The actual transmitted information, what the Serjeant called the payspeech, occupied only a part of the signalling: a message was often almost swamped by the codings necessary to secure its distribution. The current figures for instance had to reach certain centres, Aquae Sulis among them, by nightfall. How they arrived, their routing on the way. was very much the concern of the branch Signallers through whose stations the ciphers passed. It took years of experience coupled with a certain degree of intuition to route signals in such a way as to avoid lines already congested with information: arid of course while a line was in use in one direction, as in the present case with a complex message being moved from east to west, it was very difficult to employ it in reverse. It was in fact possible to pass two messages in different directions at the same time, and it was often done on the A Class towers. When that happened every third cipher of a northbound might be part of another signal moving south: the stations transmitted in bursts, swapping the messages forward and hack. But coaxial signalling was detested even by the Guildsmen. The line had to be cleared first, and a suitable code agreed on; two lookouts were employed, chanting their directions alternately to the Signallers. and even in the best-run station total confusion could result from the smallest slip, necessitating reclearing of the route and a fresh start.
With his hands, the Serjeant described the washout signal a fouled-up tower would use; the three horizontal extensions of the semaphores from the sides of their mast. If that happened, he said, chuckling grimly, a head would roll somewhere: for a Class A would be under the command of a Major of Signals at least, a man of twenty or more years’ experience. He would be expected not to make mistakes, and to see in turn that none were made by his subordinates. Rafe’s head began to whirl again: he looked with fresh respect at the worn green leather of the Serjeant’s uniform. He was beginning to see now, dimly. just what sort of thing it was to he a Signaller.
The message ended at last with a great clapping of the semaphore arms. The lookout remained at his post hut the operators got down, showing an interest in Rafe for the first time. Away from the semaphore levers they seemed far more normal and unfrightening. Rate knew them well; Robin Wheeler, who often spoke to him on his way to and from the station, and Bob Camus, who’d split a good many heads in his time at the feast-day cudgel playing in the village. They showed him the code books, all the scores of ciphers printed in red on numbered black squares. He stayed to share their meal: his mother would be concerned and his father annoyed, but home was almost forgotten. Towards evening another message came from the west; they told him it was police business, and sent it winging and clapping on its way. It was dusk when Rafe finally left the station, head in the clouds, two unbelievable pennies jinking in his pocket. it was only later, in bed and trying to sleep, he realised a long submerged dream had come true. He did sleep finally, only to dream again of signal towers at night, the cressets on their arms roaring against the blueness of the sky. He never spent the coins.
Once it had become a real possibility, his ambition to he a Signaller grew steadily; he spent all the time he could at the Silbury Station, perched high on its weird prehistoric hill. His absences met with his father’s keenest disapproval. Mr Bigland’s wage as an estate clerk barely brought in enough to support his brood of seven boys; the family had of necessity to grow most of its own food, and for that every pair of hands that could be mustered was valuable. But nobody guessed the reason for Rafe’s frequent disappearances; and for his part he didn’t say a word.
He learned, in illicit hours, the thirty-odd basic positions of the signal arms, and something of the commonest sequences of grouping; after that he could lie out near Silbury Hill and mouth off most of the numbers to himself, though without the codes that informed them he was still dumb. Once Serjeant Gray let him take the observer’s place for a glorious half hour while a message was coming in over the Marlborough Downs. Rafe stood stiffly, hands sweating on the big barrels of the Zeiss glasses, and read off the ciphers as high and clear as he could for the Signallers at his back. The Serjeant checked his reporting unobtrusively from the other end of the hut, but he made no mistakes. By the time he was ten Rafe had received as much formal education as a child of his class could expect. The great question of a career was raised. The family sat in conclave; father, mother, and the three eldest sons. Rafe was unimpressed; he knew, and had known for weeks, the fate they had selected for him. He was to be apprenticed to one of the four tailors of the village, little bent old men who sat like cross-legged hermits behind bulwarks of cloth bales and stitched their lives away by the light of penny dips. He hardly expected to be consulted on the matter; however he was sent for, formally, and asked what he wished to do. That was the time for the bombshell. ‘I know exactly what I want to be,’ said Rafe firmly. ‘A Signaller.’
