Nobody moved. That’s the first thing I remember. Seven hundred people, and not one of them so much as shifted on the floor. Then Fenwick, who’d been sitting near the door, said in his new quiet voice, “You’ll want to wipe your feet.” I don’t know why it was funny. It wasn’t. But somebody at the back made a snorting noise and clapped a hand over it, and Anselm Ward looked down at his boots as if he’d never seen them before. They were caked to the ankle in yellow clay. There was a long smear of it across the hall floor behind him, all the way to the doors. He didn’t wipe them. He walked in. He came down the aisle with the iron-shod staff clicking on the boards and the black lantern held a little out from his body, and people drew their legs in to let him pass. The light inside the glass was green. It wasn’t the soft blue-white of the Hollow. It was the colour of something left too long in a cellar. Where it fell on the shelves the wood looked wet. And on the beams above, every bat in the library had turned its face away from it, wings pulled tight, like a row of people not wanting to look at an accident. Marrow had gone right down to the front of the aisle. He stood in the middle of it with his tail puffed and his back arched, making a low unbroken sound like a kettle just before it boils. “That’s far enough,” said Abel Crane. He had risen. He was past a hundred and came up to about Anselm’s collarbone, and he stood in the middle of the aisle with his hands clasped behind him exactly as he had stood on the library steps that afternoon. Anselm stopped. He looked at Abel, and at the dozen people who’d risen behind him, and I saw him do a sum. He didn’t look frightened. He looked tired, the way people look when they’ve driven all night and the sum comes out the same as at the start. “I’m not here to hurt anyone,” he said. His voice was low and dry and northern, with the edges worn off. “I’m here for the tree.” “There’s a good deal of tree,” said Abel. “You’ll have to be more specific.” “The root under this floor. The thing that’s learned to talk.” He lifted the lantern a little. “This will do it quickly. I’ve seen it done. It doesn’t suffer.” “What is that?” I said. He turned his head. I’d come down off the dais without deciding to, and I was standing about ten feet from him with the loose white root trailing out behind me across the floor. He looked at it. Then he looked at my face. “Green fire,” he said. “You’ll have seen it in damp woods. That glow on rotten timber. Foxfire, they call it, in the country, because they say a fox started it. It’s what’s left of a tree that has died the wrong way.” He tilted the glass. “This is a cutting from my own Oak. Put it to a root, and it runs the length down to the heart and everything it touches goes to ash. It’s very tidy.” He paused. “You must be the Keeper.” “Mira.” “Anselm Ward.” He didn’t offer a hand, and I was glad. “I did try to tell you.” “You did. I read it. Twice.” “And you went ahead.” “I went ahead,” I said. “Not the way you did.” Something crossed his face then, quick and ugly, and was gone. “That’s exactly what I said,” said Anselm. “In my fourth year.” I’ve thought since about how to describe Anselm Ward, and the closest I can get is that he looked like a house with the lights on in one room only. He was somewhere past sixty. He’d been handsome once, I think, in a hard sort of way. He was thin, and his coat hung off him, and the root round his neck had grown into the skin so long ago that I couldn’t tell where it stopped and he began. He was also, quite plainly, at the end of his rope. He’d been on his feet a long time. His hands were shaking, and he was holding the staff more to stay upright than to threaten anyone. Dorothy saw it before I did. “For heaven’s sake,” she said, in her Yorkshire voice, “somebody get that man a chair.” Nobody did. They were all too busy staring. So she went and fetched one herself, a wooden library chair with a cracked seat, and set it down behind him in the aisle with a bang. “Sit.” “Madam, I’m not…” “You’ve walked here, haven’t you? In the dark? Look at your boots.” She folded her arms. “Eleven miles from the road, I’d say, and the bus won’t stop for anyone it doesn’t like. Sit down before you fall down. You can burn the place after your tea.” I wish I could tell you he refused. He stood there for what felt like a full minute, with the green fire hissing faintly in its