Well, yes, I had noticed they each had a face like a horse, but I hadn’t actually taken notice of it, if you catch my meaning. “They’re a family of thieves, then, stealing the ocular fixtures of tigers and all.”
“So it appears. I daresay Dolly told Freddie that Mrs. Arbuthnot would be visiting Mompesson Hall, whereupon he began chatting up Celia . . .”
“A human chap could hardly avoid chatting up Celia.”
“. . . so as to be invited for the same weekend. Then he absconded with the jewel, removed it from its setting, and passed the setting on to his sister whilst the other humans were at their morning feed. Unlike either Mrs. Beecham or Mr. Thatcher, the perfidious young woman had a valid reason to be moving about amongst the bedrooms before making her appearance in the kitchen—during the course of which, she hid the aforementioned setting in the pantry.”
“To stitch up poor old Mrs. B, do you think?”
“Not necessarily. I expect the Quirks intended to sacrifice the gold setting to draw attention away from themselves and to someone in the household. What they did not intend was for it to come to light quite so quickly. They meant to be far away, with the jewel—or with the proceeds from its sale, rather—when some unwitting bystander or perhaps even an officer of the law opened the tin.”
“So Freddie intended to leave Celia high and dry. Tchah!” I said scathingly.
“I daresay Miss Celia would have had the good sense to see past Mr. Quirk’s blandishments, not to mention his haberdashery. Really! I ask you!”
Jasper hadn’t asked me, but this wasn’t the time to debate the whys and wherefores of human clothing. “So what now? Freddie and Dolly can still make their getaway, free and clear as the birds and whatnot.”
“Then we must endeavor to stop them. Or him, as I rather suspect it is he who has the jewel.” Jasper looked at me.
I looked back. “There’s but one thing to do. If it—what’s that expression of yours?”
“If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.”
“Couldn’t put it better myself.”
“Then let us position ourselves in the entrance hall.”
Passing Thatcher on the way—the man looked like a thundercloud searching for a place to rain—we arrived in the hall just as the other humans were drifting away into various rooms. It appeared as though P.C. Worple, who obviously had a functioning brain cell or two, had taken Mrs. Beecham into Lord M’s study to discuss the matter in a civil fashion, rather than cuffing her ever so capable hands and bunging her straight into chokey.
The Mompessons themselves had gone to ground in the sitting room along with Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose tally-ho had at last dropped to an economical volume. Probably they had requested a restorative, hence Thatcher’s mission kitchenwards. The other servants, including, I supposed, the inglorious Dolly, had disappeared. As had the equally inglorious Freddie. . . .
No. Here he came, walking in what he no doubt fancied was a stealthy gait across the upper landing of the staircase, but which to my alert ears sounded like the thud of hoofbeats. He was tucking something away in the inside breast pocket of his jacket.
“Allow me, young Bingo.” Jasper shimmered up the stairs.
Freddie started to descend the main flight, his eye darting jerkily to and fro. Halfway down, he encountered Jasper. Or rather, Jasper encountered him, making a quick, expert figure eight through his legs between one step and the next.
Freddie’s fall was a thing of beauty and a joy forever, flailing arms and legs and a cry that would strike terror into the heart of a banshee. The cataclysm caused humans to pop out of doorways like an array of cuckoos from their clocks, eyes bulging and mouths open, and gather around the human form now sprawled upon the tiles of the floor.
Jasper shimmered back down the stairs, planted his forefeet upon Freddie’s shirt front, dug his claws into the objectionable tie, and then, with a quick fillip of his paw, extracted the something from Freddie’s jacket and sent it skittering across the floor.
The object was shiny and green, like a great scarab beetle going on about its business. It was but a small matter for me to show the prowess I’d achieved under Celia’s tutelage. I pounced, corralled the stone, and brought it to rest beside P.C. Worple’s sensible shoes.
He leaned over and picked it up. “What the . . . Mr. Quirk!”
Freddie groaned. “Filthy beast tripped me up, all of a purpose”
“Don’t be daft,” Mrs. Arbuthnot told him. She snatched the stone from Worple’s hand and held it aloft, so that it caught the afternoon sunlight and flashed like a veritable—well, it was an emerald, dash it all. “The Eye of the Tiger! My family heirloom!”
