Everyone else—or as many as can fit—follows us in to dinner. The air thrums with suppressed excitement and more than a little unease. It’s cruel, isn’t it? All of them watching him grow too fond of a woman six times his age. He’d be horrified if he only knew. Still, Helena couldn’t very well have turned him away at the doorstep, and it’s not as if there’s any malice in their interest. So they go on watching us, saucer eyed, wondering if the Omnipotent will take pity on poor lovesick Auntie Eve and make her as young again as she currently appears. Most of the children are too small yet to be looking at him with adoration, but they are picking up on their mothers’ giddiness, acting restless and talking among themselves more loudly than they ought.
The rime on our champagne flutes shimmers in the candlelight as Justin regales us with stories of all his adventures in Budapest. He’s been to a snow-globe-maker’s workshop and a waxworks, and visited every open-air bazaar in the city to root through dead people’s junk in search of treasure (he doesn’t put it quite like that, seeing as we are in the company of children, but we get the gist). He’s been to arcades with pitched-glass roofs and ridden in rickety wrought-iron elevators, gone to public baths crowded with fat men in Speedos, seen Così Fan Tutte at the Hungarian State Opera (With whom? I wonder darkly), and eaten hazelnut torte at the old café of the secret police. The little ones pepper him with silly questions and he answers them all with good cheer.
Helena puts out the ambrosia cake on a china pedestal—she hasn’t eaten with us; she’s always in the kitchen but you’d be hard-pressed to find her eating a morsel—and at the sight of the cake Justin’s eyes light up. “Ooh, what kind of cake is that?”
Emboldened by the bubbly, I lean in and pinch his knee. “What’s your favorite kind of cake?” He frowns, confused at first that I haven’t simply told him it’s a carrot cake, but then I say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if it were the same kind of cake this is?”
He pauses for a moment. “My grandmother used to make the best cake in the world. A spice cake, for Hanukkah.”
“What kind of spice?”
“Nutmeg, I think. And a bit of cinnamon and ginger. There was chocolate in it, too.”
“Well, isn’t this a delicious coincidence! That’s exactly what this is. A nutmeg cake, with a chocolate crust.”
“You’re kidding me!” he says, and I cut him a slice as the children around us giggle at the secret to which he isn’t privy.
“Oh God,” he says as he takes the first bite. “This is amazing. Even better than my grandmother’s. Did you make it?”
This is one of the few times in my life I’ve wished I were domestically inclined. I have to shake my head. “Helena made it.”
“Helena?”
“Er—my auntie.”
Vega appears at his side, thermal jug poised above the china cup at the edge of his place setting. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please!”
“Milk? Sugar?”
“No, thanks. I take it black.”
He takes it black! Justin smiles at me over his steaming cup as I gulp the rest of my champagne.
Once he’s finished his third slice of ambrosia cake he glances up at the doorway, where another load of curious relatives are still hanging around staring, and says, “Oh! I guess we’d better make way for the next sitting, eh?” He picks up his plate and silverware, the dear boy, but Mira takes them out of his hands on her way back to the kitchen, so we rise from the table and make our way through the hungry throng. I feel his breath hot on my neck as he murmurs, “Is there someplace we can go? To be alone for a little while?” and my heart skips three beats in a row. “But I don’t want to keep you from your family,” he says quickly.
I take his hand and we hurry up the stairs amid the whistles of the few adolescent magi present. They’re relishing this opportunity for an open display of impudence toward an elder (and I suppose I’d do the same in their place, so I can’t complain). Justin lets out a nervous laugh.
I close my bedroom door behind us and hastily stuff my discarded dress and pantyhose under the pillow as he pulls a small beribboned box out of his pocket. “Oh, Justin, I didn’t—”
“It’s all right,” he says as I tear off the ribbon. “You weren’t expecting me, anyway.”
The necklace inside the box is just what I would’ve wanted, had I known such a thing existed: a silver Janus pendant, with a face on either side. “Found it at one of the markets in Budapest,” he says. “Thought of you.”
