Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (20 page)

‘Only down to kitchen and back, Nanny.’

‘Well, there’ll be no more of that! You,’ she fixed Mary Ann with a cruel, hard stare. ‘When is your baby coming?’

‘I’m not exactly sure,’ whispered Mary Ann, as terrified as Fanetta obviously was. ‘Soon.’

‘It had better be soon. Cattermune’s young wife is due to kindle anytime now. Could be tomorrow.’

‘I don’t think that soon,’ Mary Ann cried in panic. ‘Not nearly that soon.’

‘You,’ the nanny said, poking Mrs Smani in her turn. ‘How many layettes are finished?’

‘All the crib sheets, Nanny. I did them yesterday. I’m working on the nightgowns now.’

‘You are not,’ said the nanny. ‘You are lolly-gagging about in Fanetta’s room, doing nothing. Watching your betters, no doubt. Wishing you were Cattermunes so you could ride about in carriages, going to birthday parties.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘No, ma’am,’ said Mary Ann and Mrs Smani simultaneously.

‘I suggest you get on with your work. You’ – she poked Mary Ann once more – ‘since you have nothing to do at the moment, could assist Fanetta in cleaning the nursery. She slacks. I know she slacks.’ The enormous woman turned and stalked away, entering a room down the hall, as Fanetta whimpered slightly.

Mary Ann, musing, was reminded of someone else. ‘Nurseys,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Constabulary Nurseys.’

‘What did you say?’ begged Fanetta. ‘What about Nurseys?’

‘I don’t quite know,’ remarked Mary Ann. ‘Except that the nanny reminds me of them. I must have encountered them somewhere. Before. Before I came here. It’s hard to remember.’

‘I know,’ sobbed Fanetta. ‘It’s always hard to remember in Cattermune’s House. Lots of people can’t, or don’t. I remember because I’ve been back and forth so many times, you see, and I wrote it all down on the bottom of my bureau drawers, so all I have to think of when I come to Cattermune’s is to read the bottom of my bureau drawers, and I have that written on my knee. Once you remember, everything is much clearer.’

‘What did you write? Where?’ begged Mary Ann.

‘All about the game, and the game squares, and where everything is, and where the junctions are from here.’

‘But how did you remember that first time?’ asked Mrs Smani eagerly. ‘We’re here for the first time, and we don’t remember. How did you remember?’

‘Groff has a rememberer. Every now and then they use it on somebody, to find out who they really are, you know? Every now and then the Cattermune will tell Groff to use it on somebody. All I did was, I was cleaning his room – there weren’t any babies in the nursery that time, so they had me working upstairs – so I used it on myself.’

‘And who are you?’ asked Mrs Smani.

‘Fanny Farroway of Seattle, Washington,’ said Fanetta with a faraway look. ‘Caught into the game on the fifth of April, 1982. I was a dental technician. It’s all written down on the bottom of my underwear drawers. And on my knee, in indelible ink, I’ve written, “Read the bottom of your drawers.” I have to keep renewing that, of course, because it wears off.’

‘I wonder who I am,’ murmured Mary Ann. ‘I wonder who you are, Mrs Smani, and who Green is and who that man is who looked at me in such a strange way.’

‘He’s probably a Cattermune,’ said Fanetta. ‘If he’s a guest, he’s probably a Cattermune.’

‘Buttercup is going to be a guest, and she’s not a Cattermune, is she?’

‘Next thing to it,’ murmured Fanetta.

‘You there!’ came the imperious voice. ‘I told you to get busy.’ The nanny stood in her doorway, glaring through rimless spectacles and threatening them with her umbrella.

The three of them fled, Mrs Smani to her sewing machine and Mary Ann with Fanetta to the nursery, where they began to dust and sweep the already spotless furniture and floors.

‘Why do these cribs have tops on them?’ whispered Mary Ann.

‘To keep the Cattermune children from eating one another,’ whispered Fanetta in return.

‘Why does the crib in my room have a top on it?’ cried Mary Ann, with a half-suppressed shriek.

‘To keep them from eating your baby,’ Fanetta replied. ‘Which they will do, if they get the chance. Last time I was here, the wet nurse had twins, and the Cattermunes ate them both. The wet nurse dried up from grief and they made a binker of her.’

