I force the screwdriver in. It takes a few goes, but eventually the claw bends, the screwdriver slides behind the gem, and it pops out.
I catch it as it falls and look up.
Arthur’s gone.
I swallow hard and look down at Merlin, feeling a sudden wave of panic. “What have I done?” I whisper. I know nothing about the soulstone and its links to the suit of armour. Maybe the two of them are bound together, and I’ve destroyed that link. “Has he gone forever?”
Merlin sneezes in a way that makes it look as if he’s shaking his head. I give a short laugh and rub my nose. “All right. We’ll stick to the plan, and hopefully it’ll work.”
I hold the ruby up. A beautiful rich red light spills from it onto my palm.
“Stay safe,” I whisper. Then I slide the gem into my jeans pocket.
I’ve so much to think about, my head is aching a little. I screw the lid of the pommel back on and replace the knight’s helm. Then I open the counter, take out one of my ginger cookies, and nibble it as I get my broom and sweep through the café. The cookies contain a simple relaxing spell, and sure enough, by the time I’ve finished sweeping and have wiped down the counter, my headache feels better.
When the café is clean, I turn off the lights, go out, and lock the door.
At home, I busy myself with getting dinner, then sit down to eat with a glass of wine. I put on the TV and switch it to the news, and have a couple of mouthfuls of dinner. Then I put down my plate. I look at Merlin, who’s sitting watching me. I know it’s not for food, because I never feed him off my plate.
“All right,” I say softly. I slide my hand into my jeans pocket and bring out the ruby. Merlin comes over and sniffs it where it lies on my palm. I turn it, and it catches the light from the TV and winks at me.
“You can watch the news,” I say, placing the gem on the coffee table. “The sport will be on in a minute. I wonder what kind of sport you like? I’m guessing you’re not a darts kind of man.”
Merlin opens his mouth to pant, for all the world as if he’s laughing. I sit back with a smile and pick up my tray. I guess I’m going a little bit loopy, talking to a crystal and a dog. But for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel so alone.
*
On Friday morning, I leave the café in Delia’s capable hands and take a walk into town, Merlin at my side. Due to it being the site of the famous music festival, Glastonbury has gained a reputation for being the home of hippies and those interested in alternative religions and practices. This is reflected in its wide range of shops that sell colourful clothing and fancy painted boots, crystals and wind chimes, and herbs and wands. I love the eclectic mix of people here, and feel comfortable among those who, for whatever reason, don’t feel they subscribe to the normal way of life.
There are ‘normal’ shops here, too: a post office, a bakery, a florist, a book shop, and also Mackenzie’s Jewellery Shop, its front window displaying a wonderful mix of diamond engagement rings and pendants in the shape of oak leaves, pentacles, crosses, and the symbol for Om.
I go inside, leaving Merlin sitting on the pavement. It’s quiet at this time of morning, and the shop is empty apart from the owner.
“Morning, Gwen!” It’s James Mackenzie himself, in his sixties, with white hair and beard and a thick Scottish accent. “How are you, lassie?”
“I’m good, thank you, James. How are you?”
“Fine, lassie, fine. What can I do for you on this beautiful day?”
“I have a special task for you, if you choose to accept it.” I slide my hand into my pocket, take out the ruby, and put it on my palm.
I feel a strong sense of reluctance as I hold it out. I don’t want to let it go. But I’ve known James since I was a child, and I trust him to handle it with care.
“Oh my goodness,” James says. I needn’t have worried about him handling it, because he takes it gently, as if it’s a snowflake and will disappear at any moment, and holds it on the palm of his hand as he peers at it. “Where did you get this?”
I’m suddenly aware I’ve pried it out of a museum piece that doesn’t belong to me, and I try not to blush. “It’s a family heirloom.”
“It’s beautiful.” Carefully, he turns it over, then takes out an eyepiece and examines it closely. “It’s an oval custom cut, pigeon-blood red, around five carats.” He looks up at me. “Maybe worth around thirty thousand pounds.”
