The Whispering Swarm (68 page)

I made to pull free but he murmured urgently. ‘Don't be foolish, lad, if you'd see your offspring again.'

I took a long breath. ‘Perhaps I'd rather die than stroll across the ice with a wretched spy!'

He chuckled at this. ‘You have a friend in me, though you'll not allow it, young Moorcock.'

And so, for Sally and Kitty, I let Andrew Marvell keep my arm. Then, for all the world like one old friend taking a stroll with another, Marvell slowly walked with me across the ice towards the dying lights of the Frost Fair. Over on the South Bank the storm still flashed and cracked.

What was Marvell's plan? The lights of the fair distant and the storm passed, we walked in silence through the darkness as the ice grew firmer underfoot. For a while it appeared Marvell and I were alone out there. The Whispering Swarm was mute, murmuring in the back of my skull. Almost as if he knew what went on in my head he reached up a hand to hold my shoulder. I felt at once under arrest, reassured and rescued from danger.

We took a long time crossing the ice. For most of that walk, with the Frost Fair still merry in the distance and the thunder grumbling amongst the flashing lightning, we said little. By the time we reached that wall of chilling fog surrounding Whitefriars Old Stairs I felt almost calm. Here we paused, looking back at the distant bridge.

‘Well,' he said philosophically, ‘if the wind holds and they manage to get downriver to open sea, your comrades will all escape justice.' I thought of the ship and her passengers. I wanted to ask Marvell about High India, the Black Aether, the silver moonbeam roads, ‘Ketchup Cove'. He seemed aware of a great deal that was going on at the abbey, for instance. Could he explain any of these mysteries? How did the notion of worlds in parallel resonate with everything else I had experienced? Why did Marvell, who was no zealot, work so diligently for the Parliamentary cause? How had he first discovered the routes to other worlds? I supposed the answer lay in his poetry. Yet to ask Marvell such questions would not force him into answering, if he knew, and would have him thinking me mad, if he didn't. Why did it matter? Obscurely, I wanted Marvell to think well of me. Or at least sympathetically. He shook hands at the stairs. ‘Godspeed, lad. You are wise to be wary of the Alsacia. It is not your children's friend.'

Without a further word, Andrew Marvell walked into the shivering night.

Only later did I wonder how he knew about my children.

Once again I went through the complicated ritual in which I followed so-called moonbeam paths. This was becoming second nature. I recalled the tarot, the numbers, the images, the shivering silver threads. I kept the images, the numbers and rhythms in my head as I stepped through that unnatural fog and this time it seemed easier to tread the silver road as I followed the Green Knight, the same Saracen warrior I had seen at prayer in the chapel of the abbey, and suddenly found myself climbing those slimed, treacherous steps back up to the cobbled quayside pulling my damp cloak around me, seeking an impossible warmth.

As usual, as soon as I was in the Alsacia, the Swarm at once fell silent. The walk up that first steep cold street, with houses that never saw light or fire, was a long one. Then at last I was again in the glow of the Alsacia, with its friendly people wrapped against the tiring chill, with cheerful oil lamps or candelabra guttering in every window and fires blazing in every grate. It warmed like home.

I got back to the square, walking a little more slowly as I recalled the first time I was there. My spirits had lifted considerably when I reached the top of the little lane. I recalled being fascinated by the girl with the tousled hair, highwayman's topcoat and tricorne who had ridden into the innyard calling for an ostler. I had fallen in love at that moment. My fascination had brought me back and kept me there.

But now I'd had enough. It was all over. Molly was no more than a fiction and the story had ended. I didn't acknowledge her even when I saw her standing, beautiful and vulnerable, outside The Swan With Two Necks. Even when she came to walk beside me, murmuring: ‘We found each other. You said it, Mike. We're soul mates. I love you with all my heart and soul. Please, let me look after you.'

I still thought it was a rather unlikely ambition for a talented adventuress. I didn't say anything to her but just kept walking. I walked into the abbey, crossed the yew lawn and found my way to the chapel. The abbey seemed completely deserted. The last thing I had seen of the abbot and the monks was when they went to meet the attacking redcoats. Had they been wiped out? On the chapel's altar I saw not the Fish Chalice but a pile of well-used swords and pistols. Had they been left there by the monks?

I was no longer curious. I went to my cell and changed back into my ordinary clothes. I took everything I had brought and packed it in my bag. I left the weapons. Then I walked out.

Carrying my bag, I made my way steadily in the direction of the Carmelite Inn gate. It was shut. A few bits and pieces of weapons and armour were scattered about nearby. Signs of a skirmish. As usual, no bodies. No blood. Perhaps their owners were waiting on the other side.

Molly stepped out of the shadows and stood in front of the gates. I looked directly into her eyes. She hesitated, shrugged and stepped aside. I pulled open one of the gates. In Carmelite Inn Chambers a lifting fog softened the square. I stepped through the gate and stood for a moment letting my tension fall away. My eyes were full of tears. I took a deep breath and stepped into the square as the Swarm began its terrifying whispering again. Meaningless yet charged with meaning. For a second, just to escape that cruel sound, I thought of returning to the Alsacia.

Then I walked away. My future was restored. I headed for Fleet Street and the Number 15 bus. I was going home to Sally and Kitty, to whatever responsibilities waited for me. I was certain I would never see the Alsacia again.

And I didn't mind a bit.

 

 

TOR BOOKS BY MICHAEL MOORCOCK

Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull

Hawkmoon: The Mad God's Amulet

Hawkmoon: The Sword of the Dawn

Hawkmoon: The Runestaff

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Moorcock is the prolific author of more than eighty works of fiction and nonfiction, and the creator of such memorable characters as Elric, Dorian Hawkmoon, Jerry Cornelius, and Colonel Pyat. In 1956, at the age of sixteen, he became the editor of
Tarzan Adventures
and later edited
The Sexton Blade Library
and the controversial science fiction magazine
New Worlds
.

He has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize for
The Condition of Muzak,
and his novel
Mother London
was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize. He has won the Prix Utopiales for Lifetime Achievement, the Grandmaster Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, Michael Moorcock was named one of the “fifty greatest British writers since 1945” by
The Times
(London).

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

THE WHISPERING SWARM: BOOK ONE OF THE SANCTUARY OF THE WHITE FRIARS

 

Copyright © 2014 by Michael Moorcock

 

All rights reserved.

 

Cover art by Ross MacDonald

 

Edited by Moshe Feder

 

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York, NY 10010

 

www.tor-forge.com

 

Tor
®
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

 

ISBN 978-0-7653-2477-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-8642-7 (e-book)

 

e-ISBN 9781429986427

 

First Edition: January 2015