Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Indeed,” he said. “But alchemy encompasses a great deal more than puritanical beliefs based on hope and faith. It is the study of utter control through higher knowledge.”

  “The philosopher’s stone?”

  “Not a stone at all, naturally. It relates to the Opus Magnum and is the achievement of divine consciousness. But I really cannot give a thesis on such an enormous concept in just a few hours.”

  I was extremely tired though the clock on the mantelpiece ticked off at just nine o’clock. I didn’t feel that a comprehensive knowledge of alchemy was necessary at all. “You’ve told me enough,” I said with as much of a smile of gratitude as I could stretch to. “I always seem to be tired these days. It can be most inconvenient.”

  “Very normal, please don’t let it worry you,” smiled Thomas. “The result of time travel of course and only to be expected. It fades as you become more accustomed.”

  “Thank you as usual,” I said. “It’s just this serpent. You say it’s the symbol of infinity. How can it follow me? Why does it? What should I do about it? And,” something else broke through the fogs of sleep, “you talk about divinity and Christianity and purity. But these people believe in torture and evil.”

  “Ah yes,” said Thomas. “Well, of course, wherever you get the possibility of great power and wealth, as Vespasian proves very well, you will always get the dark side.”

  “Like Star Wars?” I mumbled.

  “Oh dear me no,” smiled Thomas. “Much, much more realistic and disturbing than that.”

  But I had to go. I was falling asleep as usual and I apologised and asked if we could meet up another evening. He offered me his spare room if I wanted to stay the night but I told him Bertie was coming back the next morning, so I couldn’t. He frowned slightly. It seemed he would have liked my company though I doubted if a man could be lonely who travelled time as some people travelled the local bus routes. He patted the sofa. “It is far too cold to walk home,” he said with genial patience. “My spare room is very warm and comfy. You’d be most welcome.” I thought he was going to try and pressurise me but then he seemed to think better of it and shrugged. We walked back to my place together, Thomas seeing me home as usual. The paths were moonlit though the night sky was a little overcast and the village stream reflected more cloud than stars. It made my world a smaller place, enclosed and limited. I liked the boundaries. They felt safe. An absurd delusion but one I encouraged.

  It wasn’t until I was back in my own home and curled up in bed with a cup of cocoa to take away the after taste of the wine, that I realised Thomas had once again avoided the question of the coiled snake that ate its own tail.

  Chapter Thirty Five

  I slept deeply without dreaming. It was very early the next morning, being the twenty seventh of October, that I was woken by something tapping on my bedroom window. At first I could not remember who I was or what world I was in. Then I decided I was Molly and that my life was a gentler, safer life and I could risk getting up to see what had disturbed my silences.

  I expected Bertie sometime later in the day but he had his own key and certainly wasn’t agile enough to climb up the wisteria outside up as far as my attic. Thomas Cambio might be a wandering spirit which made him ageless but he inhabited a seventy year old body and I didn’t believe it could be him either. I hoped it might just be an early rising magpie. I got up and shuffled over to the window. The tapping continued without pause.

  My window was a double casement and opened outwards into the last dewy chestnut leaves and the pale graspers of the leafless wisteria. The sky was still dark and starless now though the moon in my modern times was slowly approaching climax and shone smooth. There was no one outside at all. No one had climbed my tree, no one was trying to attract my attention. I sat on the padded window seat, shivered and peered out. The autumn damp slunk into my room and filled up the corners. I closed the window and went back to bed. The tapping had stopped. I decided it must have been a loose branch, twigs in the wind, fronds of climbing greenery. I pulled the quilt around my ears and tried to gain back all the warmth I had lost. Then the whispering came directly into my ear. The voices intermingled but I heard every soft inflection. I lay in a sweat of ice and could not escape because I had opened my home to them and now they were in my head.

  “I will turn the cards for you,” whispered the woman. “First you must cut the pack.” I did not recognise her voice and I saw no one. I saw only shifting darkness in my room and squeezing my eyes tight shut made no difference. The voice repeated, “You must first cut the pack.”