glass. Then his knees gave a little, and he sat. Fenwick, in a state of agonised, shy helpfulness, brought him a mug of tea from the table by the door. Anselm took it in both hands. He didn’t drink. He looked into it as if it might say something. “Why did you come?” I asked. He was quiet a bit. “Because I felt it,” he said. “Four nights ago. We all do, when one of the roots changes hands. It runs along the old line under the whole country, like a finger drawn across a table.” He turned the mug. “I knew it was Cecily. We weren’t friends. But she wrote to me once a year for thirty years to say she was still there. I never answered. I should have.” “And you came to burn her tree.” “I came to stop what happened to mine.” I sat down on the floor in front of him. I don’t know why. It seemed easier than standing, and I was very tired, and it put my head below his, which felt like the right place for it. “Tell me. What happened to yours?” He told it flat, without decoration, the way you tell something you’ve told yourself too many times. He’d come to Hallow Cross at thirty-one. He’d been a surveyor. His wife, Judith, had died of a cancer that took eight months, and afterwards he’d stood in the hospital car park for four hours and couldn’t remember which car was his. The card had come in the post a week after the funeral. He’d taken the Hush, he said, because he’d sat beside her through eight months of doctors and nobody had ever once listened to a word he said. “I gave it back within the year. I wasn’t a fool. I saw what it did. But the Oak had taken to me. It was a lonely thing. It asked me to stay on as Keeper when the old woman died. I said yes. I told myself I could do some good.” “And you read to it.” “Every night. In the beginning because it asked. After that because I liked it.” He drank some of the tea at last, and made a face. “You can’t imagine, Miss Kessler, what it’s like to be listened to by a thing that big. It leans. You’ve felt it. It’s the most flattering sensation in the world. I read it Dickens, and Trollope, and Hardy. I read it the whole of Middlemarch twice. It started asking for more.” “More stories.” “More voices. It wanted to know what people sounded like. It had never heard a woman say a certain thing, so I read it a woman saying it. In a good voice. I did them all.” He put the mug on the floor. “Eighteen years. And it learned. I never saw it happen. One morning in October I came into the library at Hallow Cross, and the lamps were already lit, and somebody was reading aloud in the great hall, and it was my own voice. Perfect. Word for word. Reading Great Expectations to an empty room.” Nobody in the hall said anything. Behind me I heard Elliot let out a small breath. “It didn’t need me after that. It opened the doors on its own. The next Season it didn’t close. The bus kept running. People came, and went down into the roots, and didn’t come up.” His mouth twisted. “My daughter was one of them.” The hall had gone quiet. “Wren,” he said. “Nine years ago this month. She was twenty-two. I’d hardly known her. Her mother’s people brought her up. I’d sent money and cards at Christmas, and that was the whole of it. I’d let everybody go, you see. After Judith. I wasn’t fit to be anyone’s father. And then this girl turned up at Hallow Cross with a card in her hand and said, Dad, what is this place? And I said, go home. And she went into the cellar to see for herself. And that was the last time I saw her.” I couldn’t think what to say. I said, “I’m so sorry.” “I’ve tried to burn the thing three times. The green fire won’t take. The root closes over it. It’s too old, and it’s been fed too long.” He nodded at the door. “So I came here. To stop yours before it learned what mine did.” It was Thomas who spoke. I’d half forgotten he was there. I think we all had. He’d been quiet since Ilse’s light went out, a warm settled presence in the walls, the way you stop noticing a clock when it’s been ticking in the same room all night. But now the boards under our feet gave a small creak, and a voice came out of the floor, rough and unhurried, with a burr like a rasp across oak. Man, said Thomas. Put the lamp down. Anselm didn’t move. His hand tightened on the staff. I’ve a good deal of company tonight, and I’d rather not lose any of it. I’m not asking as a favour. I’m telling you how it is. If you put that to the root, you’ll burn seven thousand people who’ve