Free Stokers Shadow by Paul Butler

night.”
    The invasion has started. The barbarians are overrunning the hills. Florence takes a deep breath. She feels the galloping in her chest and hears herself called to action. She thinks of Bram diving into the murky waters of the Thames, regardless of propeller and undertow. And then she sees it in herself: the shining, swift blade of defiance.

C HAPTER VI
    Silver ridges, like mermaids’ fins, rise and fall as the sunlight dances over the water’s surface. The weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder provides the profoundest comfort to William. Father can make everything right with the world, he thinks
.
    He knows his father can dispel all fear and worry, unpick and untangle every dark chain, lock and puzzle that childhood nightmares can devise. His father is a wise magician, a weaver of tales and an important man who is revered and looked up to. When William is afraid of school, afraid of leaving the certainty and warmth of home for some bleak unknown place, his father tells him stories of valiant knights who go in search of their grail. Then William feels the safety of virtue closing like armour around his chest and shoulders and warming his heart. He knows that the fire of uprightness will burn for him through any desolation
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    And here on the balcony of his home overlooking the Thames, William is in paradise. The constant rippling sunlight on the water’s surface sends eddies of optimism through his spirit
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    â€œYou see this river, my boy?” his father says. That voice with its curious balance of great strength and gentleness acts as a balm for William; it tells of mightiness stooping to nurture; it tells of power all-knowing, all-seeing, all-forgiving
.
    â€œYou are watching the busiest waterway in the world,” his father continues, and William peers over the balustrade to see the white linen-like sails pointing into the rich blue sky, and the industriously churning wheels of the steamboats. “You see the schooner with the long white sail?” William fixes upon the vessel which closes upon a ramshackle wooden pier, and the men throwing ropes as thick as dungeon chains upon the board. “That ship is carrying woven silks from Arabia.”
    William stares enthralled, wondering why the men do not look like Sinbad with white turbans and shining trousers. He looks at the white pinnacle of the vessel’s sail and imagines the sandy peak of one of the great pyramids
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    â€œThose barges by the eastern dock haul a thousand spices into the heart of our Empire.”
    William follows his father’s pointing finger, settling on the tied-up vessels bobbing upon the tide below the dark wood-shuttered warehouses on the south side. His mind follows his father’s weaving descriptions, and he conjures the most glorious colours of silk and ruby and emerald from the scattering gold of the sun. “I want you to remember always,my boy,” his father continues, “that if you are brave, fearless and forthright in life, you may choose your destiny from the infinite possibilities you see before you.”
    The promise is overwhelming; the beauty of the world and his place in it is simply overpowering. William closes his eyes in ecstasy
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    T HE WASTE PAPER dances a little circle in the tiny alcove courtyard where no sunlight penetrates. William watches, trying to re-conjure the magic of the memory. He wonders about last night; whether he would have seen the figure in the garden once more if he had reached the window before Maud called out. Maud had forgotten about it, thankfully, by breakfast. She clearly thought his belief in the watcher was a mere delusion spilling over from his dreams.
    Now that the tide of boyhood memories is flooding over him, William finds he wants to believe in his father’s ghost, or at least in some faery spirit that may choose to have pity and rekindle his withered soul. He had always felt that belief in the supernatural was the last refuge