‘What do you want?’ she asked.
Somehow, her very abruptness galvanised Johnny and he was suddenly able to remember his script.
‘I want help,’ he said.
‘Help?’
‘I’ve only just managed to get away from Silenus and Dr Faunus,’ he said desperately. ‘Silenus wants to kill me. He wants to eat me.’
‘You would seek shelter with us?’ the woman asked.
Johnny nodded. ‘I was with Becky. I came with her, and then we were separated somehow.’
The woman did not respond, but continued her scrutiny.
‘I need to find her again.’
The woman said, ‘You came to this place yesterday with Faunus and the fool Silenus.’
The implication was clear: Are you not with them?
‘I had no choice,’ said Johnny. ‘Faunus keeps threatening to give me to Silenus.’
The woman nodded.
‘Faunus thinks Becky is with you,’ said Johnny, feeling he was on slightly surer ground. ‘So I …’
‘The girl is not with us,’ said the woman. ‘Faunus would have the girl but we are determined he shall not.’
This time Johnny nodded. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust him. He’s like a spider.’
‘You are right not to trust him,’ said the woman pointedly. ‘However, my problem is whether to trust you.’
‘Me?’
‘Do you have the flute?’
Johnny was a little disconcerted by this sudden change of direction.
‘Me?’
‘I was asking you,’ said the woman coldly.
‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘No, I don’t.’
Was this a trick? What was she playing at?
‘Do you know where it is?’
Johnny shook his head. Tell the truth, he told himself. She will know if I lie. Say what you must and no more. That’s where safety is.
‘Does Faunus have the flute?’
She is testing me, thought Johnny.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘You haven’t seen it?’
Johnny shook his head. Be honest. ‘I haven’t seen it since Becky played it to the old doctor on his lawn.’
The woman scrutinised him once more and Johnny felt increasingly uncomfortable. Be honest. Clearly the woman wanted more than he had given so far. He tried a more risky approach: ‘I don’t know if Faunus has the flute, but I do know he has the case,’ he said.
‘The case?’
‘The case Becky kept the flute in … Dr Faunus does have that.’
The woman was interested in this. ‘How do you know?’ she demanded.
‘Because I fetched it for him,’ admitted Johnny. ‘He rescued me from Silenus’s fowl house. I was locked in there. Before we left he made me go and find it.’
The woman stared at him and Johnny stared back, as frankly and honestly as he could manage. It seemed to be enough.
‘You are a fool,’ she said, her eyes gleaming. ‘But that is only to be expected.’
Johnny nodded.
‘I knew it,’ whispered the woman more to herself than to Johnny. Then she turned to him once more. ‘And where is this case now?’ she asked.
‘It’s with him I guess,’ said Johnny. ‘He’s in a cave in the woods with a bunch of fauns.’ He gestured in the general direction. ‘It’s way back there, quite high up behind a waterfall. Way up above Silenus’s place.’
‘You could lead us there?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Johnny. ‘I might, but I’d probably get lost. If I found the waterfall I could, but I don’t think …’
He didn’t quite understand. Why was she continuing with the test? She must know Faunus didn’t have the flute. Surely she had been playing some sort of elaborate game to gauge his honesty? Surely he’d passed? Why this stuff about leading her to the cave?
‘You had better come in,’ said the woman. ‘What you have said interests me and I must discuss it with my sisters.’
Johnny was not to be a party to that discussion. He was escorted through the house to a chamber where he was told he should rest. The woman then nodded formally at him, and then withdrew, closing the door behind her.
Remembering what had happened when Dr Faunus had taken them to a room in the house on Landon Road, Johnny waited until the woman’s footsteps had died away and then hurried to the door. To his relief, it had not been locked. This was somewhat comforting. His welcome had not been exactly overwhelming, but at least he had been apparently deemed trustworthy enough.
He crossed to the casement and looked out. The view was pleasant and faced the other direction from the door where he had been admitted. A large fig tree dominated the immediate prospect and then the hill sloped down dotted with lemon and orange trees. There was, however, no other sign of habitation and this absence made him wonder where the women could have hidden Becky, if he was to believe the claim that she wasn’t here in the villa. He supposed he did believe it. It made good sense to frustrate Faunus in this way.
It was while these thoughts of Becky were in his mind that he noticed the small pile of clothes neatly folded on a wooden dresser. He hurried over to check. There was no doubt whatsoever: these were Becky’s jeans, shirt and sweatshirt.
This was real proof, as if he needed it, that she’d been with these women, probably in the villa, possibly in this room. But why were her clothes here? The question troubled him. He couldn’t help but think of his tearful mother as she sorted through the clothes of his grandmother after the old lady had died.
There was probably a simple answer. Whatever is was, Becky’s clothes sitting there so neatly and puzzlingly made him all the more determined to discover where she was.
Deciding it was in his best interests to do exactly as instructed, Johnny then crossed to the bed in the chamber and lay down. Although he had rested in the clearing above the house, he was still weary from his patchy sleep the previous night and the tiring walk with Sylvester.
