Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  Party clothes. Persona clothes, for people who had found a safe space in which to wear their inner child on the outside for a while. I wondered if the person with the ever-growing BoS collection was here. I wondered if adl the BoS's had been stolen by the same person. I wondered if all the ones that were missing had been stolen. I wondered if I was losing my grip on probability.

  Who would steal Books of Shadows? Who, and why—and, dammit, how? These people were New Yorkers; their doors had good locks.

  Belle waved to me, from a kaffeklatsch of other New York-area covenleaders. Ah, Bast, play your cards right and this time next year you too can be among them.

  Although after our last conversation, Ned probably wouldn't join a coven of mine if I asked him. Not that I was going to.

  Where had Ned gotten the "Mary, Queen of Scots" Book of Shadows? Stolen? Or self-created out of the mass of public material? And why choose Mary for his fall guy? She wasn't exactly the most plausible candidate.

  Echo answereth not.

  I wandered, cataloguing the people I knew who weren't here. No Cindy, no Julian —none of the downtown Ceremonial Magic crowd who thought of Pagans as Bridge and Tunnel People. No Santeros, or representatives of any of the other tropic-zone religions: Huna, Voudoun, Candomble, Brujeria. Only the one Odinist.

  No Ilona, with or without partner. I wondered if she'd changed her mind about coming. I couldn't see Ned at the moment, which was a blessing. I had what Ned wanted, and there was no way on earth for me to give it to him, no matter whether 1 wanted to or not.

  Was Ned Ilona's new partner? Now there was a daunting thought. Fortunately I didn't shop there much.

  I hove in sight of the beer. Beaner was standing next to the keg with someone I hadn't seen in too long.

  "Niceness!" she trilled, in a voice only bats and dogs could hear. "Niceness is all!" She and Beaner broke into an impromptu duet a la Eddy and McDonald of "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life."

  "Hi, Maiidjene," I said. She turned around and mimed a heart attack brought on by ecstasy.

  Maidjene is a coloratura soprano. She has brown hair, brown eyes, and is the sort of person of whom people say, "Oh, what a pretty/ace she has." Maidjene is the founder of the Niceness Wicca tradition, in which she parodies Craft politics—a routine that has a small but appreciative audience. She'd come to today's picnic in her alternate Pagan persona, the Niceness Fairy, and every exposed body surface was covered in multicolored glitter amd sequins.

  She was wearing a size-60 fuchsia polyester nightgown and marabou peignoir over her T-shirt and overalls and carried a Lu-cite waind topped with an enormous glitter-encrusted star. More fairy dust flaked off every time she waved it.

  I refilled my beer and she got a Coke and we found a place to sit and play "How long has it been," Maiidjene interrupting herself every once in a while to bless passersby with "Concentrated Essence of Nice." In between these minidramas, she confessed that she and her husband were, as she put it, "giving up."

  Larry, Maidjene's oh-so-mundaine husband, had been a staple of Community folklore for years. Maidjene had gotten religion after they'd married, and Larry had not been pleased.

  "And now, one day I come in and the basket's gone through my things and helped himself to a big chunk of my notes."

  "Well, damn," I said. I wondered if Maidjene was out on bail. "What happened?"

  "Well, he denied it and I told him he could deny his ass out the door and into a hotel." She pronounced it midsouthem fashion: hotel; Maidjene and Lsirry are both originaUy from someplace in Tornado Alley. Kentucky, I think. "May the Nice be with you!"

  196 Bell, Book, and Murder

  "And then?" I asked, fascinated. Even if it was some floating Book of Shadows bandit and not Larry responsible for the theft, his eviction couldn't happen to a nicer newt. He'd made a pass at me, the one HallowFest he'd come to, on the expressed theory that Witches believed in casual sex.

  "Lawyers are talking, he's in the hotel down to Route 17, and I had to go back to my Queen for my real book. But fortunately the whole Nice liturgy was published in Enchante last year, so I've got that. And by the way, you hear Lark might be coming back East this fall maybe even in time for HallowFest? Selene says he said— Nice Makes Right! —that last quake did for him and he's not staying anywhere that the four seasons are Drought, Riot, Fire, and Quake—Niceness Rules!"

