Sixty-One Nails Part 58

We sat around the table in the kitchen, Ben, Jeff, Lisa and James opposite Blackbird and I, while Meg fussed around us.

"I still don't see the difference," Ben Highsmith repeated, scratching his head.

"Believe me," I told him, "We would not be sitting here talking like this if it was remotely like the Quick Knife. "

"But we made it the same," he protested.

"And it's definitely iron," Blackbird said. "But not like the Quick Knife. Rabbit is right; we would be able to tell straight away if it was the same. We would know as soon as you brought it anywhere near us, either of us." Our hopes of restoring the knife to this year's ceremony and reinforcing the barrier against the Seventh Court were melting away.

"Do you know anyone else, anyone you could recommend?" I hated to ask, but it was all I could think of. Ben Highsmith bl.u.s.tered, but it was his son who answered.

"There's no one else does the kind of work you need. That's why we've kept the skills alive all these generations. And there's none alive that's better with iron than Dad. Dad, sit down, he's only asking what you'd ask in his place."

Ben had stood up ready to defend his honour, but then sighed and slumped back into his seat, resting his chin in his hands. "I s'pose," he admitted.

"Are you sure there's no way of mending the old one? I mean, it's potent enough, it's just not in one piece," Blackbird asked him.

Ben answered. "No, No. It won't take a weld and it can't be braised. Melting down the metal will return it to solid iron, but not in the way you want. Broken is broken with cold iron." We lapsed into silence again. "Can I see the broken one?" Lisa asked.

She hadn't said a word until now, sitting close to her grandfather as if she dwelt in his shadow. He was as startled as we were that she'd spoken.

"Fetch it out for her, will you?" he asked me.

Blackbird unzipped her bag and extracted the box with the knives in it, sliding it across the table towards them. "If you don't mind, Rabbit and I will go and stand in the yard while you look at it."

They waited while we stood and trooped outside into the yard. Even then, the p.r.i.c.kling sensation down my spine, the ache in my bones, told me the moment the box was opened.

"What are we going to do now?" I asked Blackbird. "I don't know what we can do. Get them to make another? Is there any reason it would be better than the one they've already made? Maybe they've lost the art, in which case we can only ask them to experiment and try and regain it. Whatever happens it will be too late for this year, maybe too late for all of us. If the barrier collapses..." She let the words trail away and kicked a stone across the yard. It bounced unevenly across the concrete.

I felt the dull ache subside and knew they had finished examining the knife before Ben Highsmith emerged, his granddaughter trailing behind him, her father following her out to stand watch behind them. "This Quick Knife is useless, right?" He questioned Blackbird, brandis.h.i.+ng the box.

"The broken knife can't be used for the ceremony," she confirmed, "unless it can be repaired well enough to cut a hazel rod?"

"Nah, but Lisa spotted something neither Jeff nor I had seen. I'd show you but... "

"We'll take your word for it," I told him.

"The blade of the knife has been hammered after it cooled. You can see it if you hold it up to the light. Jeff and I didn't believe her at first. We didn't even look for hammer marks, but sharp-eyes here spotted it." He smiled down at her and ruffled her hair affectionately. She grinned up at him, basking in his praise. "So why don't you hammer the new one?"

"It looks like the original has been hammered cold and we know that if you hammer cold iron, it shatters. The metal's too brittle to take it. That's why we weren't looking for hammer marks."

"Then how could it have been hammered in the first place?"

"That's what Lisa wants me to try. She wants to see if the old knife can be hammered. If it can, then that might explain the difference between the knives. Or it could just shatter."

I looked at Blackbird. She nodded. "Do it," she told him.

We followed them to the back of the farm being careful to avoid the plume of smoke being whipped off the top of the chimney by the stiffening breeze. The forge was there, the bed of coals still burning from their night's work.

"Unlike copper, iron isn't usually hammered cold," Ben told us. "The knife we made for you was heated in the forge until the iron became ductile and then it was hammered into shape. Keeping it hot and hammering it drives out the impurities so you end up with something you can work with. That's wrought iron." He went through the low arch into the forge. Neither Blackbird nor I made any move to follow him. He raised his voice and moved about in the dimness within, donning a leather ap.r.o.n and collecting things together while he continued explaining, raising his voice to be heard through the open doorway of the forge. "Cold iron is harder to make," he called out to us. "A very particular ore is put though an ancient process to produce a lump of coa.r.s.e iron called a bloom. The bloom is reheated and then hammered to drive out the impurities. It has to be cooled slowly enough to allow the crystals to form, but hammered enough to drive out the impurities. Hammer it too much and it'll shatter, too little and the impurities will make it brittle and it won't take the shape. Cool it too fast and it'll develop fracture lines, too slow and it'll be soft and never take an edge. It's all in the making."

He picked a hammer from a rack and hefted it, standing in the shade of the doorway. "You'd better stand back in case it shatters," he told us, picking a safety visor from a hook.

