The Enchanted Flute

by James Norcliffe

  If Silenus were out somewhere, then Johnny must be with him, she realised. Sylvester’s revelations had shocked and scared her. Wherever Johnny was, he must be warned and somehow extricated from Silenus’s clutches.

  The room was dark but in the corner should be the mattresses and the pile of goatskins under which she’d left the flute. She guessed that Hester Nye wanted the flute to prevent any further rejuvenation of Dr Faunus. If this were the case, it was probably already too late. When she’d last seen Dr Faunus he’d been pretty sprightly and almost, she would have thought, returned to full vigour. Unless, of course, the process went even further … Was it possible that Dr Faunus could have continued to grow in power? Was this what Hester Nye feared?

  It didn’t matter to her that she would be sacrificing her flute. It was never really her flute, anyway, Becky told herself. What had Hester Nye said? The instrument. She’d simply been the one who’d been chosen to administer the life-giving music.

  Simply?

  Becky remembered the chilling moment when she’d gazed at her reflection in the wellspring. It wasn’t simple at all. Nothing was simple.

  While these thoughts were tumbling through her head she’d been feeling under the pile of skins for the case.

  It wasn’t there.

  At least, it wasn’t where she was sure she’d left it. Silenus must have discovered it and shifted it. If this had happened, the flute could be anywhere in the house and in this dim light she would never be able to find it. In growing desperation she rummaged again, finally lifting the goatskins and throwing them to one side.

  There was nothing.

  Becky left the house quickly and made her way back to where Hester Nye was waiting.

  ‘It’s not there,’ Becky whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I left it in the room we were in, hidden under a pile of skins, but it’s not there now.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Of course, I looked everywhere. Even in the darkness, if it had been there I would have found it.’

  Hester Nye said, ‘Silenus must have found it.’

  ‘I think so, too,’ said Becky. ‘He must have shifted it. I mean it would be no use to him. He wouldn’t be able to play it.’ Then she added with a wry smile, ‘He can’t even play the concertina.’

  ‘We must search the cottage,’ Hester Nye decided.

  ‘How? It’s pretty dark most places in there.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Hester Nye. ‘I have a flashlight. It’s with the bike.’

  As she hurried away to fetch it, Becky looked about. There was no moon and even outside the cottage the darkness was deep, punctuated only by a few feeble stars. She hoped Silenus was far away on some jaunt that would keep him from returning for ages. She had no desire to be found inside the cottage, even with the formidable Hester Nye, if he should suddenly return. Somehow, she didn’t think a flashlight would be much defence against an angry Silenus.

  Hester Nye had the good sense not to switch the flashlight on until they were inside the cottage. First they checked the small chamber Johnny and Becky had stayed in, but the torch only confirmed what Becky knew. There was no flute in the room.

  It was a powerful torch and although Hester Nye was thorough in her inspection of every surface and cranny, it soon became apparent that the flute was nowhere in the cottage. Silenus had few possessions, and the cottage was small. There were only a couple of chests and these yielded nothing.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Hester Nye, finally. ‘It’s not here.’

  Becky agreed that there was little point in prolonging their stay in the cottage. Silenus could return at any time, and would surely know that things had been disturbed. She was certain that this would anger him, provoke him into pursuit, so it was best to put as much distance between them and the cottage as possible.

  By an odd coincidence, it was just as she was thinking of this possible pursuit that she touched her top pocket, felt something unaccustomed there, and remembered Sylvester’s gift of the sprig of leaves.

  ‘Wait!’ she said quickly.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Could you shine the torch into Silenus’s flagon?’

  ‘Why?’ asked Hester Nye, but she obliged nevertheless.

  Becky withdrew the sprig from her pocket and, carefully crushing two leaves, dropped them into the dark brown liquid.

  ‘I was given these by the fauns,’ she explained. ‘They said they would put Silenus to sleep.’

  ‘That could be very useful,’ said Hester Nye with a grim little smile of approval. ‘But now we must go.’

  ‘What will you do?’ asked Hester Nye.

