by Helen Slavin
“But, fortunately, Afternoon Tea is just starting.” Anna spoke up behind her. “What can we get you?” And she reached for some menus under Lella’s gimlet eye.
With the arrival of the EFL students, Casey and Anna had been in their element: eggs frying, poaching, scrambling, all manner of toasties and the soup tureen drained of its several pints’ contents. There had been a cairn of scones to be consumed, an ocean of tea.
The day had fed into Anna’s mood. The discovery of the Paper Prophets had switched something positive inside her. In a time when everything had seemed to be tumbling after each other, the arrival of the Prophets felt like a pulling together.
Their last search for the Great Grey Horse had not been successful, but Anna felt a cautious optimism. If she had to characterise it, it would be a small wood mouse of optimism. This feeling was prone to flee at the first rustle of leaves, but it had poked its nose out.
She’d felt so different this morning that she commuted on foot, striding down the shore of Pike Lake, her senses aware, sending out small pulsing Reaches, testing herself. There was no sign of the horse, but Anna could see that there was also no sign of anything else that might be untoward. She’d come along the Dark Gate path that edged beneath the old castle moat.
She’d come out on Dark Gate Street with only cats for company, and now, as she walked herself home again along the same street, she was aware once more of the spilling mew of Ginger and Tabby making their way to and from Cordwainer Street. This morning she hadn’t thought much about it, but now, heading home, there seemed to be a lot of Cordwainer cats about, far more than was usual. She paused for a moment. The white one on the wall at the corner of Moot Hall Lane, three or four black and grey and tabby scampering their way up towards the back end of Market Drab. Ginger, patchy, and that rather sleek blue grey specimen that had eyed her from the top of the wall at The Twist. Anna paused at the corner of Old Lamp Lane and Long Gate Street. There were a lot of cats.
She ditched the idea of going home and headed towards Cordwainer Street. It would be exercise, both mental and physical, to patrol town. That was something they ought not to forget. Grandma Hettie had always been insistent that the Bounds of Havoc also stretched out across town; thinner, flimsier, but there nonetheless.
At the end of Cordwainer Street, Anna could see the roil of cats. They were everywhere, seething around the feet of a neighbour fetching shopping from the boot of her car.
“Shoo, damn you.” She kicked at the coil of cats winding its way around her ankles and then looked guilty as she saw Anna.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” she blustered. “Bloody nuisance. And the smell.” She picked her way to her own wooden gate at No 7 and pushed it open. The cats did not sidle in with her. Anna observed their movements, which were focused on No 4. The ranks of them squeezed around or under the fence, jumped along the walls. Anna watched them head off. Where were they going?
She followed them to the car park at the rear of the Highwayman Inn, where they swarmed over the tarmac and wove themselves in and out of a stand of birch trees before streaming away back towards Cordwainer Street. It was odd. Perhaps there were more mice here.
She was part way to the Plainsong Chapel and so, with the cats milling around her head if not her feet, Anna walked onwards.
The chapel was almost complete. Painting and sanding was going on, and the door was open, the cold winter light of the late afternoon glowing through. Anna could see from the gate where the plain, squared panes made golden angles on the interior. Matt Woodhill and his team were almost done. There were rumours around town as to the ultimate use of the building. Boxing gym. Community centre. It seemed to offer hope and possibility.
As Matt lifted his safety mask, Anna thought of Roz. She had only seen her around town twice since the terrible incident of her possession by Mrs Fyfe. A brief nod of acknowledgement had passed between them, but nothing more. Anna made a mental note to go and visit Roz. She could use Matt’s work on the chapel as an excuse perhaps.
She shuddered at the thought of red apples and turned for home. Digging her hands into her jacket pockets, she felt the small rectangle of the deck of cards and closed her fingers around it. Was it warm? Or were her hands just cold from the bitter November afternoon?
Finding the Paper Prophets had fired up memories about Mrs Massey and the afternoons spent at her cottage. As she walked to Old Castle Road, her mind drifted back to a long-ago afternoon. Grandma Hettie had let them wander and then, late in the day, asked for Anna and her sisters to wait for her at Mrs Massey’s cottage.
