Cold Angel Days (Dica Series Book 4) Read online

  Cold Angel Days

  Book 4 of the Dica Series

  (Revised Edition)

  Clive S. Johnson

  Daisy Bank

  This eBook edition first published in 2013

  Revised Edition for formatting changes published in June 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Clive S. Johnson, 2013 (2014) (2015)

  Ver 1110/1

  The right of Clive S. Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  All artwork; cover, maps and illustrations by the author. Copyright applicable.

  Also by Clive S. Johnson

  The Dica Series

  Leiyatel’s Embrace (Book 1)

  Of Weft and Weave (Book 2)

  Last True World (Book 3)

  An Artist’s Eye (Book 5)

  Starmaker Stella (Book 6)

  This can be regarded as Book 4 of the Dica Series. However, it requires no foreknowledge of it, nor are any spoilers revealed. It can therefore be read as a standalone work.

  To all those who have heat in their hearts, but ice in their minds.

  Death is carried abroad

  In cold angel days,

  Chasing aloft dawn’s ire

  As dusk’s inky choir.

  i Maps

  Table of Contents

  Also by Clive S. Johnson

  i Maps

  1 A Loss Foreseen

  2 In a Father’s Eye

  3 A Conflict of Remembrances

  4 A Household Remedy

  5 In Search of Popig

  6 Star Holes in the Sky

  7 Light’s Fast Fading Magic

  8 A Late Night Service

  9 A Sister’s Confidence

  10 A Sot’s Revelation

  11 Against a Mother’s Advice

  12 Vaster be such Vantage

  13 To a Room with No View

  14 A Wise Mariner’s Bequest

  15 An Allegation Countenanced

  16 Time’s Short Shrift

  17 Loggerheads

  18 Not What it Used to Be

  19 Home Sweet Home

  20 Cold Angel Days

  21 The Restorative Power of Tea

  22 Clay-Cold Promise

  23 An Inadvertent Distraction

  24 A Parting Gift

  25 Not a Moment Too Soon

  26 A Change of Air

  27 A Fall to Forgetting

  28 Galgaverre

  29 Frying Pan or Fire

  30 A Cold and Clammy Hand

  31 To Learn of Dissemblance

  32 Time Yet to Tell

  33 Waylaid

  34 A Chill Hand

  35 Half Hailed Tidings

  36 No Time to Lose

  37 A Man for All Seasons

  38 Steersman’s Static Store

  39 To Rise to the Occasion

  40 To Meet a Man Upon a Task

  41 To Strike a Deal

  42 To Mete a Task Upon a Man

  43 Through Weft and Weave

  44 To Strike an Accord

  45 Dusk’s Inky Choir

  46 To Wish Upon a Star

  About the Author

  1 A Loss Foreseen

  Falmeard sat at the kitchen table, mug of tea in hand, and tried hard to remember. Doing so had become more of a problem of late, not helped now by a thump that shook the joists above his head, lifting his eyes from his brew.

  Another thump came as a second bed-warmed foot stamped its way into a night-chilled boot, then came silence - a short while for laces to be tied. It released Falmeard’s eyes to sink back to his fast cooling drink.

  Preparations now clearly put in hand, the boot-shod feet stomped their way across the floor above, bursting forth to flood the stairwell with their fast descending clatter. Falmeard’s gaze swept across the table’s bleached-white boards to the bustling form that soon briefly filled the door.

  “Morning Falmeard,” Grog boomed as he burst in to fill the kitchen. “Where’s Sis, then? She amilking?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m doin’ t’Ten Acre today. Any tea in t’pot?”

  Falmeard stood, the legs of his chair scraping back against ancient stone flags, flags whose slate grey lustre had long been worn to a wood-stained groove. By the time he reached the stove - even before his hand touched the old, stained-black kettle - Grog was in the yard, his carrying voice shouldering its way back through the thick, oak door now swinging to.

  “Ah’ll get t’phlogran sorted then while you do that. Any naphtha in t’tank?” Falmeard still didn’t answer, knew full well there’d be no need, knew Grog would soon clomp his way across the yard to see for himself.

  An easy and brief task, the kettle now hung above the coals. It left Falmeard in despair, though, at the loss of yet more memories to such a short aside. He stood before the stove and there tried hard to bring to mind a favoured view across Whitsand Bay.

  What good was it being a Master of Time - as his old friend Nephril had called him - if you couldn’t even remember your own previous life? What purpose, if Rame Head’s finger no longer pointed across your plain recall at the Eddystone Light? Falmeard knew it was there, though - or had been, perhaps some long time ago.

  He could still clearly see its shape, that of a maiden promontory, one to lie full-breasted below an ancient chapel teat. It saddened him now to think how its feminine outline had for so long deserted his inner eye.

  The phlogran’s mechanical chirruping soon brought him back, its noise filling the yard as it spilled from the barn. The sound almost seemed to giggle its way through the gaps between the boards of the farmhouse door. It sang and it trilled insistently, in short, sharp bursts, until settling to an infant’s innocent burble.

