The Hickory Staff Page 6
‘Don’t touch me,’ the rider commanded, then softened and added, ‘You will be fine, but we must go now.’
Prince Draven’s body lay in state in the Malakasian capital city of Pellia as thousands of citizens paraded slowly by his ornate, etched-glass coffin in the Whitward family tomb, paying last respects to their ruler.
Draven had collapsed suddenly several days earlier while riding north along the Welstar River. His attendants had rushed the elderly man to the palace doctors, but they had been too late: though the most skilful healers in Malakasia had worked through the night, the prince died at dawn. His body showed no sign of violence or disease, save for a small injury to his left hand. The doctors guessed that Draven had been killed by the same dreadful virus that had taken the Ronan Prince Markon’s life.
Draven’s body was conveyed in the royal barge from Welstar Palace, then carried from the river in a sombre procession to the city centre. His corpse would lie in state for ten full days, time enough for mourners to make their way to Pellia and bid farewell to the fallen leader.
Many brought gifts, final offerings for their prince: loaves of bread, fruits, tanned hides and wool tunics were left on the casket to ensure Draven’s passage into the eternal care of Eldarn’s Northern Forest gods.
Marek Whitward, Draven’s heir and now Prince Marek, ignored the rumours of unrest and kept silent vigil, standing at his father’s side and staring into the distance, day after day. Dressed in black boots, black leggings and a black tunic with the family’s golden crest on his breast, Draven’s only son looked far too young to take on the challenges he would face in the coming Twinmoons. Sometimes he could not help himself, weeping silently, though it was inappropriate for the Malakasian people to see their new leader shedding tears in public. Across the city, concerned people, commoners, merchants and gentry alike, described what a heart-wrenching experience it had been for them to witness Marek waiting with his father’s body, as if he could reanimate the fallen prince by sheer will alone.
On the sixth day, as Marek arrived to continue his lonely watch over the casket, he seemed a little different. Rather than staring straight ahead, as he had previously, Marek watched the parade of mourners filing past the elaborate floral arrangement ringing Prince Draven’s coffin. Rumours flew about the village square: the young prince had made sexually inappropriate comments to numerous women in the procession, and had even taken a loaf of bread from the top of his father’s coffin and begun eating it. He no longer wore the gold family crest, but he had added black leather gloves to his already dark wardrobe. On the morning of the seventh day, the prince did not appear at his father’s side at all.
SUMNER LAKE, COLORADO
July 1979
Michael Wilson checked the flow of air from his regulator and pulled bulky flippers onto his feet. He waited, but Tim Stafford wasn’t ready yet. ‘C’mon Tim, hurry up,’ he said impatiently as he dangled his feet from the dock. It was hot in the mountains today, but the water would be cold in Sumner Lake; it always was. He was glad to have a full wetsuit. Tim wore a wetsuit as well, but unlike Michael, the younger boy did not wear a hood – he said it made his mask flood. Michael always wished he could bear the cold like Tim could, but he couldn’t stand the icy temperature against his skin. Although still in middle school, the two boys had been diving since the previous summer when both decided to give up riding the bench week after week at soccer games. Their mothers sat together on the beach near the dock, reading and gossiping.
The lake was one of their favourite dive sites. It was stream-fed and crystal-clear for much of the summer, so a diver could see further than fifty feet, even in the deepest areas, and there were plenty of sites to visit along the bottom. Back in the 1960s a small plane had crashed and had never been recovered from the lake’s floor. Michael and Tim didn’t know if anyone had been killed, but it was great fun to visit the broken sections of the aircraft. There were several rock outcroppings that were excellent places to find and dislodge lost fishing lures, and periodically they would come across a camera, a pocketknife and other cool items accidentally dropped in the water.
The best part about diving in Sumner Lake was the mining equipment that littered the bottom. The lake, created as a reservoir for Denver-area homes, covered an area mined by gold and silver prospectors more than a hundred years earlier. Michael’s teacher had told him there were flooded mine shafts too, but the boys hadn’t found any yet – secretly, Michael was glad: he knew fearless Tim would dive headlong into the flooded shafts, while he would be plagued by thoughts of iridescent spirits, ungainly, crippled fish and thick tangles of slippery weeds that would cling to his ankles and hold him prisoner inside the inky darkness for ever.
