Goblin Moon (43 page)

“Did you attend the ceremony, Lady Vizbeck?” Elsie
asked politely. “And the Duchess, I suppose she was there when I
was named, as well. It is the reason that she likes to think of me
as her godchild.”

“The Duchess?” Lady Vizbeck gave a surprised little
laugh. “But of course she was
not
there,
and that was the cause of all the fuss.”

Sera who had not really been listening to this
conversation, began to attend with great interest, for she had
often wondered about the circumstances surrounding Elsie’s naming,
and how, against all custom, Elsie had acquired an “unlucky”
thirteenth godparent.

“I had no idea,” said Sera, sitting down on a slab of
mossy stone by the altar, “that the ceremony did not go
smoothly.”

“It was all because of the Duchess,” Lady Vizbeck
explained, sitting down beside Sera and opening her fan. “She had
been originally chosen as one of the sponsors, but she arrived over
two hours late. You can easily imagine what a flutter poor
Clothilde was in—the guests all waiting—the bishop growing
impatient—to say nothing of the other eleven who had other
engagements that same day. In the end, Clothilde grew desperate and
persuaded Lady Wurzbach to stand up as the twelfth. Marella arrived
just as Clothilde and the baby were leaving the chapel, and she
went into a terrible rage!”

The Dowager turned to Elsie. “You have never, I
suppose, seen the Duchess in a rage? It does not happen often, for
in general she is the soul of good nature—then, too, being that she
is
the Duchess, people are always so eager
to oblige her.

“Well . . . she was angry enough on this occasion,”
Lady Vizbeck went on, delighted to have such an interested
audience. Even the Jarl, who was leaning against the ruined altar,
bent a little forward, as if intent on hearing every word she
uttered. “
’Of course I am late. I always come
late!’
said Marella.
‘And I think you
might have taken that into account and made your arrangements
accordingly!’
And that was certainly true.

“You will not remember this,” she added, “but the
Duchess and your mama were polite but distant for many years
afterwards. I do not perfectly recall when it was that the Duchess
and Clothilde mended their quarrel.”

“But I remember,” said Elsie. “I was ten years old,
and Mama and I met the Duchess at the cathedral. She embraced me
and called me her goddaughter—I admit that I was very much
surprised. I suppose,” she added reflectively, “that the Duchess
derives some consolation for her disappointment, by pretending that
it is actually so.”

But Sera shook her head. “Yet I find it very strange.
Were I in the same position as the Duchess, I do not think that I
would care to be reminded of an occasion when I had felt so
dreadfully insulted.”

“Indeed,” said Lady Vizbeck, “I am inclined to agree
with you. But there is never any accounting for the Duchess and her
whims!”

The season was drawing to a close, and soon the
Duchess and her houseguests would return to Marstadtt. Determined
to end her sojourn in the country with some spectacular display,
some magnificent entertainment that would leave the Duke’s
neighbors marveling at her ingenuity, she eventually decided on a
masked ball, to be held on the night of the next full moon. She had
ten days to make the arrangements: to write up the invitations and
send them out to the neighboring gentry and Zar-Wildungen nobility,
to plan the menu and conceive the decorations—but the Duchess
(being, as Lady Vizbeck had so rightly characterized her, a
creature of whim and caprice) was used to arranging festivities on
such short notice and she took up the challenge with considerable
relish.

She was also arranging another, smaller affair, to
take place on the same evening, but for that her plans (of
necessity) were attended by a certain amount of secrecy. Only Jarl
Skogsrå was in her confidence. They discussed the matter one
afternoon, while the Duchess sat by the great iron aviary in the
garden, watching the antics of the ape Sebastian, as he cavorted
among the trees and the vines, and teased the birds of bright
plumage.

“It
is
a pity that the
chapel is so unsuitable, considering that Elsie has taken such a
fancy to the place. But the nights are growing colder, and I am
afraid we must be practical.”

“Elsie,” said Skogsrå, “need not be considered. She
is scarcely like to notice her surroundings. Nor will she have eyes
or ears for anyone but me. You may count on me to make certain of
that.”

