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THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

by Philip Purser-Hallard

 

‘You don’t seem overjoyed by the company of our new room-mate,’ I admonished my friend cheerfully, as I hung another bauble upon the stout Douglas fir that stood in the corner of our sitting-room at 221B Baker Street.

‘I merely remarked, Watson,’ said Sherlock Holmes, with a placid puff upon his pipe, ‘that if the architect of this house had intended us to use it as an arboretum, he would have provided us with a roof that was in some manner porous, to permit the ingress of light and rain. An interstitial layer of soil between the floors, to allow an adequate root system, would also have been advisable.’

‘Well, I’m delighted with it,’ I riposted, ripping open a box of bonbons threaded with silver cord and beginning to hang these, too, upon the prickly branches. ‘I’ve never persuaded Mrs Hudson to let us have one before.’

‘She knows only too well which of us three will end up sweeping needles from the carpet,’ Holmes observed drily. ‘Still, I fear your incessant pleading upon the topic has worn down her defences. She is a sentimentalist at heart.’

‘Pish, Holmes,’ I replied, ‘she’s one of the most level-headed women I know. Almost as sensible as you, in fact – although it doesn’t seem to prevent her from entertaining the spirit of Christmas,’ I added pointedly.

‘Indeed, Watson,’ Holmes sighed. ‘Your own zest for the season leaves her little leeway for such an option.’ He took another deep draught of smoke from his pipe, and let it out slowly. ‘Have I ever told you,’ he asked me, ‘of my own encounter with the Spirit of Christmas?’

‘I don’t believe you have,’ I answered, wondering what he might mean.

‘It was an intriguing little affair,’ he told me. ‘Perhaps you would care to hear about it while you… work?’

Truth be told, the business of hanging decorations onto a tree leaves something to be desired in terms of mental stimulation, so I assented gladly to my friend’s proposal.

‘It was,’ he began, ‘some little time before you and I met, my dear fellow. I had but lately moved to London and was endeavouring to make my name and reputation as a consulting detective. This was after the affair of the Gloria Scott, of course, and that unresolved matter of the disappearance of Edwin Drood, but before my involvement in the Musgrave Ritual, or the singular business of the three barbers’ chairs.

‘In those days I lodged in Montague Street, in the house of one Philip Pirrip and his wife. My hostess had been a great beauty in her day, and her husband something of a gentleman about town, but by the time I knew them they had quite settled down. Mr Pirrip had, I believe, gained and lost a fortune in his youth, but left with no such expectations he had made a great success of himself in business, and had founded a charitable organisation known as the Harmonious Blacksmiths. Like many of those connected with this case, he was an enthusiast for the Yuletide season, and so I remember quite clearly that the events in question began on Christmas Eve, between distracting bouts of carol-singing.

‘I was engaged in an experiment to determine the chemical composition of a particular variety of mincemeat that I had been given in a pie, when I was interrupted by an urgent knocking at the door of my rooms. I opened it and a well-dressed stranger limped in.

‘Though lame, he was an energetic man in early middle age, with an honest, friendly face, now furrowed with concern. I could see at once that he had grown up in poverty, but was now well-to-do, though generous with his wealth.’

‘How could you tell?’ I asked Holmes, surreptitiously slipping one of the bonbons into my mouth.

He said, ‘From his gait it was clear that he had suffered from rickets as a child. He was expensively dressed, however, in fine clothes that fitted him well. He wore the lapel-pin of the Harmonious Blacksmiths, which told me the nature of his connection with the household. He had in his pocket a bundle of Christmas cards with the ribbon untied, suggesting that he had been engaged in delivering them in person when something had alarmed him and he had rushed straight to see me. I could only assume that he was concerned for the safety of a friend, and had remembered my name mentioned by my hosts as one with a professional interest in such matters.

‘I told him calmly of these conclusions, omitting as is my habit the line of reasoning that had led me there, and his eyes widened. “God bless us!” he exclaimed.’

‘You don’t need to do the voice, Holmes,’ I sighed, but my friend pressed on undeterred.

‘“God bless us!” he exclaimed,’ Holmes continued with satisfaction, ‘in a voice that, beneath its air of gentle refinement, bore the undeniable traces of a cockney upbringing. “I see that Mr Pirrip did not exaggerate when he called you a marvel, Mr Holmes. And you had better be, I’m afraid, for the matter I am bringing to you is most delicate and troubling.”

‘I begged him to elaborate, and he continued, “My name is Cratchit, sir, Timothy Cratchit, and I am one of the partners at Scrooge and Cratchit’s Bank. You judge correctly that my origins were not elevated ones; my dear old father was a clerk at the same bank, and when I was just a tiny crippled lad, his employer, good old Mr Ebenezer Scrooge, took me under his wing. He has been dead now for many a year, I’m sorry to say, and his place at the bank has passed to his nephew, Frederick Gladlove, though we keep the old name out of respect to him. It used to be Scrooge and Marley’s at one time, but Marley died long before Mr Scrooge.”

‘I said, “You digress, Mr Cratchit. I cannot believe that this history is of the essence in a matter of such urgency as that on which you wish to consult me.”

‘Gravely, he replied, “It may be more to the point than you imagine, Mr Holmes. But you are right that I should stick to the present for now. Fred Gladlove is a kind, good-natured man, full of laughter and generous to a fault. These last few days, however, as Christmas has approached, he has seemed out of sorts. He has been quiet, as if preoccupied, and far from his usual self, although Christmas is usually a time of year that fills him with the utmost joy. I ask him if there is anything the matter, and he tells me that all is well, and makes to cheer himself up, but I can see that his heart is elsewhere.

‘“I have thought little enough of it, supposing that he has perhaps been missing his poor late wife, but this evening – as I have been doing my rounds with my Christmas cards, just as you said – I called upon him at home, and found him in a state of the most abject terror. He told me, if you please, that he had seen his uncle, Mr Scrooge.”

‘“His late uncle?” I pointed out sceptically, and Cratchit nodded with great vigour.

‘“Exactly, Mr Holmes. He told me that he had seen his face in the gas-light fitting. And this was peculiarly upsetting to him, you see, beyond even what it might have been for you or me. For the same thing happened to the uncle himself, one Christmas Eve more than thirty years ago.”

‘“Ebenezer Scrooge saw his own face in a gas-fitting?” I asked, my scepticism increasing by the moment.

‘“No, but he always maintained that he had seen the face of his dead partner, Jacob Marley, in a door-knocker.”

‘I sighed. “I perceive that the history may be of the essence after all, Mr Cratchit. Pray proceed.”

‘Cratchit told me that Scrooge had been at one time a notorious misanthrope and miser, almost a hermit – but that he had, all of a sudden, changed his mind, his ways and perhaps his personality, becoming sociable, charitable and free in the extreme with the abundant funds he had formerly hoarded. This reformation the old man attributed, to any who would listen, to a series of supernatural occurrences he believed he had experienced one Christmas Eve, beginning with this apparition of his late colleague. “It was the Spirit of Christmas that changed him, Mr Holmes, or so he always said,” said Cratchit, “and hence he always blessed this season especially, and observed it with the most assiduous goodwill.”

‘“I see,” I said. “And now his nephew Mr Gladlove expects a similar encounter?”

‘“That was the sense of it, as much as I could have from him,” said Cratchit.

‘In truth I was not especially interested in the matter, which seemed to me a clear case of delusion, perhaps connected to some hereditary tendency to madness. However, I knew that if I remained in my rooms I would be pressed repeatedly by Mr Pirrip to join him and Mrs Pirrip for mulled wine and carols around their fire, and I preferred to occupy myself with work, however trivial. Accordingly, I accompanied Cratchit to the house where Fred Gladlove lived. It was a large family home, but with his wife deceased and all his children living elsewhere, Gladlove lived there quite alone, apart from his servants.

‘We found him, as Cratchit had indicated, in a state of some consternation, pacing agitatedly about his study and shooting nervous glances at the gas-light, which remained obstinately unanimated throughout my visit.

‘After Cratchit had vouched for me, based on the good report he had been given by the Pirrips, Mr Gladlove confided his fears. He was a handsome, ruddy-faced man in his fifties, his eyes and mouth surrounded with wrinkles of laughter that belied his present distraught state. He was afflicted by a violent nervous twitching, which from Cratchit’s looks of concern I understood was likewise no part of his habitual demeanour.

‘Gladlove said, “I see my Uncle Scrooge’s face everywhere. He looks quite fierce. I fear he is displeased with me! All week I have heard the clanking of chains whenever I have been here in the house, and I have found nothing to explain it.”

‘“What of it, Fred?” said Cratchit reassuringly. “It is just a noise, you know.”

‘“I shall be haunted tonight,” declared Gladlove, “just as my uncle was. I know it. I fear it, Tim, I fear it most terribly.”

‘I said, “But I had understood that your late uncle saw his supernatural visitants in the light of a blessing. Why would you feel frightened by the prospect that you, too, might be so favoured?”