Scattered across the lake bottom were the remains of miners’ shacks and pieces of abandoned equipment, most far too large for the boys ever to haul to the surface. Sometimes they would find a hand tool, a lost boot or some silverware left behind when the mines were flooded. Along with their visits to the aeroplane and their search for lost fishing lures, the boys combed the lake floor in search of mining artefacts. Mr Meyers, the old man who owned the antique store around the corner from Tim’s house, paid them a few dollars for anything of value they brought to his shop.
‘Just push the clamp down and you’re done,’ Michael directed impatiently. Tim, who was small and not very strong, struggled with the clamp attaching his scuba tank to the buoyancy compensator. ‘Let me help you,’ he said finally, pulling his feet from the water and struggling to stand.
‘I can do it,’ Tim grunted as he pushed hard to close the clamp around the tank. ‘See? Let’s go.’
‘Okay, where should we head?’ Tim had virtually memorised the lake floor.
‘Forty feet for sixty minutes,’ Tim suggested. ‘We’ll swim over near the big rocks where those guys are fishing and then cover the flats to the plane. We can head back this way when we hit five hundred pounds.’
‘That’s cool. Maybe we’ll find some lures or something.’ Michael spat into his mask to mitigate fogging, then, holding the mask and tank, he rolled from the dock into the water. He tucked his face down onto his chest as he felt the icy water rush into his wetsuit between his hood and the back of his jacket. That was always the worst moment, until his body temperature warmed the thin layer of water between his skin and the neoprene; in just a few seconds he felt quite comfortable, despite the cold. He looked up when he heard a splash and watched as Tim leapt feet-first into the lake, then adjusted his facemask and kicked towards the bottom.
Fifty minutes later, Michael motioned to Tim: five minutes before they needed to head back to the dock. Tim was playing outside the fuselage of the aeroplane, pretending to pilot it like a submarine through the depths of Sumner Lake. They had found two fishing lures and seventy-five cents near the rock outcropping about a hundred yards west of the aeroplane; Tim was thrilled with their discovery and Michael could hear him yelling, even through his regulator. Their find had been followed by a long swim to the crash site across the area Tim called ‘the flats’, a stretch of barren ground with nothing but sand, rocks and a few plants dotting the brown expanse. Tim waved once and headed out across the flats towards the dock. He was the faster swimmer; Michael put his head down and kicked as hard as he could to keep up.
They were halfway across when something caught Michael’s eye. It looked like a starfish half-buried in the sand, glinting momentarily in the sun. Michael stopped and waited for the sand to settle before he reached for the small star-shaped object. It resisted his initial tug and Michael realised the buried item was larger than it first looked. As he pulled harder, the strangely shaped metal object came free in a cloud of silt. He raised his find to his facemask: a spur. He shouted for Tim, but his friend was already out of range. As he polished the edge with his thumb, Michael could make out the letters ‘US’ etched gracefully onto the side near where the spur attached to a boot heel.
This was a great find, the best treasure the two diver
s had ever pulled from Sumner Lake. The letters carved into the metal meant it must have come from a soldier or a cavalry rider. Michael could barely contain himself as he continued searching the sandy bottom, hoping to uncover more – Mr Meyers would surely give them at least five dollars for the single spur, but if he found its mate they’d be worth much more. He checked his pressure gauge, and saw he had only two hundred PSI left in his tank. Looking around, he made a mental note of the spot: he and Tim would come back the following weekend.
Michael was running his hand through the sand one last time when he saw the key. It didn’t look like an ordinary key: it was long and flat, with two differently shaped teeth protruding from both sides of one end. It had the letters BIS etched into one side, the number 17C carved into the other. This would be one for Mr Meyers’ key jar, the huge glass jar the old man claimed his great-grandfather had used for making pickles in Austria in the 1800s. Today it held hundreds of keys, many of them fitting antique locks, like those in the cabinets and wooden chests for sale in Mr Meyers’ shop. Others were thrown into the jar in exchange for a wish. ‘They are the keys to the known world,’ Mr Meyers told all who asked. ‘If you make a wish when you drop one in, it will always come true.’ Michael was too old to believe such fairy stories, but Tim loved to drop keys into the enormous jar.