“Very true,” said the Duchess. “Well then, we must
give thought to the witnesses. I shall be Elsie’s, of course, and
for you the Duke—“

“I do not want the Duke,” said Skogsrå. “With all due
respect to His Excellency, I had far rather have Vodni.”

The Duchess was surprised. “Vodni? But between you
and Lord Vodni there is—“

“—there is no love between us. But there are other
bonds,” said the Jarl. “And Vodni is the one that I choose.”

The Duchess shook her head. “Vodni will be occupied
elsewhere.”

“That is true,” said Skogsrå, showing his teeth. “But
he has such energy, this Nicolai Vodni, surely he can do all in one
night.”

Rising from her seat, the Duchess picked up her
parasol and slipped her arm through his. “As you wish, then. You
must please yourself in this matter.”

They wandered through the gardens for some time,
among the statues and the fountains. The Duchess was in good
spirits, but the Jarl felt uneasy. “I cannot help but wonder,” he
said at last, “why it is that you are so eager to assist me to my
heart’s desire. Do not think me ungrateful, for my gratitude in
this matter must naturally be commensurate with the intensity of my
craving. But so long as I fail to understand the Gracious Lady’s
interest in this matter, I cannot help feeling as though I were no
more than a pawn in some deeper game of her own.”

He stopped and fixed the Duchess with an intent
stare. “Why have you chosen Elsie, so gentle and inoffensive as she
is? You have some quarrel, as I have heard, with her mother, but as
for the girl herself: what has she ever done to harm or insult
you?”

The Duchess opened her parasol, spent several long
moments adjusting the ruffles and the ribbons before she answered
him. “She has never harmed me, but she was the
occasion
for an insult, and by all the laws and
customs of the Fees, that is every bit as bad. I am not so much my
father’s daughter that I am able to explain that, but I am fairy
enough to feel it instinctively.”

She took up his arm again, with a weary little sigh.
“And it is not that I feel no regret, for indeed—indeed Lord
Skogsrå, I do. Just as, in an entirely different way, I must
suppose your own peculiar instincts exact an equally peculiar
penalty.

“We are as we were made,” said the Duchess, as they
headed in the direction of the house. “And if we must suffer for
that, in our separate ways . . . then so must Elsie.”

Chapter
37

Which takes the Reader back Several days to the
night of the Dark of the Moon.

The moon-faced clock in the bookshop was chiming half
past ten, when Gottfried Jenk and Caleb Braun stepped out onto the
cobblestone street and locked the door behind them.

Caleb carried a covered lanthorn, Jenk a basket, a
crowbar, and a roll of papers. The bookseller had spent much of the
previous day enscribing mysterious-looking characters and sonorous
passages from Catalana’s
Book of Silences
and the rest of the time gathering together the paraphernalia he
needed to effect the conjuration.

Clouds covered the sky, swallowing up the stars. A
damp breeze blew in off the water. The two old men were heading for
the cemetery behind the cathedral. Caleb felt a bit put out; he saw
no reason to go so far. “Don’t see no point in going to no
graveyard, when the body’s back there at the bookshop. Tomfoolery,
just plain tomfoolery, that’s what I call it! And supposing we
conjure the wrong ghost?”

“The spells specify a graveyard.” Jenk spoke tensely.
They had argued again about Eirena on the day the Duke’s man came
to see her, and he and Caleb had been eyeing each other warily ever
since. But they were both in too deep, far too deep, to seriously
consider dissolving their partnership now.

“In Necromancy, as in every species of magic,” he
went on, “it is essential to observe the correct forms. And I bring
the medallion with me, and a scrap of cloth from his robe. Yes, it
did begin to disintegrate the moment it left the coffin, but even a
handful of dust will serve our purpose. There is no possibility of
summoning up the wrong ghost.”

“Aye . . . maybe,” Caleb sniffed. “I guess you’d know
all that better’n me. But if we’ve got to go to a graveyard, ain’t
there a perfectly good boneyard on Fishwife Hill, and no one like
to take any notice—supposing they catch sight of us, poking
about?”

But Jenk was set on the cathedral graveyard. “This is
a mighty conjuration that we hope to perform, and it were best
accomplished in suitably impressive surroundings.”

