The Triple Goddess (163 page)

B.J. frowned and turned. ‘For pity’s sake, Volumnia. I should explain, Jenny, that Volumnia is the nearest thing that Hecate has to a companion—not a familiar, because Hecate is not a practising witch and never has been. I dare say she has explained that to you already. Volumnia lives below when she’s behaving herself…you probably saw the cage, somewhat reworked by her beak. The bird affects to be bored, and expresses her cynical nature by being difficult. You might want to stay away from her for a while, until she gets accustomed to you, and understands that you’re not here to steal her food. God, what a thought.’

The bird heaved again.

‘I thought familiars were always cats,’ said Jenny, ‘with names like Greymalkin.’

‘No, no. There’s nothing in Guild rules that says a familiar has to be a cat, and by tradition a black one, only that it’s retained for the duration of its life. Familiars are articled to their mistresses like lawyers’ clerks. I approve of cats myself, because they’re dependable, and show more initiative than other species. They’re fastidious in their habits, and discreet, and make good if uneffusive companions. Owls and bats are good, too, and crows, and a number of other creatures that have dexterity with beak and talon and claw.

‘Canines are a disaster, and even the poodles who rate highest in intelligence will make a dog’s dinner of the appointment book and accounts. Besides which, who wants to be seen with a French poodle strutting around like topiary on legs? The only thing a dog can be trusted—despite the common Latin appellation of Fido, to trust, believe, confide in—to do is order the wrong ingredients, and to fail to follow the prescribed measurements in a spell recipe. That can cause no end of trouble and embarrassment. A lady who went to see Mrs Rhinestone for a bad back got turned into a bedpost, and it was a week before she was on two feet again; and there’s still a whin bush somewhere on the moor that was once a person with chicken-pox.

‘Mrs McToot, whose title is First Witch—an untalented woman who nonetheless has seniority because she’s the oldest witch in the Guild—has a cat as her familiar whose name is indeed Greymalkin; but that’s like calling a dog Rover. Mrs McT is as little known for her imagination as she is for her skill with a wand.

‘Mrs Tarrant, the Second Witch, her familiar is a toad called Paddock, a similarly uninspired name. Toads are generally only considered suitable as Ingredients, but Mrs Tarrant has a soft heart and wanted to save Paddock from being recycled in the local cauldron, so she rescued him. Paddock is as intelligent as a stone, and his mistress is always being reported to the Spell Committee for dispensing the wrong prescriptions, and arriving on the wrong day for appointments.

‘Mrs Theobald, Third Witch…that’s as far as the numerical titles go...she’s done much better for herself and has a capable owl called Harpier, which she pronounces as if it were French, Harpi
ay
, because the French name for a short-eared owl,
Asio flammeus
, is
hibou des marais
. Mrs Theobald is a pretentious woman, but that hardly makes her unique in witch society.

‘Such are the airs witches give themselves. The egos of these women are monstrous, and they’ll do anything to one-up each other. In the highly competitive world of witchcraft, the more exotic the familiar, the trendier the witch is considered to be. While cats are cheap, and cannot be improved upon for service, ridiculous sums are being paid at auction for anacondas and ring-tailed lemurs, which are just two of the “in” species at the moment. The waiting-list for ocelots is a mile long, and there’s been a lot of interest recently in flying squirrels. The younger generation of witches refuses to admit that exotics are impractical as familiars. I mean, can you imagine an anaconda with a shopping bag, or a lemur with a pestle and mortar?

‘There’s also a language barrier: whereas the cat language is international, being Saxon-based with single-gender nouns and no subjunctive tense, there are all sorts of romance lingos with plenty of both. Anacondas speak a jungle dialect that nobody can understand, and I defy anyone to make head or tail of a Romansh-speaking mountain goat. Serious misunderstandings arise; last week, for instance, Mrs Bellona was brought geraniums when she sent her lunkhead of a snake out to buy a tin of Germolene.’

‘Germolene for a spell?’

‘No, she cut her finger.’

‘Then may I ask, B.J., about the names of the familiars? The ones you mentioned are from
Macbeth
, and I was wondering...’