only just learned they aren’t alone. A pause. And me. I should mind that rather a lot. I only found out my wife’s name an hour ago. Anselm had gone grey. “What are you?” A carpenter. Of Ashgrove. I built the first house. The boards creaked again, as if he were shifting his weight. I didn’t know my name until this evening. You may call me that if you like. It’s the only one I’ve got, and I find I’m fond of it. “It’s learned my voice,” Anselm said hoarsely. He wasn’t talking to Thomas. He was talking to the room. “That’s what they do. They start by telling the truth. That’s how they start.” I’m sure that’s so, said Thomas mildly. I’ve been doing it for four hundred years. It’s an effective method. Ask the lady how I did it to her. A short dry sound that was almost a laugh. She was cleverer than you or I. I saw Anselm look at me. “He doesn’t speak in anyone’s voice but his own,” I said. “I stopped him. I told him he could answer to his own and nobody else’s, and he said he didn’t know what that was. So we asked him his name.” “A name,” said Anselm slowly. “The dead ones. We read them. Every one that was on the slate, and every one anyone in this room wanted to say. I don’t think it’s food. I think it’s a visit. It’s the first one he’s ever had.” He looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at the black lantern in his hand, with its sick green light, and I saw him realise that his fingers had begun to ache from holding it. “I never asked mine its name,” he said, in a different voice. No, said Thomas gently. I don’t suppose you did. I shouldn’t have asked mine, in your place. You were frightened. It’s difficult to ask a name of something you’re afraid of. He paused. I’m sorry, Keeper of Hallow Cross. I’m sorry about your wife, and your daughter, and the long time. But I’ve something to tell you I think you’ll want to hear. Anselm said nothing. He’d gone completely still. The roots are one root, said Thomas. Did you know that? Under all of it. All the way down. I’ve only learned it this past hour, but it’s very plain once one is listening. Your Hallow Cross isn’t a stranger. It’s a long way off, but it’s on the same line, and it’s been calling for some time. It woke me early, in fact. It was why I was awake when the lady came. “What does it say?” said Anselm. It came out like something tearing. It’s a she. Younger than I. She hasn’t much of an idea of herself. But she says there’s a girl in the cellar. She’s been there nine years. She’s not hurt. She’s kneeling in one of the alcoves with her head down, and she hums a little to herself. She says the girl has been waiting for somebody to come and ask. The green lamp slipped out of Anselm’s hand. It didn’t break. It rolled across the boards, and Abel Crane, with surprising neatness, put a polished boot on it and stopped it dead. The green light flickered in its glass and went out. On the beams overhead, a long soft rustle ran through the bats, as if a whole row of people had let their breath go. And at the front of the aisle, Marrow stopped his noise, sat down, and began, with great dignity, to wash his face. “Wren,” said Anselm. She says, said Thomas, that nobody’s read her the names. I’m not going to tell you how long it was before anyone spoke. Some things are better left without a stopwatch. Anselm Ward sat in a cracked library chair in the middle of the aisle with both hands over his face. He made no sound at all. His shoulders didn’t even shake. After a minute or two Dorothy went and stood behind him and put her hand on his shoulder, and he didn’t shrug it off. Fenwick brought another mug of tea. Marguerite came and set a folded shawl across his knees. Nobody said a word about it, and I thought that was the kindest thing I saw anyone do all week. At last he lifted his head. His face was wet and red-eyed and about ten years older. “Nine years,” he said. “I’ve been trying to burn the thing nine years. And she was sitting there the whole time.” “You didn’t know,” I said. “I should have asked.” He scrubbed his face with his sleeve. “I should have gone down in the first week. I was too angry. I decided what it was before I looked.” “You were frightened,” said Thomas from the floor. “It comes to much the same.” “I need to get back. At once. Tonight.” “You can’t,” said Elliot, from somewhere behind me, and I turned and saw he’d come down from the dais, ledger under one arm and an odd look on his face. “I’m