Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  I returned A i^ose in the Shadows to Daffydd. He'd heard about Stuart; by now, everyone had. He told me that Mary had frequently been accused of witchcraft in her lifetime, but that during the sixteenth century C.E. such an accusation had been about as much of a distinction as being called a godless Commie in the McCarthy era. If he'd heard of The Book of Moons, he didn't mention it.

  Lothlorien closed.

  I read, I slept, I took long walks. I talked to Ned and Ilona when they came to visit. I did some work at the Snake, I read tarot (gratis) at Chanter's Revel, I hung out. I did my best to come to terms with what Stuart had done to me. Beyond the slap, beyond the threats, beyond attempted murder.

  Because of Stuart Hepburn, for the rest of my life I'd be sharing my life with a monster. A monster bom out of fire, brittle and inflexible as volcanic glass, something that would live beneath my skin and would die or kill rather than live with being that afraid again. Something for which death held less terror than helplessness did; a monster that could seize control of my life at any moment and make me follow not my will, but its. Because of Stuart.

  I visited Belle, more out of a sense of duty than anything else. She told me that hate would be a healthy reaction that I could work through, but I didn't feel anything I recognized as hate. I told her

  I

  I thought I ought to take a sabbatical from Changing. We both knew what I really meant, but she didn't push me to make it formal.

  I did a lot of ritual, I saw a lot of movies, and when the feeling that I needed to knock on my own door to make sure no one else was inside before going home was faint enough, I knew it was time to go back to work.

  Monday, May 23, nine a.m. The day was overcast, hot aind wet as a dog's breath. I got into the studio, doing my best impersonation of nonchalance. There was an almost full house of regulars, minus Royce. There was even a new hire, which was reassuring. Everything looked normal. We had a new coffeepot.

  "Glad you finally decided you could make it," Ray said. He waved me over to his desk.

  "Couldn't tear myself away." I came over and took charge of a dummy, spec sheet, and a folder full of type and photos. Virtue's reward. He'd saved it for me.

  "You okay?" Ray said.

  "Yeah, sure." Another inarticulate urban legend in the making.

  I took the pile back to my carrel. Mikey was out on his rounds, so there was a certain amount of chatter. The official story, as current at Houston Graphics, seemed to be that I'd decided to work late at the studio and been surprised by a burglar. It was as good an explanation as any, and, best of all, did not involve Mary, Queen of Scots. I let it ride and accepted coromiserations.

  Tyrell thought I should carry a gun to prevent future incidents. Eloi spoke up enough to say that he never had any trouble (yeah, like somebody'd jump Bogie). Chantal said nothing like this ever happened in France, but it is Chantal's expressed opinion that all the evils of the Western World descend from the American insistence on using disposable grocery bags. Ray said that since I was going to sell my story for a Movie of the Week I'd become independently wealthy and could afford to hire a bodyguard.

  Everybody's a comedian.

  My work space had been carefully neatened by others to the point where I couldn't find anything. I spent the next ninety minutes putting everything back the way I wanted it. My coffee cup was missing its handle and would have to be replaced, but would do for today. I filled it with coffee and got to work as the studio settled down around me.

  Royce got in around eleven. He was wearing a nice little

  282 Bell, Book, and Murder

  houndstooth check that had last been seen in the Bogart/Bacall version of The Big Sleep. I hoped Eloi could contain himself.

  I went back to work. A few minutes later I heard the sound of high heels. I looked up at Royce.

  "Welcome back," he said. 'This is yours, right?"

  He held out a flat, brown-wrapped package. I felt all my cozy, self-congratulatory assurance vanish like water down a drain.

  I took the package. On it was a red-and-white label of the kind the studio uses, and on it was typed: "M Q o S: B o M."

  Mary, Queen of Scots: Book of Moons.

  "Where?" I said, as if it were a complete sentence.

  Royce looked embarrassed. "I hope you haven't been looking for it too hard," he said. "I took it home with a bunch of my stuff by mistake the day before the studio got tossed—it was out on the table. Ray said it didn't belong to Houston."