The cottage was at the rear boundary of Havoc Wood, close, Anna realised, towards the vicinity of Day’s Ride. She roamed within her memory of the cottage. It was nestled into the trees on the mid slopes of High Hill. They often stopped there, and Mrs Massey was kind and welcoming, the sort of grown up, like Grandma Hettie, who did not regard them as the twin perils of dolls or nuisances. There was always something in the oven at Mrs Massey’s cottage, including, once, Anna recalled, a basket of kittens being kept warm and fed after their mother had perished in a fight with a badger.
Kittens. The link glimmered for a moment and banked down. Anna felt the edges of the cards, soft and worn.
The Paper Prophets resided, at all times, in Mrs Massey’s apron pocket. The day that put itself front and centre of Anna’s memory had been in summer.
It had been hot at the bus stop and Vanessa had been patient with Charlie and Emz who were playing a game of rock, paper, scissors that involved Charlie punching her little sister’s shoulder for the “rock” option.
“You can come along if you like?” Vanessa had frowned at her eldest daughter. “We’ll go to the Cavendish after we wrestle Charlie into her new shoes.”
Anna shook her head.
“I promised Grandma Hettie,” Anna smiled. She disliked shoe shopping, they all did. Vanessa nodded.
“Wise move.” She winked and leaned to kiss Anna farewell. “See you later.”
The bus rolled up, and Charlie and Emz united in pulling faces at Anna from the top deck as it rolled away again.
It was hot. It was quiet, too, as Anna moved off along Dark Gate Street and picked her way up through the brambles and bracken into the town-side edges of Havoc Wood.
Grandma and Anna had not brought a picnic because Mrs Massey would have something baked or baking. Indeed, as they made their way up the little stone path, alongside the drone of bees in her hives, the kettle was already whistling its greeting from the kitchen.
Anna did not recall what gossip was exchanged that day. She remembered bees and birdsong and raspberry jam. She remembered Grandma Hettie being called away. Rainclouds rolled in, so they moved indoors.
Usually they spent their time in the kitchen, but, on this afternoon, Mrs Massey showed Anna into the small parlour at the front of the house. Anna had never been in there before, and as she took up her seat at the table with its velvet cloth, Mrs Massey fussed for a few moments with the drawer at the front of the dresser, so tall it appeared to stoop under the beams of the ceiling.
“Needs a bit of candlewax, that does.” Mrs Massey turned suddenly, and her hand reached into her apron pocket and took out a small deck of cards. They were bound with a thick elastic band, the sort used by postmen. Mrs Massey also took out a small, pearl-handled fruit knife and a length of rusty orange embroidery thread.
“Been looking all over for that.” She popped the thread back in her pocket and reached for an apple from the bowl on the table. The bowl was made of cut glass that caught the sunlight. Anna thought it very beautiful.
“You ever play a hand of Three? Your gran ever teach you?”
Anna shook her head. They often played card games, but this one did not sound familiar. Mrs Massey had given her an assessing look.
“Let’s have a crack then, shall we?” She licked her lips and, with one finger, pushed the small stack towards Anna.
“How about you have a go at taking
off the band.” Her eyes did not move from the cards. Anna could see herself reflected in the lenses of Mrs Massey’s small round glasses as she reached.
Anna took off the rubber band and held the deck. It was not really a deck at all.
“Oh. There aren’t enough cards.” She looked to Mrs Massey, whose mouth was pinched tight, her eyes still focused on the cards and Anna’s hands.
“This is a very old deck. The Havoc Deck.” She took in a breath. “Some call them the Paper Prophets.” Her finger rested on the velvet of the cloth, and she nodded to the deck.
“Try and deal out three cards, just onto the table, between us.” Mrs Massey’s finger tapped the table three times.
There were pictures. Anna recalled the rich and lustrous illustrations, like illuminated letters from a manuscript: lightning so vivid it seemed to crackle as she laid the card down; a comforting wooden spoon in a herb-bedecked and practical kitchen scene; and, the final and most beautiful, a vision of water and weeds.
