by Ashly Graham
‘Hecate knows the wisdom of keeping her enemies closer than her friends. Also, she has to remain sociable and polite in order to make a living. There are so many people out there who are jealous of her power, including amongst the wizards, which she never abuses, however much they deprecate her abilities, and however many underhand means and methods they employ to demean her.
‘“All shall come to an end soon enough,” she says, with increasing frequency; “I have all the time in the world behind me, and none for silly games.”
‘As for her dowdy appearance and dress, she chooses to look like a little old lady because it plays to the witches’ egos: they see what they want to see. They want to believe that she has lost all the puissance that the legendary Dame Hecate commanded, back in the day. Some witches don’t think that she is Hecate, and the younger ones don’t believe that such a person as a triple goddess can ever have existed—such is the quality of teaching in our schools today. Those who have met her or seen her know her or of her only as a little old woman, crusty and bitter, who lives alone in a dark attic muttering over spells, and complaining to anyone who will listen to her about how she has to manage on a shoestring budget.
‘In Dame Hecate they do not see, as the poet Skelton put it,
‘
Diana in the leavës green,
Luna that so bright doth sheen,
Persephone in Hell.
‘They do not understand the significance of the Greek maiden Persephone, and her mother Demeter—of Roman Proserpina and Ceres—and the crone who stands beside them. Even I can comprehend very little of it, and I’ve been around for as long as some of the junior wizards.
‘It’s beyond my brief to tell you this, Jenny, but what makes you superior to the common or garden witch, though you’re not one and never will be, is that you’ve demonstrated a will—for thence comes the ability—to believe in what you cannot see. You demonstrated that when I asked you about the phoenix. Your determination to solve the mystery of the castle’s missing windows proves that it is ingrained in you.’
‘I didn’t think you knew anything about how I got here.’
‘It had nothing to do with me. I’m just...’
‘...the pharmacist. The witch doctor.’
‘Undeterred by there being no common-sense explanation for the windows, you conjured forth by your own ancestral magic the stairs, and the door, and the key that opened the door; and then you walked down the passageway that led to whatever else might remain to be discovered about yourself.
‘While you were your own spellmaker, hoping without understanding what it was that you might be hoping for, up here where I live, spells are nothing more than commercial products: other than trusting the manufacturer, neither our customer the witch nor the witch’s client needs to have any faith in them; they just want them to work. While below, in your world, wishful thinking in itself is a spell, here a spell is nothing more than a fait accompli, a fact in the making.’
Jenny walked to the windows to collect her thoughts, and looked out.
‘How very odd,’ she said; ‘although it’s midsummer and it stays light until quite late, although we can still see in here without lights or candles, it’s gone pitch dark outside. Everything was so bright upstairs, and only a short while ago you said, or Caractacus the squirrel did, that it was not yet half past five. Perhaps there’s been an eclipse.’
‘Night comes much earlier in the Dark Ages,’ said B.J. ‘Witchcraft isn’t a daytime pursuit, and some days we only get about four hours of sunlight.’
As Jenny looked out of the great casement windows into the profundity of blackness, the craterous globe of a giant full moon slowly made its stately ascension, forcing the darkness to the edges of the sky as it grew whole above the horizon. It seemed that she could walk or swim to it within minutes across the thick summer night.
Small dark shapes were swirling against the great pearlescent backdrop: those must be witches, thought Jenny, of the reactionary sort flying about on broomsticks. It was like some great motor-cross in the sky, and she marvelled at how they managed to stay out of each other’s way.
Both B.J. and Jenny started at a jangling sound, and looked up. Overhead Joy Almond was frowning down at them over her hook nose; she’d struck the hours in quick succession on her tubular bell, as if she were sounding a gong for dinner, and she was swinging from the effort. Livid spots of colour had appeared in her cheeks, and she seemed breathless, not in the sense of being as short of breath as a deceased person is supposed to be.
Disconcerted by the disapproving look that his mistress’s superior friend was giving him, B.J. smoothed his bald pate several times.