  It made way for the clucking of hens, flapping wings barely softening their falling escape as they fled the barn to litter the yard. A brief respite at best. Grog appeared atop the darting phlogran and chased through the yard, scattering the birds yet further still before finally jerking to a halt before the farmhouse door.

  In the time it took him to sweep in to the kitchen - a short time indeed - Falmeard had already come to a decision. He’d vouched that this time he’d not let this realm of Dica elbow aside his own true world, wouldn’t let his passage through time so completely rob him of his once true self.

  “But how?” he asked himself, only to bring Grog to a rare halt, his hand still on the doorknob as confusion filled his face.

  “How do I make sure, Grog? How do I make sure I can always remember what time’s slippage says I must not?” but Grog’s bafflement quite unusually kept him rooted to the spot.

  2 In a Father’s Eye

  The farmhouse kitchen felt dank and dreary, almost like the rebuff of a stranger’s cold-shoulder. Normally a heart- and hearth-warmed home, the window’s current slate-blue light may have been to blame, only cold hues left it in the shadow of the cliff so close behind the house.

  Even shortly looking out from the front door, from its shade to the distant sun-tinged Vale of Plenty, the northern spread of rolling fields still failed to lift the grey fog about Falmeard’s head.

  The phlogran’s merry tune tried
its best as the plough it drew cut a fine furrow across Ten Acre field. Its joyous, innocent ayre wafted in and out as it passed to and fro in the field below, heard through the gable gap between the barn and the stable.

  No, it wasn’t the view’s fault, nor the early, slanting springtime light, nor the vestige of night’s own sharp cold, a cold enough to lift the hairs on Falmeard’s arms. No, it was nothing external, nothing extraneous to his own pining heart.

  Geran wasn’t amilking this morning as Grog had thought, not about the farm at all. She’d been absent since well before dawn, and Falmeard already missed her.

  In some ways it didn’t feel like five years that they’d been together - getting on for six now - but in others it seemed much longer. It certainly felt like an age that he’d had to wait, maybe even two, all the time convinced he nurtured nothing more than unrequited love.

  An age! he pondered as he stared across the Vale, as he stared at the forest’s unbroken spread beyond, and the rounded heave of dull brown hills in the distance. Yet further still, the Gray Mountains marched impassably across the far northern horizon.

  A glint brought Falmeard’s gaze a little nearer, to just beyond the Great Wall that marked hem to the castle’s gown. A gown whose dull grey fabric fell with ancient stone-wrought folds, all threaded with jewels of verdant slash and bud-burst arbour haze.

  Beyond the castle skirted a ribbon of silver - the great Eyeswin River. Its glittering flow swept westwards to a sullen mouth where it breathed its fresh breath into the brackish sea. Falmeard’s eyes had already been drawn nearer, though, once more to the field below.

  The phlogran had again come into view but this time it stopped, its song quickly soaking to the day. Grog jumped from the seat and vanished down its far side, hidden from view. Other than the occasional clunk of metal, only birdsong now stirred the air.

  The stillness heightened Falmeard’s hearing, let him strain to hear through the ancient beams and boards for any movement in the room above. He listened for Grub’s need of him but heard none.

  When the phlogran began rocking, Falmeard knew Grog had reached the end of his short tether. The curses would soon come, and they did. In their wake, the starlings lofted from the newly turned earth and retreated - the worm not worth the worry of a wild man’s wrath.

  Grog’s recent vassalage to the phlogran had been entirely due to old man Grub’s rare indulgence. The previous year, their old mare had aged beyond its useful yoke and so had earned its final years at grass. They’d therefore all - old man Grub, keen but simpleminded Grog and a largely useless Falmeard - gone off to Weysget market, there to peer into the mouths of horses.

  However, Grog had instead become smitten by the old phlogran. To their enquiry it had wheezed and coughed and spluttered, but Grog had by then fallen madly in love.

  It may have been the sparsity of good nags that day but Grub had for some reason seen merit in the idea, had paid the price and so taken possession. That it broke down at least half a dozen times on the way home seemed not to matter to Grog. It certainly proved a fillip for Falmeard for he’d clearly shown some empathy with the beast, each time coaxing it back to life.

  It was as though Grub had that day finally if somewhat begrudgingly accepted Falmeard into the Sodbuster fold. He’d seemingly shifted from resigned toleration - born of fatherly love for a daughter long thought left on the shelf - to an almost unthinking, familial inclusion. He’d shifted, yes, but somehow had left intact an uneasy if deeply hidden mistrust.

  Grub had never pretended to understand his eldest daughter’s proclivities. He appreciated that a father’s eye more readily overlooked fault, but despite it knew that Geran - although not exactly a beauty - was certainly a woman no man would turn away from his bed. There had, however, been a waiting air about her, as though she’d always lived in expectation, as though for her a random future did in fact hold at least one certainty.

  By the time Grog had begun kicking the phlogran, Falmeard already drew near. “Oi!” he shouted. “Lay off her.” As usual, he stumbled awkwardly across the newly furrowed field, as though his boots had become not just mired but leaden.

