Witch's Honour, page 13
short acquaintance, he sensed that she was always, only herself. Yet
he had very little idea who that self really was. He visualised her
moving among the frenetic dancers with still, quiet purpose; the
strobe lighting did not touch her; her face was isolated in its own
pallor. Her lips parted and he knew she spoke, though he could not
hear what she said. Then the image dissolved into the meˆleé of the
nightclub, and there were the animals again, making their animal
noises, jerking their human limbs in a clumsy fandango. He called
out, or thought he did – Help me – and there was a whisper in his head, louder than the surrounding cacophony: ‘Come with me.’ It took all
the self-discipline he could muster not to run from the club.
Outside, he went where his feet took him. Past the statue of Eros,
along Piccadilly, across Hyde Park Corner and on to Knightsbridge.
The traffic was scarcer now, the beggars were asleep. Minicabs
kerb-crawled suggestively at his heels, but he waved them away.
In a doorway, he saw someone huddled in a blanket, moaning, but
when he bent over, hesitantly, she stared at him with glazed eyes, and
said she was fine. She may be dead by morning, he thought, and I
can do nothing. Or she may be alive, and looking for another fix of
whatever she is fixed on, and I can still do nothing. My sister’s body lies in a hospital ward, and I have done nothing. He had found her teddy-bear that day, and laid it beside her, telling the nurses not to
remove it. They indulged him. His father had not been to see Dana for
nearly three weeks. Anger, frustration, guilt, despair had all gone cold inside him, and now the absinthe filled his mind with phantoms.
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He was approaching his father’s Knightsbridge home. It loomed
over him in all its pale elegance, teetering above porch and pillar,
slices of yellow light showing between half-drawn curtains. He was
dimly aware that it was very late, surely too late for Kaspar, who rarely kept such hours. The front door opened inwards and Luc retreated,
moving from shadow to shadow, sheltering behind a gatepost. A
woman came out wrapped in a full-length velvet evening cloak, black
or some very dark colour; his father followed. At least, he assumed it
was his father, but he could not be sure, because he had the head of
a dog, a lean hound’s head with dumb obedient eyes. The woman’s
face was invisible, hidden in the lee of her hood. A car which must
have been parked further along the road drew up beside them, silent
as smoke; the man opened the car door. The woman turned to say
goodnight, and Luc saw under the hood.
He had been expecting some kind of cat, domestic or wild, a
chocolate-tipped Siamese or a mottled ocelot. But the face beneath the
hood belonged to neither animal nor man. The eyes were enormous,
staring, deep as midnight; the skin shrivelled against the skull. There was no nose, only two holes like pits somewhere above the mouth.
The shrunken lips drew back from a ragged array of teeth. Even in
his bemused condition Luc reeled, knocking his temple against the
post, stifling an oath before it could escape. The woman got into the
car. His father closed the door and stood watching while it drove away; then he went back inside the house. Luc slid to the ground and rested
his brow on his hands, fighting in vain for some kind of clarity.
Fern telephoned his flat as soon as she returned to London. ‘Hello,’
said the machine. ‘This is Luc. Leave a message, and I may get back to
you.’ It did not sound promising. She considered trying his mobile, but guessed he was at the hospital and it would be better not to disturb him.
Instead, while Ragginbone went off on affairs of his own, she decided
to marshal her troops. One particular meeting was long overdue.
‘Oh,’ Gaynor said rather lamely. ‘I didn’t expect to see you.’
‘Nor I you,’ said Will.
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‘I knew, if I told you, you’d create difficulties,’ Fern addressed the
two of them impartially. ‘I’ve had enough of this idiocy. Sit down. I
got you to come here because I need you – both of you. Ragginbone
says I should accept help, and you –’ she looked at Gaynor ‘– said you
were already a part of this, and you –’ she turned to Will ‘– well, you always have been. According to Gaynor, you’re my team, so behave
like one. You have to work together. Talking to each other would
be a start.’
‘I never stopped talking to Gaynor,’ Will said, with only a trace
element of frigidity. ‘I simply haven’t had the opportunity to do so –
for quite some time.’
‘I’m on the telephone,’ Gaynor said before she could stop herself.
‘I didn’t know I was supposed to telephone you,’ Will responded
evenly. ‘Somehow, that wasn’t quite the message that came across.’
‘I didn’t mean –’
‘You ran off in such a hurry, you forgot to leave me your number.’
‘You could have got it from Fern! No – I mean, that wasn’t what
I . . . Look, if you’d wanted to talk to me, you would have called. You always do what you want; I know that. So when you didn’t call, or –
or anything, I assumed you didn’t . . . want to.’
‘You seem to have worked out my motives very easily,’ Will said,
masking uncertainty with sarcasm.
Gaynor fidgeted with her hair, a lifelong nervous habit, but did not
attempt to reply.