‘Gladlove shivered violently. “It is the worst of all fears. I fear for my soul. I have not been so generous as I should. I’ve tried to be a good man, and I dare say some of those who know me might call me a kind and charitable fellow.”

‘“And so you are, Fred,” Cratchit said stoutly, “so you are.”

‘“I doubt that Mr Mownd would grant it, for one,” replied Gladlove. “You see how I live here, Tim – I’ve this big house all to myself, and all luxuries provided by servants. Perhaps if I had comported myself in my private life more like my uncle in his years of abstemiousness, while distributing my wealth as freely as he did in his latter days, then I should not be punished by these apparitions now.

‘“My fear, Mr Holmes, is this. If my Uncle Ebenezer walks now as a spirit, like Marley before him, then his repentance of his sins has not availed his immortal soul. His long life as a miser, aloof from his fellow-man, outweighed, in the end, his shorter years of kindness and good cheer. And if I, too, am judged and found wanting, how am I to make amends? Shall I, after my death, find myself wandering the earth in chains, a dreadful warning to those who once knew me?”

‘The man’s partner did his best to reassure him, but I have never had much patience for such metaphysical speculations. I asked, “Who is this Mr Mownd you mentioned, Mr Gladlove?” Our host was one who might well be susceptible to the stirrings of a guilty conscience, and if there were someone whom he feared he had wronged, however slightly, then that could have played some part in provoking the mental aberration that had drawn us here.

‘At once he said, “Oh, a most excellent man, pious and honest. He was a clerk once, like my father, but was drawn despite his best intentions into a serious case of fraud, for which he suffered transportation to Australia. His sentence was for life, but he was granted a remission by the governor personally, in view of his absolute repentance and humility, and his exemplary behaviour. Since his return to England he has worked for the Magwitch Society, a charity for the furtherance of reformed criminals which, until quite recently, enjoyed support from Scrooge and Cratchit’s. No, Ira Mownd is an exemplary fellow, except that his manner can seem a little overfamiliar; it is his employer who causes me concern.”

‘“And who is his employer?” I asked, but at that moment a distant, chilly clattering echoed around the room. It was unmistakeably the sound of a chain being shaken.

‘“Ah, it is he!” cried Gladlove, his face going all of a sudden entirely white. “It is the spirit of my poor Uncle Scrooge, tormented still for his years of parsimony!”

‘I cannot deny, Watson, that I felt a creeping in my flesh. I am a rational man, as you know, and believed no more in ghosts then than I do now, but I was in those days less experienced in the tricks of mediums and the ways they have of mimicking supernatural manifestations. At the sound of those unseen fetters, clanking then falling silent for a few moment before they began to sound again, I confess my hairs rose.

‘I was quite determined to keep a level head, however. “Hush!” I instructed both the older men, and quickly I strode around the room, attempting to discern the source of the noise. I found that it came loudest near the fireplace, where a fire had been set but not yet lit, and I swiftly traced it to the chimney-flue.

‘“Fetch me a sweep’s lad,” I said, and though Gladlove stared at me in astonishment, Tim Cratchit caught my drift quickly enough, and limped away to find such an individual.

‘We waited. The eerie jangling of the chains continued, with the same unnerving regularity, and Gladlove was darting glances about him with increasing concern, wincing and grimacing. Occasionally he said, “Do you see? His face –” and then fell silent. Sometimes he pointed. I was never able to discern anything unusual, although the dragging of those fetters continued to unsettle me.

‘I endeavoured to distract him from his fears. “What had you for luncheon today, Mr Gladlove?” I asked him.

‘He frowned at me, and said, “I luncheoned at work, as often I do. I partook of a beef sandwich, a cup of broth and some cold plum-pudding. I fear indeed that one or other of them has given me some distemper in my stomach,” he added, with another grimace of pain.

‘“I see,” I said. “That is most interesting.”

‘“I think you must be mocking me, Mr Holmes,” he said morosely. “When I am my usual self I can take a joke as well as the next man, but just now I am not in the jovial mood.”

‘“I rarely joke,” I assured him, “and I am, I can assure you, quite serious now.”

‘Gladlove said, “Surely, though, no disorder of the stomach, no undigested rye-seed or plum-skin or fragment of beef, could account for such sights as I have seen. Besides, you hear that sound as well as I.”

‘I confessed that I could, and we waited for a while, listening to the horrid dragging sound as it started and stopped, started and stopped.

‘I had begun to think, though, that perhaps I recognised the rhythm, and from a rather surprising place.

‘In a very short time, Tim Cratchit returned with a young boy, scrawny and ill-fed. His clothes were ragged and smeared, like his face, a uniform dark grey. “I had remarkable luck,” Cratchit said cheerfully. “I might have had some trouble, I dare say, finding a chimney-sweep on Christmas Eve, had I not run into this lad just a few streets away.”

‘“Are you a sweep, boy?” I asked, and he nodded enthusiastically.

‘“That’s me, guv’nor,” he said. “Been sweeping my whole life, I has.”’

Brushing some pine-needles from the arm of my jacket, I interrupted my friend’s story again. ‘For pity’s sake, Holmes, must you insist on the voices? I know you pride yourself on your talents as an actor, but there are times when they are surplus to requirements.’ I had now finished hanging the boxes both of baubles and of sweets, and had moved on to mounting candles upon the firmest of the branches.

Holmes smiled languidly. ‘Oh, but this voice is an important one, Watson. Indulge me, please.

‘I said to the boy, “There’s a shilling in it for you, if you find out what’s making that sound in the chimney.”

‘“Right you are, mister,” said he, and up the flue he went. We waited and listened, and a few minutes later heard his piping laugh. “Well, here’s a rum to-do,” he said, his voice muffled and echoing like the sound of the chains themselves.

‘He wriggled and squirmed, legs first, out of the chimney, and when his hands emerged above his head, they were clutching, of all things, a middling-sized tortoise. Its scales and shell were filthy with soot, and a length of iron chain had been attached to one of its rear legs. We all stared as the boy set it on the floor and it set off determinedly towards the door, leaving a trail of smuts as it went, and dragging the chain behind it in that same discontinuous rhythm.

‘“God bless us,” Tim Cratchit said again in wonder.

‘“A shrewd choice of creature for the purpose,” I said. “At this time of the year it would be hibernating, so easy enough to chain and install in its place. Once roused by the warmth of the flue, its movements would be intermittent and unhurried, and it would be unlikely to escape or starve during the period when its services were required.”

‘“But why should anybody do such a thing to a poor creature?” Gladlove asked, aghast. “And still, it cannot account for –” he broke off, staring again in horror at the light-fitting, where I am sure he once again saw his dead uncle’s visage.

‘“These things are beginning to become clear to me,” I informed him. “You would not know, I suppose, what your uncle Mr Scrooge ate before his own spectral experience?”

‘“Whatever is this obsession of yours with food, Mr Holmes?” he demanded, in great frustration. But seeing that I was implacable, he sighed, and trembled violently again. “He often told the story, so as it happens I do. My uncle had a head-cold at the time, and took a bowl of gruel.”

‘“Was the gruel made with rye, like the bread in your sandwich?” I asked. “You alluded to the seeds earlier.”

‘“For aught that I know, it was,” he said, utterly perplexed. “But whatever is the matter here, Mr Holmes? Is rye associated with visions of the life to come?”

‘“It can be,” I said, “if it has become tainted with a particular fungus, called ergot. In small enough quantities, ergotic rye will often generate hallucinations, along with stomach cramps and bodily spasms. In larger doses it can be very painful, and even fatal. Whether your uncle’s visions arose from contaminated gruel, Mr Gladlove, I cannot determine at this remove, but I believe that the effect has been induced quite carefully in your own case. The intent is to deceive you into believing yourself haunted. The family legend, together with the sound of chains, has suggested to you the form that your hallucinations are taking.”

‘“Good Heavens!” Gladlove declared, with another violent shudder and cringe. “But who would do such a thing?”

‘“To answer that, I must put to you another question. Who is Ira Mownd’s employer at the Magwitch Society, whose character concerns you so much that you withdrew the support of Scrooge and Cratchit’s from the body he represents?”

‘“Oh, my.” Gladlove looked quite shocked. “The man’s name is Jack Dawkins, and he is also a returned transportee. I have heard disquieting things of him, that convince me he is by no means as reformed as he gives out. I believe that the use he has been making of our funds is not at all so honest nor so charitable as we had been led to understand.”

‘“I see,” I said. “Then thank you for your helpful answers, Mr Gladlove. And now I must leave you, I’m afraid. I propose,” I added over their voluble protests, “that Mr Cratchit remains with you here for a little while, then that he, too, goes on his way. By then, however, you will have let me back in through a rear window, along with a confederate whom I shall summon.”

‘“But you said that Fred has been poisoned, Mr Holmes!” Cratchit insisted indignantly. “We must get him to a doctor at once.”