  “Sorry, Falmeard, but she never starts for me when she’s hot.”

  “That’s ‘cos you flood her every time. I keep telling you, but you’re just too ... well, too heavy handed.” He climbed up into its seat and there feathered the phlogran’s various levers, mumbling all the time about mixture and breathing.

  “Come on then! Give her a swing,” he called down to Grog, who then spat on his hands before turning a cautious eye to the beast.

  “Tek heed, tha bitch, an’ don’t tek on,” Grog incanted - as he always did before grasping the starting handle with both hands.

  One almighty swing, and he leapt clear - a wary eye on the rocking handle. The phlogran coughed disdainfully but only the once.

  “That should’ve cleared its throat,” Falmeard said.

  When the handle had been still awhile - clearly safe again - Grog spat on his hands for a fourth time this morning.

  This time the phlogran coughed a number of times, the handle kicking back and forth violently as something inside the engine began to hiss.

  Experience had taught Grog a salutary lesson, one no end of book-bound learning could have bettered, and so he watched and waited patiently as the handle continued to jerk. With each little kick, Grog absently kneaded the kink in the bone of his finger.

  In a blur, the handle abruptly whipped back and caught with an almighty crack as a ratchet-gear gave leave and the engine finally coughed into life. A great gobbet of black, sooty smoke billowed forth from a vent, finally following the startled starlings away to the west.

  Falmeard smiled at Grog, saw his wary grin, saw how he stared at the phlogran, affection once more flooding his eyes. Grog now smirked and cast a mischievous look Falmeard’s way but said nothing.

  A few deft adjustments, and Falmeard left the phlogran humming merrily to itself, merrily enough for Grog to climb aboard, enough for its throat to breathe easy and so soon finish ploughing the Ten Acre field.

  As clumsily as he’d arrived, Falmeard stumbled his way from the field, back towards the rise onto the lane to the yard. Before he’d even begun the climb, images of Geran filled his mind - her gaily swinging ponytail, her milk-white skin and fulsome mouth. Even sooner, his heart resumed its pining.

  He turned and looked down the line of the wall to the west of the field, the one bordering the narrow lane that dropped towards Utter Shevling - the lane Geran would later return by with the family leech.

  “Doctor!” Falmeard corrected aloud. “The way she’ll come back with the doctor, and hopefully before nightfall.”

  That very thought made him mindful of their need and so brought guilt to the fore. He leant forward, rushed up the steps to the yard, over the stile and quickly back to the house.

  3 A Conflict of Remembrances

  For a farmhouse, the broad and sumptuously appointed staircase appeared a little too grand, but by now Falmeard had had a number of years in which to come to terms with Castle Dica’s idiosyncratic ways. The anachronism had, like much else in the realm, eventually come to seem quite fitting.

  The persistent layer of dust and fluff that coated the hallway’s picture rail ledges were no better testament to Dica’s now slumbering years - a tarnished dotage due a richly squandered youth. Unseen from below, where most traffic nowadays passed, the parlous state of the ledges - and that of their equally swaddled ornaments - had long since become unnoticed.

  The large front hall, once the welcoming embrace for visitors to more formal occasions, now only served access to a little used dining room and a small passage through into the kitchen at the rear. The staircase itself led only to a master bedroom, and at a half-landing, a spacious but unused lavatory.

  Workaday activity stayed confined to the rear of the house where it centred on the kitchen. Comings and goings largely clattered their way through a passage off, one that
led to a gable-set door to the outside world. The passage itself gave foot to the rear stairs, their flights leading to another two floors.

  Opposite and on the other side of the kitchen’s rear window, a shy passage gave private let to yet another outer door, but one that opened only onto a small rear yard. Its short, brooding and sullen reach to the cliff behind the house seemed only to gather to it a mist of tears from the air, one that seemed ever to keep its stone flags wet.

  Somewhat mischievously, Falmeard had recently made a habit of using the front door, of enjoying the heavy reluctance long infrequent use had given it. He seemed to have brought a returning glow of life to its age-bleached wood, given it an almost illicit frisson of use.

  From where it had come he’d no idea, but between them - he and the front door - they seemed to have brought alive a wholly different time, one that had seen that door more commonly used. Perhaps for the carrying of buckets to and from the farmyard’s well, the one not far from the door’s own threshold step. Maybe Geran, in some other imagined life, had had habit of bringing in the household water that way, of then pouring it in to the butt beside the door.

  Falmeard came to a halt mid-step, part way up the first flight, on a level with the unseen dusty picture rail ledges, and there frowned - frowned hard.

  “Damn!” He turned and looked down at the front door. “Now I’m even forgetting my own time here,” and he looked into some inner space, “or confusing two times maybe, or two places.”

  Now he remembered! Geran had seen him from the bedroom window - the bedroom he was still remiss of checking. She’d rushed down, out through this same front door and into the yard. She’d hastened, albeit cautiously, to another of their very first meetings there.

  Some other time perhaps, some other space beside this one, where armfuls of buckets were likely carried to the well. Not in this world, though, he was now sure - or so he thought.