The Witching Hour (The Witches Pendragon Mystery Series Book 1) (4 page)

Hmm, I wonder what they used to store in there.

I am just bending down to have a look when the lights on the wall flicker to life as if they have been hit by some sort of electrical impulse. When they go out again, I stare into the black void with my flashlight. In the hollowed out archway I see more wine barrels stacked choc-a-bloc.

“Allo?” comes a high-pitched female voice from somewhere among the barrels.

“Sweet Eostre!” I scream, invoking the name of the spring goddess. In my terrified state, I drop my flashlight. It makes a sickly thud as it hits the ground, and a second later, the beam goes dark. I don’t care. I take off sprinting as fast as I can heading for the stairs. I take them two at a time, hollering for help the whole way.

Chapter 5 (
Noelle)

At eight o’clock, I switch the sign on my door to
Fermé
and shut down the chocolate shop without incident. Perhaps my ghost has decided to haunt someone else. Maybe he haunts Jacque who runs the pastry shop on the other side of the street, or Bridgette who runs a laundromat tucked away on the corner behind my store. Perhaps my ghost is popping out of people’s dryers right now, giving them heart attacks as they fold their unmentionables. Wherever he is, I have a feeling he’ll keep coming back to my shop until I find him some justice.

“Darn,” I mutter when I glance at my old-fashioned kitty cat clock, the kind with the moving tail and eyes that hangs on the wall behind the counter. It’s almost eight o’clock; I was hoping to get the shop closed up early and go home to change, but a few last minute customers threw me off track. Even though the tourist crowds are beginning to thin now that it is September, and even though we currently don’t have any of Elfie’s
Chocolate Surprises
, it was still a busy day.

I grab my sweater and my faux-alligator purse, and lock the door behind me. For a minute, I stand in the center of Amboise’s main shopping street, breathing in the night air and smelling all the wonderful things that are being cooked in the restaurants on the next street over. The Rue Victor Hugo comes alive at this time of night as patrons sit outside various eateries, dining in the shadow of the gloriously illuminated Chateau d’Amboise, home of 15th century monarchs.

But there’s no time to soak in the atmosphere; I’m late for my date. I turn and head north, walking along the Quai des Marais. One of the things I love about Amboise is that it is a town built on the scale of a human and therefore easily walkable from one end to the other. It reminds me of the great villages of my time, Oundle and Londinium, which were also quickly traversed by foot. Tonight as I walk, I pull my sweater around me. For the first time in months, there’s a hint of chill to the air. I take a sharp right on Rue Le Prince and walk past a café, a bicycle repair shop, a bed and breakfast, and a travel agency advertising vacations to the beaches of Tunisia. Finally, I arrive at
L’Epicerie
. I step inside to find my policeman already here, dressed in black jeans with a button-down shirt. His short hair is neatly combed.

“After being cooped up indoors, all I want to do is watch the leaves fall off the trees,” I say to the owner of the restaurant, Hercule, who asks if we want to sit inside or out. “It’s a bit nippy, but I say we sit outside.”

Hercule knows me well. Indeed, he knows all us witches well and calls us by name. We are frequent customers. Tonight he shows us to a white linen-clad table in the middle of his patio garden.

“Bonsoir, Madame Noelle. Vous êtes en bonne compagnie, il y a beaucoup de végétariens,”
he welcomes enthusiastically and informs me that I am in good company tonight, his restaurant is full of vegetarians. I glance around and spy a bunch of fit people in cycling clothes.

“There’s an American tour group coming through,” Hercule says, following my gaze. A moment later, he ducks inside and returns with a plate of piping hot roasted hazelnuts which the policeman (whose name is Pierre) and I devour as fast as possible. Over a plate of tomatoes stuffed with quinoa and herbs, Pierre and I fall into easy conversation. When he tells me he has always adored my chocolates, I raise a suspicious brow. Making artesian chocolate to meet the high French standards has not been easy. Usually the locals use words like “vile,” “revolting,” or “repulsive” when referring to my confections. I have even seen one woman pull her chocolate back out of her mouth and plop it into a waste bin yelling, “It is
très désagréable
.”

Were the Gauls this tough to please back in my day? They were probably happy just to have food in their mouths when Clovis swooped down and unified their chiefdoms. Clovis was the Frank who started it all. He was a fierce and barbaric warrior and his tribes were always on the brink of starvation. I wonder what he would think of the modern Frenchmen with such pampered palettes that they spit out perfectly edible chocolates.