There was a moment of shocked silence; then the laughing started and swelled. The Guilds were closely guarded; Rafe’s father would pay dearly even for his entry into the tailoring trade. As for the Signallers… no Bigland had ever been a Signaller, no Bigland ever would. Why, that… it would raise the family status! The whole village would have to look up to them, with a son wearing the Green. Preposterous…
Rafe sat quietly until they were finished, lips compressed, cheek-bones glowing. He’d known it would be like this, he knew just what he had to do. His composure discomfited the family; they quietened down enough to ask him, with mock seriousness, how he intended to set about achieving his ambition. It was time for the second bomb. ‘By approaching the Guild with regard to a Common Entrance Examination,’ he said, mouthing words that had been learned by rote. ‘Serjeant Gray, of the Silbury Station, will speak for me.’
Into the fresh silence came his father’s embarrassed coughing. Mr Bigland looked like an old sheep, sitting blinking through his glasses, nibbling at his thin moustache. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well, I don’t know… Well…' But Rafe had already seen the glint in his eyes at the dizzying prospect of prestige. That a son of his should wear the Green… Before their minds could change Rafe wrote a formal letter which he delivered in person to the Silbury Station; it asked Serjeant Gray, very correctly, if he would be kind enough to call on Mr Bigland with a view to discussing his son’s entry to the College of Signals in Londinium.
The Serjeant was as good as his word. He was a widower, and childless; maybe Rafe made up in part for the son he’d never had, maybe he saw the reflection of his own youthful enthusiasm in the boy. He came the next evening, strolling quietly down the village street to rap at the Biglands’ door; Rafe, watching from his shared bedroom over the porch, grinned at the gaping and craning of the neighbours. The family was all aflutter; the household budget had been scraped for wine and candles, silverware and fresh linen were laid out in the parlour, everybody was anxious to make the best possible impression. Mr Bigland of course was only too agreeable; when the Serjeant left, an hour later, he had his signed permission in his belt. Rafe himself saw the signal originated asking Londinium for the necessary entrance papers for the College’s annual examination. The Guild gave just twelve places per year, and they were keenly contested. In the few weeks at his disposal Rafe was crammed mercilessly; the Serjeant coached him in all aspects of Signalling he might reasonably be expected to know about while the village dominie, impressed in spite of himself, brushed up Rafe’s bookwork, even trying to instil into his aching head the rudiments of Norman French. Rafe won admittance; he had never considered the possibility of failure, mainly because such a thought was unbearable. He sat the examination in Sorviodunum, the nearest regional centre to his home; a week later a message came through offering him his place, listing the clothes and books he would need and instructing him to be ready to present himself at the College of Signals in just under a month’s time. When he left for Londinium, well muffled in a new cloak, riding a horse provided by the Guild and with two russet-coated Guild servants in attendance, he was followed by the envy of a whole village. The arms of the Silbury tower were quiet; but as he passed they flipped quickly to Attention, followed at once by the ciphers for Origination and Immediate Locality. Rafe turned in the saddle, tears stinging his eyes, and watched the letters quickly spelled out in plain talk. ‘Good luck…’
After Avebury, Londinium seemed dingy, noisy, and old. The College was housed in an ancient, ramshackle building just inside the City walls; though Londinium had long since over-spilled its former limits, sprawling south across the river and north nearly as far as Tyburn Tree. The Guild children were the usual crowd of brawling, snotty-nosed brats that comprised the apprentices of any trade. Hereditary sons of the Green, they looked down on the Common Entrants from the heights of an unbearable and imaginary eminence; Rafe had a bad time till a series of dormitory fights, all more or less bloody, proved to his fellows once and for all that young Bigland at least was better left alone. He settled down as an accepted member of the community.
The Guild, particularly of recent years, had been tending to place more and more value on theoretical knowledge, and the two year course was intensive. The apprentices had to become adept in Norman French, for their further training would take them inevitably into the houses of the rich. A working knowledge of the other tongues of the land, the Cornish, Gaelic, and Middle English, was also a requisite; no Guildsman ever knew where he would finally be posted. Guild history was taught too, and the elements of mechanics and coding, though most of the practical work in those directions would be done in the field, at the training stations scattered along the south and west coasts of England and through the Welsh Marches. The students were even required to have a nodding acquaintance with thaumaturgy; though Rafe for one was unable to see how the attraction of scraps of paper to a