‘Message received, ma’am,’ he said loudly; ‘Jenny: time, tide, and Joy Almond wait for no woman, and you have accepted an invitation to Dame Hecate’s open house this evening. We were upstairs longer than we should have been, which was my fault. At least you don’t have to worry about my insisting on giving you a practical demonstration with the live Ingredients…
‘…who now, Jenny, have another function to fulfil. They’d better be ready. It’s the squirrel’s job to watch the time and open the cages and hutches, but he sleeps a great deal for one who never does anything and is supposed to keep an eye on the clock…I would never want to set one by him.’
‘What do the Ingredients have to do with the open house? I hope nobody gets served on crackers, I couldn’t stand that.’
B.J. looked up again at the imperious Joy Almond. ‘Excuse me, Jenny, but I better call them.’
Going to the staircase, the doctor cupped his hands and hollered, ‘Ingredients! Come on down, please, quick as you can!’ He clapped several times.
Jenny goggled as a number of the Ingredients, led by the rump-fed ronyon, trooped down the steps, carrying, of all things, a collection of musical instruments.
‘As you can see,’ said B.J. as he rejoined her, ‘the Ingredients have uses other than clinical. Perhaps this might cheer you up a bit about their fates. Hec’s gatherings are as much for them as they are for the witches, as a token of recognition for their services, even though their job tonight is to provide entertainment and wait on everybody.
‘House rules are that the witches aren’t allowed to take them aside to talk shop; about what goes into certain spells, for example; and anyone who prods an Ingredient to check for ripeness or condition, or steps out of line by asking Hec or me if she can put a hold on one of them for herself, is escorted off the premises by Coolblood the baboon…and there’s no arguing with Coolblood. There was a witch once, would you believe, who tried to take a cutting from the ronyon for a bit of Do-It-Yourself.
‘So Jenny, it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you The Essentials Swing Time Band. Take a bow, boys and girls, and bits and pieces.’ As the ronyon reached the bottom step he did as he was bid, and the others followed. The ronyon’s hair, previously so tangled and matted, was now washed and neatly combed and parted, as straight as if it had been ironed. Several strands were wrapped around a conductor’s baton. B.J. lowered his voice. ‘Sometimes it takes him hours to arrange his coiffure as he wants it, and he has a tantrum if we try to hurry him along.’
Each of the Ingredients was accompanied, or rather followed—most of them weren’t physically equipped to carry anything—by a musical instrument: Liz the Lizard and Sharkey Saltsea were followed by double basses; Curly and Belinda Swinekill the pigs, grunting hard, were struggling with a set of drums and sticks in their trotters.
‘The Essentials,’ B.J. continued, ‘are a popular fixture at Hec’s parties. They’re quite talented: Fang the wolf’s tooth plays clarinet and alto saxophone, along with the other saxes: Puttock the toad on tenor, William Webtoe the frog on baritone, and Coolblood the baboon on bass. Terence Turknose and his friend Andreas Lip-Tartar, Horace Hedgepig, and Fork the adder are fine trumpet players; and Gally the goat, Nigel Natterjack, Thomas Turtle, and Fenny the grass snake do sterling work on the trombone. As you can see
, Liz, who’s powerful and spunky for a lizard, despite being dwarfed by her instrument, and Sharkey Saltsea slap the basses; and Bruce Thumbpilot tinkles the ivories with amazing speed for a single digit. With Curly and Belinda on drums, Nora the rat does duty on the cymbals and other percussion instruments.
‘All the band members take their job very seriously and practise hard; they have a terrific sense of rhythm, especially the reptiles and amphibians, and Fenny’s solos are magnificent. Snakes have very good embouchures. Dogtongue is the crooner and a fine one. The rump-fed not only conducts but is an accomplished composer; although his Hellbroth and Hemlock is a much-encored favourite with the witches, the tunes of his I like best are Slips of Yew and Cauldron Blues.’
‘The mice and bats and the others,’ said Jenny, ‘what do they do?’