For a minute, I am lost in a vivid daydream of Clovis lecturing the people who frequent my shop. I imagine him dressed in all his fierce warrior garb saying, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit,” in the manner of a preschool teacher.

“Hello?” Pierre says interrupting my revelry, “You seem so far away.”

“Just enjoying the evening,” I murmur while watching a group of swallows chase each other around overhead. I take a sip of wine. It’s fresh, fresh, fresh. Why can’t I make my chocolates taste this good?

It strikes me that I’m being rude. I should ask Pierre about his life and his work and eventually, I need to steer the conversation around to my ghost.

Pierre, however, doesn’t seem overly interested in talking about his job. I try to bring the subject around to the dead teenager found floating in the pond in the Parc Leonardo. Pierre will have none of it. He is more interested in talking about why I live with a group of nuns.

“Convenience,” I reply. “The rent is cheap.”

“But don’t you have to share a room with others? And don’t you have an early curfew?”

A curfew? Of course not.
We witches love the Witching Hour. The later the better. What’s hard for us is early mornings. But I can’t tell this to Pierre.

“It’s not so bad,” I reply, and try a different conversational tactic, asking Pierre a more pointed question about why he chose to enter the police force.

Pierre answers that he’s always lived here in Amboise and that he received superior marks at school. He tells me he could have been anything he wanted –a doctor, a lawyer, a software engineer– but he decided to go into police work instead.

I’ve never much cared for a boasting man. I mumble appropriate “uh huhs” and “mmm hums” and concentrate on eating the butternut squash soup the owner has brought to our table. It’s so delicious, it tastes like autumn.

When we get to the main course, the owner brings me a nice plate of ratatouille and a huge steak for Pierre. The policeman looks genuinely blood-thirsty as he carves into the thick slab with a knife. While he chews his meat, I decide to get down to brass tacks.

“Any news about that poor boy who was murdered?”

“Not a thing,” Pierre hums as he chews.

“Such a pity.”

“It is a pity. We don’t see many murders in Amboise. Maybe one a decade. We don’t really have the police force to deal with it. That poor boy was from Noizay, which is such a small place. Everyone knew him. He went to high school here in Amboise and graduated a few years ago. Then he seemed to drop out of life.”

“What do you mean drop out of life?”

Pierre shrugs. “I don’t know. His name was Hugo Fermier. His father is a pharmacist here in town. Apparently Hugo received good marks in high school but after he graduated, he didn’t really do anything, like go to university or get a job. From the sound of things, he didn’t get along with his parents much either, and had moved out and was living on the streets.”

“I see.” Well, now at least I’ll know what to call my ghost when he reappears in my shop.

“What do you know of pentagons?” Pierre asks, startling me.

“Pentagons? They are a five-sided polygon,” I answer, trying to remember the limited geometry taught to us by a member of our coven back in Anglia.

“No, no, they are a symbol of Satan.”

It takes me a while to figure out what he’s talking about. Firstly, because my French even after 16 months in the country is still developing, and secondly, because I’ve never heard of a polygon in connection with Satan before.

“I believe the word you are searching for is pentagram. It is a symbol of good,” I reply. Pierre flushes red, embarrassed to have his French corrected by a foreigner.

“Pentagram, polygon, whatever. It’s not a symbol of good, it’s a symbol of Satan.”

I’m stymied. I’m not sure why Pierre is telling me this. I want to tell him that in ancient Anglia, when Arthur Pendragon was on the throne, five of anything was a lucky number. At Arthur’s court, the five points of the pentagram stood for generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry, and piety.

“If it’s inverted,” Pierre continues, making illustrative gestures with his hands, “it is the symbol of the devil.”

Inverted? Never heard of that. Since falling through the portal, I’ve learned the modern world views most things as either black and white. Things are either good or bad. Christianity seems to draw a line in the sand. And from what I’ve learned, witches fall on the wrong side of that line. I have no idea why; I never knew a witch that would hurt a fly. Well, Hendra might hurt someone if she got spun up enough, but none of the rest of us would. For whatever reason, it would appear that between 546 A.D. and modern times, witches received a bad reputation. Somewhere along the way, we became associated with Satan. It’s strange because in my day Christianity was a religion that one only found in large cities, or among the Celts. The only “Satan” we knew in Anglia was the Dark Queen.

“I didn’t know that about the inverted pentagram. And I’m not quite sure why we’re talking about it anyway.”

“Because we found one, drawn in the dirt, where we found the body,” he says gesticulating with steak knife in hand.

“I still don’t understand.”