  “I can’t see you,” I whispered back. “I can’t see the cards. I don’t want my future told.”

  “Oh, this is not your future I foretell,” said the voice, “it is your past.”

  “You mean Tilda?” I pleaded. “Please, she’s suffered enough. Please leave her alone.”

  “You must cut the pack,” said the voice.

  I curled up tight, my knees beneath my chin, my head under the covers; a petrified child. Then another voice interrupted the woman’s sibilance. The new voice was as soft and malicious as a frosted breeze over low grass and I recognised it at once. “I will cut for her,” said Vespasian.

  “You have no right. She has not appointed you,” said the woman.

  “I took that right,” said Vespasian. “It was claimed in blood and is indisputable. It cannot be denied.”

  “Very well. I believe it was properly witnessed by one of the common folk and therefore I acknowledge your right,” said the woman. “Now cut the cards.”

  I was shivering like a fool. I had become such a part of enduring magic I should not have been afraid, but I was terrified. Then Vespasian said, “The card is the number eighteen. It is the card of The Moon.”

  “That is appropriate,” said the woman. “It is the Arabic nine and represents the cycle of reincarnation.”

  There was another voice which interrupted her, harsh and ugly and gloating, neither masculine nor feminine. It gathered force, reverberating into a snarl. “That is the card which represents the final stage of the quest when rationality must be sacrificed for instinct and the material state surrendered during the first acknowledgement of spirit. It is the card which challenges courage and opens the paths of the dead. It is true then, who she is and what you have done to her.”

  “It is quicksilver,” said Vespasian, soft as the dying echo of threat. “It is the mercury which changes body into soul. It represents not only death but also rebirth. And so – the reintroduction of incarnation both into body and into spirit.”

  “With this card,” said the woman who had first spoken, “the girl is surely alone. I do not take her part. She relies only on her own faith.”

  “She is not alone. I will stand in her place whenever I choose,” said Vespasian. “None of you can deny me. Even her. Even you.”

  “I will deny you,” hissed the second voice. “And I will claim both of you. You will both wish for death and I will deny you reincarnation, rebirth, and death itself. You have challenged me for too long. The card is The Moon. The full moon peaks this Samhain. There are just five days to wait before I eat you both.”

  “Then continue to chew on your hunger,” said Vespasian and I could hear the malice in his smile thicken like treacle poured on honey. “But do not anticipate torture, for the girl is under my protection, and me you will never touch again. I was never the acolyte you thought me and I do not swive with filth.”

  I still saw nothing but I heard her spring. At the same moment I heard Vespasian laugh. The wind rushed around me like winged creatures on an invisible battlefield.

  The first voice said, her voice bland beneath the rushing wings, “The law stands, whoever chooses to disregard it. The human’s claim is just. His actions were not challenged at the time, for he understood when others did not. Therefore, now he has the right to take this female’s place whenever he wishes.”

  The angry hiss spat back. “Law? Rule? I make the law
. I rule over this arrogant striding fool who thinks himself powerful, when he is as human as all the rest. I will eat his prick, and drink his eyes. I will bend him over my altar and flay his hide from his puny bones.”

  I heard Vespasian’s laugh again, very soft, from close by my side. “Evil is always ignorant,” he said. “You call me human. You call the girl human. You understand nothing. But I will teach you, and you will learn.”

  The shadows hurtled huge and swamped me. I thought I had fainted but when I woke, the normality of sunshine was streaming through the window, the curtains drawn back, and the catch rattling loose. My bedroom was swathed in a dazzle of glistening dust; the brightest autumn morning this year. I sat up and rubbed the disbelief from my eyes, then brought back a semblance of reality in the shower. I had just put the kettle on when Bertie arrived and I almost kissed him.