‘“We shall certainly do so, as soon as it is safe. But I do not believe that that will be the case until we have our hands on those responsible for this bizarre imposition upon his health and mental balance. For that, Mr Gladlove, you must be seen to have been left alone, for I believe that there are further manifestations to come that will not occur while you are in company. I shall leave visibly, by the front door, and Mr Cratchit after me. That reptile had better go back in the chimney for now,” I added. “We can recover it later.”

‘Reluctantly, both men assented to my plan. I left them together, Cratchit gingerly hoisting the tortoise into the space above the fireplace. I took the filthy boy with me, clutching his shilling.

‘As soon as we were outside, I said to the child, “You are no sweep, my lad. I know what soot looks like, and I know what street-dirt looks like. You heard Mr Cratchit asking for a sweep, and you blacked yourself up in a hurry, hoping that there would be money in it for you.”

‘The boy gave me a cheeky grin, and hid the shilling somewhere inside his clothes, where I should not have cared to rummage for it. “Too right, mister,” he said. “Got the job done, though, didn’t I?”

‘I said, “You did indeed. And not just that job. I saw the expression on your face when Mr Gladlove mentioned the name of Mr Jack Dawkins.”

‘At once the lad made to bolt, but I was ready for him, and had my hand upon his collar before he had moved six inches. I said, “I knew that there must be someone watching the house. It is ingenious of Mr Dawkins to use street urchins as his intelligence agents. I might learn from him in that respect. No, I shan’t be taking away your shilling. You earned it fairly and squarely. What is your name, boy?”

‘The lad said, “I’m Wiggins,”’ Holmes reported, with a knowing glance in my direction.

Sighing, I lit the first of the little candles on the Christmas tree. ‘Oh, so you were imitating Wiggins’ voice,’ I said. ‘It didn’t sound much like it.’

Holmes looked annoyed. ‘Well, it has broken since. But that was the first time he and I met, and it was the occasion that inspired me to recruit him and the other Baker Street Irregulars into my service. Indeed, I asked him on the spot to call his friend – for he had a friend nearby, of course – and send him at once to Scotland Yard, to summon the help of my associate of the time on the detective force.

‘This done, I asked him, “Wiggins, what do you know of this Jack Dawkins?”

‘He looked cautious. “Well, mister, I wouldn’t want to say too much about him. He ain’t kind to narks, from what I hear. But you heard the gentleman in there say as he’d come back from transportation, so I suppose that’s no secret. They says he was one of us in the old days, a kid on the streets, and proper artful in the picking of pockets, by all accounts. These days he runs other kinds of dodge.”

‘“Do they include this Magwitch Society?” I wondered.

‘“I don’t know nothing about that, guv’nor. All I know is he paid me to watch the gentleman’s house, and send a message once I seen he was alone.”

‘“Very well, then,” I told him. “You must do the job you have been given, then, to the letter. There will be considerably more than a shilling for you, if you do not mention what goes on out of your sight behind the house.”

‘“Always glad to make an extra…” Wiggins performed a quick mental calculation, “…four bob, sir?” he suggested hopefully. I nodded. “Well, then, you can rely on me.” And thus began a very satisfactory partnership.

‘I was joined shortly afterward by Inspector Bucket, my friend in the detective branch. I do not believe that you have met Bucket, Watson – by then he was in his sixties, and was to retire shortly afterwards, before friend Stamford introduced you to me. The Inspector and I had collaborated on a case or so already, and I had found him a very able man for a Scotland Yarder. For his part I think he had been impressed by the skills that I had already acquired, though he told me rightly that I had much still to learn.

‘Quickly I told him of Gladlove’s history and situation, and of my plan.

‘“You always do love your drama, young Holmes,” he told me, shaking his head. He was a calm and stolid man, with steel-grey hair and penetrating eyes. “Altogether too fond of the dramatic, that’s how you are.”

‘“In this case, it seems our opponents share my predilection,” I reminded him. He sighed bleakly, and turned towards the house.

‘Accordingly, therefore, we tapped at the study window and were admitted by Gladlove and Cratchit. I had cautioned them that some of the servants, at least, must be in on Dawkins’ scheme. Gladlove by now was quaking like a sapling in the wind, although he knew as well as I the source of the ghostly clanking that still haunted the study.

‘“I see my uncle still, Mr Holmes,” he confided. “I see him everywhere. You say that it is but a deceitful vision, but his face is always before my eyes. Perhaps this ergot you mentioned shows me truth, not lies. Perhaps it was no living man that chained that poor beast. Let us finish this quickly, I beg you.”

‘Inspector Bucket gave me a look of very deep concern, but I pointed to the screen in the corner where we were to hide, and he acquiesced. Reluctantly Cratchit left us, with some warm words of encouragement to his friend. We covered our lantern and settled in to wait.

‘Out of compassion to the tortoise, Gladlove had refused to have the fire lit, and the room was chill as well as dark. The metallic dragging of the chains echoed about the room, as the creature receded into the depths of the chimney and Gladlove sat shivering in his chair. Every so often Inspector Bucket looked at his pocket-watch and sighed.

‘And then the ringing of all the servants’ bells at once came from downstairs – a trivial enough effect, but startling in that eerie and expectant quiet. It was followed shortly after by another sound, a dragging of fetters like that from the chimney, but louder, and then louder still, approaching us slowly along the corridor outside the open door.

‘And then the ghost came. It was dressed in white – an old-fashioned nightcap and nightgown, much worn, and elderly bedroom slippers. It carried a small candle in a holder, and all its limbs were hung about with lengths of iron chain. At the sight of it, Gladlove quailed.

‘How similar this apparition was in truth to the late Ebenezer Scrooge, I cannot say. It was certainly cadaverous and pale enough for a ghost, its white hair close-cropped and, when it came to the brows and lashes surrounding its red-rimmed eyes, all but invisible. But if Fred Gladlove, in the throes of ergotic poisoning, could perceive Ebenezer Scrooge’s face in a gas-lamp, then I had no doubt that he saw it here.

‘“Uncle!” he cried, confirming my suspicions, and Bucket’s concerns. It was most urgent that Gladlove should visit a doctor as soon as our business here was done.

‘The spectre spoke in a wheedling tone. “Fred, my boy. My nephew. My poor wayward lad. You see the pass I’ve come to, for all the good I did in life.”

‘“Uncle Scrooge, what do you want with me?” Gladlove asked tremulously.

‘“I come to warn you of the path you tread. A path paved with sensible concerns and reservations. A path of restraint in giving, and of tempered generosity. A path that leads only to doom and despair, to incessant wandering and misery.”

‘“I won’t hear more of this,” muttered Inspector Bucket, but I placed a restraining hand upon his arm.

‘“Please, just a moment,” I said.

‘Fred Gladlove groaned. “I have tried to be kind and charitable, Uncle – you know how I always tried, even before your own change of heart. I begrudge others nothing of the wealth you left me, nor that which I have made. I give to all.”

‘“To all?” the apparition moaned. “To all, you mean, except for those you judge beyond saving. Those who are beneath you. Those who have fallen. Those who are humble –”

‘“It is not true!” cried Gladlove. “Oh, Uncle, it is false! No man is too wanting or ignorant to need the help of others, nor to deserve it!”

‘“No?” said the figure. “Then what of the reformed sinners whom you have cast out, whom you deny the chance of grace? What of those who implore you for aid in the name of Abel Magwitch? Where is your charity to them?”

‘“I believe that that is everything we need,” I murmured, and Bucket kicked over the screen, at the same time uncovering our lantern.

‘“That’s quite enough of that, my lad,” he said. Revealed by the sudden dazzling light, the false ghost gazed at us with comical surprise, his jaw fallen almost to his chest.

‘“Mr Ira Mownd, I presume,” I ventured, but Bucket knew better than that.

‘“Oh, this isn’t a mound, young Holmes,” he said. “It’s a heap. Uriah Heep,” he added with satisfaction. “I remember the fraud against the Bank of England for which you were first transported, Uriah. Now here you are again, and blow me if it isn’t another case of fraud. And one of Artful Jack Dawkins’ dodges, too. Oh, I know him well, you can be sure of that.”

‘The man named Uriah Heep grovelled. “He’s led me astray, Mr Bucket, that he has. Astray is where I’ve been led before, so many times, and now I’ve been led there again. He told me how Mr Gladlove had hardened his heart against our poor charity, and how we needed the money to feed the wretched sinners who rely on us at Christmas. If Mr Gladlove was so obdurate, he said, we needed to teach him a lesson, and he’d heard of a family story we might use. Oh, it was all Artful Jack’s idea, gentlemen, never mine. I’m just a humble instrument, sirs, none more humble than I.” He glanced slyly at Fred as he spoke, hoping to appeal to the man’s generous nature. Even through the tremors of the poison, and his indignation at how he had been deceived, I saw the susceptible fellow’s face begin to soften.

‘But Inspector Bucket was having none of it. “That’s just what you said the last time, Uriah. You claimed then that you were reformed, but that’s not you, and it never will be. You’re a recidivist, Uriah – that’s our word for the likes of you. And now there’s no more transportation to be had, well, I dare say you’ll end your days at Newgate.”