“We think we have a group of devil worshippers on our hands. We think the boy may have been some kind of a sacrifice. A human sacrifice.”

“Heavens, no,” I murmur, scandalized.

“Yes, pretty sick. They slit Hugo’s throat.”

That’s it, I just lost my appetite.

“Sweet Eostre, they know not what they do,” I murmur mostly to myself. Even we pagans know that fooling around with dark magic is a good way to get yourself killed. “Poor, Hugo.”

“You’re right, they don’t know what they’re doing messing with that evil stuff. And if I catch them, they’re looking at a long time in prison.”

Pierre sits up, a smug expression on his face. He’s a plain-looking sort, with a high forehead, and a large nose. He has tiny, hazel-colored eyes. Having enjoyed every last morsel of his steak, he wipes the corner of his mouth with a linen napkin. Then he says something so startling, it makes my blood run cold, “I’ll rid this place of witches.”

“What?”

“I’ll rid this place of witches. That’s what Satan-worshippers are, they’re witches.”

Alright, perhaps it’s time to slip this man one of Elfie’s cannabis-laden confections. Equating a peaceful, earth-loving witch with a Satan worshipper? He’s a crazy man. I’d love to give him a lesson about real witches, but I can’t give the Sisters of Perpetual Patience away. Feigning a headache, I offer to pay my share of the bill, leave 35 euro on the table, and grab my purse from around the back of my chair. With quick steps, I exit the patio. Behind me, a very confused Pierre cries after me, “Wait, let me settle the bill, and I’ll walk you home.”

Walk me home and I’ll give you a fine potion that will have you baying like a donkey every time someone says “Bonjour”
, I think, as I storm away down the street.

So Pierre wants to rid Amboise of witches? We’ll see about that.

“Careful how you lay them out, haste makes waste,” I call to Camille, Beatrice, and Sheila two days later as they are helping me lay out heating coils on the floor of our cavernous first floor bathroom.

“Yes, yes, Elfie,” Beatrice waves at me with some exasperation. “We know how to do it. You’ve told us fifty times.”

When we first moved in with Francine and Lizelle, I had a grand vision for restoring the house. Trying to turn my ideas into reality, I journeyed to Paris to take a class on how to put heated floors into ancient buildings. Watching the instructor snap the heating coils together, it looked relatively easy. However now, as I and my fellow witches give it a try, it seems like nothing fits together properly.

“I’m just not sure,” I mumble, staring at the mess of wire tubes on the floor. A knock on the front door rouses me from my thought.

“I’ll get it,” Francine announces playfully.

“Oh no you don’t. That’s my electrician. You need to stay out of sight or you’ll freak him out,” I snap. Francine gives me a moody stare before disappearing, and I throw open the front door.

Indeed, it is my electrician and he is perfectly yummy. Muscles bulging under his thin black t-shirt, Etienne is a sight for sore eyes. I introduce him to my renovation crew, who all become quite tongue-tied in his presence. Even the always dignified Beatrice goes red in the face as she shakes his hand.

“How happy we are to meet you!” Camille exclaims, towering over Etienne. At a staggering 6’3 inches, Camille is a whole lot of woman. “Come to set us straight, have you? Our dear, sweet Elfie’s good, but I’m afraid trying to put modern wiring into our ancient abode is proving quite the challenge.”

“That’s why you should let me do it,” Etienne blusters. He wears a most serious expression on his face, as if has come to rescue a bunch of dim-witted damsels in distress. I tug at his arm, and direct him to the first floor bathroom. Unfortunately, he stares down at my metal coils on the ground, as well as tangle of wires running down the wall, with disgust.

“
Mon dieu
, it is a disaster.” Etienne clicks his tongue in rapid succession – a Gallic form of tongue-lashing.

“Some of the wires you have dangling here are hot,” he mutters.

“Mmm,” I reply melting into his huge brown eyes.

“That’s bad, that’s very bad. Someone could be killed.”

“Oh!” These words sober me. “Is it really that bad?”

“Is it really that bad? It is worse than bad. Who made such a mess? Was it you? Clearly you have no idea what you’re doing.”

“Will you show me how to do it properly?” I ask, and immediately wonder if this sounds like some strange form of double entendre.

“I will show you, but in the future all work must be done by a licensed electrician.”

“Is that the law?”

“Of course it’s the law! You Americans, you really don’t know anything do you? You are all running around in the woods shooting at each other with your Uzis.”

I have no idea what he means by this, what’s an Uzi?