  "Yeah—and stop using our wrapping paper on your personal jobs, Kitty," Ray called from the front. I waved fingers at him.

  "No," I said, with what I hoped was conviction, "it wasn't anything I needed. Thanks, Royce."

  He studied me closely, trying to decide if I was being completely truthful with him. Like me, Royce is also into what we frequently Ccdl "alternative spirituality," but as his path is the achievement of the Holy Grail he and I don't really have that much to talk about.

  "Yeah, anytime. Don't get yourself into trouble. Bast," he said. He went back to his desk. I wish I had half the self-assurance in heels that Royce does.

  I looked at the package. I took a mat knife and cut away a little comer of the wrapping, exposing the edge of an old leather book—the old leather book, in fact, that I'd expected to see. I set it aside, out of harm and spilled coffee's way.

  I was not forced to revise my view of Stuart's intelligence or posit supernatural intervention after all. Stuart hadn't found The Book of Moons in the studio because it hadn't been here to find. Somehow it had managed to go home with Royce and safely absent itself from the events that followed.

  Which might be supernatural intervention enough. I didn't, after all, remember leaving it out on a table, but that Tuesday's events were pretty hazy in my memory. I could have. Whether I had, in fact, was just one more thing I'd never know.

  It took me eight weeks to copy out The Book of Moons —in modem ink on modem paper, creating something with no verifiable link

  to the past. I copied each word carefully, straining at the archaic Elizabethan "secretary hand," although 1 had little Latin and less French, and not much of the book seemed to be in English. Maybe someday Fd do a typescript version and get the whole thing translated.

  And when I was done making my copy 1 swaddled the original in neutral pH tissue and placed it in the pale gray archival document box I had bought to store it in. I bound the box tightly in acid-free tape, and when I had wrapped The Book of Moons for the last time I took it up to the Pierpoint Morgan Library and told them I was a messenger with a parcel.

  Parcels do get messengered, even to libraries. They let me in.

  rd used a blank from Lightfleet messengers, the service the studio uses; it wasn't hard to slip one out of Mikey's desk and mark it up, and I picked the day carefully. Rainy, and just an anonymous messenger's bad luck that the call sheet that would tell who it was from and who it was to was sodden beyond recognition. Maybe the Pierpoint Morgan'd come up with plausible answers on their own. God knew they'd get no answers from Lightfleet.

  I left it in the hands of a bored receptionist who didn't seem to care whether or not it was ever delivered, let alone who I was. I tried not to care what happened now; I'd done what I could for Mary aind her cause. The Pierpoint Morgan has one of the most extensive rare books collections outside the Vatican, as well as a nearly complete Visconti-Sforza tarot deck. They'd know what to do with a book that was very, very old. If it was, in fact, even that, and not some modem forgery.

  Magic or not?, so the question goes, but the real question isn't, in the final analysis, what is there, but what we see. Reality is a consensus, arrived at through polling the testimony of individuals. Truth and reality are both in a constant state of mutation, and all anyone can do is ride the crest of his particular wave. Alone.

  In the end, everyone's alone. It was the middle of the day in early August. I was on my lunch hour. I headed downtown, back to work.

  The Bowl of Night


  -•^i^

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6

  I hate Halloween. This might seem odd, but only consider how many people profess to hate Christmas—that frenzied end-of-year potlatch that has dragged Hanukkah down with it in a fine Judeo-Christian unanimity. December 25's certaiinly not a religious holiday anymore, and if not for the fact that retailers do 50 percent of their annual business during the month of December, the observance might actually die out. One of my co-workers defines Christmas as 'The time of year when you buy people you don't like things they don't want with money you don't have" — which seems, on the face of it, to be a pretty good description of the entire winter gift-giving season, Kwanzaa included.