My eyes nearly fall out and roll across the counter. “What?”
“It’s beautiful, Gwen. I think it’s Scottish. I’ve heard about them but never seen one.” He peers into its depths. “It has a beautiful red glow.”
He’s silent for a full thirty seconds. Eventually, I clear my throat, and he looks up and blinks. “Sorry. It’s quite mesmerising…”
“I’d like to give it as a present for a friend,” I tell him softly. “Something he can wear. I was thinking a necklace?”
“Possibly.” He turns it with his fingers. “It would make a better ring.”
“A ring… what type?”
“For a man, you say?”
“Yes.” I think about Arthur Dux Bellorum. A warrior. “He’s a man’s man. He’s not used to wearing jewellery.”
“Something simple, then. A plain gold band. The ruby nestled in the setting rather than riding high, so it’s not easily knocked out.”
“That sounds perfect,” I say happily. “How much will it cost?”
“What size do you think it needs to be?”
I have no idea, but I explain that he’s a big guy and has big hands, so James suggests a size that should fit one of Arthur’s fingers, and says he’ll happily resize it if it doesn’t fit.
He names an approximate price to set the stone into the gold band, and I try not to wince. I don’t have a lot of savings. But this is important. I can’t leave Arthur trapped in the suit of armour.
“I can work on it over the weekend,” James says. “It’ll be ready Monday.”
It’s generous of him to do it so quickly, but even so, I don’t like the thought of being parted from it for so long. But I smile and nod, and he writes me a receipt, then takes it out the back to his workshop.
I leave the shop and walk back up the high street toward the café. I look down at Merlin, trotting at my side. “I miss him already. Is that crazy?”
Merlin shakes his head and sighs. I feel a peculiar mixture of emotions. Loss and sadness, and also a bubbling excitement at the thought of what might happen when I get the ring back.
But first I have several days to get through. As I pass under the oak trees with their new leaves, I wonder how Imogen is doing with the murder enquiry. At that exact moment, my phone rings, and I see on the screen that it’s her.
“I was just thinking about you,” I say, smiling.
“Weird,” she replies. “Anyone would think you had psychic powers or something.”
I chuckle. “How’s it going? Caught him yet?”
“I’m working on it. What are you up to? I called in for a chat, but Delia said you’d gone into town.”
“I’m on my way back.” I watch Merlin snuffling along the ground. I’m not sure whether to tell Imogen about Arthur and the ruby. She’s very open minded about me being a witch, but I don’t know what she’ll think about soulstones and King Arthur hiding in my suit of armour. I decide to keep it to myself, for now. “Just picking up a few bits for the weekend,” I tell her. “It was quiet in the café and I felt like stretching my legs.”
“Fair enough.” She pauses. “Are you… you know… okay?”
My eyebrows rise. “What do you mean?”
“Finding a dead body would have freaked anyone out. But finding the body of an old school friend, someone you knew well and had a history with, and the fact that she’s not just dead but murdered… it would be no surprise if you were struggling a bit with it.”
“I’m okay,” I tell her, touched by her concern.
“Alice only died six months ago,
” she says softly. “I know how hard it’s been for you to adjust to losing her.”
I stop walking and watch Merlin snuffling happily at the roots of a tree. “Yes, it has been hard. But I’m okay.”
“Are you sure? Are you going to talk to a therapist or something? I’m worried about you.”
“Why? Honestly, I’m okay.”
“It’s just… everyone thinks you’ve been a bit distracted, and… don’t blame Delia… but she said she overheard you talking to Sir Boss.”
“You talk to him all the time,” I say, amused.
“Yes, but I’m bonkers. You’re the sane one. You’ve always put everyone else first your whole life. I’m not sure you know how to do anything for yourself.” She hesitates. “You’re very important to me, Gwen. You keep me grounded. I… look up to you, and I admire you.”
Her words startled me. “Gosh.”
“We’ve always told each other everything. I can’t begin to understand your magical talents, but I love that you’re a witch, and I’d hate anything to happen to you.” She sounds a little tearful, very unlike my best friend.