“Freddie!” said Celia, her lovely complexion flushing a color that would have embarrassed a rose.
“Oh no, Freddie!” yowled a female voice. A rush and stumble amongst the reconvened huddle of servants, and then Thatcher, his meaty hand clasped around her arm, dragged Dolly forward.
“Dolly!” exclaimed Mrs. A. “And you came to me with a good reference from Mr. Quirk here . . . Oh. I see.” Her jowls sagged.
Lady Mompesson patted her arm. “There, there, Sadie. All’s well that ends well.”
Lord M. harrumphed. “Blighter, scoundrel, ought to be horsewhipped, uses me, uses my daughter. Uses my cook, for the love of—beyond the pale, I tell you.”
“Very true,” I said to Jasper.
He stretched and flexed his claws. “If I do say so myself.”
P.C. Worple hoicked Freddie to his feet. “Well then. A mighty fine pair of cats you have here, Lord Mompesson. Lady Mompesson. Miss Celia. . . .” His clear blue gaze stopped at her pink cheeks and hung there.
She smiled at him, a wild surmise lighting her face.
Smoothing her apron, Mrs. Beecham paced past them all and headed down the hall toward the kitchen. “Jewel thieves. Police. It’s all upsetting to the digestion. What we all need is a good tea, that’ll set us to rights.”
Jasper and I cantered on after her, not too quickly, but close enough.
She glanced over her shoulder with a conspiratorial smile. “There you are, you rascals. Funny how you should turn up just when I was thinking of opening a tin of sardines.”
Ah yes, I thought, life is good.
Beside me Jasper murmured, “Very good, young Bingo. Very good.”
Author’s Note
“Sardines for Tea” first appeared in Kittens, Cats, and Crimes, edited by Ed Gorman, Five Star, 2003.
I’m very much a cat person. And I love the works of P.G. Wodehouse, especially his Bertie Wooster and his Mulliner stories, which are laugh-out-loud funny not just for the stories themselves, but for the way he tells them.
Jeeves has always seemed superciliously feline to me, so it wasn’t a huge leap to recast him and Bertie as cats. And there’s nothing like an Agatha Christie-style country house mystery.
The Necromancer’s Apprentice
Robert Dudley, Master of the Queen’s Horses, was a fine figure of a man, as long of limb and imperious of eye as one of his equine charges. And like one of his charges, his wrath was likely to leave an innocent passerby with a shattered skull.
Dudley reached the end of the gallery, turned, and stamped back again, the rich fabrics of his clothing rustling an accompaniment to the thump of his boots. Erasmus Pilbeam shrank into the window recess. But he was no longer an innocent passerby, not now that Lord Robert had summoned him.
“You beetle-headed varlet!” his lordship exclaimed. “What do you mean he cannot be recalled?” Soft answers turn away wrath, Pilbeam reminded himself. “Dr. Dee is perhaps in Louvain, perhaps in Prague, researching the wisdom of the ancients. The difficulty lies not only in discovering his whereabouts, but also in convincing him to return to England.”
“He is my old tutor. He would return at my request.” Again Lord Robert marched away down the gallery, the floor creaking a protest at each step. “The greatness and suddenness of this misfo
rtune so perplexes me that I shall take no rest until the truth is known.”
“The inquest declared your lady wife’s death an accident, my lord. At the exact hour she was found deceased in Oxfordshire, you were waiting upon the Queen at Windsor. You could have had no hand . . .”
“Fact has never deterred malicious gossip. Why, I have now been accused of bribing the jurors. God’s teeth! I cannot let this evil slander rest upon my head. The Queen has sent me from the court on the strength of it!” Robert dashed his fist against the padded back of a chair, raising a small cloud of dust, tenuous as a ghost.
A young princess like Elizabeth could not be too careful what familiar demonstrations she made. And yet, this last year and a half, Lord Robert had come so much into her favor it was said that Her Majesty visited him in his chamber day and night . . . No, Pilbeam assured himself, that rumor was noised about only by those who were in the employ of Spain. And he did not for one moment believe that the Queen herself had ordered the disposal of Amy Robsart, no matter how many wagging tongues said that she had done so. Still, Lord Robert could hardly be surprised that the malicious world now gossiped about Amy’s death, when he had so neglected her life.