“Ooh look.” Anna pointed to the view through the kitchen window above the white butler’s sink inked onto the card.
“What do you see?” Mrs Massey asked, resting her head on her other hand.
Anna had seen several different things in that small image. A view of Yarl Hill lit by glimmering candles. A summer view of Crow Houses, the meadow bobbing with ox-eye daisies at one instant and, in a blink, the scarlet of poppies.
“Oh, they’re so beautiful.” Anna felt she could fall into these cards, they were so pretty.
“This one,” Mrs Massey tapped at it, “is the Scorched Spoon.”
The name made Anna look again at the spoon. It sat at the sink’s edge in a blue flowered pot and, yes, there at the tip, the blackened bit where it might have caught on a hot pan. Or been struck by the Lightning. Anna’s glance shifted at the crackle of electricity from the other card.
“What do you see?” Mrs Massey asked. Anna said nothing for a moment. There was something about the way that Mrs Massey asked the question. She locked glances with her for a second and then looked back at the card.
Lightning seared it, but, if you paused and took a breath, Anna could see the edge of Havoc Wood behind it, the hills of Woodcastle, and how the lightning showed it in a different, otherworldly light.
“The edge of Havoc.” Anna chose her words carefully. Mrs Massey understood.
“Exactly.”
The third card had altered at the edge of her vision. She could see where the water and weeds hid a pike.
“A pike.” Her own finger pointing at the third card. “In the lake.” She knew the black, deep, blue-cold water as if it ran through her veins.
After this first afternoon, there were other days when Mrs Massey had asked her to cut the cards and deal their game of Three, and it occurred to Anna now, as she walked up past Pike Lake to Cob Cottage, that on no occasion had Mrs Massey dealt the cards. Each time, so few now that Anna looked back, Mrs Massey had sat very still and upright, her left palm face down on the table, and her twinkling, clever eyes watching Anna.
No one was home, and Anna, without taking off her jacket, cleared the stray bills and leftover crumbs from the table and sat down. After a moment, she took the cards out of her pocket and set them on the table. She was uncertain what to do next.
She reached for the kettle and clicked it on, but the bright blue electrical light of it was wrong. She rummaged in the cupboard for a moment, pulling out Grandma Hettie’s cast iron whistling kettle. She filled it, put it onto the hob, and, at the first hiss of the heat catching the water, an instinct twitched inside her.
Anna sat down and reached for the cards. The edges were foxed and feathered into something like mouse fur, and it gave the sense of being alive. Her fingers stretched the elastic band and released the deck. The old gilding on the backs glittered.
Anna paused. She was very tired. She was weary of worry and grief and afraid of being afraid and angry at distrusting herself. She sat for a moment, letting her eyes wander over the filigree patterns of the top card. The kettle whispered behind her. She made a choice.
Let go.
Let it go.
Anna shuffled the few cards. How many had there been? Thirteen, of course.
She dealt three, face down. The remainder of the Paper Prophets she placed face down on the table and focused on the sound of the kettle and the hob light, phut, phut, phut.
Let go.
She turned the middle card. The Castle. It was at once new and familiar. She recalled the intricate brickwork of the crenelated tower strangled with ivy that she did not recall in real life. The sky above it shimmered with green light.
Panic rose up like bile. Anna took a deep breath, and, instead of trying to fight the fear and the doubt, she reached past them, further down to where her Strength was trying to hide.
She opened her eyes and turned the right-hand card. This was how she had done it with Mrs Massey, and she was certain now that it had been a lesson.
The Stand. A cluster of trees, but it was different from the card of her memory. It had been elm and oak and everything Havoc, but this time it was a needled pine forest. Towering larches and firs reached up into another sky that shimmered green. The ground sparkled and was dappled with lacy shadows. The bark of the trees was textured with lichen. It took her breath away. She looked into the image for a long time, glanced back at The Castle. What had Mrs Massey said of that one?