  HallowFest is the big Pagan festival held in upstate New York every October—four days of fun and frolic in the mud and freezing rain. I go every year.

  "We'll have to have a welcome home party for him," 1 said. I'd known Lark pretty close to very well a few years back. 1 wondered if he was coming back unattached.

  "And let me say this about that," Maidjene went on, in her trademark nonstop rattle, "if you're looking for a working partner— Niceness Upon You! —you'd be one helluva lot better off with Lark even if he's commitment shy—which we don't know for sure, and he may have changed—than with Fast Eddie Skelton if you ask me and even if you don't." Even Maidjene had to stop after that one and pause for breath.

  "You know him?" I said, surprised. Maidjene lives in the occult wilds of northern New Jersey. A long way for Ned to travel.

  "Whooo-eee!" Maidjene shook her head, shedding sequins. "Had him in an Open Circle. Once. I tell you, you want somebody joggling your elbow, you call in Fast Eddie —Have a Nice Day! He not only knows what you're doing, he's got a better way to do it— Niceness Rules! Wah!"

  "It sounds to me like he's been around," I said.

  "You want to know how far, you ask Reisha. Or Lorelli Lee. Everybody knows him. Nobody likes him. He's pushy," the Niceness Fairy said, wrinkling her nose.

  Belle must have known all this. There was no way she could not. Okay, so she did, and didn't tell me in the name of impartiality.

  But while it was true that people could not-click for reasons having nothing to do with whether or not they were good people.

  if Ned had as much experience in the Conununity as Maidjene said and was still acting as jerkishly as he had today, the odds were against his being one of the innocent ones.

  Maidjene saw someone else she wanted to talk to, and I gravitated to the edge of the party, where you could look down the hill and see the real world. Reality, as the saying goes, is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Not what passes in this modem day for Reality, anyway.

  I watched the escape of a fugitive balloon, my mind full of things I hadn't yet mashed down to thinkable-size portions. Behind me. The Cat's sound system slid lower in volume and then cut out, and in the sudden silence I could hear musicians tuning up: flute, guitars, and harp.

  "Hey, everybody—hey.'"

  I winced. Ned. And, from the sound of things, not 100 percent sober.

  I turned around and walked back into the picnic. There was a clearing-within-the-clearing that provided seating by way of two stumps and a big rock. The Cat's tape deck was there. So were two bemused Crafters with guitars, a man wearing satyr horns and canying a silver flute and a tin pennywhistle, and a woman in medieval clothes with a harp.

  And Ned. Just as if he were following a script I'd handed him titled "How to Make of Yourself a Permanent Stupid Joke and Outsider in the New York Pagan Community." He was standing on the rock, plastic cup of beer in hand, face flushed, obviously ready to make his announcement.

  I felt the stunned horror that you feel watching an accident slowly happening right in front of you. You don't want to believe in it, but it's right there, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. I wasn't even angry at Ned at the moment. You aren't angry at the car that's stalled in the path of the oncoming train.

  "Ned!" I yelled. Maybe I could stop him.

  He swung around toward me. He sneered.

  "She doesn't want me to tell you!" he shouted, which got him even more attention and me a lot of stares.

  "She doesn't want me to tell you because she wants to suppress it! But I don't believe in secrecy!" Ned ranted on. A few peop
le cheered. 1 saw The Cat crossing left behind him, heading for the tape deck. Probably on orders from Belle.

  "I have a genuine Witch's Book of Shadows —a real one. It's

  198 Bell, Book, and Murder

  hundreds of years old and has all the true authentic old spells and rituals, and I — "

  Someone laughed. The flutist played a derisive skirl. And whatever Ned had to say next was drowned out by jeers, catcalls, and people producing various bombastic takes on the rest of his speech. Ned looked stunned. He'd finally seen the train.

  I'd told him. We've heard it all before. And though many of us would desperately love to trace our religion in identifiable form back across thirty centuries, it's still a joke. There've been too many disappointments.

