The Sea Priestess

by Dion Fortune

  CHAPTER XV

  THREE woods were wanted by Morgan Le Fay for her Fire of Azrael. Two of these I knew where to lay hands on, but the third had to be sought. On the opposite side of the little canyon in which ran the ; river Dick, a cedar had blown down during a thunderstorm last summer, to my great grief, for it was a noble tree and left an ugly gash in the greenery. So I crossed the river by Bridge Street, and turning left into a maze of alleys, set to work to try and trace the house in whose garden it must have stood, in the hopes that I might be able to lay my hands on a few logs, honestly or otherwise. This was the oldest and meanest part of the town and had been condemned by successive generations of sanitary inspectors, but as the owners were all town councillors, nothing ever came of it. I suppose local government is much the same wherever you go, and it is nothing to write home about, what I have seen of it. Anyway we had got as nasty a little slum as you could want, tucked away in a bend of the Dick at Dickford. It seemed unlikely that any of these unlucky ones would run to cedars, but I persevered, and presently I came to a high wall of ancient brick, mellow and old, like my stable, with most of the mortar out of the courses, and wild snapdragons and mulleins and the remains of wallflowers clinging to the crevices. This looked promising, for that mellow red brickwork went with cedars. I followed the alley that ran under the wall, and presently came to a tumble-down dwelling of some dimensions that presented its backside to the public gaze, as was the custom of Queen Anne. I rang the bell, and was answered by the caretaker, a doddering old dame like my Sally Sampson gone to seed. I told her what I wanted, and she told me that the old lady, the last of the line, was dead, and she was carctaking for the distant heirs; half a crown changed hands, and the cedar was mine. I found out who were the distant heirs, for I guessed that the old place would go for a song owing to the slum around it. But, thought I to myself, if, having bought it for a song, I cannot ginger up the town council into doing something about the slum, I'm a half-wit. Thus does the worthy house-agent make his humble living. I went out to view the corpse. It was a Lebanon cedar and I reckoned it would do very nicely, so arranged to have it sawn up and carted out to Trethowen at the farm, whence he could haul it in penny numbers in his chug-cart along with Mrs Treth and the brooms, for I had no mind that any Dickfordian should set eyes on Morgan. I had got to live in the blasted town. The house was full of Benares brass, and foxes' masks, and unskilful water-colours of ships of the line in full sail, very correct as to nautical details, and assorted swords all up the staircase; so one could see just the sort of family it had been, serving king and country for generations, and dying out in consequence, till only one old lady was left, and as she couldn't serve her country she survived to be ninety. There were a number of faded sketches of the Lebanon and its cedars, and the old dame told me that the fallen cedar had been grown from seed brought home by a son of the house. It was a curious thought that here in English soil had grown the seed that had ripened under Arabian suns, and that deadalive Dickford had a living link with the ancient East. The old dame showed me a picture of the tree that was the ancestor of their tree, and I think it must have remembered the Crusaders, or--more agreeable memory--Saladin. So I left her to arrange with her agricultural offspring to saw up the logs, they being glad of the job, and took the car up on to the hills behind Dickford where I knew juniper grew, juniper being a plant of the chalk. It was a clear day, and as I drove along the road on the ridge I could distinctly see the farm at the foot of Bell Head, freshly whitewashed by Treth- Owen ; but the fort I could not see, for it was hidden by the bend of the down, which, as I have said before, curves like a banana. I was glad of this, for distant as it was, I did not wish either Dickford or Dickmouth to overlook the sea-palace of Morgan Ie Fay. Starber, humble little fishing village, was a different matter, I do not know why. Presently I saw beside the way an ancient gentleman repairing the dry-stone walling. Him I accosted and explained my desires. He said juniper burned very badly, with sparks and sputterings. I said it didn't matter. He said he had never heard of such a thing as cutting and carting juniper for burning. I said that didn't matter either. He shook his ancient and infested head and said he didn't think it could be done. I asked him why, and he didn't know, but continued to shake his head. What a country to die for! I drove on a little further and came to a camp of gipsies; so I thought I would have a word with them, and see if I could persuade them to steal the old gentleman's juniper as he wouldn't part with it honestly. Needless to say they did not need much persuading. Then an old dame crawled out of a tent and wanted to tell my fortune. I agreed, for I have a weakness for gipsies; they have broken away from the haunts of men as I