The Yeare's Midnight by Ed O'Connor Read Free Book Online

com muter station and as a business-development zone. A number of software and logistics companies have sprung up in the city, taking advantage of the new sites and financial incentives that the city council has made available. Their hi-tech, smoky glass buildings back onto the railway line, reflecting the tired faces of rail passengers as the crowded commuter trains for London flash past.
    The line is old and unsuited to the increase in traffic volume. The fencing is rusted and broken in places. At some points, it has ceased to exist altogether. Sometimes, at the weekends or during school holidays, children crouch in the overgrown hedge rows and hurl stones at trains as they accelerate out of New Bolden.
    Tonight, however, the area is deserted apart from a cluster of birds huddling together for warmth on a steel pylon and Crowan Frayne who walks in the centre of the southbound track. It is almost nine p.m.
    This section of track is long and straight. He can see two miles in both directions. He has plenty of warning, plenty of time to avoid oncoming trains. There is a small risk that he might encounter maintenance staff working on the track but he is unconcerned. Granite splinters crunch hard underfoot. Cro wan Frayne stares ahead. There is blackness on either side. Blackness above. Only the path ahead is lit, the rails stretching endlessly to the horizon. He has walked three miles from his house and is nearing his destination. He has decided not to drive. His car is not distinctive but he does not wish to attract attention. Eyes are everywhere. Like the dead.
    New Bolden Cemetery sits next to the main line. It is a huge sprawling place that predates the new town. Frayne finds its proximity to the railway unfortunate. He thinks of the dead jarring in the ground with every express train; two trains an hour in both directions. Fifteen minutes of blissful oblivion between each disturbance. There is a splintering fence half swallowed by hedgerow. He is over it quickly and inside. The cemetery is dark and vast. There are trees that seem to ache with cold. Most of the graves are terribly overgrown. Tall, unkempt grass obscures the inscriptions on many of the headstones.
    Crowan Frayne moves like a ghost along the dark pathways. He is not afraid. He is energized by the concentration of nature. There are elemental forces focused here: disease, war, fire, flood, life, birth, death. He feels a strange energy, as if the numberless infinities of the dead have risen and surged up within him. There is a quieting as he moves deeper inside. Crowan Frayne looks at the star-strewn sky. He is familiar with the constellations and the bright spots of planets. He listens for the harmonies. In this place he can sometimes hear the Harmoniae Mundorum: the harmonies of the planets.
    He is familiar with the writings of Pythagoras and Aristotle. He is attracted to the idea that each of the planets produces a particular musical note determined by its distance from the Earth. This celestial music is the most beautiful sound imagin able and is so exquisite, so rarefied, that is beyond the compre hension of ordinary mortals. He has explored the Pythagorean notion of musical intervals expressed as simple numerical ratios of the first four integers: octave 2:1, fifth 3:2, fourth 4:3. In this context, the relative distance between the planets corresponds to a musical interval.
    Frayne remembers Kepler’s attempts to ‘erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system’ and one occasion attempted to recreate the sound himself. He spent considerable time translat ing the distances of the various planets from the sun into musical intervals that could be applied to a piano keyboard. He applied the same logic to the largest asteroids in the Solar System – Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta – and even tried to work in variables such as orbital velocity that were not available to Kepler in the seventeenth century. In a fury of excitement he transcribed the notes