“Secrets.” The voice spoke close by, as if Mrs Massey was once more sitting opposite to her at the table. “A fortress you see, a place to keep secrets safe. As well as being a home, of course.” Mrs Massey’s voice acquired a dreamlike tone. “Stronghold and target. There’s a balance in all of the cards, the knack is knowing which way it’s tipped.”
The kettle on the hob was more agitated now, whispering fiercely as Anna let go and let the card speak to her.
The Castle was sitting in snow. The window casement was frosted shut. The ivy looked more tangled in the green glimmer of the sky. The sky signified something more, and Anna thought of the aurora borealis. She had a strong sense that someone within the castle was looking out. She acknowledged this thought and looked down at the small wooden gate beneath. Oak, closed tight. Secrets, the kettle whispered.
The Stand. She was convinced it was not Havoc Wood, but it was alive and evergreen wherever it was. What was this card again?
“It’s always Havoc, but in its other ways.” Mrs Massey confused matters from her seat in the past. At the time, Anna had understood because, back then, she was knitted into the Wood like mended bone. The Stand was the way home, shelter, even more. There was something beyond the trees, waiting. Anna let her focus shift, dreamlike. There, to the right, just beyond sight, did it feel like a threat? She didn’t blink. There was a sense of threat in her thoughts.
The left-hand card waited for Anna to turn it.
The Black Blank had been blank indeed the sole time she had seen it. Mrs Massey had shown it to her. Anna had never dealt it. She remembered this card was the Ace of the deck.
She stopped breathing as she looked at the card. It was no longer blank. The darkness was the backdrop to the stylised image of a heart, something bloodied and animal. At the edges of the heart was torn fur, grey and black, as if it had been recently ripped from a ribcage. The aorta twisted out of it, the open end of the artery pointed towards her. Anna did not want to lean forward, but she must if she was to see the scene pictured at the end as though through a telescope.
A white frozen lake; a wolf, black, making its solitary way across the surface.
The kettle howled wildly as Anna jumped up from the table. She reached a shaking hand to turn off the hob. The sudden silence was calming. She breathed deeply.
The wolf on the lake. One of her recurrent dreams and always, always associated with her father. The missing, absent, Dr Lachlan Laidlaw. She was shaking and turned back to the cards with the intention of shuffling them away. The Black Blank was empty once more
.
24
Best Laid Plans
“Did Mr Herald ring then?” Charlie popped her head around the office door on her way from the brewhouse. Michael was looking at the computer screen and pulling at his bottom lip, deep in thought. Charlie could tell he was not listening.
“Michael?”
He glanced up, put out.
“What? I’m slogging here, can’t you see?” He looked back at the screen. Everything had become a slog of late for Michael Chance, and a dark thought crossed Charlie’s mind that perhaps he had been permanently poisoned by Mrs Fyfe’s apples. What if this current mood was a hangover from that?
“Never mind.” Charlie ducked out of sight. The poisoning thought was tainting her mind. She could not remember if she had any of the antidote, her Blackberry Ferment, left. She might track some down and slip a shot into his coffee.
Her mind was being tricksy today. As she loaded the tun, letting the scent of hops and roasted wheat waft over her, she considered that a true love’s kiss was generally a cure-all. Her memory flickered over the kiss they had shared in Michael’s garden. He had been heavily under the influence of the Slow Poison, and that kiss had not worked. Or perhaps it had carried a poison of its own.
Charlie tore the thought up and set the mash to boil.
She avoided the office for the rest of the day and, as was his habit of late, Michael avoided any interaction. Charlie left it until the last moment of her shift before entering the office and putting two shot glasses down on the desk.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Michael looked at his watch, but Charlie felt a shiver at the words.
“I’m on my way. But first…” She undid the stopper on the last ever bottle of Blackberry Ferment. There was a finger or two of the ruby liquor still remaining. Charlie had taken that as a good sign.
“Let’s have a toast.” She offered him a glass.
“We are toast,” he said. “Quincey’s have cancelled our contract.”