“I must find proof that my wife’s death was either chance or evil design on the part of my enemies. The Queen’s enemies.”
Or, Pilbeam told himself, Amy’s death might have been caused by someone who fancied himself the Queen’s friend.
Lord Robert stalked back up the gallery and scrutinized Pilbeam’s black robes and close-fitting cap. “You have studied with Dr. Dee. You are keeping his books safe whilst he pursues his researches in heretical lands.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“How well have you learned your lessons, I wonder?”
The look in Lord Robert’s eye, compounded of shrewd calculation and ruthless pride, made Pilbeam’s heart sink. “He has taught me how to heal illness. How to read the stars. The rudiments of the alchemical sciences.”
“Did he also teach you how to call and converse with spirits?”
“He—ah—mentioned to me that such conversation is possible.”
“Tell me more.”
“Formerly it was held that apparitions must be spirits from purgatory, but now that we know purgatory to be only papist myth, it must be that apparitions are demonic, angelic, or illusory. The devil may deceive man into thinking he sees ghosts or . . .” Pilbeam gulped. The bile in his throat tasted of the burning flesh of witches.
“An illusion or deception will not serve me at all. Be she demon or angel, it is Amy herself who is my best witness.”
“My—my—my lord . . .”
Robert’s voice softened, velvet covering his iron fist. “I shall place my special trust in you, Dr. Pilbeam. You will employ all the devices and means you can possibly use for learning the truth. Do you understand me?”
Only too well. Pilbeam groped for an out. “My lord, whilst the laws regarding the practice of magic are a bit uncertain just now, still Dr. Dee himself, as pious a cleric as he may be, has been suspected of fraternizing with evil spirits . . . my lord Robert, if you intend such a, er, perilous course of action as, well, necromancy . . . ah, may I recommend either Edward Cosyn or John Prestall, who are well known in the city of London.”
“Ill-nurtured cozeners, the both of them! Their loyalty is suspect, their motives impure. No. If I cannot have Dr. Dee I will have his apprentice.”
For a moment Pilbeam considered a sudden change in profession. His beard was still brown, his step firm—he could apprentice himself to a cobbler or a baker and make an honest living without dabbling in the affairs of noblemen, who were more capricious than any spirit. He made one more attempt to save himself. “I am honored, my lord. But I doubt that it is within my powers to raise your . . . er, speak with your wife’s shade.”
“Then consult Dr. Dee’s books, you malmsey-nosed knave, and follow their instructions.”
“But, but . . . there is the possibility, my lord, that her death was neither chance nor villainy but caused by disease.”
“Nonsense. I was her husband. If she had been ill, I’d have known.”
Not when you were not there to be informed, Pilbeam answered silently. Aloud he said, “Perhaps, then, she was ill in her senses, driven to, to . . .”
“To self-murder? Think, varlet! A fall down the stairs could no more be relied upon by a suicide than by a murderer. She was found at the foot of the staircase, her neck broken but her headdress still secure upon her head. That is hardly a scene of violence.”
Pilbeam found it furtively comforting that Lord Robert wanted to protect his wife’s reputation from hints of suicide. . . . Well, her reputation was his as well. The sacrifice of a humble practitioner of the magical sciences, now—that would matter nothing to him. Pilbeam imagined his lordship’s face amongst those watching the mounting flames, a face contemptuous of his failure.
“Have no fear, Dr. Pilbeam, I shall reward you well for services rendered.” Lord Robert spun about and walked away. “Amy was buried at St. Mary’s, Oxford. Give her my respects.”
Pilbeam opened his mouth, shut it, swallowed, and managed a weak, “Yes, my lord,” which bounced unheeded from Robert’s departing back.
* * * * *
The spire of St. Mary’s, Oxford, rose into the nighttime murk like an admonitory finger pointing to heaven. Pilbeam had no quarrel with that admonition. He hoped its author would find no quarrel with his present endeavor.
