The Triple Goddess (157 page)

That Jenny only briefly attended to the book did not betoken a lack of interest in it. On the contrary her heart jumped; but when everything around one is out of the ordinary, single items don’t stand out as being more unusual than others, and there were so many other fascinating things in the room vying for her attention. Hence her determination to be methodical in...“casing the joint” was the phrase that occurred to her, because she felt like a burglar with no time to lose. The room had the air of a place whose occupant had only stepped out on an errand, or to fetch something from another room; if he or she returned to find her there, Jenny could not think what excuse she might offer for her presence.

The furniture was not of good quality, and very old. There were worn leather- and chintz-covered chairs; standard lamps with singed and crooked shades; and a lumpy sofa with a spring poking through the fabric, at the higher end to that where whoever used it habitually sat. The fireplace grate in its tile surround was filled with half-burnt logs, ash, cigarette ends, and partly incinerated paper. On the hearth to one side were an electric cooking-plate with a frayed cotton flex, a dented pan, a cracked plate, and an empty can of Heinz baked beans. In front of the sofa a low veneer coffee-table, ringed and stained, had on it three unwashed mugs, a bent spoon, a jar of Maxwell House instant coffee, and a tin of Marvel powdered milk.

The wide floorboards like the banister rail outside were shiny, not from polishing but the traffic of feet; and there were several balding rugs, rucked up and dotted with holes caused by the trodden cigarette butts of careless smokers.

Every surface was covered with bric-à-brac, and teetering piles of journals and magazines, and newspapers that were yellowed with age as if one had never quite got around to reading them.

In the middle of the room was an open spiral, rather than helical—in that it was wider at the base and tapered upwards—wrought iron staircase, which Jenny guessed must lead up into one of the turrets. Also of particular note was what appeared to be a sawn-off lamppost set in a weighted base, from one ladder arm at the top of which depended an empty birdcage big enough to house an eagle. The other arm, judging from the copious black and white deposits on the floor beneath, which was inadequately covered with newspaper, served as the creature’s day perch.

Inside the cage were hanging a shoulder of ham with a few shreds of dessicated meat left on it, a stick of red liquorice, and an enormous cuttlefish bone. Secured by pieces of twisted wire to the top were a hand-mirror, and a bell-ball the size of an orange. The only evidence of the absent occupant was a very large feather, with which, if it were bound with a few more of the same on a handle, one could have swept the floor. Although the cage door was open, the bars were in one place bent apart as if an escape had been attempted.

Restraining herself from darting about as each novelty caught her attention was proving very difficult, so Jenny went back to the door and started in an anti-clockwise direction around the perimeter of the room, with the intention of circling inwards until she reached the centre...then a thought struck her and she halted.

‘Widdershins!’, she said aloud, recalling that in nearby Scotland going round anything “widdershins”, or in the opposite direction to the sun, especially a church, was asking for trouble.

‘Well, it’s not a church, is it?’, she said, peevishly; ‘it’s my house and I’ll go around it any way I please.’ As she spoke she was conscious of the bravado behind the words.

Continuing as she had begun, because she wanted to deal with them first, she came to several armoires. The upper sections were shelves filled with the sort of very large glass jars found in old confectioners’ shops; except that, instead of sweets, they contained odd-looking biological specimens and organs in formaldehyde, none of them immediately identifiable.

From waist-level down were rows of brass-handled drawers, graded in size from very small at the top to full width at the bottom. A number of them were open, revealing a “gallimaufray or hodgepodge”, to use the description from the dedicatory epistle to Spenser’s
Shepheardes Calender
, of clear envelopes of variously tinted powders; boxes of loose bones and teeth; scalpels, forceps, pliers, tweezers, needles, tubes, droppers, probes, and pins; and piles of what Jenny supposed to be a taxidermist’s collection of animal skins and bird capes. Some were stiff from curing with boracic powder; but spilling from the lowest drawers were a number of soft pelts with long, short, coarse, and fine hairs.