Ominous sounds filled the night: a stifled cry
followed by a splash down by the river—a skittering and a squeaking
of rats in the shadows. With the moon dark, there was no danger of
an encounter with hobs, but when Caleb thought he heard furtive
footsteps following behind him, he pulled out a long knife he kept
tucked in his belt, and allowed the blade to flash in the light of
a street lamp as he walked by. Beside him, Jenk tightened his grip
on the crowbar.

“We ought to go quick,” Caleb muttered. “I ain’t easy
in my mind, leaving her all on her own at the shop. Sommat might
happen to her.”

“She cannot get into any mischief shut up in her
box,” said Jenk, “so long as you made certain to close the
catch.”

“Aye,” replied Caleb. “But that ain’t what worries
me.
She
can’t cause no mischief, that’s
certain sure—but what if some mischief comes to her?”

Jenk shook his head. “Sometimes, your concern for
that unnatural little daughter of yours becomes tiresome.”

The gates of the ancient graveyard were closed but
not locked. Jenk pushed one open very slowly, lest the rusty hinges
creak. Then he and Caleb moved silently among the old monuments and
the tilted gravestones until they came to one of the larger
mausoleums.

As they were now some distance from the lighted
street, Caleb uncovered his lanthorn. A high fence of iron pickets
surrounded the tomb, and Jenk broke the lock on the elaborate
wrought-iron gate with his crowbar. It was a noisy business.

“My dear Caleb, I believe you are trembling,”
whispered Jenk. “But who are you to fear the dead?”

“Guess I’m as easy with the dead as any man,” Caleb
hissed back at him. “But my nerves ain’t what they once was, and I
don’t care for all this racket.”

The marble mausoleum gleamed white in the moonlight.
One section of the wall, not far from the door, had collapsed. Jenk
dropped his crowbar, and passing the basket and the papers over to
Caleb, he bent down and crept through the opening. Then Caleb
handed the lanthorn through.

“As I had hoped.” Jenk’s voice drifted out of the
tomb. “The steps leading below appear to be sound.”

Caleb stuck his head through the opening and crawled
through. Jenk had already reached the head of the stairs. When
Caleb caught up with him, they descended into the vault
together.

The bones of the dead lay neatly arranged on marble
slabs. Weird frescoes and carvings were on the walls, stylized
figures from another age, which Caleb found oddly disturbing. Had
the men of the past truly seen themselves and the world they
inhabited with a vision so skewed and distorted—or had the world
changed and the races mutated since then, achieving their present
forms?

Jenk, however, was impelled by an odd sense of
urgency. Without so much as a glance at the frescoes, he set the
lanthorn down on a slab, opened his basket, and began to lay out
the contents: a piece of chalk and some black candles; a dagger
with a long, wicked blade; a tinder box and a little charcoal
brazier. There was also a crudely made wooden doll, about twelve
inches high, and something stiff and furry, loosely wrapped in a
piece of old cloth.

“What’s that lot?” Caleb asked, indicating the last
two items.

“The corpse of a grey cat, and a wooden man to house
the spirit when he comes,” said Jenk. “There is a little chamber
inside, containing a mummified human heart.”

Taking the chalk, he drew a five-pointed star upon
the stones at his feet. He lit five black candles, setting each one
on a separate point of the pentagram. Then he unwrapped the corpse
of the cat, with its awkward, rigid limbs and its staring green
eyes, and placed it near the center of the figure on the
ground.

Jenk drew out the medallion, from a pocket in his
waistcoat, and a little bag containing the crumbling remains of the
cloth from the coffin. He wrapped them both around the doll. “Now
we are ready to begin,” he said, standing the wooden man up at the
center of the pentagram, propped up by the corpse of the cat.

He handed the roll of papers to Caleb. “Hold these up
near the light, beginning with the first page, so that I may read
them.”

“It ain’t too late to be changing our minds,” said
Caleb, shifting uneasily away from the dagger in Jenk’s hand.

“I have no desire to change my mind. And do not
flinch so . . . I have no intention of using this dagger on
you,”
said Jenk, with dry humor. “Now, how
does the spell run?” he asked, as Caleb held up the first paper.
“Ah, yes!”

And with the words impressed more firmly on his mind,
he turned, skewered the cat, and began to chant the invocation.