sorry. You walked eleven miles. The bus won’t run to Hallow Cross until the Season closes, and that’s the second, at dusk.” “Then the second.” “And the road to Hallow Cross isn’t a road you can drive. You know that. It opens in the Season, for a card. You’d have to be sent for.” “I am sent for,” said Anselm. “I’ve been sent for nine years.” He got up out of the chair. He was unsteady, and Fenwick took his arm without being asked. He stood a moment looking round at the faces in the hall, the empty ones with their wet cheeks, the guests, the returned, a hundred old strangers in the lamplight. Then he looked at me. “I owe you an apology. Several.” “You walked eleven miles to stop something you thought was going to kill people. I’d have done the same.” “I’d have burned it.” “You didn’t.” “A man put his foot on my lamp,” said Anselm, with an attempt at a smile that didn’t quite arrive. “I think the credit’s his.” “Abel Crane,” said Abel, with a stiff little bow. “Nineteen forty-four.” Anselm looked at him. I think it took a second to land. Then he put out his hand, and Abel shook it, once, with great formality. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” said Anselm Ward. I should tell you the rest of it quickly, because it matters, and because I was so tired I only half took it in. We took him to the bakery. Dorothy made eggs. He ate three without speaking, with the concentration of a man who’s forgotten that food is something you can enjoy. Elliot sat across from him with the ledger open and wrote down, in his small upright hand, everything Anselm could remember about the Hallow Cross Hollow. How many lights. How many kneeling. The date it stopped closing. Anselm told it flat and slow, and I noticed his hands had stopped shaking. Tomas had come in and was standing by the stove. “I’ll tell the bees,” he said, abruptly. Anselm looked up. “I’m sorry?” “The bees. We tell them everything here. And the roots are one root, the Oak says, so I should think the hives are one hive, in a manner of speaking. If I tell ours that Wren Ward is alive, and asking, I should think it’ll go down the line. I can’t promise how fast.” He looked embarrassed. “It’s only what I can do.” Anselm Ward looked at Tomas Vey for rather a long time. Then he said, “Thank you,” in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear it. Tomas went out. A little later, up on the roof, twelve hives began to hum a note I hadn’t heard before, rising at the end, like a question being passed from hand to hand. At some point in the small hours, Anselm looked up at me over a plate of crumbs. “Can I ask you something about the setting?” I’d been dreading it all night. “Go on.” “It sets on the second. At dusk.” “Cecily said so.” “It drank me for two days,” said Anselm. “I didn’t say that in the letter. I didn’t think I could.” He rubbed the old grey root round his throat. “I’d stripped myself, you see. Before. In the weeks before it set. Not on purpose. I was grieving, and I’d stopped answering the telephone, and let everyone go. There wasn’t a soul at Hallow Cross who knew my name. So when it set, it had nothing to take but me.” I felt Elliot go still beside me. “It takes what’s in you,” said Anselm. “That’s what Cecily got wrong. Or couldn’t say. It isn’t that it takes what ties you to the world. It’s that it takes what you’re holding. If you’re holding nothing, it takes you. But if you’re holding a great many other people’s hands…” He turned his own hands over on the table and looked at them. “It drinks them as well. And they’re not so easily swallowed.” “Anchors,” said Elliot, quietly. “Whatever you want to call them. You’ve been paying all week. You’ve been losing your own. But that book of his,” Anselm nodded at the ledger, “is a better anchor than anything I had. You’ve got the names. You’ve got the people. You’ve got a roomful of them who’d say yours.” “My name’s going,” I said. “The Oak told me. It’s fading off the slate.” “Then somebody had better write it back on,” said Anselm. He pushed his chair out and stood up. “I’d like to lie down for an hour, if there’s a bed. I haven’t slept since Thursday.” Dorothy took him upstairs. We could hear her scolding him all the way up. It was a comfortable noise. It was nearly dawn when Elliot and I went across the square. I don’t know whose idea it was. Neither of us said. We just left the bakery at about five, with the sky going pale