap as once before and be subject to the seasons again. They wanted Buden the Oak to put down roots for them.

Buden wished to halt as much as they, but for a different reason. Two, perhaps three, days south of here, he calculated, one came to the land controlled by the ‘Count of the Shore’, King of Anderida. That Lord of the Welsh did not suffer a Saxon to live in any place his strong arm could reach.

As a young man, on his first raid, Buden had seen the walls of Anderida from afar and seen warships and mailed horsemen issuing from its gates. He remembered them well enough to know that his folk must not come to the attention of such power as was manifested there.

No, it had to be here or some other place not far off. Everything hung upon that villa.

In time, the scouts returned, racing their ponies and whooping in the manner of happy young warriors. Clearly there was good news.

‘My Lord Buden,’ said the most senior, ‘it is empty land. The Welsh lords of the villa are dead, slain by their slaves upon word of our approach.’

‘And what of these slaves,’ asked Buden, cautious as ever. ‘Are they fled?’

‘Yes, lord. There is no man left. No living thing save a dying horse, an ancient beast—the favourite of the master’s family, I suppose. The slaves have hacked off its hind legs and pulled down the stable onto it.’

Buden shrugged. The way the Welsh organised their society—it bred refinements of cruelty.

Wulfstan the priest sidled up to Buden.

‘Lord,’ he said quietly, ‘the omens are most favourable. Woden has wandered here and our wyrd has drawn us in his footsteps.’

Again Buden shrugged. Lack of respect for the gods was another of his sad shortcomings.

Buden was noting the nearby lake and the little river that fed it. There would be plentiful water. The soil looked fertile, if a touch too sandy, but good enough for his peasants to wring his living from. Above him was a wooded ridge that could provide timber and a look-out point in times of trouble—which was to say, all of the time.

But most important of all, this place was in accord with his spirit. He felt happy that his descendants might reach the future from here. He renounced his old homeland in his heart and never thought of it again.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘this will be my valley. We are the new people of this place.’  And thus ‘Buden’s valley’—or ‘Buden’s-combe’—or ‘Binscombe’, was born.

The men of the fellowship raised their spears, punching them into the sky, and together with the womenfolk they shouted an acclamation.

Buden made as if to proceed into his domain but stopped almost immediately.

‘I thought,’ he said angrily, ‘that this land had been scouted. I thought that it was empty land!’

‘It is, lord,’ protested the chief scout. ‘We have travelled the valley from end to end.’

‘Then who,’ said Buden, ‘is this old man coming up to meet me?’

###

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Whitbourn has had nine novels published in the UK, USA and Russia since winning the BBC Gollancz First Fantasy Novel prize, whose judges included Sir Terry Pratchett, with
A Dangerous Energy
in 1991.

Most recently, his published books include the
Downs-Lord
trilogy, concerning the establishment of empire in an alternative, monster-ridden England; and
Frankenstein’s Legions
, a sequel to Mary Shelley’s seminal SF work that considers what might happen if Victor Frankenstein’s resurrection technology fell into the hands of the military.

Whitbourn's works have received favourable reviews in
The Times
,
Interzone
,
Locus
,
SFX
,
The Bookseller
and
The Daily Telegraph
, among others. A former archaeologist and British civil servant, he lives in at least one of the several parallel Binscombes.

*  *  *

Find out more:
www.binscombetales.com

Also by John Whitbourn:
Frankenstein’s Legions

If you have enjoyed the Binscombe Tales, you may enjoy:
A Minotaur at the Savoy

*  *  *

“Waiting for a Bus” was originally published in
The Third Book of After Midnight Stories
(William Kimber, 1987) and
The Year's Best Fantasy Stories
(DAW Books, 1988). “Roots” was originally published in
The Fourth Book of After Midnight Stories
(William Kimber, 1988). “Hello Dolly” was originally published in
The Fifth Book of After Midnight Stories
(Robert Hale, 1991). “Rollover Night” was originally published in
Rollover Night
(Haunted Library, 1990). “Peace On Earth, Goodwill To Most Men” was originally published in
Mystery for Xmas
(Michael O'Mara, 1991). “Oh I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside (Within Reason)” originally appeared in
A Binscombe Tale For Summer
(The Haunted Library, 1996). The complete series of stories was previously collected in two limited edition hardcover volumes from the Ash-Tree Press (1998 and 1999).