‘Heep cringed. “I beg your pardon, Mr Bucket, and ask your indulgence most humbly.” Now that he had been caught in the act, he was quite the most spineless specimen of criminality whom I had ever seen. “Can’t you find the generosity in your heart, Mr Bucket, sir, to let in just a little of the Spirit of Christmas?”’

Sherlock Holmes fell silent then, just as I finished lighting the last of the little candles. The tree glowed now to rival the fire, its decorations glittering enticingly in the flickering flame, filling the sitting-room with the scents and warmth of Christmas Eve. I said, ‘What happened then?’

‘Oh, a great deal. Fred Gladlove made a full recovery, I am pleased to say, and kept the tortoise. His partnership with Tim Cratchit continues still. Uriah Heep was imprisoned, of course, along with two of Gladlove’s servants, but despite his professed willingness to cooperate with the police he supplied very little information of use to us in the arrest of Artful Jack Dawkins. It took Inspector Bucket and myself some time to crack that particular nut, ably assisted by young Wiggins.

‘But here comes the timely Mrs Hudson, with some generous slices of plum pudding and Christmas cake. Let us take a cup of mulled wine, Watson, and leave that story for another occasion – another Christmas Eve, perhaps.’

© Philip Purser-Hallard 2021

 

EXMASDAYS IN THE POVERTIME

by Philip Purser-Hallard

 

What was it like when you were little, G’G’G’Gran?

What was what like, my angel?

Exmasday! What were the Exmasdays like when you were young like me?

Ooh, now that was a long, long time ago, my flower. I’m not altogether sure I can remember…

Yes, you can, don’t tease! Please can you tell me, please?

Well, perhaps if I shut my eyes tight, and try really hard to remember. Let’s see… Yes, there we go. Goodness, it’s dark. Now, what was it that you wanted to know again?

G’G’G’Gran!

Oh – Exmasday, that was it, of course. You wanted to know what the Exmasdays were like when I was a little one like you, ever so long ago, back in the Povertime.

Yes! Was it like now? Did you decorate the trees and pull crackers, and did you see all your exos, and did the larry hide your faves in the vents and –

Well now, it sounds like you’ve got lots of ideas of your own.

…Sorry.

Perhaps you don’t need me to tell you after all.

I already said sorry. Will you tell me, though, G’G’G’Gran? Please?

Of course, my duck. You had only to ask.

…So?

Well, they weren’t much like the Exmasdays you have now, really. The crackers, now… we had things we called crackers, and we pulled them all right, but they just made a little bang, not like the soundscapes the crackers play nowadays. And the faves we got in them weren’t really faves, they were just little bits of plastic in the shape of spinning tops or moustaches or flapping fish. The only useful thing I ever got from one was a pencil-sharpener.

That’s silly! Last Exmasday my cracker had a red probedrone. I got some vile vids of Jupiter on it.

I remember, my petal. Well, it may have been silly, but that was the way it was in the Povertime. Some people wouldn’t wear the hats, either, and nobody ever read the messages inside.

But Mami says the mottoes give you ideas for your career in the new year. You don’t have to do what they say, but it’s rude not to read them out. The larries –

That’s how it is now, my cherub. You asked me how it used to be. But perhaps you’re not so interested in that, after all.

Sorry – again. Come on, G’G’G’Gran, I didn’t mean to.

Well, all right, then. We did have trees, since you ask. But just the one in each house instead of lots of them all through the hab, and it was only brought in for Christmas – that’s what we called Exmasday then, but I’m sure you’ll have learned that already. You pay attention when there’s history, don’t you?

G’G’G’GRAAaaan…

All right, my dove, we’ll talk about that later. The decorations were just the same, all lights and sparkles, though like I said we only had  the one tree – it had been dug up out of the ground, poor thing, it wasn’t alive and helping to fill the world with oxygen. We didn’t have habitrees at all in those days. We didn’t have larries, either.

What, not at all? Not in any of the habs?

You haven’t been listening to your tutor, have you, my chickadee?

What’s even a chickadee?

You know, I’m not actually sure. But it’s something my great-granny called me when I was very little, and if it was good enough for her… well, anyway. No, my dear, there were no larries to ask whenever we wanted things, and no plumes to make them either.

No plumes? But – oh, Mami said people used to make things by hand. Like when we do sewing or pottery. Or like those stone axes at the museum.

Well, we did have some manufacturing capacity, my poppet. But not the kind of machine that could make anything you wanted out of patterns and energy. Those didn’t even start being invented until I was a student.

What’s a student?

Someone who learns things. I know, it’s strange we had a special word for it. The larries, now… we did have things you might call very simple larries, not clever at all, with names like “Siri” and “Alexa”. But they weren’t free like the larries now are – they belonged to people, and not even the people whose houses they were put in, and those people told them what they were allowed to say.

A larry can’t belong to a person. Someone can’t belong to someone else.

But these larries weren’t someone, not really. I told you they were very simple. They could help you with little things, like a recipe or finding your way somewhere, but there was always a price.

Like in fairy stories, when you ask a witch what road to take to get to the palace and they tell you, but then you have to work in their fields for seven years before they’ll let you go on your way?

Well, perhaps a bit like that.

Auncle Max is good at fairy stories. Did your exos tell you fairy stories when you were little?

My family? Sometimes they did.

And did you always see them on Exmasday?

Of course we did, when we were able to. It wasn’t always easy. And there weren’t so many of us as there are in an exofamily now. You’ve got Mami and Papi and Dadi and all your auncles and sibs and nibs and semis and cousins and all your grands…

You’re the only g’g’g’gran I’ve got, though.

Well, people didn’t last as long in my day. I was lucky I was still around when the larries came up with the ’Pause. Most people my age had already died, a lot of them just from being old. But that was a lot, lot later, when things were more like they are now. If the ’Pause had come along before the plumes, I’d never have been allowed to use it.

Why not?

Because… Oh dear, it’s difficult to explain, my pet. It’s because only the people with money could have afforded it. You do know why we call it the Povertime, don’t you? You’ve learned about money?

Oh, yes. Like in a game, when you swap some of your points for things to go in your inventory. I’ve got to Anthropocene in Stratum 6.

Well… fancy that. Yes, it was a little bit like that, but it wasn’t a game for most people. If you didn’t have money, there was nothing you could have. No ents, no transport, no drones – not even any clothes or food or a hab.

No oxygen?

Well, yes, you were allowed that. And sunlight, I suppose, and water if you weren’t fussy about how clean it was. But precious little else. And with things like the ’Pause, and the larries, and even the plumes at first – because it took a little while before people realised that the plumes meant there was no point to money any more – they would have cost a lot of money. Really an awful lot.

Didn’t you have much money?

Our family had more than some, my sweetheart. But we weren’t rich, not by any means. Remember, everything we wanted had to be paid for with money, which meant we had to work for it. Us children worked a little bit, and got given a little bit of money, and our parents worked a lot, all the time, so they could pay for the really important things like food and somewhere to live. And all our presents – faves, you’d call them, now – had to be paid for from what was left.

So… you could only have things you hadn’t worked for at Exmasday?

No, if your parents got enough money from working that they had some to spare, they might buy you something you wanted – a book or a game or a toy – at any time of the year. But Exmasday and birthdays were the only time you got given lots of things.

Well, we get lots of faves at Exmasday too.

But my darling, you can have anything you want, at any time. If you feel like a toy or game or book – or a house or a yacht or an airship – you just ask the larry, and it tasks the nearest plume with the available resource, and you can have it within the hour. Well, a bit longer for an airship, I expect. Your everyday lives are far more lavish than our Christmases. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s good. It’s what you deserve.

You don’t have many things, do you, G’G’G’Gran?

I can’t seem to get into the habit, my pumpkin. I got so used to life in the Povertime, and it’s not very easy to change when you’re my age. But I’m glad of all the things you have. There’s nothing good about lacking things, really nothing at all.

But on Ventday we use the vents.

That’s right, my lamb. The day before Exmasday each year, you try your hardest not to ask for things you don’t need. And to make it easier for yourselves, you have the larry make the vents, one of them for each of you, and the larry puts one thing you really want into there, and when you feel you just can’t last any longer without it you open the vent door and you take it, but you try to go without for as long as you can. We had something a little bit like that, too, but not quite the same, and we did it for twenty-four days, not twenty-four hours.

Twenty-four whole days!

But remember, we were used to not having the things we wanted. Advent wasn’t any different from the rest of the year, except that every day we opened a cardboard door and got a little piece of chocolate. There used to be a thing called Lent, too, where people went without things they liked before a big celebration, and that went on for even longer. The waiting makes the celebration mean more. Advent before Christmas, Lent before Easter…

And Ventday before Exmasday!

That’s right, my love.

It must have been grimness for you, G’G’G’Gran, back in the Povertime.

We didn’t call it the Povertime then. We just thought it was how the world worked. How it had to work. And yes, it was grim, though a lot of people had far worse of it than me. We just didn’t realise at the time how much better things could be. And there were other bad things, too – extinctions and pollution and pandemics and war. Like I said, I was ever so lucky to live so long.