behind the eastern hills, and walked up the library steps and in at the open doors. The great hall was empty. Seven hundred people had gone home, or to someone’s floor, or to sleep where they sat. A few paper cups lay under the benches. A single child’s shoe had been left on a window ledge. The lanterns hung dark on their chains. The Toll had stopped. For the first time since I arrived, I could hear the plain tick of the library clock in the entrance hall, the ordinary one. We went through into the great hall where the slate hung. I took the brass-railed ladder, because my legs wanted something to do, and climbed to the bottom third of the board, where the nineties began. My hands weren’t steady. It took me a while to find the right row. Nineteen ninety-eight was there. Ilse Kessler, in white chalk, with the faint line through it. Below it, in 2026, in the same chalk, was a name. I looked at it for a long time. Mira Kessler, it said. It wasn’t Elliot’s handwriting. Elliot’s was small and square. This was sprawling, and slanted, and a bit childish, with a loop on the K. And on the frame beside it, sitting upright with a stub of chalk held in both paws like a candle, was a mouse. It wasn’t looking at me. It was looking at the name, anxiously, with its head on one side, like a child checking a spelling. There was chalk dust on its whiskers. In the fur of its chest, a small round bulge, something tucked in there and kept safe. “That’s the one,” said Elliot softly, behind me. “The one you gave the crumb to.” I couldn’t say anything. “They take it as a promise,” said Elliot. “I did say.” The mouse looked up. It looked at me for one long moment with its black bead eyes. Then it dipped its chalk, carefully, and went over the loop of the K again, to make it better. I climbed down a rung and looked at the names beside it, and the ones after. Over the whole of the lower third of the slate, round my own name and above it and below it, someone had written other names in every kind of hand. Round ones. Spiky ones. A few in what looked like crayon. They ran down the board and across, filling every gap, dozens and dozens of them, and every one was new. A few were in a tiny crabbed copperplate, and I understood that the other mice had stopped erasing and started to help. Dorothy Webb. Fenwick Ames. Marguerite Laurent. Abel Crane. Tomas Vey. Winifred Aldous. Pippa Mills. Jonah Reyes. And at the bottom, in the very last corner, written small and carefully, as though by somebody who didn’t want to take up more room than they had to: Elliot Marsh. I came down off the ladder. “Did you do this?” “I wrote one.” He was looking up at the board. His voice was rough. “Mine, down in the corner. When I saw yours was going I meant to put it back, and somebody already had. The rest of it I don’t know. They came in and out all night. I think they were just writing themselves down.” “All of them.” “I think,” said Elliot slowly, “they wanted it on the record. That they’d been here. That someone, somewhere, would be able to say so.” I looked at the slate. At the great black board, taller than a man, wider than a door, with its rows of names going up and up into the dark. I looked at the new chalk, white and crooked, at the bottom. I thought of the Oak saying, in its sweet voice, there will be no Mira Kessler on any list in the world. Not true. Not any more. There were dozens of me. “Elliot.” “Yes?” “I’m tired.” “I know.” “I think I’d like to sit down on the floor.” So we did. We sat on the floor of the great hall of the Library of Ashgrove with our backs against the wall under the slate and our knees drawn up, in the grey light coming through the high windows. After a while he put his arm round me. After a while longer I put my head on his shoulder. Neither of us said anything. Overhead, one by one, in every lantern on every chain, a small ember-face climbed back down into its glass, looked about, rubbed its eyes with two tiny hands, and began, cautiously, to glow. The first of November arrived. The clock in the entrance hall ticked. Somewhere below us, faintly, something hummed a few bars of a tune I couldn’t place. Then it stopped, and began again, and after a while I realised it was Thomas, trying to remember the words to a lullaby he’d once sung to a child who hadn’t been born. New chapters come out on novelping . com first.
Chapter Nineteen: The Man with the Green Lamp
The Night of Names