  Becky shrugged in the darkness. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I could hang around here to see if Silenus comes back with Johnny. I’m a bit scared of that, though. I sort of feel it’s more likely that he’d find me before I find him.’

  ‘A reasonable fear,’ said Hester Nye dryly.

  ‘On the other hand, I could try and find the fauns again, but I’m scared I’d put them in danger. Silenus hunts them. And anyway,’ she added bleakly, recalling the tortuous masked journey, ‘I’ve no way of finding them.’

  She stretched out her hands helplessly. ‘I don’t really know what to do,’ she said. ‘I always understood Arcadia to be a place of sunshine and play, but it’s not like that. It’s full of shadows and darkness. It’s murderous …’

  ‘Silenus probably doesn’t think so,’ said Hester Nye.

  ‘It’s okay for him,’ said Becky. ‘I suppose he gets to rule the roost.’

  ‘I must be away,’ said Hester Nye. ‘I must tell the others that the flute is missing. We must decide what to do. I imagine it will mean confronting that drunken oaf somehow.’

  ‘Could I …’ began Becky.

  ‘Come with me?’

  Becky nodded. Her request came out before she had time to think and took her somewhat by surprise. She couldn’t have imagined asking such a thing a few hours ago. But yet again, everything had changed.

  Hester Nye’s reply was equally surprising. ‘Why not,’ she said. ‘I imagine you’re one of us anyhow.’

  Before they climbed on the farm trike, Hester Nye gave Becky instructions.

  ‘When you get on crouch low behind me, okay? It’d be just like that fool to unloose a couple of arrows at us if he’s in the vicinity.’

  Becky grinned. ‘He thinks you’re a centaur,’ she said. ‘He thinks you want to kill him and eat him and he’s keen to kill you and eat you first.’

  ‘He doesn’t think at all,’ said Hester Nye grimly. ‘He’s governed completely by his appetites, just like his goat-footed master.’

  Becky guessed she was talking of Dr Faunus and noted the vehemence in the woman’s tone. She’d already used the word danger when referring to Dr Faunus. Did she mean that he was even more terrible than Silenus? Becky shuddered a little. No wonder the woman was angry at what had happened.

  As she expected, Hester Nye manoeuvred the farm bike along the river flat towards the bluff where Silenus had pointed out Faunus’s ancient house.

  Hester Nye took the trike very slowly for despite the powerful headlight the route was fraught with danger: at any moment there could be a sudden dip or a boulder, trees or bushes could appear out of nowhere. As she was jostled along, Becky’s mind was full of this strange world she had been thrust into and its stranger inhabitants. Silenus troubled her. Hester Nye had said he was governed entirely by his appetite and had said that Dr Faunus was no better. Becky wondered about her own father. Was he driven by his appetites as well? Had his appetites been so powerful that his love for Donna and his love for her had been swamped? She presumed so. Her father and mother always seemed quite happy, not like the way Johnny Cadman’s parents sounded. Why then were Johnny’s parents still living together in a kind of bickering unpleasantness while her father had suddenly upped and fled to Australia with a bimbo?

  Her mother would be frantic by now. This was their second nigh
t away. How would her mother explain it? Would she think that Becky and Johnny had run off together. Would she think that history was repeating itself? Despite herself, Becky almost giggled at the ridiculous nature of the idea. All the same, how would it look?

  She clung to the stolid figure driving the trike. Even in low gear, the powerful engine sustained a loud throaty gargle, pitching into a whine occasionally as Hester Nye encouraged the trike up a steeper slope. The shadows disappeared on either side, sometimes reaching and then always drawing back in a kind of surreal sideshow. Because her head was pressed into Hester Nye’s leather jacket, Becky was unable to see anything of what was to come and gained no advantage from the headlight. Her sense was only of a disappearing past and an enveloping darkness.