And I must say, they have an awful lot of laws in modern day France. We witches never seem to be able to keep up. For a long time, we drove around the Loire valley not knowing we needed licenses or license plates. It seems ridiculous to me to license both the driver and the car, but then, what do I know? I’ve lived in the Feral Forest since I was a child. The only laws there were the laws of Mother Nature.

Etienne stares at me impatiently. He taps his blue and white high-tops against the stone floor as he explains everything to me like I’m five. “Come ca,” he repeats over and over, as he begins to twist together different wires. In no time at all he has the light in the downstairs bathroom hooked up. Then he takes the floor’s heating coils to task.

“Non, ah non, it is all wrong,” he says crossly. He bends down on all fours and bellows instructions to my fellow witches. He is quite rough and crude in manner, but I see the other witches smirking behind his back. I can read their minds; they think Etienne is handsome but also a bit of a narcissistic egomaniac.

Come evening the heating coils are in place and Etienne and I begin working on the chateau’s other wiring problems. We leave Camille, Sheila, and Beatrice to their job of spreading a thin layer of concrete over the coils in the bathroom. Tomorrow, when it’s dry, we’ll lay the beautiful glazed azure tiles I purchased from a salvage shop in Paris. Then the whole floor will look like an ocean.

“Beh, that’s enough for today” Etienne mutters, somewhere around seven o’clock in the evening. It’s been a long day and everyone is dirty and tired. I brush off my jeans and put a hand to my aching back.

“Despite the deplorable mess you made, I’ve got your living room and this bathroom straightened out. The chandelier in the dining room may always be a little spotty, and flicker on occasion. It doesn’t really belong here, it’s over-sized.” Etienne unleashes more tongue clicking and a wagging of his forefinger.

“We love how it flickers. We wouldn’t want it any other way.”

“Have it your way,” he sulks, and gives our main parlor the onceover as I show him to the door. The room is sparse, and in a state of disrepair but it doesn’t deserve Etienne’s reproachful eye. Broodily, the young electrician exits into the cool night air, with his bag full of work necessities firmly in hand. I watch him swagger down the driveway.

“What a jackass,” I mutter, as he disappears around a bend in the road. I am about to shut the door when I spy someone wearing a black cloak moving in a clump of trees about 100 feet from where I am standing.

“Who’s that?” I murmur to myself. Should I be alarmed that a hooded, cloaked figure is walking in the woods near our house? A second later, I see something else –a young teenager in jeans and a hoodie is coming up the drive. I watch as the cloaked figure motions to him, and he heads into the woods.

What’s going on? A clandestine meeting of sorts? Feeling very conspicuous, I duck behind a potted topiary tree.

For a while, I watch as the cloaked figure and the teenager stop to talk in a stand of oaks. They chat for a long time before the figure reaches into the pocket of the black cloak and fishes about.

“Wait a minute,” I mumble as the person in the cloak holds something aloft. I can’t quit see it from where I’m standing behind the topiary so I shift a little to the right. Now I can clearly make out that the hooded figure is holding up a small vial.

“Why, that has to be one of us. But what’s she doing?” I mutter to myself like a mad woman. Yet I am not the mad woman. The mad woman is the one in the woods who is dressed in a cloak and giving away our secrets to the locals. But who exactly is it?

I don’t have to wonder for long. Having gotten what he came for, the young man turns to leave, walking away down the drive. A moment later, I see Manon emerge from underneath the cloak. She pulls it off, wads it up, and stuffs it in her large felt bag, the one that she uses to carry her knitting supplies. Manon just loves to knit all kinds of cute stuffed animals when things are slow at the store. She’s very talented.

From my hiding spot, I watch as she straightens out her skirt, and wipes a few leaves from her hair. Swinging her bag casually, she comes sauntering up the driveway.

“Who was that?” I question, popping out from behind the topiary when she is only ten feet away.

“Goodness, Elfie, you scared the heck out of me,” she gasps, her eyes wide, one hand to her chest as if trying to calm her racing heart.

“Who was that?” I ask again. Manon doesn’t meet my eye.

“That boy looked all of 17, at the most,” I continue.

Manon has always been known as shy and reserved. She reminds me of a timid little mouse, and she looks like one, with her pert, pointy nose and ash gray hair. But sometimes, she is the bravest among us, starting up stores and convincing me to fly with her to America. So what is she up to giving potions to locals? If Hatha knew she would have a fit.