Jeff pulled his daughter away behind him, standing at an angle to the doorway. Blackbird and I moved well back behind a stone wall, well aware of what flying fragments of cold iron would do to either of us. From our position we couldn't see into the forge, but we knew when he took the broken blade of the Quick Knife from the box.

There was a long pause and then a characteristic sound

'Tink... tink... tink... tink... Thonk!'

Then a pause.

'Tink... tink... tink... tink... Thonk!'

Every time he hit the knife it made a jarring note that accented the wrongness in the metal. It was like sc.r.a.ping fingers down a blackboard, but a hundred times worse. By the time he was ready to stop I had a thumping headache and Blackbird looked no happier. Jeff and his daughter crowded back into the forge to view the results. Blackbird and I had no wish to get closer to the knife or the forge, so we stayed outside. The headache had intensified and I was seeing vague images, like brief mirages, in the periphery of my vision. I felt Blackbird's hand on my arm. "Are you well?" I nodded, sending needles of pain through my forehead making me grimace.

"It's done now. They've finished," she rea.s.sured me. There was an animated discussion going on between Jeff and the old man. They were arguing technicalities and sparking off each other. The argument died as quickly as it started. They put the knife back into its box and brought it back to us.

"It's still whole," Ben told us, "though the metal has started to crack. If I had continued it would have broken again."

"So is that a yes or a no?" Blackbird asked him.

"I think the la.s.s has the right of it: it was hammered cold. Remember though, simply dropping it onto a hard floor was enough to break it in the first place. "

"That was a fault in the metal," Jeff interrupted.

"Regardless, if we cold-hammered the new knife then it would crack and break."

"Not if we had the right tools," Jeff interrupted again. "Jeff, we've been over this. The anvil would need to be enormous and specifically made for the job and the hammer would have to be tuned to the metal. Even then..." His frustration at his son evaporated as he watched the expressions on our faces change. "What?" he said. "This anvil? How enormous would it need to be?" Blackbird asked him. "Big. Bigger than anything we've got."

"About this long, so high?" She hopped around, miming the distances, unable to spread her arms wide enough to encompa.s.s it.

He looked askance at her theatrics, but nodded.

"We saw it," I told him. "It's in London, hidden." I described the anvil sitting on the island amid the dark water of the underground river.

"It sounds right, but without a hammer that's tuned to it, it only solves half the problem."

There was a pause while we thought it through.

"You wouldn't want to separate the hammer from the anvil, would you?" Blackbird suggested.

"No," I agreed, "But you wouldn't leave it lying around either, not where someone could appropriate it for some other purpose. It might get lost."

"Or stolen," she added. "You'd lock it away."

"Somewhere close by," I agreed.

"Somewhere safe."

"But we can't open it. It's sealed, remember?"

"Would the two of you mind telling me what on earth you're talking about?" the old man interrupted. We described the square iron door in the wall, neither of us mentioning the two visitors that had come to inspect it while we had been there.

"But it's locked and we don't know how to unlock it," I told him.

"And you reckon there's a hammer in this lock-box? "

"Where else would you put it? It has to be there."

He scratched at his unshaven chin. "You might be able to break into it, but it sounds like you'd need heavy cutting equipment. Any idea how thick the door is?" We both shook our heads. "The door is flush to the wall and not easy to get at. It's set in the wall above head-height over a thin ledge where it would be almost impossible to set a ladder, let alone apply any leverage once you had climbed it."

It was his turn to shake his head. "Even if there is a hammer in there, it doesn't sound like you'll be able to get at it without unlocking it."

"There must be a key." Frustration rang in Blackbird's tone.

"Are you sure the key's not with the anvil?" Jeff suggested.

"No, there's nowhere to leave it where it would be safe. Besides, why leave the key with the safe? There'd be no point in locking it if the key is with it. Are you certain you don't have a key here, handed down through generations, a family heirloom perhaps? "

"We can look," Jeff volunteered.

We followed Jeff back into the kitchen and he started pulling out drawers looking for keys.

"Jeff, I'm trying to put lunch together. Do you mind?" Meg Highsmith protested as Jeff started turning drawers out onto the kitchen table.

"It's urgent," was all he said and continued pulling things out.

Ben went into the room with the dogs, amid much snuffling and a low growl from the big dog at us. Ben emerged with a wooden box filled with bits of rusty broken tools, orphaned cutlery and old keys. He spilled the lot out onto the table. Meg folded her arms and sighed as they began sorting through the oddments. "If you tell me what you're looking for I might be able to help," she offered.

They carried on sorting, but explained the dilemma of the missing key. There was a growing pile of old keys in the centre of the table, but none looked likely. "It has to be quite large," I told her, picking up an ornate bra.s.s key. "The keyhole is square and about a quarter of an inch on each side. The thing is, it didn't look as if the lock turned."