‘Nothing musical; although the bats have perfect pitch, the sounds they emit are far above the range of the other instruments; and Howlet the little owl, despite his sharp hearing, is tone deaf. But they make themselves useful delivering hors d’oeuvres to those who point to what they want. Wort the liver mixes the punch by swimming around the bowl. Piemuffin and Weesleekit the twin mice, and Brian Noctule and Radar Bill the belfry bats circulate and smile. Berenice the pipistrelle distributes sheet music to the players and turns pages, and Ferdinand the flying fish hands out programmes of the sets they’ll be playing.
‘Coolblood mingles when he’s not playing in a number; he flirts with the witches, and it’s the only time I see him in a good mood. Even Fallflat the jokester has a role, because when witches have had enough to drink they’ll laugh at anything. An appreciative audience stimulates Fallflat’s memory, and some nights he’ll puff up with inspiration a dozen times or more.
‘The only two you won’t see are Stingless the slow-worm, who stays behind to baby-sit Mia’s farrow...he sleeps through most of their noise, how I can’t imagine, they make such a racket...and the brinded cat, who has a frightful voice and refuses to help: she says it’s all too, too beneath her. Though occasionally she’ll attend out of curiosity and applaud languidly between consuming fish nibbles.’
‘What was the brinded cat’s name before you took it away for scratching you?’
‘Agatha. She mewed thrice many times, I can tell you, to get it back, but I held firm.’
‘And I see Buckets. What function can a bucket of sweat have in a Swing Time band?’
‘None. The witches call him over to use as a mirror to check their make-up in. Some of them are ugly enough to heat him up to boiling point.’
Bruce Thumbpilot, who had been hovering overhead and signing directions to the Ingredients and Esoterica, with a thumbs up to B.J. confirmed that all and their instruments were present and correct.
A loud knocking came from the direction of the hallway, and Jenny spun round.
‘Who could that be?’
‘The first of our guests has arrived,’ replied B.J., ‘or more likely a gaggle of them, because witches don’t understand the meaning of being fashionably late when there’s free drink on offer and gossip to be exchanged. Except, that is, those who elect to make a grand entrance directly from outside, coming in by the windows so that they can show off their expensive conveyances. The witches at the door will have valet-parked their more ordinary transports with the apprentice greeters downstairs and walked up.
‘Now Jenny, I’ve something to attend to, so would you mind letting the witches in? The password key this evening, which being a party night works only from this side, is “Sausages on sticks”. Speak the password into the keyhole and turn the door handle, and then stand back as quickly as possible. That’s important. Try and keep the familiars from brawling with each other, and make sure the witches tether them in their allocated spots along the hall—their names are on the brass plates. There’ll be a lot of cloaks to hang up, too, on the pegs.’
The sounds were now those of impatient hammering.
B.J. huffed, ‘“Here’s a knocking, indeed!...Knock, knock, knock!”, as the porter in the Scottish play says. You’d better hurry, Jenny, or I wouldn’t put it past them to batter the door down.’
And before she had time to protest, he had hurried back upstairs.
Pausing to take deep breaths, Jenny muttered to herself Sir Walter Scott’s herbal couplet, ‘“Trefoil, vervain, John’s wort, dill,”—none of which she had about her person—|Hinders witches of their will.”’
Hastening down the corridor, Jenny noticed that the brass plates along the wall were now burnished to a gleam. Taking a moment to stoop and look more closely, she registered that, instead of being illegible as they had been when she and Jock McJoist had entered, they were now clearly etched with the names of the familiars and the witches whom they belonged to.
On the other side of the door she could hear a babel of barking, caterwauling, squalling, hissing, and spitting.
Jenny’s inclination was to run back inside and join B.J. in the turret, until it was safe to come out under escort. The prospect of confronting, not just one witch, but many at once who’d never seen her before, as well as having to deal with a lot of hysterical and unfamiliar familiars, scared her.
The situation was worsened by her not having had an opportunity to change her dress. So engrossed had she been in learning about the Ingredients, that she had forgotten Hecate’s promise to give her time to spruce up, and provide her with something more suitable to wear. But now, because Hec hadn’t reappeared in time, the witches’ first impression of her would be to see her in the same informal clothes that she had worn all day, which were dirty and creased from searching dusty rooms and being covered in loose plaster from the walls. There were several tears in her skirt, her shoes were scuffed, and the state of her hair didn’t bear thinking about.