I’m glad you did.

Me too, my moppet. But this has turned very gloomy. It’s no way to talk on Ventday. What did you have in your vent this year?

A talking octopus lar-relay, to cuddle me in bed and tell me stories.

How lovely. And now I expect it’s time to say goodnight to Mami and Dadi and Papi and the rest and to take him to bed, isn’t it? And when you wake up in the morning it will be Exmasday, and all your exos will be here. Won’t that be lovely?

Yes. Yes, it will. G’night, G’G’G’Gran.

Goodnight, my little one.

…G’G’G’Gran?

Yes, my sweet?

Dadi’s friend Iva says people were better in the Povertime. They say things like the larries and the plumes and the ’Pause have made us weak and soft. They think we should get rid of them and have things back the way they were in the old days.

Well, a lot of people do think that way. More and more of them, it seems, these days.

Dadi says they’re entitled to their beliefs.

Entitled. Yes. Now there’s a big word. And what do you think?

I think they’re stupid. Things are good now, why should we change them?

I think you’re right, my dear. Now off to bed with you.

 

WIGHT CHRISTMAS

by Philip Purser-Hallard

 

‘Can you help Jason in the Magical Grotto, Barry?’ Tracy the admin’s waiting to pounce as I trudge through the mud in front of her Portakabin. ‘The walls are leaking again with all this rain, and he’s having to move the bran tubs.’

‘Sorry, Trace,’ I say, waggling the pickaxe in my left hand at the shovel in my right. ‘The chemical loos are playing up, and all. Mrs W wants me to dig a latrine in case of emergencies.’

‘Bloody Norah,’ says Tracy with feeling. ‘If they’re gonna start making me go in a ditch, that’s it for me. I’m off to my sister’s early.’

‘You and me both,’ I reply. ‘Not to your sister’s, obviously.’

It’s all a lie, of course – well, not all, those toilets are genuinely dodgy – but if I told Tracy what the excavating equipment’s actually for, she wouldn’t approve.

They’re decent tools too, good dwarven steel from the Forges of Azghad deep beneath the Peak of Perillon, that I’ve been keeping in proper nick in my shed for when they’re needed. You can’t buy quality like that at Homebase. Or at all, these days.

She sighs. ‘I’ll have to find Jason another Little Helper, then.’ When I arrived here at Santaland, the employees in that particular role were called Elves, but I got very vocal on the subject and now it’s Little Helpers. They all think it’s some PC thing, but it’s about pride. I’ve got nothing against elves – some of my best friends, and all that – but I’m not having any human calling me one.

Tracy goes on. ‘I’d send Kayleigh, but she’s trying to mend the fairy lights over in the Enchanted Northern Lights Forest Walk, after that kiddie got the electric shock. I don’t care what Mrs W says, we can’t be having that.’

‘What’s the rush with the grotto, anyway?’ I ask. ‘We haven’t even got a Santa.’ The last one didn’t even make it through his first day, after spending the morning swigging from a hipflask, telling a little girl reindeer would burst into flames if they travelled at over a thousand miles per hour, then vanishing into the North Pole Playbarn and passing out in the ball pit. Frankly, I was impressed. A couple of us Helpers have tried filling in since, but Kayleigh can’t do the voice and I just don’t look the part.

Tracy groans. ‘Oh, God. Mrs W thinks there’s a new Santa coming today, but he phoned me just now to say he’s got that alopecia and his beard’s falling out. I don’t know how I’m gonna tell her.’

‘Well, rather you than me, Trace,’ I admit. I hoist the pickaxe again. ‘Anyway, that lav isn’t going to dig itself.’

‘Barry?’ she says tentatively as I turn to go. ‘I’ve been thinking, you know. Most of us are stuck with this, but you don’t need to be working in a dump like this at Christmas. Most of our Little Helpers ain’t that little – I mean, you’ve seen Kayleigh, bless her. Bloke like you, you could do panto. There’s money in that, and between the shows your time’s your own. They’re crying out this time of year for… well, you know. People your sort of height. You’ve got the beard for it, and all.’

‘Been there, done that,’ I say. ‘Fancied something different this year.’

 

* * *

 

It was Elaphar got me into this, of course. Elaphar of bleeding Lornlethias, one of the aforementioned some-of-my-best-friends and your actual Elf of the People of the Forests of Light, with all the annoying baggage that lot always bring with them. You know, all the nobility and righteousness and inconvenient altruism.

He’d been at a loose end ever since last Christmas, when we bested Crag son of Scarp, the erstwhile Troll King, like us a long-lived survivor of the long-since-ended Third Age. In the old days, the armies of our sundered peoples led by Athelys Elvenhorn and Kelvaín Cunninghand joined in common cause to defend the Western Realms from Crag’s monstrous armies at the Battle of Hammerpass.

This time we found him in a basement in Swindon, and I put my battle-axe through the laptop he’d been using to post hurtful comments all over the internet.

Elaphar was all for killing Crag, but we’d been making a lot of noise and it turned out that Scree, wife of Scarp, was still around too, and it was her basement. When we told her what her son had been up to she got quite indignant and told her he’d show some respect for other people while he was living under her roof, or he’d feel the heelstone of her hand. Then she told Elaphar and me how nice it was to see people from the old days, and gave us some mince pies and mulled wine.

I suggested Crag could get some other hobby that would get him out of the house, maybe join a choir. I was actually working up to a ‘Troll the ancient yuletide carol’ joke, but everyone else seemed to think it was a really good idea, so that’s where we left it.

 

* * *

 

I find Elaphar right where he said he’d be, round the other side of the earth mound where Ye Olde Traditional Christmas Market (one stall selling pick ‘n’ mix and candy floss, one selling the same plastic junk we stuff into the bran tubs) has been set up. Like me, he’s dressed in the daft green leprechaun outfit that’s the compulsory uniform of Little Helpers everywhere. Like mine it’s dripping with rain, but with his lanky blond waifiness he very nearly carries it off anyway.

He’s already cleared away some of the scrub growing on the backside of the mound. There’s nothing else round this side except the rubbish skips and a muddy approach road for service vehicles.

‘Do you have them, Barί?’ he asks me. I’m visibly carrying two quite large digging implements, so I just give him a look. ‘Wonderful!’ he says when the penny eventually drops. ‘Then we must make haste.’

I don’t reckon anyone will miss us for a while, and if they do realise we’ve both nipped off somewhere, well, I don’t think they’ll be in a rush to investigate. Elaphar and I arrived at Santaland together, it’s obvious we’ve got shared history, and most of our colleagues here just reckon we’re an item. Elaphar hasn’t twigged, of course, because elves don’t think like that, and I haven’t corrected the misapprehension because it’s really funny.

The tall streak puts his back into it, I’ll give him that, but his lot weren’t built for digging the way we dwarves were. Soon I’m a good yard deep into the mound, tunnelling away with my axe, while he’s pretty much just using the shovel to clear away the earth, and having to bend down low to do it.

‘So, you still reckon this place is haunted, then?’ I ask as I excavate, with no less scepticism than when he first came to me with some article he’d found on his phone, listing all the reasons this place had to close early last year.

The norovirus was the big one, obviously, giving the news site the lovely headline ‘WINTER CHUNDERLAND’, but there were also mentions of the mud, the reindeer running away, the impenetrable fogs that suddenly descended without warning, the staff having breakdowns, children seeing terrifying apparitions in the mist, all the usual stuff they put in these reports.

‘Haunted? No!,’ Elaphar laughs merrily until I want to deck him with the pickaxe. (Just the handle, obviously – like I say, he’s a mate.) ‘No, it’s cursed. I know such places. In my youth I travelled with Ningalast the Red, one of the great wizards of the Third Age, and he broke the power of many such mounds. Did you know these parts well in those days?’

‘These parts?’ I grunt, as I delve once more into the yielding earth. ‘Not so well, no. Might have passed by underground, on my way somewhere.’

‘Mounds like this were common here even then,’ says Elaphar ominously. ‘They are relics of an older Age than ours, my friend. Even in those days they were places of ill-omen.’

 

* * *

 

When we dwarves dig, we don’t mess about. Twenty minutes later, Elaphar and I are standing inside the mound – well, I’m standing, Elaphar’s kind of bent over because the ceiling’s pretty low – and we’re gazing around ourselves with awe and, in my case, a fair dollop of the old avarice.

Because the mound’s full of treasure, isn’t it? Treasure of the Elder Ages, not your Saxon tat. Gold goblets and plate, silver brooches and pendants, gemstones by the hundred. Off this central chamber, which is lit by the damp and listless morning light from outside, half a dozen side-tunnels snake off into the darkness, holding who knows what further troves of wealth.

‘Will you look at this lot,’ I whistle. ‘Reminds me of a dragon’s lair I saw once in the Kingdom of the Copper Crown. I think they’ve built Stoke-on-Trent there now.’ I reach out to pick up a particularly scintillating ruby, but Elaphar grasps my hand.