I frown. “Immi, what’s happened?”
“Nothing. Well, almost nothing. It’s just… it’s Matthew Hopkins.”
I go cold. “What’s he done?”
“He’s put in a formal complaint about you. He said you cursed him.”
I laugh. “I wish I could. I’d make him go bald or something. That would show him. But I can’t. Or at least, I’d never do that. I only do positive spells, Immi—my cakes cure headaches and make people feel more positive for a few hours. I thought you knew that.”
“I do… I just wondered whether what’s happened had tipped you over the edge, and now I feel terrible even thinking you’d do anything like that.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I’m so sorry.”
“Immi, it’s your job. You have to question everything and everyone.” For the first time, I wonder what kind of an impact the investigation is having on her. Liza was hardly a good friend of ours, but Immi’s had to question Christian, and all her other friends.
Suddenly suspicious, I ask, “Have you discovered something about someone we know? I mean, I know you can’t tell me any details, but I wondered if that’s what’s bothering you.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then she says, “What are you up to tomorrow night?”
“Uh… nothing. Why?”
“You want to go for a drink? I could do with a girly night out.”
“I’d love to. I’m going to look through my books tonight and see if I can find anything out about the astrological signs around Liza’s body.”
“Excellent. You can tell me if you’ve found anything out tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“I’ll knock on your door at seven,” she says. “We’ll walk down to the Lady of the Lake.” It’s our local pub, which is great because we can both have a drink and we don’t have to drive home, as she lives not far from me.
“Perfect,” I tell her. “I’ll see you then. And Immi?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m all right, honestly.”
“I’m glad. Just… steer clear of Hopkins, okay?”
“You don’t have to convince me of the wisdom of that.”
“Good. See ya.” She hangs up.
I walk slowly back to the café, Merlin at my side. Something’s bothering her, something she can’t tell me about.
Briefly, I wish Arthur was with me, watching over me. But there’s nothing I can do about that now.
I reach the café, push open the door, and go inside into the warm interior that smells of coffee and lemon muffins. I have a day’s work ahead and lots to do, and I put everything else to the back of my mind.
Chapter Twelve
It turns out there are several coachloads of tourists visiting the Abbey and the Adventure in the afternoon, so I’m flat out from lunchtime onward. By the time the evening comes and I get home, I’m shattered. I think the emotional turmoil of the past week is finally taking its toll. I decide to get a fish and chip takeaway and eat it with a beer while I watch an action movie that takes up no brain power, but I thoroughly enjoy. By nine p.m., I’m in bed and asleep, Merlin curled up in the doorway, keeping guard.
We open the café on Saturdays, but although I go in to bake a few rounds of sausage rolls and muffins, by lunchtime I’m done, and I leave the café in Delia’s hands. She’ll have Monday afternoon off instead. I head home with the luxurious feeling of having a whole afternoon and Sunday off.
This weekend it’s the spring equinox, one of the two times of year when the hours of day and night are equal all over the planet. It’s the pagan festival of Ostara, and one of my favourite celebrations. The Christian festival of Easter isn’t for another few weeks, but the two have a similar theme of renewal and rebirth.
Today, after a sandwich and a cup of tea, I spend a few hours working in the garden. I have a veggie patch and herb garden, as well as several flower borders and a greenhouse. I weed the vegetable beds and dig some compost into them, sow some carrots, broad beans, peas, and onions, and plant some mint, basil, thyme, and sage. Tomorrow I’ll sow lettuce and tomatoes in the greenhouse, and plant some summer bulbs—lilies, gladioli, and agapanthus—in the borders, and I’ll do some spring cleaning indoors.
I bring out a new pack of bottles of water, take the bottles out of the plastic wrap, and line them up on the outside table, ready to be blessed under the full moon.
By this time, it’s late afternoon, the sky is clouding over, and I feel the first few drops of rain, so I retire inside. I spend some time reading about various herbs and spices, then plan out some new recipes that I hope will help people with various ailments.