He withdrew into the dark, fetid alley and willed his stomach to stop grumbling. He’d followed Dr. Dee’s instructions explicitly, preparing himself with abstinence, continence, and prayer made all the more fervid for the peril in which he found himself. And surely the journey on the muddy November roads had sufficiently mortifed his flesh. He was ready to summon spirits, be they demons or angels.
The black lump beside him was no demon. Martin Molesworth, his apprentice, held the lantern and the bag of implements. Pilbeam heard no stomach rumblings from the lad, but he could enforce Dr. Dee’s directions only so far as his own admonitory fist could reach. “Come along,” he whispered. “Step lively.”
Man and boy scurried across the street and gained the porch of the church. The door squealed open and thudded shut behind them. “Light,” ordered Pilbeam.
Martin slid aside the shutter concealing the candle and lifted the lantern. Its hot-metal tang dispelled the usual odors of a sanctified site—incense, mildew, and decaying mortality. Pilbeam pushed Martin toward the chancel. Their steps echoed, drawing uneasy shiftings and mutterings from amongst the roof beams. Bats or swallows, Pilbeam hoped.
Amy Robsart had been buried with such pomp, circumstance, and controversy that only a few well-placed questions had established her exact resting place. Now Pilbeam contemplated the flagstones laid close together behind the altar of the church and extended his hand for his bag.
Martin was gazing upward, to where the columns met overhead in a thicket of stone tracery, his mouth hanging open. “You mewling knotty-pated scullion!” Pilbeam hissed, and snatched the bag from his limp hands. “Pay attention!
“Yes, Master.” Martin held the lantern whilst Pilbeam arranged the charms, the herbs, and the candles he dare not light. With a bit of charcoal he drew a circle with four divisions and four crosses. Then, his tongue clamped securely between his teeth, he opened the book he’d dared bring from Dr. Dee’s collection, and began to sketch the incantatory words and signs.
If he interpreted Dee’s writings correctly—the man set no examples in penmanship—Pilbeam did not need to raise Amy’s physical remains. A full necromantic apparition was summoned for consultation about the future, when what he wished was to consult about the past. Surely this would not be as difficult a task. “Laudetur Deus Trinus et unus,” he muttered, “nunc et in sempiterna seculorum secula. . . .”
Martin shifted and a drop of hot wax fell onto Pilbeam’s wrist. “Beslubbering gudgeon!”
“Sorry, Master.�
�
Squinting in the dim light, Pilbeam wiped away one of his drawings with the hem of his robe and tried again. There. For a moment he gazed appreciatively at his handiwork, then took a deep breath. His stomach gurgled.
Pilbeam dragged the lad into the center of the circle and jerked his arm upwards, so the lantern would illuminate the page of his book. He raised his magical rod and began to speak the words of the ritual. “I conjure thee by the authority of God Almighty, by the virtue of heaven and the stars, by the virtue of the angels, by that of the elements. Domine, Deus meus, in te speravi. Damahil, Pancia, Mitraton . . .”
He was surprised and gratified to see a sparkling mist began to stream upwards from between the flat stones just outside the circle. Encouraged, he spoke the words even faster.
“. . . to receive such virtue herein that we may obtain by thee the perfect issue of all our desires, without evil, without deception, by God, the creator of the sun and the angels. Lamineck. Caldulech. Abracadabra.”
The mist wavered. A woman’s voice sighed, desolate.
“Amy Robsart, Lady Robert Dudley, I conjure thee.”
Martin’s eyes bulged and the lantern swung in his hand, making the shadows of column and choir stall surge sickeningly back and forth. “Master . . .”
“Shut your mouth, hedge-pig!” Pilbeam ordered. “Amy Robsart, I conjure thee. I beseech thee for God his sake, et per viscera misericordiae Altissimi, that thou wouldst declare unto us misericordiae Dei sint super nos.”
“Amen,” said Martin helpfully. His voice leaped upward an octave.
The mist swirled and solidified into the figure of a woman. Even in the dim light of the lantern Pilbeam could see every detail of the revenant’s dress, the puffed sleeves, the stiffened stomacher, the embroidered slippers. The angled wings of her headdress framed a thin, pale face, its dark eyes too big, its mouth too small, as though Amy Robsart had spent her short life observing many things but fearing to speak of them. A fragile voice issued from those ashen lips. “Ah, woe. Woe.”
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