‘Oh, by blessed Moomaw,’ said Mary Ann, holding her bulging stomach. ‘What dreadful place have I got myself into.’

‘Cattermune’s House, is all,’ said Fanetta. ‘And if you think that’s bad, you ought to see some of the other places I’ve been.’

A manservant, not Green, arrived to help Mondragon dress for dinner. Cocktails, he said, would be served at the first bell. The second bell would be struck ten minutes before dinner was served, just time to get down to the drawing rooms. If Mondragon had brought a gift, it could be put with the others in the library.

‘Green asked me to tell you, sir. It would be wise to avoid the meat pie.’

‘Thank Green for me. I always avoid meat pie. So anonymous, don’t you think? Meat pie and mince meat and paté. So subject to abuse.’

‘Exactly Green’s thought, my lord.’

‘Not “my lord,”’ said Mondragon abstractedly. ‘I may be addressed as “Your Excellency.”’

The manservant, a lean and pallid creature given to sudden twitches and starts, bowed. ‘Green also said, Your Excellency, that he would see to that small matter of yours following dinner.’ The speaker did not look precisely human, Mondragon thought. Not precisely. Something about the face was odd. Also, there was something repellently obsequious in his tone.

Still, he replied politely. ‘Thank Green again.’

‘May I say, Your Excellency, that if Green is ever unavailable to take care of Your Excellency’s needs, you have only to ask for me. I would be happy to …’

‘And what is your name?’

‘Sneeth, sir. John Henry Sneeth. I was at one time in service to Her Majesty, Queen Buttercup the First.’ A strange expression, half terror, half pride, flitted across the creature’s face. ‘The Guest of Honor at Cattermune’s fete. She arrived just moments ago.’

‘So we are to see Her Majesty at this celebration?’

The expression again, this time with terror predominating. ‘She came down the highway through the Moomaw Incisive and the Inquisitive Galosh, crossing Cattermune’s Pique on the causeway, which he had fenced off for the occasion.’

‘Cattermune’s Pique?’

‘Where the hunt takes place, sir. Where they … where they always release the binkers. For the hunt. The Queen will take part in the hunt. Of course. Tomorrow.’

Mondragon started to ask, ‘Binkers?’ then changed his mind. Something in Sneeth’s voice indicated that it might be better not to ask. Still, he tucked the word away, waiting to hear it again in a context which might explain it.

Mondragon’s partner for dinner was a Cattermune cousin, Eulalienne Cattermune, she told him, of the highland Cattermunes. She was inquisitive and predacious, but Mondragon managed to keep her talking about herself rather than inquiring about him, though her curiosity was evident. Looking about, Mondragon could understand why. He was one of very few non-Cattermunes, and none of the others looked precisely human. They, like the creature Sneeth, seemed to have something wrong with them.

‘So this is the big banquet,’ he smiled. ‘Cattermune’s birthday.’

‘At last,’ she grinned, pointed teeth showing at the corner of her mouth. ‘No more worries about supplies. Plenty of good hunting from now on.’

‘Binkers,’ he smiled.

She gave him a glance of startled attention.

‘One hears things,’ he shook his head.

‘You’re no Cattermune, so I wouldn’t talk of binkers,’ she purred, pointed teeth showing at the corners of her mouth.

‘Inappropriate of me,’ he said.

‘Rather. Yes.’

‘But still, such a very elegant affair. And Queen Buttercup is here!’

‘Grisls,’ she sneered. ‘I claim we’re not related at all, though the Cattermune says we are a kind of cousin to that line. Still, she’s seated down there on the Cattermune’s right. The man on Cattermune’s left is the surviving son and heir – not counting what the wife will produce. Rather throws a rock into the machinery, that.’

‘Um,’ nodded Mondragon, around a mouthful of something safely vegetable. There was a good deal of cheerful laughter at the table, resulting at least partly from much drinking of wine. ‘Will we have an opportunity to meet her?’

‘After dinner. Or tomorrow, at the hunt.’ Eulalienne seemed to have lost interest in him, turning to her neighbor on the other side with some laughing remark.