  For a moment more, Ned tried to shout over his audience. Then he just stared—angry, humiliated, betrayed. 1 thought he might be going to cry.

  The Cat flipped a switch, and "Com Rigs and Barley Rigs" (she'd sampled it off a tape of The Wicker Man) filled the space. Nearly everyone there knew the song, and some of them started singing. The harpist began improvising against it.

  Ned jumped down off the rock and ran. A couple of people tried to stop him, but he jerked past them. I was on the opposite side of the crowd from him; even if I thought I could do any good, there wasn't £iny way to get to him.

  The Cat said something to one of the guitarists, who nodded and began fitting himself into the music. The Cat took her sound levels down, and after a ragged few beats the tune was being carried live by two guitars, a pennywhistle, and a harp. Someone started to sing a set of words—not Bobby Bums's originals, but our own invention. The people within earshot quieted down to hear them.

  I hurt for Ned Skelton, legend in the making. He could manage to live this down if he could pretend he'd been making a joke.

  But he hadn't been, and I knew it. I think nearly everyone there knew it.

  He'd been serious. And he'd brought his seriousness to people who he thought would understand. And we'd laughed at himi. And he'd never understand why, not in any way that would help him heal, though it's really very simple.

  When it hurts too much, you laugh.

  There was nothing I could do for Ned, and the picnic seemed to be under control. I wanted to get the preceding scene out of my mind and looked around for something that would help me do it.

  That's when I saw him. The stranger.

  He was standing at the edge of the clearing. He was wearing a sportcoat and an open shirt with his neatly pressed khakis and oxblood loafers, and the reason he looked out of place wasn't really his clothes, although they were part of it.

  Although it's not quite PC to say so, it's also unfortunately true that the men who belong in the Community actively dis-belong elsewhere. They've made a choice, conscious or otherwise, to drift from the normative centerline of Western culture, and the first place that drift appears, as the poet says, is as a sweet disorder in the dress. Even Daffydd exhibits this subtle sartorial mark of Cain. Studded leather or slogan T-shirts, there's a concrete fashion subtext there for the discerning eye.

  This spectator radiated none of these cues. His haircut was a thing of expensive beauty, of the sort rarely seen above Seventy-second Street. And, confronted with the spectacle of a woodland clearing full of Us, he was not in the least discomfited.

  No one else had much noticed him yet. I headed toward him, bracing myself for everything from an evangel interested in the state of my soul to a reporter to an innocent bystander looking for a lost dog.

  "Hi," he said when I approached. "Is this the Witches Picnic?" The accent was English, pure BBC Received.

  He was around my age, with light brown hair and eyes the color of expensive Scotch.

  "Yes," I said cautiously.

  "Is it okay if I stay?" he asked. "It isn't a private party, is it? Oh, I'm Stuart Hepburn." He held out his hand.

  His Englishness shouldn't have made any difference, but it did. I shifted mental gears and shook the hand. It was innocent of rings. He wore a very well-bred and expensive watch on a black leather strap.

  "Hello, Stuart," I said. "My name is Bast. What can we do for you?"

  "Well, I saw the poster for the event and thought I'd take a dekko. I'm interested in learning more about. . . Wicca?"

  He pronounced the name as if he weren't quite sure he was pronouncing it right, but he hadn't boggled at mine. I smiled. He smiled.

  "Sure," I said. 'There're a lot of people here who can answer your questions. Would you like a beer?"

  200 Bell, Book, and Murder

  We sauntered back toward the food. I was steering Stuart in Daffydd's direction because Daffydd is erudite and respectable and makes the Craft seem like nothing more than an enthusiastic exercise in reconstructive anthropology. But when I got close enough to hear what he was saying, I was sorry I had.

  "Look. If Henry hadn't forsaken the Catholic Church, none of this would have happened," Daffydd said. "Mary was the logicad heir, the rightful heir—"

  Oh god. Not her again.

  "Yes, and if she had got her hands on England we'd all be speaking Spanish today," Beaner shot back with passionate inaccuracy.