“Elithra of the Forest Fosse,” she says, calling me by my birth name.
I have no idea who you’re talking about. I had an exhausting day at the store. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go help in the kitchen. It’s Sheila’s turn to cook tonight and you know how that turns out. If nobody’s watching, she’ll burn the place down,” Manon lectures and scuttles past into the house.

Well I’ll be. Sweet little innocent Manon is up to something and I guess I’ll just have to find out the hard way what she’s doing standing in the woods handing out vials to strangers in hoodies.

*****

At dinner that night everyone asks about my ghost incident at Chateau Trisse. This is the first time we’ve all been together since it happened, and everyone listens enraptured as I tell my tale with dramatic flair.

“I don’t know why a ghost saying hello is so frightening,” Francine chides when I’m done.

“Nor do I,” parrots Lizelle, who sits sulking in her chair like she does every night.

“It was just that I wasn’t expecting it, and it was in such a damp and dark place,” I reply petulantly, taking a sip of water from my goblet.

“How could you not expect a ghost when you went searching for one?” Lizelle questions, working her bottom lip so that it sticks way out. I’ll say one thing about the French, they sure know how to pout.

Although, I have to admit she does have a point. I did go searching for a ghost, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been completely surprised when I ran into one.

“My ghost came back tonight as well,” Noelle states matter-of-factly.

“At
Le Denouement
?” I ask.

“Precisely, at my shop,” she replies, reaching for a tray of pickled cauliflower that sits in the middle of the table.

“Is he still wailing muur deerrr?” Francine giggles. For some reason, this puts her in a good mood. She smiles a big toothy grin.

“He is, and he also wailed the name of a girl.”

We all lean forward waiting with bated breath.

“He said, ‘Elise.’”

“There are a million Elises in France. Could be anyone,” Hendra snaps, “Pass me the roasted parsnips.” I reach for the tray of beautifully browned vegetables caramelized in a balsamic glaze. Seems to me that Sheila didn’t burn down anything tonight; in fact, that youngest member of our coven has done very well. Our dinner is delicious and everyone seems to be reaching for seconds.

“Or it could be Elise from the electrical shop. The one that wanted to confess to Hendra the other day,” I suggest.

This spurs so much conversation at the table that it’s hard to hear what anyone is saying. When things die down, Noelle states that she is quite keen on stopping by the electrical shop and asking Elise a few questions.

“I can cover for you at the chocolate shop if you like,” Camille replies jovially. All the while, Sheila is coming around and booming out in her Pict dialect, “Who wants pasta with parsnips?”

“What is it with all the parsnips?” Monique complains. By the puckered-up, twisted expression on her face, I can tell she is working herself up. “Parsnips pasta and roasted parsnips. What are we having for dessert, parsnip pudding?”

“Actually,” Sheila says with a warm smile, “We have a rather special dessert.” Sheila is plain and short, but she has the loveliest smile. It always illuminates her face. She’s never looked like a fierce highland warrior to me. Originally from north of the Forth-Clyde, her people were known to be a bane in the Emperor’s side during the Roman invasion. Sheila’s real name is something like Cruthin, although she tells us that we Anglians never pronounce it correctly. I’m glad she changed it to Sheila after we watched some American movie on TV. Unlike the rest of us, she didn’t pick a French name, because, as she put it, “We’re supposed to be pretending to be from the New World.”

“And since we are from the New World, we shouldn’t have names like Manon, Elfie, Noelle or Monique,” she continued matter-of-factly. She was right of course, but none of us changed our minds about the names we had chosen. Although, if I think about it, I don’t believe Elfie is either French or American. I’m not sure where I got the name. All I know is that Noelle says it suits me quite well.

Tonight, as Sheila ladles a healthy pile of pasta on my plate, I smile up at her and mouth encouragingly, “It looks delicious.”

“Thanks,” she says with a smile and I try to imagine her as a fierce Pict dripping in inky blue tattoos of wolves and eagles, flying across the highlands with an ax in her hand, chasing off Romans. Despite myself, I let out a laugh. The whole idea is ludicrous.

That’s not to say that Sheila is not brave. She is. She rode all night to escape her tribe and join us for a simpler life in the Forest Fosse. Had she been caught deserting the Picts, she would have been killed. When she first arrived in the forest, she told me her life’s dream was to become as good at midwifery as Hatha. That never really worked out. The one time she was called upon to help with a birth of a noblewoman, she became so nauseated she vomited all over Hatha’s medical instruments. I was there, and I had to fix Sheila’s mess by quickly sterilizing everything anew. Needless to say, Hatha never allowed Sheila near a pregnant woman again.