would like to do. So she produced a pack of cards as ancient and tattered as herself, and bid me take one, which I did gingerly, glanced at it, and found that I held in my hand the portrait of Morgan Le Fay as I had seen her sitting on the high stern-poop of the ship that brought her to Ishtar's Becrc. There she sat, in her great carved chair with a book on her knee; and behind her were strange fruit, pomegranates, I think, and under her feet the moon. It gave me quite a turn; the old girl saw it, and asked me to take another. This I did, and it proved to be the Hanged Man--a knave hung up by the heels to a kind of gallows, with a halo round his head and a tranquil expression on his face. I crossed the old dame's palm with silver, and she told me that there was a woman in my life who would sacrifice me for her own ends. ("Tell us something we don't know, mother!") thought I to myself. Then I had bread and cheese and beer at a pub at the crossroads, it being far enough away from Dickford not to upset my sister's Band of Hope, and went on to Bristol. Bristol is a peculiar port, and one for which I have a great affection, for the ships come up into the town in an intimate and agreeable manner, and one can walk under a bowsprit that only just gives sufficient clearance for the trams. So I left the car on the quay and hopped over the cobbles seeking sandal-wood. Now sandal-wood sawdust is easy to get but darned hard to burn; what I wanted was sandal-wood chips, or better still, bits of board that could be broken up. I was looking for a curiosity shop, and presently, between establishments where they sell oilskins and save souls, I found it. It was a genuine bit of old Bristol. I only just missed going through into the cellar. The small-pancd window was packed so full of undusted junk that it was impossible to see what was there; and it was all unpriced, save for some picture postcards, very vulgar, and in my opinion, very dear, being twopence each. We have much ruder ones in Dickford for a penny. I went in, and some stones in a cocoa-tin tied to the doorhandle announced my entry. Out came a great obese spider of a man from the room behind the shop, whose half-glass door was carefully curtained. His eyes brightened when he saw me, thinking I wanted post-cards, or what they stood for. I told him my needs, and he registered disappointment in human nature in general and mine in particular. However, I gave him a bob, and he sent me down the street to knock at the door of a tumbledown warehouse; the whole street, in fact, looked as if it were in imminent danger of falling into the dock, which in my opinion was the best thing that could have happened to it. A Eurasian youth admitted me, and ushered me into a little office where I found myself face to face with a Mongolian of some sort, but not, I think, a Chinaman. There was no difficulty whatever in obtaining what I wanted here, and I was immediately supplied from stock with neat little packets of sandal-wood done up like kindling, and I don't fancy he charged me more than the proper price for them, though they were not cheap. I wondered greatly who burnt this expensive wood, and why? Also what he imagined I meant to do with it, for he expressed no surprise and asked no questions. Then I drove home and had the hell of a row with my sister over the dinner. If there is one thing that lays me out quicker than another it is pork in the evening, and yet she will give it to me. This pork was under-done, too. Then I went out to the "George" to seek something edible, and called in at the butcher's on the way, and told him if he delivered any more pork at my house I would close the account and buy foreign. He grinned. There are times when I even surprise myself.
I had a very good evening at the "George" in the commercial room, and made up my mind I would dine there in future, and have a glass of wine with my dinner in peace--and may God have mercy on the Friendly Girls, and the Band of Hope, and anything else that needs it. The idea of setting a good example has always been a very odd one to me, and I could never understand why we did it; for we do not dispense charity lavishly, so why should anyone take any notice of us? Personally, I never found they did. The next three days I was at a sale, not auctioneering, which I hate, but buying on behalf of a big Bond Street dealer, which I enjoy. On the third day he turned up in person, after the pictures, which I won't tackle, and I dined with him when the sale was over in a private room at the "George". They do you well at the "George"; the proprietor's mother does the cooking and I choose the wines. Mind you, it is stodge; plain roasts and boileds and fruit-pies and such-like, but it takes a lot of beating because the family live with the business. There is some very fine linen-fold panelling in the private room, too, which my pal wanted to buy, but they wouldn't part. We could hear grandma from the kitchen saying they weren't to. We knew it was no use then. After dinner, I took him round to my place and tried Morgan Ie Fay's personally-imported wines on him, and helped him home as it got light. After that I took the day off, too, and then it was the week-end again.