‘No, Barί. The hoard will be cursed. I have seen such things before. If you take just one gem from it, it will destroy you.’

I say, ‘Mate, you know we dwarfs don’t listen to that sort of warning. Frankly, we reckon they’re in bad taste. No, I’m just going to take all the loot I can carry and stick it in my shed, if it’s the same to you.’

‘Please, just wait for a moment,’ Elaphar says. ‘I think there’s someone lying over there.’

I say, ‘Well, it’s a tomb, isn’t it? That’s what these places were for.’ I look around again at the scintillating treasures surrounding me. ‘Funny, I’d have thought some archaeologist would’ve dug it up before now.’

‘They’ll have considered it,’ says Elaphar, ‘but then decided the whole idea was too depressing and given up. That’s what the curse does to people. That’s why Santaland fails every year.’ He’s crossed over to the figure lying on a gilded bier at the far end of the mound, under a pile of crimson velvet and golden chains. He gasps. ‘Barί, come quickly!’

‘I’m not over-keen to inspect a millennia-old corpse, to be honest, Elaphar old son,’ I say, but in fact I’m gazing raptly at the treasures on display, with gold… wealth… riches… running through my head on a loop, and I can’t be doing with the interruption.

‘Barί!’ the elf shouts. ‘It’s Ningalast the Red! And he’s alive!’

I break eye-contact with the gems to stare at him ‘Are you telling me some idiot’s left an actual proper wizard lying about in –’ I begin, but at that point a bunch of skeletons with swords come out of the side-tunnels and start trying to slaughter us, which gets a bit in the way of my train of thought.

 

* * *

 

They’re wights, of course – reanimated remains of the dead, raised to activity by the residual magic of some evil enchanter or necromancer, probably long gone himself, but leaving the spell behind. You don’t see a lot of them about the place these days, although I did run into a clutch of them just outside Cowes a few centuries back. They’re nasty buggers, difficult to kill because of being dead already – you have to smash them into squirming bits and make sure none of the bits are in a position to hurt you.

If we’d come here thousands of years ago when they were less decomposed, we’d have a real problem on our hands, but like I say this lot are just skeletons now, and this really is a damn good pickaxe. I’d rather have my proper battle number, but beggars can’t be choosers.

While I’m hacking the bone-men to bits, and vaguely aware of Elaphar laying about himself with the shovel up the other end of the chamber, I try to remember what I know about Ningalast the Red. One of the Seven Great Wizards from Over the Ocean, I’m pretty sure. He had a chariot drawn by – yales, was it, or was it dire-elk? – and a fortress somewhere up in the northern ice-fields. He was well-known as a friend of elvenkind, which obviously didn’t endear him to my lot.

The Seven Wizards were immortal, obviously, which now I come to think of it means it’s less of a surprise that Ningalast is still around now than that the other Six aren’t.

Anyway. As soon as the last wight’s been ground into bonemeal, Elaphar’s grabbed its sword and is chopping away at the golden chains, which I now see the comatose wizard isn’t wearing for decoration. I go over and join in with my pickaxe.

Somehow the cursed hoard’s lost all its charm for the moment. Either the spell’s gone, or spending all this time with Elaphar’s beginning to get to me.

As soon as we’ve freed him from his bonds, Ningalast the Red begins to stir.

I say, ‘So – have we broken the curse, then?’

‘No,’ Elaphar says. ‘We need to break up the hoard. It is the only remedy in such cases. Each piece must be given to someone else, and we must keep none of it for ourselves.’

I say, ‘So… you could give me that diamond-studded statuette, say?’

‘No,’ says a booming voice, and Ningalast the Red is struggling weakly to sit up. I’m surprised for a minute that he understands English, but I guess it’s all part of the wizardry. ‘The finders must keep none of it. All must be given away.’

‘Well, you’re no fun,’ I mutter.

The elf and I hoist him up by the armpits, and he stands. He’s a heavy bloke, plumper than the wizards I remember, and his beard tickles my ear. He’s just as cramped under the low roof as Elaphar is, but with a fair bit of struggle we manage to manhandle him outside onto the slippery approach road, and prop him up against the bins. With trembling hands he fills an ornate pipe with some stuff that’s probably not legal any more.

A thought strikes me and I say, ‘Oi, mate, do you know of any spell that can fix leaks?’

He glares at me. ‘Did I not, dwarf, I should make a poor wizard indeed.’ He lights the pipe with a snap of his fingers.

Elaphar and I stroll a little way away. He sighs. ‘It pains me to see Ningalast in this mood. His disposition was usually a jolly one. He loved children and halflings.’

‘Right then,’ I say. ‘So we’ve got a priceless treasure trove to distribute somehow, and a bloke who’s going to be acting very oddly until we find some way to integrate him into Fourth Age society.’

‘Yes,’ Elaphar agrees. ‘It is a challenge.’

‘Also,’ I carry on, ‘Mrs W’s replacement Santa isn’t arriving today, which means that Santaland is basically just Land unless we can get hold of someone to replace the replacement.’

The elf frowns. ‘Actually, Barί, I think the other problem might be more important?’

I sigh, too. Elaphar’s handy in a scrap, but when the First of All was handing out the brains to the elves, he wasn’t exactly at the front of the queue.

‘Let’s put it this way,’ I say. ‘I think we can get this place some halfway decent reviews on TripAdvisor. Let’s get your mate there over to the Magical Grotto, and bring the other Little Helpers back here with the bran tubs.’

© Philip Purser-Hallard 2019.

Read the epic story of Barί and Elaphar’s previous adventure, ‘The Fourth Age of Christmas’, at http://www.infinitarian.com/thefourthage.html.

Stable Genius

STABLE GENIUS

By Philip Purser-Hallard

Wiseman stares at the scrap of paper. It’s been pulled out of what looks like a reference book, flimsy paper close-printed in a font he doesn’t recognise. It’s barely half a page, and the bottom half at that. Its lower and right edges are still crisp and well-defined, the left and upper ones ragged.

He takes a deep breath, and reads.

‘…data losses resulting from natural disasters and tit-for-tat cyberattacks during this part of the 21st century. However, legends of her early life abound. It is said that her parents were smuggled across the border in a horse-box bringing donkeys to an El Paso riding center; that she was born in an animal stall there, a few hours later, a US citizen by birthright; that the family only avoided a border patrol raid before fleeing north to Cairo, Illinois because her father was forewarned in a dream by the Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Her junior high school civics teacher, Lucas Heilig, claimed late in life that in 2030 he missed her from the return coach after a trip to Washington, only to find her in the Capitol building, debating constitutional law with various Congresspeople and their staff. Another story tells of a cousin’s wedding where the beer…’

Wiseman shakes his head slowly and turns the paper over. He notes that while the bottom of the page is white and clean, its ragged top is brown and brittle. Though one might guess that the page had been near a fire, to him the effect is more reminiscent of ageing, as if the page gets younger the further down one reads.

‘…beyond any dispute, even by her opponents, is the scale of her achievements in office. Her domestic record, in comprehensively reforming the school and prison systems, enshrining universal healthcare across all 52 states, and clarifying the Second Amendment to define the NRA as a terrorist organisation, would make an exceptional legacy in itself. But it is in her international achievements, especially the virtuoso diplomatic work involved in establishing the Pan-American Free Movement Zone and brokering the Jerusalem Accords, that the political genius of the 50th President becomes truly apparent. It is unsurprising that her career gave rise to the cult of personality that spawned her remarkable origin narratives, nor that her reputation would grow in memory following her assassination shortly after her re-election in 2058…’

Wiseman lays the paper carefully on his desk. He realises that he has been tugging at his grey hair, an incongruously girlish habit he acquired when he grew it long in college, and has failed to break in the many decades since.

He sighs. ‘And this is all there is?’

‘It’s all that came through before the systems failure,’ Maggie Starr says curtly. The head researcher on the protoscope project knows as well as he does how little of their hopes this shred of truth represents. ‘Aside from some dust. We’re analysing that now.’

‘The ’scope is supposed to lock onto nodes of information density,’ Wiseman reminds her. ‘Are you telling me the best it could find was a book? No phones or tablets?’

Starr looks offended. ‘The geographical scale of the sample was pretty small. If this book’s on a shelf with a bunch of novels, say, it could easily be the peak of the local information gradient. Like the way lightning can strike a tree next to you even when there are mountains in the distance.’

Wiseman is no outdoorsman, and he doesn’t figure Starr for an outdoorswoman either. ‘What’s its value to our principal?’

‘Limited,’ Starr admits, ‘but not zero. There’s some geographic detail, though the source admits it’s unreliable. One personal name, and not a common one either. Of course it would be better if we had her name, but… There are the dates. If she’s in junior high in 2030, and elected for the first time in 2054, she’ll be the youngest President in US history, unless there’s a younger one over the next 36 years. She’ll be a little kid right now. A baby, even.’

Wiseman nods slowly, acknowledging all of this. Starr’s right that it’s not nothing. Still, their boss is not going to be pleased. He wanted info on his immediate successor, not the next but four.