He still was drowsing when a long time later there was a small tap at the door and one of the women came in with a tray of food: fruit, cheese and some kind of flatbread.
She did give Johnny a faint smile and he smiled back. It was the friendliest moment he’d had since he’d knocked at the door.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
She nodded in acknowledgement and then turned and left, closing the door behind her. Three out of ten for friendliness, zero out of ten for conversation, thought Johnny. He felt that Faunus’s idea that he could somehow discover the whereabouts of Becky through cunning questions and answers was rather too optimistic. Even to try Twenty Questions would require these women to at least say yes or no. He wasn’t going to get very far with faint Mona Lisa smiles for replies.
The bread was okay, the cheese was good, and the fruit — figs and grapes — excellent. He had forgotten how hungry he was. He hadn’t really eaten since he’d picked suspiciously at Silenus’s meat the previous day.
When he’d eaten sufficient, he picked up the platter thinking it would give him an excuse to leave the room. He tracked back down the corridor and found the large cloistered room, which he’d passed through earlier. Three of the women were there in conversation. They looked at Johnny neutrally as he approached proffering the empty platter.
‘Thanks for the food,’ he said. ‘It was great.’
One of the women took the plate and nodded.
‘Would it be okay if I went outside now?’ asked Johnny. ‘I mean is it okay if I had a look around?’
‘You don’t think Faunus will be lying in wait for you?’ asked one of the women.
Johnny shook his head. ‘I don’t think he’ll be bothered,’ he said.
‘You don’t?’ asked another.
‘He just seems to want to sit in his chair all the time,’ said Johnny. ‘The fauns pulled it out for him. It’s like a throne.’
‘Why does he sit there?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Johnny. �
��I think he’s plotting.’
The women exchanged glances, and then the first to speak said, ‘Follow me.’
She led Johnny through an anteroom adjacent to the great room and then into a wide hall. Up ahead was a door, and Johnny recognised it as the door to the outside.
‘You will need to knock to get back inside,’ warned the woman. ‘We are keeping the door bolted in case …’
Johnny nodded. He understood.
It seemed, though, that he had freedom to explore. This at least was promising even if the lack of communication was not. He wandered from the doorway side of the house around the front facing the sea to the other side. Now he could see the huge spread of the fig tree he had seen from the chamber window. He made his way towards it.
From underneath it was like looking up into a great leafy parasol. The figs he had enjoyed just before possibly came from this tree because there seemed to be few now available within easy reach. However, further up there looked to be a number of black juicy-looking fruit. Without a second thought Johnny clambered into the tree and climbed from branch to branch until he was perched in the upper branches. He had never seen a bigger fig tree. If it came to that he’d hardly ever seen a fig tree apart from a shrubby little thing in his Aunty Ellen’s back garden.
The view from the tree was great: to his right the short plateau of the bluff falling away with the sea stretching beyond; to his left, the wooded hills rising above the villa. The villa itself was at his back and before him the plain and the coast stretched in a great arc. Below him was the bank from which the tree grew and below the bank was a small paved courtyard with two or three stone benches and some weathered garden statues.
He had given up on the view and was reaching for a fig when he became aware that two of the women had found their way to this courtyard. He froze, considering quickly what he should do. He could either draw attention to himself so that they wouldn’t think he was spying on them, or he could stay as still as possible and pray that they didn’t look up. All in all, he thought the second option was the least compromising, and so he continued to stay as immobile and as inconspicuous as possible as the women continued their walk.
Then, to his alarm, it became clear that the women were not continuing their walk. Instead, from what he could see, scanning through the leaves and branches, they sat down together on one of the benches immediately below.
They began to speak in low voices, but not so low that he couldn’t hear what they were saying. To his surprise, and chagrin, he found that the topic of their discussion was none other than himself.
‘Hesteria should not have taken him in,’ one remarked.
‘He is an ill-found and ugly little thing,’ the other observed, ‘and not to be trusted.’
‘I wouldn’t trust him either,’ said her companion. ‘And if Hesteria believes the boy-child knows where the flute is, then she should have sent him back to get it. There’s no possibility of our ever getting the cursed thing any other way.’
While his ears were still burning at these unflattering references to himself, Johnny was unsure what to make of these later comments. Did these women not know that the motorcyclist, who must have been one of them, had taken the flute? Did this mean that there were camps and factions within the villa?
‘But could you trust him?’
‘Probably not, but anyway I’d prefer him anywhere but here.’
‘Althea, you must know that the problem is not the flute. The problem is really the girl.’
‘I do know that. I believe Hesteria has again miscalculated. I felt that she bullied us at our meeting.’
‘She has spent too long away from Arcadia.’
‘She has become soft.’
‘I agree, Althea. The problem is easily solved. Sequestering the girl with Basilius is only prolonging the difficulty.’
‘Delaying the inevitable.’
‘Exactly. Faunus has the flute. Sooner or later he will find the girl and seize her from Basilius. The old man will be helpless …’
‘Then chaos will reign again.’
‘You are right. As I say, the girl is the problem not the flute. It would be easily solved.’