  "fl,Yeso te molesta?" Ronin said, and those who could follow the Spanish laughed.

  "The point is — " Beaner said.

  "The point is, even though the Great Divorce was driven far more by the need for the dissolution of the monasteries and the reappropriation of capital by the Crown—" Daffydd said.

  Stuart put a hand on my arm.

  "Before we go any farther, there's something you ought to know," he said, nodding toward Daffydd and Beaner.

  My heart sank. Uh-oh, I thought. Here it comes.

  "I'm the rightful king of Scotland," Stuart said gravely.

  I stared at him. The comer of his mouth quirked upward in mockery. "Hepburn," he explained. 'The Earls of Bothwell. If you go back far enough."

  Thanks to my recent reading I was ready for him, although I was beginning to sympathize with Beaner's desire to scream when That Woman was mentioned.

  "James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, Mary's third husband," I said. And related to the Bothwell that'd tried to assassinate James the First by magic, leading to the Berwick Witch Trials, one of the most famous cases in the history of the subject.

  "Or as we prefer to think of her, Bothwell's second wife," Stuart said solemnly. He smiled again, encouragingly. I breathed an inward sigh of relief and decided conditionally to like him.

  He was crazy, all right. But he seemed to be crazy like us.

  "Are you married?" Stuart asked me a few minutes later. It took me a moment to recognize the question for what it was: mundane world small talk.

  "I used to be, but I got out of the habit," I volleyed back glibly. It's true, actually.

  Just within hearing the historical debate raged on, with Belle hovering nervously around the edges. Sandra had joined it, as a voluble partisan of Elizabeth the First, Christendom's most puissant prince (her words). I sympathized with Lace's bewildered expression. I have enough trouble stajmig afloat in one century at a time.

  "And what's your interest in the Craft?" I said to Stuart, steering him away from the new English Civil War.

  "Well, I admit that I'm coming to it from an historical perspective," he answered. "1 understand that the witchcult can trace its roots fairly far back."

  "Oh, more or less," 1 said. It's true enough. There's material in the BoS that appears nearly word for word in a manuscript dating from the early 1300s, which is no proof of antiquity for either the book as a whole or our religion.

  "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me all about it?" Stuart said. I glanced at him. He flashed me a charming smile. I wished I'd worn more upscale clothes.

  "Mmmn," I said, not coromitting myself to anything. Sheer force of habit. "Your best bet is to do some reading. Talk to people. There're a lot of books on the subject; you could do worse than hit up some of the occult bookstores and look at w
hat's in print."

  I gave him some titles and some addresses, and the talk turned general. He was over here visiting. He was in business for himself and could set his own schedule. He was interested in Wicca and was looking for someone he could talk to about it.

  He hinted that it wouldn't be all that unpleasant to see me again. I made it as clear as I could manage that I didn't think it would be any hardship without quite coming out and saying so. Explicit declarations would have to w£Lit until I had a better idea of his agenda.

  Like rock stars, doctors, and movie producers. Witches have to resign themselves to the fact that there will be people who don't love them for themselves alone, but for what they can get out of them, from social introductions to magical initiations to free spells cast on their loved ones. I wasn't quite sure how to peg Stuart yet, and keeping my distance until I found out who he knew and who knew him couldn't hurt.

  Eventually we went amiably in our separate directions, me

  202 Bell, Book, and Murder

  wondering if Stuart was what I needed to take my mind off Julian and Stuart thinking whatever Stuart was thinking. I honestly thought I'd never see him again.

  This was not my day for being right.

  The Closing Ritual went off smoothly at around six o'clock, when most Ecumenipicnickers (we'd drawn over two hundred people. Belle thought, and I thought she was being conservative) were still here but thinking about leaving. Xharina had collected her troops and her ice chests and left about four, saying she hoped to see me again at HallowFest. 1 hoped she'd heard enough about missing books to make her give her covener another chance, but 1 doubted if I'd ever know.

  The closing ritual was essentially the opening ritual in reverse, where we thanked the Powers that Were for attending and seeing to it that nobody was beaten up, struck by lightning, or afflicted with food poisoning.