In addition to brown and black furs, there were solid, spotted, and striped ones of orange, red, green, turquoise, and pink. They did not look as though they had been dyed.

A gallery of pictures hung haphazardly and askew up and down the walls. A series of hunting scenes were signed by the artist, R.T. Pallitt R.A.: they included a couple of very large hares grilling a scarlet-coated and -faced huntsman over a fire; a gaggle of geese stringing up Charlie the fox on a gallows; a muscular-looking pheasant dropping a brick on a man with a shotgun; a V-formation of ducks attacking a gun blind; a monster pike biting a hole in a fisherman’s skiff; and a salmon dragging another angler off a riverbank in the direction of a pool that fed a hundred-foot waterfall onto rocks.

Other framed items revealed a little about the profession of the resident. There were honorary medical and philosophical degrees from universities and academies around the world, and certificates and diplomas in subjects so arcane that Jenny had never heard of them; with the exception of one affirming that the holder—the ink the names were handwritten in was faded to illegibility—had satisfied the examiners in Intermediate Sanskrit. That the person might be a doctor, was indicated by a badly typed letter from one Hedley Akehurst, thanking the recipient for relief from a lifetime of migraines.

Photographs showed people at parties, who, judging from their be-medalled uniforms, and fancy if untasteful clothes, were officials and celebrities.

All were in the company of the same little old lady. In one picture she was leaning on a cane and wearing a frozen smile and a rusty black dress; and in another she was in a Bath chair, holding up a pendant on a gold chain that she had been presented with. The four bosomy dames who were standing behind her didn’t look sober, and one of them was holding two fingers over the honoree’s head like rabbit ears.

Jenny’s presumption that the woman was infirm or incapacitated, rather than suffering from injury or fatigue, or too much to drink, was proved incorrect when she saw, tucked into the frame, a snapshot of her taken after the latter occasion by, according to the scrap of paper pinned to it, “Your partner in crime, Dodie”. In the picture there was sign of neither cane nor chair: the beldam was running through a courtyard picking up her skirts with one hand, swinging the chain around her head with the other, and clicking her heels together two feet off the ground.

The rest of the back of the room was taken up with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, against which leaned a wooden ladder on wheels that ran along a track slide at the top, for the purpose of enabling one to reach the highest shelves. There were many leather-bound octavo sets, and, at the base, multiple thick volumes of an edition that made the full
Oxford English Dictionary
look like the
Concise
version. Jenny could not hazard a guess at the language, because each tome bore a single letter like a rune, which indicated that it might indeed be a dictionary or an encyclopaedia.

Another section was devoted to books on music, which, judging from the authors’ names, were of an instrumental nature. The first, by Cordelia Piano with a foreword by Joanna Baddeley, was followed by others either written or edited by Violet Olin, Adolphus Stringfellow, Linette Cleary, O. Bough, Paula Piccolo, Arthur Bass, Fritz Trump, Trond Bone, Hornblower S. French, Glwladys Harper, Perry Cushing, Drummond Kettles with Tim Panini, and Morgan Pipe. There was a biography,
Sixta Conti-Nenta
:
The All Round Soprano
; a beginner’s guide to composition co-authored by Melody Lyne and I. Mortell Tune; a monograph on modern jazz by Verity Noyce; and sheet music for a duet from an operetta called
Strike It Up!
starring Donna Vibrato and Bravo Tenna.

Moving on, Jenny’s eye lit next on a glass ball in a cup, on a short stand such as one might find at a funfair coconut shy. When she carefully picked it out of its receptacle it was warm and heavy, and the surface swirled with a smoky opalescence as if it were alive. Replacing the crystal ball, if that was what it was, and feeling guilty at having touched it, she proceeded past a dovecot, the “pigeon holes” of which were filled with papers; these she deemed personal and refrained from sneaking a look at them.