‘Easily. The girl must die. With her permanently out of the way and beyond Faunus, the flute becomes useless.’
‘Hesteria has become soft.’
The women stood up. Johnny gripped the tree. He squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to make himself even more invisible.
‘We must work on her.’
‘I agree. The longer the hard decision is put off, the more risk there is.’
Johnny scarcely dared breathe. He heard the footsteps move away and the soft voices gradually become inaudible. He opened his eyes and stared shocked at the peeling bark directly in front of him. He was clutching the tree trunk as if it were a lamp-post in a windstorm, as if it were a mother.
Had he really heard that? These two beautiful women coldly talking about the practical necessity of putting Becky to death! They might well have been discussing whether to have eggs for breakfast or toast.
Now the need to find Becky hadn’t become just important, it had become a matter of life and death.
Whatever happened from now on, he too would have to get away from the villa. It wouldn’t be long before the idea of getting rid of him would occur to them as well. It would probably be far and away the easiest way to deal with such an ugly, ill-found, untrustworthy little thing.
But there was one other vital thing the women had let slip. In his horror he had almost overlooked it.
He now knew where Becky was.
She had been sequestered with someone called Basilius. Whatever sequestered meant … Whoever Basilius was …
Later, back in the chamber, he gathered Becky’s clothes and wrapped them as inconspicuously as possible under his own sweatshirt, luckily quite baggy, and ventured through the house again. It was to his advantage that the women largely ignored him. Few bothered to give him more than a passing glance as he went by, and luckily he passed few women anyway. He knew the geography of the house reasonably well by now, at least the route from his chamber to the main entrance.
Once outside, though, he was at something of a loss. Clearly, it wasn’t possible to ask any of the women who this Basilius was, but then there was nobody else to ask unless he trudged the long miles back to Faunus, even if he could remember the way. Silenus was out of the question.
Faunus had instructed him, on pain of being turned into a roast, to return immediately once he knew where Becky was.
But the fact that Becky could be in deadly danger surely changed that.
Faunus wouldn’t thank him if … He didn’t want to think about that.
The priority was to get to Becky anyway. Faunus would surely understand this. If those women had taken it on themselves to work on the one they called Hesteria with their ruthless logic, the decision to kill Becky could be made at any time.
Another priority was to get away from the villa as soon as possible.
But where?
It was like tossing a coin, or rather tossing several coins. In the end he thought it best to follow the stream back up the grassy clearing where Sylvester had left him. At least that was in the woods. If he’d travelled left or right from the front of the house he could have been spotted more easily.
He looked apprehensively about him, but the olive grove was deserted. He looked over his shoulder. Nothing. Without any further hesitation he moved swiftly from tree to tree until he found the path up the hill beside the stream. Warily still, but confident he hadn’t been seen, he hurried upwards beside the bank until he reached the small plateau.
It was only once he was there that he realised bitterly all he had achieved was escaping from the house without being noticed. But what was the point of that, except to escape some imagined future danger? In terms of getting to Becky what he’d done was utterly futile. The trees all about him seemed to gather together almost as if they were determined to obstruc
t his view. Looking about him he saw that he could see only a few metres in any direction. Becky could be fifteen metres away and he wouldn’t be able to find her. He was in a blind alley and Becky was a needle in a haystack.
In any case, Becky probably wasn’t even in the forest.
She was with somebody called Basilius.
It was hopeless, utterly hopeless.
Then almost as the sheer hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed him, a small figure stepped from behind a tree and moved delicately into the clearing.
It was the faun Sylvester.
Johnny looked at him with a mixture of relief and surprise.
‘Hello!’ he exclaimed. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘You have left the villa?’ asked Sylvester.
Johnny nodded.
He was on the point of explaining to the little faun exactly why he had left the house when something made him pause. The faun’s sudden appearance was too much of a coincidence. When he’d last seen him earlier that day Sylvester had told him he was off back to Faunus to report Johnny’s safe delivery. Had the faun travelled all the way back to the cavern and then all the way back again?
It did not make sense.
‘You haven’t been back to Faunus?’ he asked.
Sylvester gave a small, almost embarrassed shrug. ‘Not yet,’ he admitted.
‘Then what …?’
Johnny stared at the little creature and his obvious discomfit. And then he realised.
‘You never had any intention of going back, did you?’ he asked.
Sylvester shrugged again.
‘You were left here to spy on me, to make sure I was doing what I was told, weren’t you?’
‘Only to protect you if …’ the faun began.
‘Nonsense!’
Johnny was surprised at his own anger. He knew part of it was just the result of all the stress and frustration he was experiencing, but much of it was also because he hated being told such bald-faced lies. The idea that a fraidy-cat little faun like Sylvester would come charging to his rescue if he’d got into trouble was ridiculous, laughably ridiculous.
It all had to do with trust. From his eavesdropping in the fig tree, he knew that the women did not trust him, and now it was clear that Faunus did not trust him either. It seemed Faunus did not even trust the power of his threat to throw Johnny to Silenus.
The Enchanted Flute Page 24