Jenny was determined not to fail in her assignment, however, when Hecate had been kind enough to invite her to the open house. Also, as strong as the door, was there was an urgency in B.J.’s assurance that the witches would brook no impediment to their entering.
So, hastening down the passage, Jenny brushed off her jacket, smoothed her skirt, patted her hair, bent to the keyhole, said, ‘Sausages on sticks!’, and turned the handle.
Although she remembered B.J.’s advice to get back, and braced herself against the crush, a surge from the other side pinned her against the wall behind the door. She was just able to squeeze out as a crowd of witches and assorted familiars jostled and barged their way into the confined space from the landing.
The air was filled with shouted instructions to the familiars as the women, none of whom greeted or acknowledged Jenny, used their elbows and feet to dig each other in the ribs and kick enough shins until they had space enough to doff their cloaks, before joining the scrimmage of bodies that were already forging down the passage.
It all happened so quickly that Jenny caught only a glimpse here and there of a face as garments were thrust at her to be hung up, and a lot of misshapen hats. She sank to the floor under the weight of heavy wool, grateful at least that the material afforded protection against swinging fists, sharp heels, and the familiars’ teeth and claws. The cloaks were redolent of a combination of scent, toilet water, mothballs, cigarettes, gin, and fried food.
As soon as the initial assault was over, Jenny fought her way upwards, disentangled herself, and got up. Now that the first wave of witches had gone inside, it was the familiars’ turn to do battle, and dozens of them: cats, owls, a weasel, a fox, and an aggressive rabbit with feet like giant piano hammers were those she had time to identify—laid into each other with ferocity.
Finally, as if upon some signal or by common agreement, the familiars stopped scrapping, parted, and took their positions under their designated brass plates, where they settled down and went to sleep.
Jenny, heaving a sigh of relief, took the opportunity of a respite in the flow of arrivals to sort out the cloaks and coats. This was made possible by each having a tag inside embroidered with the name of both the witch and her
familiar, so that she could hang it on the appropriate peg above the already slumbering helpmeet.
The names, other than those of Greymalkins Eleven, Seven, and Nineteen, were Dogbreath, Sharptooth, Familiarity, and, presumably, a relative of Familiarity named Contempt, Cat-a-Wampuss, Muzzle, Boomer, Hoot, Sirius, Plonker, Croak, Blyndazza, Scratch, Flighty, and Musk.
For the next quarter of an hour there was such a stream of witches coming in, that Jenny wondered how they were all going to fit in the living room. The women passed before her in a blur, and still she gained no more than a fleeting impression of what any of them looked like. Eventually the corridor was full of familiars sitting on the cloaks of their mistresses who weren’t senior enough to have earned a hook and brass plate. More spilled over the threshold through the open door and onto the landing, where the smaller ones were able to find space enough to make themselves comfortable, and others had to drape themselves in awkward positions on the stairs.
No more fights broke out, and, when it seemed nobody else was coming, Jenny stood in a daze and wondered what to do next. Hecate, it seemed, had either been delayed or had forgotten about her. Even without a mirror to look in, Jenny knew that only lengthy recourse to her own bathroom and wardrobe could rectify her dishevelled state, which could only have been worsened by the ruckus at the door. But there was no time, and even if there had been she’d no confidence that there would be anything to return to.
Unable to come up with a solution as to how to improve her appearance, she decided not to bother. She’d been invited to the open house, and she was going to attend it. That Hecate had overlooked the matter of her toilet was not Jenny’s fault. Although she would be embarrassed to present herself as she was, life with Lord Huntenfisch, and having to put up with the ocular criticism and rudeness of his acquaintances and those he was cultivating, had removed what vanity and capacity for embarrassment she might once have had. The only thing to do was to imagine herself perfectly coiffed and turned out, to act confidently, and to hope that an elegant deportment and polite manner would temper the witches’ censures.