  That much being said, I should also add that while it is actually possible for me to ignore the debasement of Hanukkah/ Christmas/Kwanzaa/Yule (having no one to buy presents for), I have no such luck with Halloween. All Hallows' Eve is, after all, the climax of what passes for the liturgical year in our Community, and so I loathe the Real World "celebration" of it from the first sighting of Halloween candy at the grocery store to the last newspaper story about holiday vandalism; from the cute stories about Wiccans in your local newspaper to the green-faced Margaret Hamilton clones on every door, window, and trick-or-treat bag.

  Those of you who hate Christmas will understand; I cling to the reactionary position that religious holidays — like Halloween — are not shopping opportunities. But then, my name is Bast, amd I'm a Witch.

  288 Bell, Book, and Murder

  I don't want your ruby slippers, and you and your little dog can live in perfect harmony for aill of me; what Hollywood means and what I mean by the "W word are miles apart. What Hollj^wood means —after Bette Midler's last flop —is that bucktoothed broads on broomsticks are box-office poison. What 1 mean is that I'm a practitioner of a NeoPagan Earth-centered religion—Wicca—the majority of whose practitioners define themselves as Witches and then spend tedious hours on the political reeducation of everyone within earshot.

  Not me. I'm a Witch, but 1 won't go on about my religion if you don't go on about yours. And like you, there are times when I don't think about my religion at all and times when I actually feel like an oppressed minority.

  Times like Halloween. Or as we call it, Samhain.

  In most Wiccan traditions, Samhain (pronounced "Sowwan," for those of you who didn't grow up speaking Gaelic) is the Feast of the Dead; the festival at which we followers of Wiccan and NeoPagan traditions remember our beloved dead, whether tied to us by kinship or simply by affinity. It is also the time, both in Christian traditions and ours, when the world of the dead and the world of the living draw together, and when past and future merge, just for an instant.

  Or, in modem terms, it's a time for wholesale vandalism and the mass purchase of cheap candy.

  My personal rebellion against the secular commercialization of Samhain has taken the form, for the past thirteen years, of an escape to HallowFest.

  HallowFest is a Pagan gathering held on Columbus Day (observed) weekend at the Paradise Lake Campground in Gotham County, New York. A Pagan festival has certain things in common with a Christian religious retreat, except that HallowFest isn't restricted to one denomination, or even to one religion. People come from all over the eastern seaboard and from as far west as Ohio and Indiana; it's a Samhain celebration for most of us, but it isn't held Halloween weekend, because covens hold their private celebrations then.

  This was the first year I wouldn't have a coven to go to — or with. I was hoping HadlowFest would help me forget about all that. And as it turned out, it did; a salutary lesson in being very careful about what you wish for.

  But that was later. This was Friday, and all I was thinking

  about when I got up that morning was getting to Paradise Lake, which is about two hours' drive north of PsfYC on a good day.

  Holding the thought of our planned two p.m. departure firmly in mind, I'd gotten myself and my duffel bag down to The Serpent's Truth promptly at eleven o'clock. Julian was just opening up. The van, which someone had been supposed to fetch earlier and leave parked out front, was nowhere to be seen.

  The Snake (or, technically. Tree of Wisdom, the Snake's mailorder branch) has a table every year at HallowFest, selling those things —from Dragon's Blood resin to crystals to purpose-built athames —that attending Pagans can't find in their own backyards. Most years I drive the van, driver's licenses being in short supply among New Yorkers. Most years, I take one of the clerks from the store. This year I was taking Julian.

  Yes indeed, Julian: ceremonial magician, my clandestine lust-object, and neurasthenic manager of New York's oldest and tackiest occult bookstore. The Serpent's Truth —known to its intimates as The Snake. Julian the Un-Pagan was coming to HallowFest— for some reason having nothing to do with my company, sanity prompted me to suppose.

  "Hi, Julian," I said brightly. He ignored this, but Julian tends to do this with conversation not to his taste. I stashed my duffel behind the counter and looked around. The stock for HallowFest, which ought by rights to have been already packed, seemed still to be on the shelves.

