9. Conversations
In which Gosie has rather a lot to report...
The first thing Gosie saw on coming through the door was Graphic, bent low over a sheet of Bluestocking notepaper with a fine-liner in one paw, three more pens lined up beside her in different inks, deep green, a burnished gold, a blue dark enough to pass for black until the light caught it. The sheet already held the beginnings of something that looked less like a letter and more like a small, very deliberate piece of art, ivy worked along one margin in the green, a compass rose taking shape in the corner picked out in gold, the crooked little crest at the top left untouched, worked around rather than over, as though even improving on Galley and Gutter’s printing would have felt like a step too far.
“We’re writing to Fenella again,” said @ChristmasStars, before Gosie had said anything at all.
“I didn’t know that was decided.”
“It wasn’t, particularly. It just seemed obvious once we talked about it. She liked the notepaper. So we thought, more of that, only better.” Christmas Stars nodded at Graphic’s work with the satisfaction of someone who considered the matter settled. “It’s not going to say anything different from before. It’s just going to look considerably harder to put down.”
Gosie left them to it and let herself be drawn further into the room, where the evening had reached the stage where several conversations were happening at once and nobody minded that they overlapped. Gosie had barely got her coat off before Gantry had her notebook out again, and by the time tea arrived Gosie had an audience arranged around her in the manner of people who had learned that Gosie’s news was usually worth interrupting an argument for.
She told them about Brennard and Vye first, because it was the part she understood least and wanted rid of. The steady years of quiet commissions. The sudden silence. Norwich Cathedral as the last confirmed piece of work, finished and delivered, and then nothing since, until, apparently, now.
“Nothing since,” said @Hedgehogforshort, “until now.”
“That’s what Gemma Glasswing said. Workshop after workshop getting the same enquiry. Nobody confirmed yet. Just the asking.”
Hedgehog set down her cup with the particular care of someone who had just heard a fact rearrange several other facts behind her eyes. “So whatever it was, stopped, and now it’s starting again.”
“That was my thought.”
Christmas Stars looked up from the half finished letter still sitting on the table beside Graphic’s inks. “Well,” she said, “that settles what we’re asking Fenella.”
Gosie looked at her.
“Whether anyone’s been round asking after her availability,” said Christmas Stars. “Same as the other workshop. If they need this much glass, they’ll have gone to more than one place for it.”
Gosie told them about Norwich Cathedral next, and here she was more careful, because she still wasn’t sure how much of it meant anything. The roundel. The symbol worked into the border. Glossy, who had been hovering since the word Norwich, held out a paw for the camera before Gosie had finished the sentence, and vanished toward the darkroom she kept through the door behind the bar, the one nobody else was allowed to use the good chemicals in.
And then, because Hedgehog was looking at her in the way that meant she wasn’t going to let it go unmentioned, Gosie mentioned the discrepancy.
"@EdithStourton noticed it, not me. Said the circle was out of true, just in one small place. The rest of it machine pressed, clean as anything. That one bit wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t what,” said @AngleofRepose, not looking up from the atlas, which had reappeared on the table sometime between the tea and the toast.
“I don’t know. Just wrong. Different, somehow, from the rest of the mark.”
Angle turned a page without any particular urgency. “Worth remembering,” she said, which from Angle counted as considerable enthusiasm, and went back to whatever she was cross-referencing.
It was @Boiledbeetle who spoke next, from her position half under the table where she had been quietly working through a plate of Tunnocks Teacakes that nobody remembered giving her.
“Well, obviously,” she said, through a mouthful of marshmallow, “they thought they’d finished.”
“Finished what?” said Hedgehog.
“Aurelia. That’s why the workshops went quiet. They were close. Days away, maybe less, and then you lot went and took the one thing they still needed.”
“So it wasn’t finished?” said Hedgehog.
“Wasn’t then. Isn’t now, unless they’ve been very quick about it.” Boily reached for another teacake. “But you forced Customs to seize the last few consignments they needed, and workshops don’t start quietly asking around for new work unless somebody still wants something built.”
“Of course,” said Hedgehog. “The project in Portland. Days away from completion, and we stopped it.”
“They still want it done,” said Boily. “So they still need the stuff. Seeds. Maps. Ledgers. Stonework. Glass, evidently. Whatever they lost, they’ll need it again, one way or another.”
Glossy had already pinned the Norwich prints up beside the other photographs on the wall, the roundel enlarged twice over, the symbol in the border blown up bigger still, and it was Graft who saw them first.
She got up and crossed the room without excusing herself. Grind followed, because Grind generally did.
“That’s the glass from the yacht,” Graft said. “The crate we opened. I’d know that cut anywhere, and that blue.” She looked at Grind. “Same panes.”
“Same panes,” Grind agreed, with the flat certainty of someone confirming a measurement rather than offering an opinion.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/9-conversations