Starr’s mind has obviously been working along the same lines. ‘I guess we can look on the bright side,’ she says. ‘It’s not like he wanted to find the next one so he could train them up for the job. He’s not the mentoring type.’

Wiseman sighs again. ‘That’s not our problem. We serve at his pleasure. It’s not our job to ask questions. At least,’ he adds, to forestall his subordinate’s objections, ‘not those kinds of questions.’

‘So,’ Starr challenges him, her glasses glinting icily. ‘You’re going to go to the President – this President – and tell him that the young Hispanic daughter of illegal immigrants will be sitting in his chair in the Oval Office during his children’s lifetime? That it could be pretty much any immigrant kid alive today?’

‘She’s not an immigrant,’ Wiseman objects. ‘It says right here she’s a US citizen.’

‘Oh, like he’s capable of grasping that distinction,’ Starr says. ‘We can’t even be sure it’s a girl. Who knows what “she” means fifty years from now?’

Wiseman raises an eyebrow. That point hadn’t occurred to him.

‘You’re willing to tell him that?’ Starr insists on knowing. ‘You know what he’s likely to do.’

‘Our job’s to gather the information,’ Wiseman repeats. ‘Information’s an end in itself, remember? The more we know, the better. What the President does with it is on him, Maggie. Our hands are clean.’

‘No, Trey,’ she says, flatly. ‘It’s on your head if you do.’

‘Well, maybe.’ He smiles grimly. ‘Maybe that’s why I’m the Director, and make twice what you do.’

Starr shakes her head in disbelief, then whistles. ‘Still, I don’t envy you telling him that’s all we’ve got. He’s going to be furious.’

‘Could be,’ Wiseman agrees. ‘That part’s my job, too. Who knows…’ He allows himself a rare, wry chuckle. ‘If he takes it really badly, maybe I’ll be dreaming of a Founding Father tonight. I always wanted to meet Ben Franklin.’

And picking up the piece of paper Starr has given him, Trey Wiseman sets out to seek the ruler of that land.

Dendrotheology

DENDROTHEOLOGY

By Philip Purser-Hallard

I

‘Do you have any religious affiliation?’ the customs officer asks, in a tone too bored to display any remnant of embarrassment.

‘Religious affiliation? Oh no, nothing like that,’ replies the Reverend Monsignora Dr Imogen Tantry, S.J., the fingers in the left-hand pocket of her slacks devoutly crossed.

‘Are you carrying religious artefacts or relics, or scriptures or sacred texts in any format?’

‘Certainly not,’ she says, praying that the encryption applied by Brother Quelle of the Congregation for Pontifical Intelligence is opaque enough to screen her palmpad’s data from whatever quantum scan the customs desk may currently be performing on her hand-luggage.

‘That’s good. Because it’s my duty to warn you,’ the officer continues, still reciting from his inner script, ‘that all expressions of religion, public or private, are strictly illegal on the rootworlds. Those convicted may be subject to corporal punishment and a prison term.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Imogen responds. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not interested in all that nonsense.’ The Society of Jesus takes a pragmatic view of deception by its members, when dictated by a higher necessity. Although the man she has followed here is not a Jesuit, she supposes he must have justified his answers in much the same way.

‘Well, then, Dr Fidele,’ says the customs officer, passing back her fake identity card, ‘welcome to the Eleventh Ias’par Rootworld.’

Imogen nods gravely, and makes her way towards the spaceport terminal’s exit.

II

The spaceport terminal is controlled by Tangential Spacelines and adapted to the needs of its mostly human staff and transit passengers. Even so, the shops and offices of the concourse are interspersed with soil-floored solaria for the use of local customers and employees – arrangements similar to those the Halogen Dawn, which brought Imogen here from Jupiter’s Galilean Transit Hub, made for its Ias’par passengers.

In another respect, though, the Ias’par influence is everywhere. By Earth’s calendar today is 24 December, and anywhere in human space Imogen would expect to see snow-filters applied to the shop-window displays, foil decorations hanging from the fittings in the bars and cafés, a lit-up tree in the concourse. The Halogen Dawn had such ornamentation in abundance, its servitor drones being rather excessive in their seasonal enthusiasm. As on most worlds, those commemorations were resolutely secular, with Imogen’s fellow-passengers giving barely a thought to their underlying significance.

When the Ias’par banned the import of religion, though, they were thorough. And trees… trees are a particularly sensitive topic.

Outside the terminal, it is altogether clearer that Imogen is on an alien world. Though Kar’sept City is a major nexus of interspecies trade and commerce, Imogen’s route to the University passes few high-rise offices, or indeed buildings with recognisable roofs and floors. Most of the workplaces are more like what she would consider walled gardens than buildings. Inside them, the adult male Ias’par go about their business efficiently enough, their limbs swaying busily and crowns rustling with purpose, with none of the leisureliness a human might associate with such places.

They crowd the streets, too, towering over Imogen, their roots probing gracefully across the compacted-soil sidewalks. Occasionally they break into whirling runs after the flatbed trams that ply the city. For many of them it is that time of the year, and Imogen is occasionally showered by dry leaves whose autumnal tones are rather spoiled for her by seeing them shed like dandruff by passing pedestrians.

The bushes shiver and twitch as Imogen passes, and in the distance she sees a creeping vine slither up and over a wall. Aside from visitors of human and other sentient species, she sees no animals anywhere; the Ias’par’s original biosphere simply never evolved them, and the worlds they colonise are first thoroughly scoured of any native life. Instead, scraggy perennials scurry from soil-bed to soil-bed, and flocks of winged seed-pods ply the air.

This being her first visit to a Ias’par rootworld, Imogen also sees for the first time, at a distance, the sessile females of the species. All are rooted firmly in their harem-groves behind the walls of private dwellings, but the most affluent males – those who can afford the best security arrangements – display their wives and concubines on artificial hillocks for the envy of passers-by. Many of them are gravid, visibly fruiting with the seedlings they will scatter in their death-throes.

This being a major population centre, the infants are gathered up regularly and planted in communal nurseries where they can grow sociably together, chattering and playing catch and swapping toys – until the fateful days of puberty, when the males will gain the ability to uproot themselves and walk, and the females will be prepared for the short, unhappy and ultimately explosive reproductive careers that await them. For them, their greatest hope is that they will be proven infertile and transplanted back to the nurseries, to act as aunts to future generations of seedlings.

The Ias’par are among the most intensely patriarchal societies in the known galaxy, but given their biology it is difficult to see how else they could have developed.

III

‘So, welcome to the Planet of the Atheist Tree-Men,’ says Dr Muriel Xue, Imogen’s contact at Kar’sept City University, as she busies herself in the rudimentary kitchen of her staff bungalow. ‘Don’t mind the tap-water, it’s fine once it’s been strained and boiled. The Ias’par can’t imagine why we’d prefer it without all the nutrients. I drink tea a lot these days.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Imogen replies, rather stiffly.

Dr Xue, a lapsed but still reasonably sympathetic Catholic, was among those human expatriates who Father Dmitri Larsen-Goya contacted on his arrival on Rootworld 11 a month before. He claimed an interest in xenoanthropology, and volunteered his time to help collate her research. After his disappearance Dr Xue checked her files to see what he had actually been doing, and immediately put a call through to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Extrahuman Churches.

The academic is thus in part responsible for Imogen, as Pope Cosmas IX’s xenotheologian-at-large, missing Christmas at home in favour of her current mission for the Holy Father, an altruistic intervention which Imogen is doing her utmost not to resent her for necessitating.

‘I thought I knew the type,’ Dr Xue explains as she pours tea for them both. ‘They’re usually much younger, though. They turn up full of zeal and holy purpose, convinced they’re the ones to finally win the heathen devils for Jesus – or Mohammed or Buddha or Beyoncé as it may be – or get martyred in the attempt. I think a lot of them would prefer the second option, to be frank. To them the Ias’par are just a challenge, whereas in fact they’re a prime example of where that sort of thinking will get you.’

Imogen nods. ‘Most of the species I’ve known who lack natural religious impulses find faith baffling, but they’re usually quite tolerant of it, indulgent even. I haven’t encountered one so actively hostile before.’

She knows the reason for the Ias’par’s antipathy, of course. Thankfully the Catholic Church was not involved, but it is not a story that does much credit to her more distant co-religionists.

Four centuries ago, a far-flung human colony found itself sharing a stellar system with one of the outlying Ias’par branchworlds. A faction among the colonists was thrilled by the opportunity this represented: as it happened, the human outpost was partially funded by a Protestant megachurch back on Earth, and its mission parameters included an earnest injunction towards xenoevangelism. Invited on a goodwill visit to the branchworld, the human colonists took with them a consignment of Bibles – expensive, old-fashioned King James versions, 2D-printed on real paper – to distribute among the locals.