‘“The Scottish play” is what we call it here,’ said B.J. tersely, ‘as in the theatre. There’s none of the black arts goes on at Dragonburgh, everything’s white. Off-white, perhaps, but white nonetheless. Sorry, Jenny, I’m a bit of a pedant, comes with the territory. Although you’re quite right about Act Four, Scene One, the names in the play that go into the boiling cauldron on the blasted heath have been around for a thousand years. Except for mine: because my name is Wegner, I was the pejorative literary inspiration for “liver of blaspheming Jew”; in truth, we use powdered polecat,
Mustela putorius
, which I procure myself so as not to tip off the chains that polecat is the only efficacious overnight treatment for shingles.’

Hastening to follow up after her mistake, Jenny said, ‘Is discovering the properties of ingredients scientifically based, or hit-and-miss, trial and error? It seems such a serendipitous science.’ Too late, she realized that she had only compounded her error. ‘I’m sorry, B.J., I know you’re a qualified pharmacist, and I don’t mean to imply...it’s just that this is all so new and sudden, and complicated for me to understand.’

‘Nothing to apologize for,’ said B.J.; ‘it’s as difficult for me to explain, and I’m being too anecdotal. Everything we do, Jenny, is the result of centuries of experimentation. I’m an expert on herbs and homoeopathy and holistics, the three H.s of alternative medicine. As Chief Pharmacist of the Witches’ Guild, and Dame Hecate’s apothecary, and her Ingredient Curator, I carry an enormous weight of responsibility, both in not letting Hecate down, and in serving the industry.

‘But as much as I am a walking pharmacopoeia, I couldn’t
spell
an ingredient—that is, turn an ingredient into a spell, as Hecate does—to save my life. Nor can I cast a spell. Most of the witches who cast the spells can’t tell saltpetre from talcum powder; which on the one hand is a good thing, and on the other it’s why the ignorant buying of Spellmart homebrews, and enchantments on the cheap, from the bucket-shops is so rampant. I’m not boasting when I say that no one has a fraction of my knowledge about what goes into a spell. If you refer to this year’s revised edition of
ACES
, the
Authorized Complete Encyclopaedia of Spells
, incorporating all the previous supplements and addenda, you’ll find that most of the acknowledgements for the ingredients are to me.’

Jenny still had
Macbeth
on her mind. ‘So the three witches of...the Scottish Play actually exist, then: Mistresses McToot, Tarrant, and Theobald. Are they the weird sisters?’

‘We refer to them as the three Ts. But the number of witches on the Guild’s membership roll stands at nine hundred and ninety-nine, which is the maximum permitted by the Statutes. While the Board grumbles about membership falling off, it isn’t true; it’s just that a lot of witches are not in good standing, being behind on their dues, which provides the Guild with a convenient excuse not to up Hec’s spell rates…and consequently my wages. If the dues were reduced, and the rules changed to allow more members, the number of witches would double overnight.

‘That would be a good thing, because a lot more so-called professionals would have to subscribe to the Guild’s code of conduct, and sit for their final exams, and bring us bona fide business, instead of behaving as unethically and irresponsibly as they do when they are unregulated, and offering their services as para-witches who are not fully qualified but tout them anyway. The examinations aren’t anywhere near as rigorous as they used to be, and Hec and I have frequent cause to grind our teeth as well as our ingredients, because standards have fallen so low. Many of the old required courses such as Ancient Runes, and Skull Duggery, which had to do with brainwaves and perception, have been dropped; and a lot of that continuous-evaluation nonsense has replaced the old system of invigilated papers.

‘But the Board won’t change the statutes. It’s a selfish thing, really, protecting the oldest members’ existing share of the best accounts in the market, because they don’t want to open themselves up to competition from younger, hungrier, and more competitive witches.’

‘Would you tell me about the Witches’ Guild, B.J.?’

‘The International Guild of Witches, or women sorcerers as they now prefer to be called, was formed over eight hundred years ago by a handful of witches who were fed up with the rampant sexism of the wizards in the Necromancers’ Union, to which every qualified person involved in the white arts used to belong. The witches threatened to secede, if they weren’t given an equal voice in the governance of the society, and parity of ranking with the wizards.