I turn the pendant—heavier than it looks—over and over in my palm, grinning from ear to ear. It is the perfect gift. How did he know?
“Can I put it on for you?”
“Oh, please do!”
His arms encircle me and I feel his breath on my neck again, his fingertips tickling my nape.
“Do you have any idea how old it is?”
“It’s hard to say. Late Victorian, I think. Made in England.”
“I’ll treasure this,” I tell him, and his cheeks redden with boyish pleasure.
“I don’t want to keep you,” he says softly. “We should go back down.”
“I suppose we should,” I reply, but I make no move to the door.
“I was thinking …”
“Yes?”
“Maybe we could meet up in the city sometime soon?”
“I’d love to.”
“Great. Name the day.”
“Friday?”
“Oh. No sooner?”
“What day were you thinking?”
“How about the day after tomorrow? Maybe we could go to a museum. How about the Met?”
I nod. I’m smiling so hard my face might fall off.
We come down and when I say, “I’ll get your coat,” Mira and Vega protest most volubly. “Stay a while longer,” Mira says as Vega nudges him into the drawing room, where an alternate puppet show is about to take place for his benefit. The marionettes are still inert, of course, so the children are working their wires and putting rude words in their mouths. Auntie Emmeline proclaims herself a “big smelly meanie” and Goody Harbinger sings, “A noose, a noose! I’m bruised on my caboose!” They know they will be scolded for this once Justin’s left, but they’re having far too much fun to care.
“Those are the most amazing marionettes I’ve ever seen,” he says, and wants to know where they were made.
I plop down in the middle of the sofa to keep the girls from sitting beside him, and as he settles himself he glances at the photograph of Morven and me in our ANC uniforms on the end table. He does a double take. Shoot! I ought to have hidden that.
“Is this your grandmother?” he asks. “She looks a lot like you.”
I’m not pressed to lie, though, for the ongoing jollification distracts him: the naughty children are making Uncle Erskine tell Auntie Emmeline that her mother was a hamster and her father smelt of elderberries, pausing only to ooh and ahh out the drawing room window at the falling snow; in a nearby armchair Cousin Tabitha, having imbibed too much mulled wine, hiccups and giggles alternately, quite comical seeing as she’s even older than I am; the catnip mouse Uncle Heck draws from his rucksack sends the tabby into paroxysms of ecstasy on the oriental carpet.
Justin’s looking about the room in idle enjoyment, when suddenly he frowns and starts darting glances at the faces in the crowd. “How odd!”
“What is it?”
“Nobody wears glasses in your family. Not even your great-aunts … and I see a few who look like they could be in their eighties.”
I shrug. “Good genes, what can I say?” Morven rolls her eyes.
Night is falling and at last he thinks he’d really better be going now. I see him to the door and he kisses me full on the mouth, but my euphoria is short-lived. I reenter the drawing room and the ancestors launch into their reprimand: For shame, Evelyn! You have no business—no right—oh, the indecency of it! Clickety-clack go their little wooden jaws. The children take this opportunity to quit the drawing room en masse in se
arch of further refreshment, and everyone else fidgets in their chair.
Helena appears in the doorway, still wearing her apron. “That’s enough!” she calls out. “She’s done no harm.”
“No harm yet!” the puppets cry in unison.
“The boy’s only after a bit of fun himself. And so I see no harm in it.” She catches Uncle Heck’s eye then and nods. My uncle draws his old ibex headdress out of his pack and puts it on while the sulking puppets seat themselves on the end of the stage. Heck produces his tin whistle and plays a few notes. The children hurry back into the room in a stampede, trailing cookie crumbs all over the carpet. Faced with this wild new getup, the younger ones hide their faces in their mothers’ bosoms, believing him the bogeyman.