‘Time’s up,’ Fern said, glancing pointedly at her watch. ‘If that was
apology and reconciliation, I didn’t think much of it, but it will have to do. We have serious matters to discuss. All the evidence indicates
Morgus is back –’
‘Back?’ Will repeated. ‘But she’s dead. Are we talking some kind of ghost, or a tannasgeal – or has someone been fruit-picking on the Eternal Tree?’
‘You’re behind,’ said Fern. ‘Take your mind off your personal
problems, and I’ll fill you in.’
In the end, she brought them both up to date, concluding with a
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brief account of her discussions with Ragginbone. In asking questions
and debating possibilities, Will and Gaynor forgot their mutual
embarrassment and inevitably began to talk to each other as well
as Fern.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Will said finally, ‘is where Azmordis –
sorry, the Old Spirit – fits in to all this. And don’t say he’s out of it this time, because I won’t believe you. He’s never out of the game
for long. He’s like God or the devil: where Man goes, he goes.’
‘He’s played both god and devil down the ages,’ Fern said. ‘And we
were credulous: we fell for it. We worshipped him and feared him.
He’s grown strong on that. All the same . . .’
‘He wants you on his side,’ Will persisted, ‘and you’ve turned him
down twice. Could he be sending you this recurring dream to try and
mesmerise you somehow? Third time –’
‘Lucky?’ Fern finished for him. ‘Perhaps. But I’m not a child now;
he would find it very hard to get inside my head. My Gift is more
developed: it guards me. Besides, if the dream is meant to mesmerise,
it isn’t working. It just fills me with horror. Worse each time . . . Let’s leave it for the moment. Right now, Morgus is the problem.’
‘She can’t be as dangerous as the Old Spirit,’ said Gaynor. ‘Can
she?’
‘In some ways she’s more dangerous. He’s been in the real world
since the beginning; he knows how it works. He’s become a part of
what Ragginbone calls the greater pattern, an evil part maybe, but
still a part. His goals of corruption and despair are woven into the
fate of the world, an underlying theme to our goals of happiness
and decency and universal sharing. Morgus is different. She’s lived
too long outside. Her attitudes are those of the Dark Age. If she’s
heard of nuclear weapons you can bet she thinks radioactive fallout
is a kind of diabolical magic, something you could stop with a spell
of Command. I suspect – I fear – that to her modern society is a
toyshop full of entertaining new gadgets. Heaven knows what she
may do with them.’
‘What you are saying,’ Will summarised, ‘is that the Old Spirit
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knows how to play cricket, but cheats, whereas Morgus thinks it’s
croquet.’
‘And plays by witches’ rules,’ Gaynor added.
‘Witches’ rules,’ Fern echoed. ‘One of these days I must find out
what they are.’
She spoke to Luc the next day. He sounded distracted and told her
he had found the teddy at least three times.
‘Good,’ said Fern, giving up. ‘Hang on to it.’
‘Did you find out anything in York?’
‘Not York, Yorkshire. I didn’t go there to find out anything. I went
to consult someone and I consulted. Finding out comes next. Excuse
me, but . . . are you quite all right?’
‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘A two-day hangover. The headache
doesn’t want to go.’
‘What were you drinking?’
‘Absinthe.’
‘Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder,’ Fern quipped. ‘Sorry, that
must be as old as the hills. It’s poisonous, isn’t it? I should have warned you, be very careful with alcohol at the moment. It lays your mind
wide open. Anything could get in.’
‘I know,’ said Luc. ‘I think it did. I kept seeing people with animal
heads. I looked in the mirror and even I had one. You were the only
person who was normal.’
‘I wasn’t there,’ Fern said, disconcerted.
‘No, but . . . I imagined you.’
‘What sort of head did you have?’
‘Something grey and foxy,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m not sure if it’s
important, what happened next, but maybe I ought to tell you. It
wasn’t a dream, but it felt like one, and you said I should focus on
my dreams. Afterwards, I went round to my father’s house. I was
walking home from this club and it’s more or less on the way to
my place. There was a voice in my head, and I walked and walked,
and then I was there. He came out with a woman. He didn’t see me;
I just watched. He had the head of a dog, maybe a wolfhound, all
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lean and silvery, but his eyes were stupid. The woman had a cloak
and hood. She got in a car and was driven away.’
‘What kind of animal was she?’ Fern asked.
‘Not an animal. I only saw her for a second. She looked – hideous.
A skull-face with staring eyes, and no nose, and jagged teeth . . . This sounds insane, doesn’t it? I was probably hallucinating.’
‘Probably,’ said Fern. ‘Could you ask your father who she was?’
‘I rang him this morning. Said I was passing in a taxi the other
night, and I’d seen him with someone. She’s a Mrs Mordaunt,
Melissa Mordaunt. Apparently she’s renting Wrokeby from him.