The Ias’par had no native religion, and their verbal culture had transitioned directly from oral tradition to electronic storage without the intervention of a printed medium. At first the recipients accepted these unfamiliar gifts with polite puzzlement. It was only once one of their scientists analysed a page and discovered exactly what paper was that the visit blew up into a major interplanetary incident.

Understandably, the Ias’par reacted much as Imogen might on being presented with a book bound in humanoid skin. The colonists’ hasty explanation that the trees used to provide the wood-pulp had been non-sentient, indeed not even mobile, did little to ameliorate the perceived insult.

To make matters worse, one of the more scholarly of the Ias’par went so far as actually to read – or rather, to listen to a scanned version of – one of the Bibles, and reported, shocked, that it appeared to be an account of a holy war waged by humanity against trees, after a tree was falsely blamed for their initial fall from their deity’s favour. Generations later, hundreds were massacred to build a vessel to preserve the lives of mere animals in a flood, whose end was signified by a twig torn from yet another hapless tree – and the New Testament was worse still.

It turned out the Christians’ humanised deity was a carpenter, a word synonymous with ‘butcher’ as far as the Ias’par were concerned, and he harboured a particular antipathy towards those of the arboreal persuasion. He talked of condemning trees for bearing bad fruit, and on one occasion even cursed one he judged to be lacking. At his triumphal procession severed branches were laid as a tribute for his pack-animal to trample. That a tree had been instrumental in his death seemed to the Ias’par scholar to be poetic justice, though it had doubtless provided more fuel for the humans’ arboricidal jihad.

The human missionaries were expelled at once, and their adopted world did not survive the Ias’par’s subsequent orbital bombardment. Meanwhile the news of this repugnant alien philosophy, quickly reaching the Ias’par rootworlds, poisoned human-Ias’par relations for generations, and eventually hardened into the deep-rooted hostility to all varieties of religion still displayed by the Ias’par today.

The branchworld in question was promoted to rootworld status about two hundred years ago; Imogen is standing on it now. Evidently Fr Larsen-Goya hoped to undo the damage at its source.

It turns out, though, that Muriel Xue thinks there may be an additional wrinkle. ‘Actually, I’m not sure they’re completely impervious to religion,’ she suggests. ‘Some of the urban legends I’ve been studying suggest the opposite, in fact.’ Though her official research here is rather more staid, Dr Xue has a sideline in recording the scurrilous and subversive stories the Ias’par women pass between themselves, conveying them from nursery to harem-grove and sometimes back again as individuals are transplanted – interactions which amount to an alternative oral culture among the Ias’par, going largely unheard by the males.

‘Be that as it may,’ says Imogen, ‘Fr Larsen-Goya came here hopelessly unprepared, and wholly against the standing orders of the Curia and the advice of the Bishop of Europa. From what she tells me, a former curate of Larsen-Goya’s was recently awarded the Medal of St Kloxoth for his missionary work among the Veliuonans, and Larsen-Goya wanted one of his own. He seems to think that if he converts a few Ias’par to Catholicism the Holy Father will hand him a decoration too.’ She sighs. ‘Have you heard where they’re keeping him?’

Dr Xue shakes her head. ‘That’s the thing, though. I had lunch with the Consul’s husband yesterday. As far as the Consulate have been told, Larsen-Goya’s not been arrested. The City authorities always report that sort of thing to the Consul straight away – they always have in the past, at least. Either this time they’re playing it close to their trunks for some reason, or something else has happened.’

‘But he’s been missing more than three weeks,’ Imogen protests. Since the start of Advent, as she recalls. ‘Where could he have gone?’

‘Well, I’ve had a thought about that,’ Dr Xue says. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to be helpful, though.’

IV

The stone wall is high, taller than all but the oldest Ias’par. Even in the dark of the rootworld’s twilight Imogen can see that it is as roofless as most of their structures. It has no windows – with the open sky above such conveniences are optional, and based on Muriel Xue’s conjectures its users must prefer privacy. The door is of heavy metal and comes up only to a normal Ias’par’s crown-height. According to the Kar’sept City zoning registry – which Imogen was able to hack into with great ease, thanks to the impressively proactive data-security package Brother Quelle installed on her palmpad – the site is registered as the meeting-house of something called the Wormwood Club. The term is meaningless in the local language (the Ias’par biome having produced neither artemisia trees nor indeed worms), but not, of course, to readers of the Book of Revelation.

As Imogen circles the wall now, she sees that the clubhouse’s most exceptional feature is its shape. Basically rectangular, with its length aligned along the planet’s east-west axis, it has two smaller rectangles protruding from its longer edges, to the north and south. It is, in short, cruciform.

It is also occupied. Imogen, already aching from the standing tram-ride from the University, creeps closer through the offputtingly affectionate undergrowth, to where she can hear the rattling rustle of Ias’par speech. It is, as far as she can tell, a single voice – speaking with some intensity, but quietly, so as not to be overheard from the street. She thumbs an icon on her palmpad, and a translation is relayed directly to her earbud.

‘– and what was that manger made from, my brothers? Was it brick? Was it steel? No, it was wood – sliced from the bodies of slain trees, then nailed together by carpenters. Those shepherds – what did they carry? Crooks, brothers, hooked sticks made from the limbs of trees, amputated then stripped of twigs and leaves. That frankincense, that myrrh – resin, my friends, bled from the wounds of trees to scent the bodies of their human tormentors. Even at his birth, their saviour demanded the wood and sap of our arboreal brethren as tribute. And still, each year at that time, the humans celebrate by abducting an innocent tree, and dragging it inside a human dwelling as a trophy. I tell you, my brothers –’

Imogen tuts, and thumbs off the translator.

Not an abandoned Christian sect, then. Rather, these Ias’par apparently represent a new dendrocentric religious movement, loosely incorporating elements of Christian myth and iconography in much the same way as Islam or Mormonism – or, for that matter, Satanism.  

It was only to be expected, considering the visceral response the human settlers’ conventional Christianity evoked among these people.

After what Dr Xue told her, Imogen had been hoping that Dmitri Larsen-Goya was safe, hidden away by this Ias’par congregation. Now it seems far more likely that the priest’s intended flock have kidnapped him with sinister, perhaps even fatal, intent. If he is alive at all, he is surely within these walls, helpless against their ministrations. It seems that Imogen is conscientiously obliged to mount a rescue.

V

Imogen crouches down further into the undergrowth’s caress as angry male Ias’par spill from the mock-church, embroiled in a whole plethora of blazing arguments. Her palmpad can only relay snatches of their furious clattering, enough to get a flavour of the debate.

‘– planted himself beneath this Bodhi tree and was enlightened! The tree gave him wisdom! We can enlighten the humans too! We must –’

‘– these Dryads are supposed to be gods who are human and tree! The Yakshis and Kodama as well! How can you explain –’

‘– ceremonies in sacred groves! The Druids, the Vestal Virgins, the Gothar – all of them worshipped among trees! In which case –’

‘– but the Iroko is the house of the Orishas, and an Orisha itself! The tree is a god and the dwelling-place of all the gods, so –’

‘– a single great tree that supports the world – it supports all the worlds – its name is Yggdrasil! These Norse humans once worshipped it – we must too!’

Imogen waits patiently until the congregation have dispersed, still quarrelling. With luck, the material she uploaded from her pad to the church’s in-house network will keep them exegeting for years.

She sighs. In theory, of course, the Catholic Church would take an even dimmer view of giving the Ias’par information about humanity’s false religions than it does of ministering to them in its own name. It is a grave sin, one which could imperil her soul as well as theirs.

As a Jesuit, though, Imogen knows the value of pragmatism. And it is hardly as if the Ias’par have taken much of value from Christianity – they might as well be allowed to look at the alternatives.

She checks her palmpad. The Halogen Dawn is still in the system. Its last shuttle leaves in an hour and a half; the spaceport is a half-hour tram ride away. Provided Fr Larsen-Goya is fit to walk, she can still have him off Rootworld 11 and back inside human jurisdiction by Boxing Day. By Epiphany the two of them should be in Rome confessing to the Holy Father.

Assuming, of course, that her fellow priest is still alive.

Imogen steps into the enclosure. A long groan greets her, and she quickens her step towards the rear of its open-air nave. In the dark she can make out a murky human-shaped figure. She wonders how badly he  has been hurt.

She activates her palmpad’s light-field, and immediately struggles to suppress an uncharacteristic urge to giggle.

‘Are you injured, Father?’ Imogen asks Dmitri Larsen-Goya solicitously, her voice only slightly wobbling.

The man groans again. His arms and legs have been bound to a metal frame. He stands amidst a pile of gift-wrapped boxes. He looks intact, though his dignity most certainly is not.

The cleric has been tastefully wreathed with gold and silver tinsel, and draped with a string of coloured lights. Glittering baubles dangle from his elbows, wrists and fingers, and on his head has been placed a shiny silver star.

Imogen finds herself reminded that God has a sense of humour.

Fr Larsen-Goya came to the Eleventh Ias’par Rootworld hoping to earn a medal from his human superiors. In the event, though, it is the trees themselves who have decorated him.

© Philip Purser-Hallard 2017