  The Davidsons had finally become a little tedious or perhaps that was how they were beginning to find Bertie. He unpacked his case in the spare room and handed me a box of chocolates. I disliked chocolates, something he had never been able to grasp through seven years of marriage. As far as Bertie was concerned, women all liked chocolate and that is what you were supposed to give them.

  “You’re not still all vague, are you?” he demanded, eating the first of the chocolates himself. “You’re no company at all these days, you know.”

  I knew what he meant. When I was being Tilda, it left Molly without personality or coherence. “No, I’m sort of myself at the moment, if that makes sense.” I yawned. “Mind you,” I added with a slight shiver, “I had a very disturbed night so I dare say I’ll only be half awake today.”

  “Bad dreams?” It was what he was no doubt still suffering from himself.

  I shook my head. “Perhaps, but it didn’t seem like a dream. There was something tapping on my window and I had to get up and see what it was.”

  “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’?”

  I allowed myself a smile. “There wasn’t anything there at all. Just the chestnut tree in the wind I suppose.”

  “You ought to get it pruned,” said Bertie. “By the way, I like your little carved snake over the fireplace. I saw something like that in the antique shop down Tramper’s Lane a few months ago. I nearly bought it for you. I know you like funny old stuff like that. But this isn’t the same one, is it? That one was much more modern looking. Yours is better carved and has nicer eyes.”

  “I didn’t know you ever took any notice of that sort of thing,” I said, surprised.

  “Well,” said Bertie, “it just goes to show, doesn’t it? You underestimate me as usual. Anyway, I like your one, it looks really old. Where did you find it?”

  “Just hanging around,” I said.

  I walked off and left Bertie in the kitchen with the chocolates. I swaddled myself into my coat, scarf and gloves and walked quickly down to Thomas Cambio’s cottage but he was out. I was bitterly disappointed. I assumed he was off walking on the hills as he often did and as we’d first met but I didn’t feel like walking in the drizzle and mist. There was a sense of threat closing tighter around me, magic was no longer a strange interruption in my life but a constant companion, my own shadow and a part of myself. Fear had moved into my gut, a black stone of tremendous weight. I had little reason to trust anyone, even myself, for I was two people and felt more unbalanced than those around me with their unsettling menace.

  Instinct told me Thomas was a safe guide and his other self, the abbot, a man of kindness however intolerant his age had made him. But when I needed him, he had gone and I was all alone. I returned home and unwrapped myself back into the warmth. Bertie was making lunch so I went upstairs.

  Back in my bedroom I sat on the unmade bed and remembered what I could from the night’s messages. I examined the catch on the window which would no longer close tight, yet before it had always clasped snug. Now its rattle persisted when I pushed at it. Then I got up and went downstairs to search the house, for once a very long time ago I’d bought a pack of tarot cards. They had appealed because of the designs rather than their possible and improbable meanings. I had no book of divination or explanation, I had bought only the cards and now I couldn’t remember where I’d put them. I had never, ever used them. My book shelves were cluttered and disorganised but, even though I hadn’t seen or thought of these cards for years, I found them at once. They were tight wedged in the very first place I looked. The carved serpent watched me from the wall.

  I undid the dust grimed cellophane from the box and sat with the cards on my leather chair by the empty fire place. They were colourful and held a certain fascination, though they looked somewhat different to the few others I had ever seen in my life. These had been designed by one Aleister Crowley whose name seemed familiar, and they were called the Tarot Cards of Thoth, which sounded even more familiar, though I couldn’t remember why. I shuffled them, then cut the pack. I turned over the next card. It was the card of The Moon.

  I sat there for a long time with the card face up, staring at the picture. When I looked up from it, my walls had faded and I was sitting on the dew damp grass beside the cold pool I loved, in the medieval forest where Richard had been buried and where I had sat as Tilda so many times before. Through the silvering trees, my book shelves, the window and its sunshine reflections all paled but were visible all the same in a combination of worlds. I was Molly and my room remained, but within it the forest of a thousand years ago stretched in translucent autumn glory. Richard’s burial mound had been decorated with vervain, periwinkle and henbane. Then I realised the rest of the flowers were in my lap and I had been the one who had strewn them across the grave. Beneath the little piles of green herb and tiny purple flowers, was the card of Thoth, number eighteen in the major arcana; The Moon.