His voice was strange when he spoke of her. He said something
about gratitude . . .’
‘He’s lending her the house out of gratitude?’ Fern hazarded. ‘But
for what?’
‘He never feels gratitude,’ Luc said flatly.
‘I think,’ said Fern, ‘you’d better tell me more about your father.’
Ragginbone called round that evening. ‘My friend in Soho has agreed,’
he said. ‘We can use his basement.’
‘When?’ asked Fern.
‘Friday,’ said Ragginbone. ‘The night of the full moon.’
It is full moon tomorrow. I will make the circle, and call up the spirits, even the oldest and strongest, and put them to the question. I will
summon Azmordis himself, if need be, but I will find her. I will find her in the end.
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PART TWO
Valour
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V
Inthecity,youcannotseethenightsky.Trafficpollutionthickens
the air, and the reflected glare of a million street lamps fades out
the stars. They are uncounted, more numerous than the grains of sand
on a beach, and yet a tiny cluster of man-made lights can dim their
far-flung fires out of existence. And the moon is paled, and hides its
concave profile behind the hunched shoulders of buildings, and the
jagged crests of walls, and in the blur of unclean fogs. For the city
is the unreal place, where nature and magic are diminished, set at a
distance, and Man reigns supreme in the jungle of his own creation,
controlling, manipulating, lost and alone. Only the full moon is big
enough, and bright enough, to impinge on the cityscape. And in the
summer when the moon is hugest the concrete towers cannot hide
it, and it rolls into view around every corner, and its glow is stronger than the electric lamps, and the creatures of the city gaze up into its silver face, and remember who they really are.
On that Friday night the sky was clear and the moon seemed larger
than ever, its brow lined and pitted with mountain ranges, its cheeks
smooth with oceans of dust. It peered over the rooftops into the
alleyway called Selena Place, and touched briefly on a shop window,
hooded with a shabby canopy, where a few stuffed birds showed their
moulting plumage in a glass case against a background of unswept
cobwebs and unlit shadows. Soho was busy but the alley was relatively
quiet; people came and went soft-footed from both the social club and
the unsocial, mumbling names not necessarily their own into discreet
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entryphones. A ginger cat which was diligently excavating a dustbin
bag twitched at the moon’s touch on its fur, and glanced up quickly
with a glitter of eyes. Then it returned to its foraging, ignoring a
passer-by, looking up again only when a group of four turned the
corner. In front strode an old man whose broad-brimmed hat and
flapping jacket made him resemble the traditional concept of Fagin;
a much younger man and two women came on his heels. The cat
surveyed them for a moment and then shot up a vertical wall and
through a broken pane. No one paid any attention. Beside the hooded
window, the door of a shop that never opened trembled under the
impact of a multiple knock.
‘Maybe he’s gone,’ said Fern, after a pause.
‘Never.’ Ragginbone lowered his mouth to the keyhole and began
to mutter words they could not hear, words that crept through the
crack and into the darkness beyond. The door began to shiver
of its own accord; chains rattled inside. They caught the sound
of scurrying feet and scraping bolts; the door jerked open to the
limit of a safety-chain; part of a face appeared in the gap. A pale
subterranean face with a single boot-button eye. A smell of unwashed
knitwear wafted towards them.
‘Moonspittle,’ said Ragginbone. ‘Let us in.’
‘Too many. Two too many.’ Or possibly too too many. The fluting whisper was thin with fear, shrill with obstinacy. ‘Go away.’
‘We will never go away,’ Ragginbone said. ‘There is power here.
Feel it. You can shut it out but you cannot make us leave. We will
wait for as long as it takes.’
‘No . . .’
‘ They will see us waiting. They will want to know why. They will want to know who is here, making us wait so long.’
They? Fern mouthed.
‘His bogeymen,’ Ragginbone explained, sotto voce. ‘Whoever they
are. Probably everybody.’
The safety-chain was released; the door opened wider. A hand
plucked Ragginbone inside. The others followed.
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They found themselves groping in almost complete blackness.
‘Mind the furniture,’ said the voice of their host, receding ahead
of them. With great presence of mind Fern grabbed the skirts of
Ragginbone’s jacket, simultaneously reaching behind her for Gaynor’s
hand. Will bumped into what might have been a small table, but it
sidled away from him. Ragginbone said: ‘This way’ and presently a
dim light appeared at what must have been the far end of the room.
They crammed into a narrow passage and descended a twisty stair
where all but Fern had to duck under the roof beam, and then they
were in the basement.
Minimal lighting revealed the shop owner, his small round body
bundled in peeling layers of cardigan, his spindle legs inadequately
trousered, exposing knobbled ankle-bones above his threadbare slip-
pers. Tufts of hair stood out around his scalp like cloud-wisps round a barren hilltop. He carried with him an odour of closed cupboards, stale woollens, things long forgotten left at the back of unopened drawers.