‘Despite a lot of piecrust promises nothing came of the initiative, so the ladies resigned to go off on their own. Dame Hecate was asked to become the first Chairwoman and President, and she agreed: she wanted the stipend, not the power of running the organization, which meant nothing to one whose influence in the Old World is impossible for most to comprehend, me included. Hecate probably…silly me, she must have already told you about her straitened circumstances; it’s the only topic she gets really animated about.

‘Hec was the logical choice for the position, having been around long before there were wizards and witches, all of whom ultimately owe the livelihood that they derive from their profession to her.

‘As the witches grew in knowledge and experience under Dame Hecate’s leadership, for a long time none of them either wished or dared to challenge her authority. Until, that was, a woman called Jesse Saunders assembled a jealous faction intent upon ousting Hecate as head of the Guild. The three senior witches kept out of it, and didn’t lift a crooked finger on Hec’s behalf, mostly because it would have interfered with their bridge schedule.

‘Hecate was extremely upset when the rebels confronted her, but she concealed her feelings and stepped down without resistance, not wishing to start a civil war. As soon as Jesse Saunders assumed the position of the Guild’s Chief Executive, a new title that she created for herself in addition to that of Chairman, rather than Chairwoman as Hecate had been—eliminating the other executive title and office of President because to her mind it didn’t sound, well, executive enough—Jesse decided that it behoved her to change her name to something more commanding-sounding.

‘So Jesse Saunders morphed into Wanda Empiria, by means of a deed poll posting of a statutory declaration to that effect in the Witches’ Gazette, which she subsequently renamed
Bewitched
.

‘Jesse–Wanda is a very strong personality, and the opposite of Hecate in that she’s a masterful organizer. Never tell Hec I said so, but in my opinion she’s the perfect business person to lead the Guild: tough, resourceful, and forward-looking. Although her management style and agenda is a lot of flim-flam and hooey, and her knowledge of true magic is exiguous, it’s what people are accustomed to and expect these days. The Guild had to come out of the Dark Ages—the original Dark Ages, Hecate’s era in the Old World—if it was to survive.

‘What confirmed Wanda Empiria as unchallenged leader in the eyes of those who had wavered about pushing Hecate out, was a symbolic rather than meritorious occasion when she beat the equally pompous Byron Bymilunch, President of the Necromancers’ Union, at the annual Starlight Games by a hundred and three points. Empiria humiliated Byron on the moon circuits, where he was pre-eminent until his dining habits started prompting remarks that his waistline had ballooned sufficiently to be mistaken for the racetrack; and he missed going round all the markers, in a desperate attempt to capitalize on his competitor’s own addiction to Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

‘It’s not that Wanda has any natural sporting ability, far from it, but she inherited a fortune from her mother who started Intermagica, the overnight spell-delivery company, and could afford to hire the world-renowned skiing instructor Bob Slade to coach her in using her weight to body-slalom. There was some talk of performance-enhancing drugs, but the threat of legal action quieted that, and it’s best I don’t comment on the allegation. Although no witches are allowed up here, and I sweep downstairs for bugs, the eavesdropping kind only for the others are legion, in this business it’s best to assume that every wall has ears.’

B.J. adjusted his gig-lamps so that the spring of the right arm of the frame, as well as the left, was now curled over the ear. ‘However one classifies it, Wanda Empiria’s victory of witch over wizard signified the defeat of a very important man; one that became a humiliation when Byron Bymilunch made the mistake of trying to bribe the judges to disqualify the winner. Considering that four of the judges were witches, that was pretty dumb of him. There was a scandal, Byron resigned, and Odo Ranunculus is now running the Union. It was a terrific coup for Wanda and boosted the witches’ morale no end, and she has reigned supreme ever since.

‘As soon as she was in charge, to placate those who were still loyal to Dame Hecate, Wanda Empiria
née
Jesse Saunders offered Hec a consultancy position supplying the Witches’ Guild with spells and enchantments: the ones that have to be bespoke because they aren’t available from the normal retail sources.