  I heard him behind me as he walked up through the trees. This time I was expecting him. I knew he stood and looked over my shoulder for a moment before he spoke. “I see you have found your card,” said Vespasian. Then he walked forward until I could look up and see him. “It is dangerous for you here. You should go back to your own time.”

  “I’m still in my time. But I know this place too,” I said, “although I’ve never been here as myself before. I didn’t ask to come and I don’t know how to leave. But I feel at home. You don’t recognise me?”

  “Recognise you? Are we playing word games?” inquired Vespasian with his usual soft malice. “I doubt we have time for that. I’ve seen you occasionally in your own place, and I’m hardly likely to forget who I’ve met there. I know who you are and I know who you are not. You are not my Tilda, but you merge with her. You bring her into great danger.”

  He was standing over me and I had to strain my neck to look up at him. He was dressed in the old dust-worn clothes of before and his hair was untrimmed. I was in modern clothes, a loose dress and cardigan and my own hair was probably more of a mess than his. Once again, aware of his gaze, I was conscious of the length of my modern skirt and tried to tug it down over my legs. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “It’s you who bring her danger.” I was angry and reminded of everything I hated him for.

  He didn’t seem annoyed at all. “Perhaps,” he said, half smiling, “that’s partially true. It has been true. Do you want me to explain? Perhaps you are the one to help her, and it’s time I told someone the truth.” And quite suddenly he sat beside me, stretching out his long legs on the grass, leaning back on one elbow, his face raised a little to the mild sunshine. I could see the holes in the dust faded black of his woollen hose and the frayed edge of his tunic. The little handle of his hunting knife was visible tucked into the cuff of one of his boots. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek.

  “Then answer these questions,” I demanded, sitting upright and a little rigid. I was blushing, feeling uncovered, but most of all I was angry. “You come into both worlds,” I hurried on. “Why? What do you come for? Is it to kill?”

  He leaned over, stretching out his arm. I thought he wanted to t
ouch me, and tensed. Instead he picked the tarot card of The Moon from my lap and held it up to the light. “This is not made by hand,” he said. “It seems that the world of the future takes what it wishes from the past, turning knowledge into progress. Then is magic more accepted in your time?”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “Less. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  He looked across at me and grinned. “You look so fierce, Mistress Molly, woman of the future. Do I kill? What a question to ask a God fearing man.”

  “I doubt if you fear God or anyone else,” I muttered, increasingly irritated by his prevarications and pretence at good humour.

  “Now there you are wrong,” he said. “I do not fear God because God is love, although sometimes love might be fearful to some, and real love is inevitably awesome. But there are men I fear and forces I fear even more. However, that was not your question and it is not your business.”

  “It’s my business who you murder,” I said, glaring at him. “Three women have died in my time and one of them was my cousin. I loved her. She was slaughtered in my own home. I have to know if it was you. So how much were you involved?”

  “I am sorry if you lost someone you loved,” he said, his voice soft again, without the underlying thread of threat. He looked away from me and across to the silver shadows of the forest pool. His fingers were in the vervain I had spread on Richard’s grave. “I know how that feels,” he continued, his voice little more than a whisper in drifting memory. “They killed my wife. She was the first, many, many years ago. I know how you feel and I am sorry.”

  I was silent. I waited for him to go on. This time I knew he would.

  “No,” he said, looking back at me. “I kill, when I have to. But I did not kill your cousin or any other woman in your world. I do not torture or kill for pleasure. I do not lust for blood or hunger for pain. My pleasure is not the suffering of others and torture disgusts me. That is not my sickness or my vice.”