THE KIDDIES go to bed before the meeting commences. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories of winter covention: being snuggled up in bed and hearing murmuring through the floor punctuated by occasional laughter, and if you got up for a glass of warm milk you would arrive in the doorway of a drawing room gone strange in the cozy gloom, your mother’s face silhouetted in the lamplight. You knew it was the same old room you passed your days in—but late at night, in the darkness, and with all the ladies and their big words and only faintly familiar perfumes, the room acquired an air of preternatural excitement. You expected there was a tremendous secret to which you’d shortly be made privy.
But what did I tell you about nostalgia? A sweet distraction before it bites you in the rump.
The first part of the meeting is uneventful, and I am too busy thinking of Justin to pay much attention. The boy child is named Erskine, after his grandfather, and the young people make their beneficium pledge. Many of the ladies knit through it all, and Olive Jester, Dymphna’s daughter, sits in the corner embroidering a tiny blouse. (She inherited the workshop over on Alabaster Street from Uncle Dickon, who, when he got old enough, sat down and made his own juju.)
Olive’s daughters appear in the doorway and listen with wide eyes as the last couple girls take their oaths. “Mommy, may we have some milk?” Two mugs appear on the end table at her elbow as Olive continues at her needlework, and the two little girls stand there in their footy pajamas with their noses in the gently steaming cups.
Then, as usual, Helena says, “Are there any matters of conduct to be brought to our attention?” to which there is always a brief silence before Morven says, “Right then, I’ll bring in the tea tray.”
Morven is opening her mouth to say just that as Lucretia Hartmann raises her hand. “I have a charge.”
Helena starts. “A charge?”
Lucretia rises from her chair and smooths her skirt before speaking again. “It is my unfortunate duty to declare that I have come into possession of documents suggesting that you, Helena, had a hand in the death of Henry Dryden.”
Gasps, gaping mouths, snorts of incredulity. My sister, a murderess? Helena Homebody? Preposterous.
“Surely you can’t be serious, Lucretia,” the ladies are saying.
“I assure you that I am. And if this evidence is to be believed, the consequences for this coven will be profound.”
I stand, trembling, and face her. “How dare you,” I say. “How dare you accuse my sister in her own home!”
“How dare you, Evelyn! How dare you suggest your family is above the rules of this coven!”
“Lucretia is right, Eve,” Helena says quietly. “She may be mistaken in her accusation, but I must prove my innocence according to custom.”
The ancestors are of little help, being too busy arguing among themselves. Their limbs clash against one another’s as they argue, clackety-clack-clack. “It isn’t true. We know it isn’t,” says Uncle Dickon, but what can a ghost offer in the way of tangible evidence?
“This is nonsense and you know it,” I cry. “Everyone knows it. Where’s your proof, you spiteful old cow?”
“Eve, please!” Morven tugs at my sleeve. “Hush now. We’ll sort this out.”
“You are the worst hypocrite there ever was, Evelyn Harbinger. Look at you, vain as a peacock, strutting around as if—” She cuts herself short, flushing quite deeply, for it has only just occurred to her that a third of the people in this room are Peacocks.
“Peahen,” Vega sniffs.
“And peahens don’t strut,” her sister says impishly. “They haven’t the plumage.”
“Be quiet!” Lucretia’s face has gone rather purple. “The way she’s bewitched that poor boy is positively criminal, and as I see it you’re all to blame for your complicity.” She huffs and glares at all the ladies seated around her. They avert their eyes and clear their throats. “Call me all the names you like, Evelyn,” Lucretia says, “but your house is made of glass.”
Morven implores me not to retort as Lucretia fumbles for her purse—a great brown thing that resembles a mound of offal more than a fashion accessory—and pulls out a neatly binder-clipped sheaf of photocopies. She’s been planning this, the sour old prig!
She hands the sheaf to Helena, who skims the first page with a dispassionate eye (as only Helena could, the poor dear). “I found these letters in my mother’s papers. These are facsimiles, of course. Her correspondent laid out the case against you, Helena, and it is lamentably convincing.”
“Who is the correspondent?” somebody asks.
“Miss Belva Mettle, a native of this town.” Lucretia turns to Marguerite. “Your father’s secretary.”