Michael slipped his latest find inside his wetsuit, gripped the spur like a recovered national treasure and swam hurriedly to the dock.
IDAHO SPRINGS, COLORADO
Last Fall
Steven Taylor walked slowly across Miner Street to the entrance of the First National Bank of Idaho Springs. Steven had few physical characteristics that would make a passer-by take more than a cursory glance in his direction. Slightly shorter than average, he was green-eyed, with a shock of unruly brown hair. He was pale, more from genetics than any aversion to sunlight; rather than tanning he slid gradually from the cold ivory he sported in winter to the alternating blotchy pinks and deep sunburned reds of summer.
His face was a battlefield between worry wrinkles creasing his forehead and laugh lines tugging at the corners of his close-set eyes and surprisingly delicate mouth. He was attractive to the few women who knew him well, more for his wit than his physique, though, as an avid weekend sportsman, he was in good physical condition – and this despite his poor eating habits. Steven’s clothes appeared to have been borrowed from two people: one a thickset man with low, slat-sided hips and the other a lean athlete with a penchant for overworking his arms, shoulders and upper body.
It was 7.45 a.m. as Steven fished in his coat pocket for keys to the front door. He’d been holding a pile of files in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other and was forced to put the paper cup in his mouth, gripping the edge firmly with his teeth as he dug through the pockets of his wool blazer. Looking up towards the mountains above Clear Creek Canyon he could see the yellow leaves of the intermittent aspens, now fully changed from their spring green. They dotted the hillsides among the hegemonic green expanse of the Ponderosa pines. Autumn came early to the canyon. The coming winter would be another long one. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought, then laughed at himself: I think that every morning.
‘Hello, Steven,’ Mrs Winter called. She was sweeping the sidewalk in front of her pastry shop next door and stopped to offer a quick wave.
‘Good morning,’ he answered, his voice muffled by the cup, and burned his upper lip in the attempt. ‘Ouch, damnit.’ Steven dropped the coffee cup onto the sidewalk, splashing his shoes.
‘How’s Mark this morning?’ Mrs Winter asked, ignoring the coffee accident.
‘He’s fine, Mrs W,’ Steven answered. ‘He’s teaching the Stamp Act today … was up late last night working on some way to make it a bit more palatable for the kids.’ Mark Jenkins was Steven’s roommate; he taught US and world history at Idaho Springs High School.
‘Oh, that’s exciting: one of the causes of the Revolutionary War. Tell him I said keep up the good work.’ Mrs Winter had known Steven since he was a boy, when his family moved to Idaho Springs. Her pastry shop was one of many local businesses kept afloat by tourists stopping for gas off the interstate. Not many people visited Idaho Springs for more than a few hours; the local LATGO and Sidney mines did not draw many from the masses who rushed by on their way to the ski resorts of Breckenridge, Vail or Aspen.
Steven had started working in the bank after completing his MBA at the University of Denver. He was a bright, successful graduate student, and he’d been headhunted by a number of investment firms from San Francisco, New York and Chicago – but he had procrastinated too long and lost out on several lucrative positions. He put it down to fate and bad luck and climbed back up Clear Creek Canyon to take the assistant bank manager’s job for a year; he planned to accept the next decent offer that came his way. That was three years ago. Now he couldn’t remember why he had hesitated to accept the jobs when they had been offered. He didn’t love the bank business or investment fields, certainly not the way Mark loved teaching. He studied business because he knew it would pay well, but it didn’t inspire him to study further, or to explore the nuances of financial theory in action. Actually, he could remember very little that inspired him that much – so he wasn’t really surprised when he found himself still here, still home, after three years. Steven never actively sought inspiration; he expected it to come one day, in a great metaphysical epiphany. He would wake one morning and find his calling waiting for him with the morning paper. It hadn’t shown up yet, and here he was, as usual, opening the bank at 8.00 a.m., although this time with no coffee and stained shoes.