Mondragon became inconspicuous, taking every opportunity to examine the features of Queen Buttercup and those of the Cattermune.

The Grisl Queen had a triangular face, mouth and chin coming to a point in front from which a long, ivory fang depended. The fang moved with the jaw. She looked much less human than Sneeth, and yet not precisely inhuman. No less than the Cattermunes, who also looked rather human. Bipedal, bimanual, eyes, ears, noses, and mouths in the right places, facial expressions quite readable. The Queen was delighted to be here. One could see it in every gesture.

The brooding hulk which was the Cattermune was not so obviously pleased. Furry brows curled over dark eyes which seemed to see everyone, everything. As though aware of Mondragon’s scrutiny, the Cattermune darted a glance down the table and Mondragon dropped his eyes to his plate, pretending to say something to his neighbor. The Cattermune’s glance went by him like a laser, visibly hot.

A chinkling of glassware brought his attention back to the head of the table where the Cattermune’s eldest son stood up and grinned voraciously at the other guests. ‘Honored guests!’ he cried. ‘Friends! Family! A toast to my father –
our Cattermune!
’

‘Hear, hear,’ thundered the Cattermunes.

‘Tonight at midnight, he will have successfully concluded a coup which has been a generation in the making.’

‘Hooray,’ yowled the Cattermunes, striking their wine glasses with their spoons.

‘It was a generation ago that our Cattermune, braving dangers which we cannot even conceive of, traveled to the World Outside and established there – The Connection!’

‘Hooraw for The Connection,’ the diners cried, echoed by their guests and the servants lined along the walls.

‘The only Connection,’ continued the toastmaster. ‘The One Connection. Purchased at a terrible price and totally irreplaceable.’

The large figure at the head of the table smiled grimly, nodding in agreement.

‘And since that time, how many hundreds – nay – thousands of participants have traveled The Connection and become part of Cattermune’s Game!’

‘Binkers,’ cried a drunken young Cattermune male, possibly a feckless nephew. ‘Binkers and the hunt!’

The toastmaster lifted his glass in acknowledgement. ‘And binkers, of course. Now, you all know what great occasions tonight and tomorrow are.’

‘’Ray! Wonderful night. Whoopee,’ cried the diners.

Tonight, The Connection becomes
permanent
!’

Wild cheers and outcries. Mondragon, paying close attention, waved his hands with the rest as he adopted an expression of feigned delight.

‘Thereafter, it may not be dislodged. The location of The Connection has been checked by yours truly. I went there a week ago. The anchor is in place. Nothing threatens it. I invite you all to rise and drink to – the Cattermune!’

Chairs scraped. Some fell over backward, propelled by the enthusiasm of those who rose, waving their wine glasses, caterwauling, ‘The Cattermune.’ ‘Long live the Cattermune,’ and other such sentiments. Out of the corner of his right eye, Mondragon saw that Eulalienne Cattermune was watching him closely over the rim of her glass. He gave her a drunkenly lecherous grin and appeared to gulp deeply from his own glass. She returned his lecherous expression with one of her own. Well, no help for it. He counterfeited drunkenness, then increasing physical distress, and between the next two courses he excused himself hastily and slipped away as inconspicuously as possible while Eulalienne stared sullenly after him.

As he went through the reception hall, he saw a gray-haired Cattermune arguing hotly with one of the butlers.

‘I must see him now! It’s an emergency.’

‘You must be quite mad. They’re in the middle of the birthday dinner!’

‘I must see him. I’m the immigration master. It’s my responsibility. The Cattermune must be told what’s happened.’

‘After dessert,’ sniffed the butler. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’

Mondragon didn’t linger. Green would be waiting for him. Probably. If Green had not attracted some suspicion. If Green could get away.

And Green had somehow managed it.

‘The under-butler kept watching me,’ he murmured from his place behind Mondragon’s door, taken, so he said, so that he could hide in a moment if necessary. ‘There’s a sneak down there in the servant’s quarters. A sneak named Sneeth, I’ll warrant. A slimy sort.’

‘Not human,’ suggested Mondragon.

‘Why, no,’ Green agreed with surprise. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t believe he is.’