  At length the pitch of the engine altered as Hester Nye turned up a narrow pathway barely wide enough for the trike. Becky now became aware of a clay bank seemingly far too close to her left and a dark threatening void to her right, which she imagined was where the bank fell away. They proceeded up this steep trail for some time until they reached a plateau of sorts and shortly afterwards Hester Nye brought the machine to a halt and switched the engine off.

  ‘We’re here,’ she said.

  Becky let go and slid off the pillion.

  ‘Where’s here?’ she asked.

  ‘The villa,’ said Hester Nye as if that explained everything.

  ‘Is this where Dr Faunus used to live?’ asked Becky, curious as to whether this was the place Silenus had pointed out.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Hester Nye with finality. ‘Anyway, come in. I’ll find you somewhere to sleep. I’m sure you’ll need some rest.’

  Becky woke early the following morning to find the sun shining in a broad shaft through an open casement. She was in a simple chamber with whitewashed walls, completely unfurnished apart from the bed she had been sleeping in and a large pitcher she guessed contained water. The air was warm and still, and somewhere she could hear the sound of voices. Becky pushed aside the thin woollen blanket and walked to the door to listen.

  Becky opened the door and found herself in a long corridor. From the previous night she had only the vaguest memory of the geography of the villa. She remembered Hester Nye ushering her into a large entrance hall dimly lit by oil lamps. Hester Nye, lamp in hand, had taken her through a succession of rooms, then into this corridor and finally into the bedchamber.

  Now Becky followed the corridor towards a large door at the end. The voices, still muffled, but almost certainly women’s, seemed to be coming from the other side.

  Unsure quite what to do, Becky paused at the door and then knocked softly. Immediately, there was a silence and then Becky heard footsteps. She hoped she hadn’t interrupted anything important. The door swung open and Hester Nye stood there, but not Hester Nye as Becky remembered her. At Arcady House, Hester Nye had stood at the door, too, but then she had been grey-haired and severe, dressed in dowdy housekeeper black. That Hester Nye had also been coldly angry. This Hester Nye was younger somehow and her hair was a golden brown, and instead of a black pinafore she was wearing a long shift-like garment in white homespun. Most astonishing of all though was the half smile with which she greeted Becky. She looked to be almost friendly.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You must have heard us talking about you.’

  Becky stepped into the room and looked about. This was a much larger room divided by a series of arches to support the ceiling. Beyond the cloisters was a large table and sitting around this table were several other women dressed like Hester in long white shifts. They turned to Becky curiously as she was led across to the table, but Becky felt it was a neutral enough curiosity.

  ‘This is the girl,’ said Hester Nye, and a number of the women nodded and one or two smiled encouragingly. Becky smiled nervously and glanced around at them. There were eight in all, nine including Hester Nye.

  ‘We are very worried about the flute,’ said one of the women addressing her directly.

  Becky nodded. She felt very worried about the flute as well, but clearly there was to be no beating about the bush or time wasting on the usual courtesies like ‘Welcome to this humble villa’, ‘Did you sleep well?’, ‘You must find it strange being here?’, ‘I suppose you’d like something to eat?’ or ‘Let me tell you where the bathroom is.’

  ‘You are quite sure the flute is not still in the house of Silenus?’

  Again Becky nodded, ‘Quite sure. We looked everywhere,’ she said, glancing at Hester Nye and silently imploring for her help.

  ‘As sure as we can be,’ said Hester Nye. ‘I did have with me a torch from the other side and this expelled the darkness. We could see nothing.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  This seemed to satisfy the women, who looked thoughtfully around the table at each other.

  At this point, Becky was invited to sit down and she did so. She was also offered fruit, but declined, whispering, ‘Later, if you don’t mind.’

  She felt rather intimidated by these women. They were so serious, so worried. The atmosphere at the table was heavy, as though this were a council of war. She wanted to ask ‘What were you saying about me?’ but something told her that this would be presumptuous and out of place. She also wondered why she hadn’t been given a name, or why she hadn’t been given the names of any of the women.