Mounted on a plaque on the next section of wall was a horseshoe, on its side with the points going left, under which the
Macbeth
ian inscription read: “‘When shall we three meet again?’ In memory of our stormy, wet, but fun holiday in the Urals, summer 1467 CE. Ditzy Moonblocker & Veronica Broome.”

Horseshoes, Jenny recalled, repelled witches when the points pointed down, and betokened good fortune when they were up so that the luck did not run out. Which presumably it had, weather-wise, on this occasion, the implication being that thunder, lightning, and rain were for doing business in only; which might explain the ambivalence of the shoe’s position.

Next to the plaque was a framed parchment diploma, inscribed in a slightly wobbly round- or copperplate hand, stating that

The International Guild of Witches

is proud to present the

Fifth Millennial Order of the Golden Broomstick

to

Dame “Hec” Hecate, MA (Oxon); D.Sorc.;

Dip. Wiz.; Cert. Necr.; MBA (Houston); Hon. Litt.D.

(Queensland); Triple Goddess, and Goddess of the Lower

World (Emerita); former Grand Mistress of the Ancient

Order of Necromancers; and first Chairwoman and President

of the International Guild of Witches (retd).

Signed: Wanda Empiria, Chairman and Chief Executive

p.p. Mona Monsoon (Mrs), Hon. Sec.

”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“

Suddenly there was a sound of rushing wind. All three windows blew open, and Jenny was surrounded by a whirl of papers and flying objects, some of them sizeable. She dropped to her knees, shut her eyes, and covered her head with her arms.

As she crouched Jenny was certain that the storm, after recharging itself at sea, must have returned to complete its job of annihilation; and she wondered, for all its history of impregnability, how many more such onslaughts the ancient fortress was capable of withstanding.

It also occurred to her that this was retribution for the radical changes made by her husband; in which case this was all her fault for agreeing to marry him. The discovery of the hidden rooms was small recompense for the destruction of her heritage. Even in eleventh century Scotland, at the time of Malcolm, Duncan, and Macbeth, nothing of such magnitude had taken place; and Glamis castle, Macbeth’s home, was still standing. But as Jenny knew, the historical Macbeth was innocent of attracting misfortune: he had been a religious man who went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and brought peace and prosperity to his country.

It was Shakespeare, Macbeth’s calumniator, who was responsible for the troubles that historically afflicted productions of the Bard’s dramatizations of his source, Holinshed, and the accidents that befell the actors. There were too many instances to be brushed off as coincidences: from the falling of stage lights, and collapse of flown scenery as ropes snapped from pulleys, to the illnesses and sudden deaths of cast members. When the occasional Lady Macbeth sleepwalked off the edge of the stage, one might attribute this to the dimness of the lighting, or the actress being so absorbed in her performance, or drunk, as to fail to pay attention to her position; but the lore was too well documented to be dismissed as bad luck.

The most important superstition related to the calamities that ensued when actors mentioned
Macbeth
the Tragedy by name—“the Scottish play” was the approved euphemism. There were a number of remedies for those who were remiss, most important of which was that of leaving the theatre and spinning around three times before spitting, cursing, and knocking to request readmission to the building. Also reckoned efficacious was the quoting of lines from other Shakespeare plays, such as, “Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you!” from
The Merchant of Venice
; or
Hamlet
’s, “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”

When the brouhaha in the room subsided, a thankful Jenny uncovered her ears. Fearing another whirlwind, she rose slowly to her feet, clutching the side of a table…and watching in fascination as the windows closed as if they were electrically controlled.

Tiptoeing forward, she was astonished to note that everything that had been tossed around had come to rest in exactly the same position it had been in before the irruption. The pictures were slanted at the same angles; the book on dragons, the pages of which had been violently riffled, was open at the same chapter with its scarlet ribbon marker on the desk; and the crystal ball that had been rolling around the floor, like a marble in a child’s game, was back in its place in the cup. Even the dust on the furniture was back.