To make matters worse, today was going to be especially dismal. His boss, the estimable Howard Griffin, had directed him to oversee a complete audit of all open account files – some going back as far as the bank’s original customers in the 1860s. Steven had started the job the previous day; he anticipated a great deal of tedious secretarial work with little reward.
‘You’ve got leadership potential, Steven. I want to see you taking on more projects like this in the future,’ the bank manager had told him with enthusiasm.
But Steven was finding the assignment was disillusioning him even further, increasing his distaste for a career in finance.
‘Who could be inspired by this?’ he said to himself as he switched on the lights and crossed the lobby floor to the aged pine window and counter top.
Pushing the stack of files through his window, he re-crossed the lobby and switched on the illumination for the display case hanging on the opposite wall. It held grainy photographs showing mine workers, and some hand tools found in the LATGO mines on the northern wall of Clear Creek Canyon, as well as the original ownership papers for the bank, a photo of Lawrence Chapman, the founder, and several pages of accounting ledgers from the original books. Steven rarely considered the items, but he was glad customers had something to look at while they waited in line.
The condition of his shoes this morning made him pause and consider one photo, of Lawrence Chapman and a bank employee. The man wore a uniform with awkward-looking boots, a frilly white shirt, suspenders and a large belt buckle with the letters BIS clearly visible on the front.
‘Well, my shoes may be wet and smell of cappuccino, but at least I’m not wearing that get-up,’ Steven said, wandering towards his office.
Checking his e-mail, Steven found a message from Jeffrey Simmons, the doctoral student in Denver who shared Steven’s only real passion, abstract mathematics concepts.
‘You work in a bank, dress like a philosophy professor from the ’50s, and you love abstract maths. I’m surprised you don’t have to beat the women away with a slide rule,’ Mark would tease him.
Even though his roommate couldn’t appreciate the beauty of calculus or the genius of a good algorithm, Steven liked Mark immensely; the two had shared an apartment ever since Steven had returned to Idaho Springs. To Steven, Mark Jenkins was the perfect history teacher: he possessed an enormous body of knowledge and had a
razor-sharp wit. He thought Mark was the most knowledgeable and quick-thinking person he knew – not that he would ever admit that to Mark.
Jeff Simmons, on the other hand, fully understood the joy of a complex equation: the mathematician often sent Steven problems to consider and solve in an infuriatingly uncomfortable deductive paradigm. This morning’s message was no exception. It read: ‘You use them both every day but probably have never considered why the numbers on your cellular telephone and your calculator are organised differently.’ Steven was about to pull a calculator from his desk drawer when he heard the bell above the lobby door chime as someone entered the bank.
‘Stevie?’ Howard Griffin, at only 8.10 a.m.? He was early this morning, which meant he hadn’t taken time to exercise on his Stairmaster before leaving for work. Steven smiled at the irony of anyone owning a stair machine while living in Idaho Springs: the entire city was constructed on an incline at 7,500 feet above sea level, with mountains on either side of Clear Creek Canyon rising to over 12,000 feet. He liked to think Griffin had lost some sort of bet with the Devil and had to climb his eternal stairway, a corpulent, baby-boom Sisyphus, rather than just go outside for a walk each morning, but he knew better. Griffin had moved to Boulder from New Jersey in the 1960s. When he discovered the decade would not last for ever, he enrolled in the University of Colorado, completed his degree and moved to Idaho Springs to become manager of the small town’s bank.
Now, at fifty-five, Griffin was bald and had a burgeoning paunch that he battled every morning as he climbed Colorado’s highest peak, the Mount Griffin Stairmaster. His commitment to exercise was admirable, but he had a weakness that regularly bested his determination to regain the thinness of his youth: Howard Griffin loved beer, and most afternoons would find him propping up the bar at Owen’s Pub on Miner Street. Steven sometimes accompanied him, and Mark would join them for a few beers or the occasional dinner.