  "So, are we ready to go?" I chirped, just to be difficult. We weren't ready to go. We'd never been ready to go on schedule in living memory. The festival didn't really open until tomorrow, but Summerisle Coven was running the festival this year and I knew Maidjene, its High Priestess, would let us come in and set up early.

  "Here are the keys," Julian said, handing me the keys, parking voucher, and registration for the van.

  Julian is an entirely satisfactory manager for the Snake, looking, as he does, as if he might have stepped full-blown from a nineteenth-century Russian icon, from his lank black hair and steel-rimmed bifocals to his rusty hammertail coat. He wears a Roman collar, too, which he may be entitled to, for all I know. But he doesn't drive.

  I headed for the subway. Maybe he and Brianna would pack while 1 was gone.

  I doubted it, of course, but it was possible.

  290 Bell, Book, and Murder

  * * * The Snake's van is an ancient Ford, once black and now mostly primer gray, in a dramatic state of disrepair and with most of the lower body panels rusted through. Driving it is an adventure. Between the subways, the garage, and New York traffic — factoring in a stop for gas because anytime I get my hamds on the van the tank is nearly empty—I got back to the Snake around one-thirty.

  There was no legal parking left on the street. 1 double-parked in front of the shop and went in. Julian was just giving instructions to Brianna, the clerk of the moment, on how to handle the store while Julian —its manager—was gone.

  Brianna is short, round, dreamy-eyed, and vague to a fault. She also has black hair long enough to sit on, something that I was pretty sure was not a factor in any decision of Julian's or Tris's (the Snake's actual owner) to keep her, considering Tris's sexual preferences and the fact that Julian is not known to have any, alas. Her continued employment is far likelier to be because Brianna shows up (eventually), is willing to work for something less than minimum wage, and doesn't steal.

  'This key locks the top lock," Julian was saying patiently.

  "Um-m," said Brianna.

  Tris (it's short for Trismegistus, and probably not the name he was bom with) usually hangs around when Julian isn't here, so there wasn't much chance for Brianna to get into serious trouble, but Julian is nothing if not thorough.

  'The Vein is double-parked out front," I said at a suitable break in the conversation.

  Brianna's gaze slowly wandered toward me. Her eyes are an unlikely shade of turquoise, which is natural so far as I know. There was a pause while she adjusted to the fact of my presence.

  "I guess we better start packing the stuff for the festival?" she said at last.

  In other words, business as usual.

  I could tell myself 1 was putting up with this monstrous lack of organization for the pleasure of Julian's company, but the fact is that I do it every year whether he's goin
g or not. It would be a real stretch to call this community service — and I'm not much on altruism an3^way—so the only possible explanation must be masochism. As masochistic experiences go, this was a pretty good one; it was about four o'clock when Brianna, Julian, and I finally started loading cartons of books, Tarot cards, and Pagan jewelry

  into the van. The work went fast; Julian is stronger thain he looks. But it was eight by the time he and I were well and truly rolling.

  It was dark by the time we'd crossed the Willis Avenue Bridge (one of my favorite bridges, owing to the fact that the City of New York, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen to paint it a pale violet) and progressed, toll free (another reason I like the Willis), to the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway (or Twy, according to the signs). Although this meant there wasn't much to see in the way of scenery unless you liked strip-malls and headlights, I still felt that same deviant thrill that leaving the metroplex for the land where the green things grow always gives me.

  Once you become used to Manhattan's asphalt ecosphere, there is something perversely unnatural about suburbia, a land characterized by shopping malls and meaningless expanses of lawn. By comparison, there's something reasonable about the true countryside—which is defined as anything above commuting range.

  We cut over from the thruway to the Sawmill River Parkway, stopped once for dinner at a Chinese place in Tanytown (New Yorkers preferring their native cuisine whenever possible), once for gas when the tank got to half full, and once for groceries, because HallowFest is a demi-camping event: without tenting but with the necessity of preparing most of your own meals. In practice, this means I exist for three days on trail mix, tinned smoked oysters, and warm Diet Pepsi. Julian bought vegetables.