“An ordinary woman?”
Lucretia nods. “Not that it matters.”
Dymphna clears her throat. “Naturally, we must have time to review th—”
“Yes, of course,” Lucretia says. “Will we reconvene in one month’s time?”
Helena looks up from the papers in her hands and nods slightly. With that, Lucretia Hartmann slings that horrid handbag over her shoulder, lifts her chin, and marches out of the drawing room.
Nobody speaks. I fall in a heap onto the sofa beside Morven. Olive’s children, thoroughly oblivious to the kerfuffle Lucretia has just kicked up, have been rummaging through Uncle Heck’s knapsack in the corner of the room. The elder of the two is monopolizing the bag, however, so her little sister has moved on to her own mother’s sack; Olive, like most of the rest of us, is too busy staring at the floor in troubled rumination to notice what her kiddies are up to. With a small cry of delight, her younger daughter pulls out a string of three unfinished puppets and carries them across the room to the sofa where we are seated. “Look, Aunties!” she says. “Look what I found!”
I lean forward to see her better—what a sweet little thing she is, Shirley Temple curls and a milk moustache drying to a crust on her upper lip—and I take the marionette she offers me.
It has no clothes or hair yet, but its face is freshly drawn, and as I look upon it I am dimly aware of Olive demanding her daughter bring her back the puppets at once. It’s a girl puppet, of course, with pale cat’s eyes, arched black eyebrows, and a bowed mouth painted crimson.
Olive rushes forward, plucks the puppet from my hands, and stuffs it, clickety-clack, back into her workbag. “I’m so sorry, Auntie,” she mutters. “I never intended for you to see it.”
Schemes and Counterschemes
14.
There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men.
—Joseph Wood Crutch
“RATHER PREMATURE, wouldn’t you say?” I’d said drily once someone had poured me a generous glug of brandy. “I might live another sixty years, you know.”
“You might,” said Olive.
“Mind you, Auntie Emmeline was two hundred and twelve. Uncle Elmsford was nearly two forty-three. And Dorcas Harbinger lived to be over three hundred!”
“You don’t know that for certain,” Olive replied. “Sorry, Auntie, but you Harbingers do have a tendency to exaggerate.”
I turned to Morven, who didn’t seem aggravated in the slightest. “Aren’t you offended?” I asked. She said no, and I replied, “Why not? Don’t forget,
you’ve got almost a year on me.”
The covention was spoiled, of course, though Lucretia had the sense to hide her face the rest of the weekend. I took pleasure in none of the old New Year’s customs, not even the Enchanted Gingerbread Man’s annual prophecy. (At least it wasn’t any more ominous than it usually is.) Nobody had the heart to man the Grey Mare, so the horse’s skull sat idle on the drawing room mantelpiece, the well-worn cape trailing down the side of the fireplace. Vega put two votive candles in its sockets and we—only the Harbingers left now—sat in the darkness, watching the light flicker where its eyes used to be. Helena kept to herself.
Until now I never truly understood how a small-town feud could drag on for generations, how children could so willingly inherit the grudges of their grandsires. For days afterward my blood roared in my ears whenever I thought of the toy shop proprietress going about her daily business, doling out Robitussin-flavored lollies with every purchase in between plotting the ruination of the Harbinger clan. Why must we defend ourselves against her ridiculous accusations? Anyone can see she’s mad as a wet hen!
THE DAY after Christmas we hold a family meeting. The Peacocks and the Jesters and all the rest had offered sympathy in abundance, but none of our friends could possibly offer a solution. So we kept our conference to ourselves.
“There’s not much to tell beyond what you all know already.” Helena is seated at the head of the dinner table, dignified as ever. Her daughters pepper her with questions.
“Have you read the letters?” Rosamund asks. My sister nods.
“Who was this Belva Mettle, anyway?” Marguerite says. “I never heard anything about her.”
“She wasn’t your father’s secretary for very long. I don’t remember much about her myself—only met her a handful of times …”
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