Cinnamon lowers blood sugar and cholesterol levels, so I come up with a new recipe for some spiced toffee cookies that I’ll make in the café on Monday. Turmeric is another spice that has anti-inflammatory properties and is good for arthritis, and I create a recipe for turmeric carrot muffins—I’ll add a spell to them to take away pain. Basil helps reduce stress, so I invent a bacon, pesto, and sundried tomato muffin, and I’ll top that up with a relaxation spell.
By now it’s raining and a little gloomy, but I cheer myself up with a cup of herbal tea and a Twix. After my rest, I lower the ladder to the loft, switch on the light, and climb up.
I don’t come up here often, but it’s relatively clean and free of dust. I don’t have a garage, so this is my storage room, and there are quite a few boxes here taped and piled up. Mine are at the front, my mother’s are behind, and there are even older ones at the back that I’m sure belonged to my grandmother.
I begin moving aside the ones at the front containing some of Mum’s old kitchen equipment that I don’t use every day but have kept in case I need it. Then there are memory boxes—they contain old schoolbooks of mine that Mum kept, a shawl from when I was born, an old sweater of my father’s. I press my nose into it; it still retains the slight scent of his aftershave. Beneath it is a photo of the two of them with me as a baby at a beach somewhere—I turn it over, and on the back Mum’s written Alice, John, and Gwen at Bigbury Bay, Devon, 1993. I was two years old. Just a year later, my father would pass away, killed in a car crash in London.
Not wanting to get bogged down in the past, I place it back and move the box to one side.
Behind it are a couple of boxes of photos. I shift those and climb into the space behind. I look through Mum’s clothes I haven’t been able to bring myself to get rid of, some of her jewellery, more photos, mementoes from holidays, all sorts of things.
I keep moving and shifting boxes, until eventually I see some boxes marked Lizzie—my grandmother’s name.
My pulse picks up speed a little. I pull one of the photo boxes forward so I can sit on it, then drag the first of Lizzie’s boxes toward me.
There are more photos here—of Lizzie and Richard, my grandfather, my mother and Beatrix whe
n they were young, on holidays, at school, and in the garden of this house. And then older photos beneath those. On the back, Lizzie has written names in her loopy handwriting, the photos are of her and her siblings with her parents and grandparents, going back generations.
I brush a thumb over a picture of Mum and Beatrix as babies with Lizzie, my grandmother, Harriet, my great-grandmother, and Josephine, my great-great-grandmother, smiling as I think how Matthew Hopkins would have a fit seeing all these witches. But this isn’t why I came up here, so, leaving that one photo out, I replace the rest and move them aside, then start searching through the boxes at the back.
And that’s when I find it. Beneath another box, in the corner, a small wooden chest. I’ve never seen it before.
I remove the boxes around it and pull it forward. My fingers tingle and for some reason, beneath me at the bottom of the stepladder, Merlin barks.
There’s a catch on the front. It’s locked.
I purse my lips, frustrated. Do I have the key? Please, don’t let it be in one of the other boxes…
Then I remember that, in the kitchen, in the bottom drawer, there’s a box of odd keys. I’ve never figured out where they go, but it’s Sod’s Law that if I throw them out, I’ll need them the next day.
With some difficulty, I manoeuvre the chest across to the top of the stepladder. It’s not easy to get boxes down on my own, but luckily some time ago I fashioned a clever device out of rope, and I use it now, fitting the box into the harness, then lowering it down the steps as carefully as I can. Merlin is very excited and dances around it as I turn off the light, then climb down the stepladder, lowering the hatch behind me.
“It might not be what we’re looking for,” I tell him as I pick the chest up and carry it into the kitchen. “It might contain Lizzie’s old socks or something.” But I have to admit I’m breathing quickly, excited at the thought that this might be the one.
After opening the bottom drawer, I take out the bowl of keys and begin sorting through them. There are rusty keys that look like they unlock shed padlocks, old door keys, tiny keys for bike locks, keys to suitcases, all sorts. And then, at the bottom, I find an old, ornate key that looks just the right size.
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