  Looking around at them Becky was struck by their similarity, a similarity that extended far beyond the uniform clothing. They could have been sisters. Each had the same hair colour and style as Hester Nye: long and gathered behind them with a ribbon, and they had the same regular features. Becky tried to find the word: beautiful was too strong, pretty was too slight and did not give any sense of the strength of character there. She gave up. Any word she thought of seemed to suggest Hollywood or some magazine full of supermodels or glossy celebrities. Lovely came closest, but that was a gushing grandmother kind of word. Lovely sisters. But then, they could not have been sisters. They all looked to be the same age. Becky could not have said that any one of these women was older or younger than any other. It was weird. Perhaps they were clones.

  Whatever, they were very worried clones.

  ‘What do you think?’ Hester Nye was asked.

  ‘I think there are two possibilities. One is that Silenus has the flute. I have no idea why. He probably hasn’t either.’ She turned to Becky. ‘You didn’t attempt to play the flute for him did you?’ she asked.

  Becky shook her head. ‘I didn’t even take it out of its case,’ she said.

  Hester Nye shrugged. Again she turned to Becky. ‘What of the boy?’ she asked.

  ‘Johnny?’

  Hester Nye nodded.

  Becky thought about it. That did make a kind of sense. If Silenus had left the cottage with Johnny, then Johnny may have taken the flute with him. She could think of reasons why. Perhaps he felt the flute would be safer with him than in a deserted cottage, perhaps Johnny had begun to suspect Silenus and hoped to escape from him. In this case he would probably have taken the flute in the hope of meeting up again with her. Becky’s eyes widened as she suddenly realised that could have been one explanation for Silenus being away the previous night. It could have been that Johnny had taken the flute and escaped from the cottage and that Silenus was pursuing him.

  Becky looked at Hester Nye. ‘Johnny could have taken the flute, I suppose,’ she said. Then she explained her reasoning.

  ‘In any event,’ one of the women said, ‘even if the boy-child has the flute, sooner or later it will be in Silenus’s possession. We will need to get it from him.’

  Becky glanced at her. Clearly the woman did not think much of Johnny Cadman’s chances of staying out of Silenus’s clutches for long. This made Becky feel unaccountably resentful.

  ‘It’s not just the flute we need to get from Silenus,’ she protested. ‘It’s Johnny, too. The faun said that Silenus would want to kill and eat him.’

  Becky looked around the table, but few of the women met her
eyes. Many in fact stared at the table and Becky had the clear impression that either saving Johnny did not rate as a very high priority or, worse, that it was already too late.

  ‘How should we get the flute from Silenus?’ asked one of the women who had not spoken before. Something in her tone suggested this could be as difficult as removing a tooth from a Rottweiler.

  Perhaps it would be that difficult, for nobody offered any suggestions. Becky wondered whether retrieving Johnny would be just as difficult.

  ‘What was your other possibility?’ another asked Hester Nye. ‘You said there were two.’

  ‘The second is that Faunus himself has the flute. He was or is a friend of Silenus. The goatherd could have given it to him or he could have found it himself.’

  The others at the table looked at her in alarm.

  ‘He is in Arcadia already?’

  ‘I imagine so,’ said Hester Nye bleakly.

  ‘You have seen him?’

  ‘No, I have seen nobody apart from Silenus and this girl-child and her friend.’

  ‘Then he may not …’

  ‘It is highly unlikely,’ said Hester Nye. ‘His process of rejuvenation, thanks to …’ she indicated Becky, who shrank a little, ‘… is well underway although I suspect he is not completely returned to complete robustness. He will therefore need the flute.’

  The women nodded.

  ‘I need to add, though,’ said Hester Nye dryly, ‘that the flute is only one half of the equation.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘So, you mean if Faunus already has the flute, then he will need the girl?’ asked one of the women eventually as the implication sank in.

  Feeling the eyes of the table turn to her, again Becky shrank a little. She turned to Hester Nye for confirmation.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ said Hester Nye. ‘As soon as he has the flute, Faunus will come for the girl.’

  Much later, when they were alone, Becky asked Hester Nye, ‘What did you and the others say about me?’