Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (19 page)

‘A day,’ said the carver. ‘Using my power tools. If I do nothing else.’

‘Please,’ said Makr Avehl, piling money on the counter. ‘I would be deeply grateful if you would do nothing else.’

‘I wish we were doing something,’ Ellat fumed. ‘Marianne is gone, heaven knows what is happening to her, and here we sit, dillying.’

‘I am not dillying,’ said Makr Avehl in as patient a voice as he could manage. ‘Listen, Ellat, there is a villain out there. A most horribly noxious but subtle villain. His name, for lack of a better and because it has become ubiquitous, is Cattermune. I think it is no coincidence that this chain of game stores springs up and at the same time people begin to disappear. It is no coincidence that we find this game in a place where Marianne and Dagma and the faithful Aghrehond have just vanished from. You’ve been to a Cattermune store. You brought back a game, the same game, and Therat says it, too, is dead. The dice that came with it are those strange dice. The game pieces are all alliterative little animals. Ruby rats and chalcedony chickens. Bloodstone bats and garnet geese. Little animals which disappear when their players do. So, and so, Ellat, I, too, will disappear …’

‘Makr Avehl,’ she wailed. ‘I wish you didn’t have to do it, not again.’

‘What can I do when my beloved has gone off in this mysterious way? Can I leave her there, wherever she may be? At the mercy of this Cattermune. Can I leave this Cattermune in peace, to continue his depredations? No, of course not. I must go. But I will not use this game piece which was made by Cattermune. No. I will use another, made of something violent and strange which belongs to me. I will go in a guise that suits myself. Besides, you were right about rhinoceri being very shortsighted with disablingly bad tempers. I will need to be far more subtle than that.’

‘And I will help you,’ said Therat. ‘I am ashamed of myself. I should have caught the strangeness of the reading in the Cave of Light. The vacancy. It meant nothing to me then. Now, well …’

‘You’ve blamed yourself quite enough,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Who knows what higher purpose may be achieved through your failure.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Therat through gritted teeth. ‘Failure! I don’t like it at all.’

‘Bear up, Therat,’ rumbled Makr Avehl. ‘Bear up and turn your considerable talents to making our dragon invincible.’

‘How would you suggest?’ asked Ellat.

‘I would suggest a few spells and invocations,’ Makr Avehl responded. ‘I would suggest asking a few of Marianne’s friends from among the momentary gods for assistance. I would suggest a guidance reading from the Cave of Light, conducted by you, Therat, by long-distance phone. See whether it tells us the same thing now that it told you before. I would suggest some protection spells done by you, Ellat. Does this give you any ideas?’

Both of the women flushed, admitting that it did.

‘Then get with it,’ Makr Avehl suggested. ‘While I do some thinking of my own.’

Thereafter, Makr Avehl meditated. Ellat burned incense and spoke persuasively to the powers and confusions. Therat called her fellow Kavi in Alphenlicht and asked for a reading. Some hours went by. Evening came. They ate and slept and began doing the same things again.

‘Have the Kavi any help to offer?’ Makr Avehl asked of Therat as he unwrapped the tiny package which had just been delivered.

‘There have been confirming readings twice in succession. An anchor, a rope, a road on the first session. A bridge, a chain, a gateway on the second. There can be only one interpretation.’

‘A way to travel between two points,’ said Ellat promptly.

‘A tie between two points,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘The anchor, the chains, the bridge, the line. Things that fasten two places together.’

‘Things that permit passage between two places,’ amended Therat. ‘During the last reading the gateway was marked with a death’s head; the road went by a cemetery.’

‘Oof,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Passage between two places, this place and some other not-so-nice place? What kind of creature will this Cattermune be?’

‘I’d like to know what Marianne’s great-aunt Dagma could have done that got her involved with this Cattermune.’

‘Involved she was, whether purposely or by accident. And not happy about it, I should think. That was what Dagma wanted. She wanted Marianne to do something about this linkage, whatever it is,’ Ellat sighed.

‘Which Marianne either tried to do or not. If not, she was simply caught and vanished, as hundreds of others seem to have been caught and vanished. Which changes nothing, so far as I can see. I still have to go, and here is my game piece.’

He unfolded the last piece of tissue paper and disclosed what had been wrapped in it. A dragon, neck curved and front claw raised, tail stretched behind into a sinuous line, wings half unfurled. The red glow within the stone made it appear to be on fire, and Makr Avehl nodded his head.

A note had been enclosed with the dragon. ‘My family has taken the liberty of invoking some help for you,’ it said. It was signed by Won Sin in a splash of ideographs which looked very much like dragon tracks. Makr Avehl read it, half smiling, then put it away with a sigh.

‘There’s no point in delay is there? Do you have the dice, Therat?’

‘Two to use here, and eight identical-looking ones to take with you, Makr Avehl. All ten of them loaded as you asked. You can throw any number you need to.’

He took them from her, threw each one to see how it rolled, then carefully separated two from the eight others, which he pocketed, remarking as he did so, ‘I will go to Cattermune’s House. I will see if I can find Marianne. If I cannot, I will find out anything I can about Marianne, then go elsewhere as needs must.’ He spread the parchment out on the table in front of him and placed the dragon in the space marked ‘Start Here.’ ‘Is there anything else you can think of?’

‘Watch out for Cattermune,’ said Therat.

Makr Avehl sighed. ‘I had intended to do so.’

‘What do we tell Marianne’s parents?’ asked Ellat.

‘As little as possible,’ Therat answered. ‘He’ll either have her back very soon or …’

She didn’t finish the statement but all three of them knew what she meant. Makr Avehl would either have the vanished ones back fairly soon, or he wouldn’t bring them – or himself – back at all. Makr Avehl nodded once and swallowed rather hard, then muttering the opening enchantment which he hoped would get him into the game and concentrating very hard on Cattermune’s House, he threw a six.

And found himself rolling into a vast, funereal courtyard in a capacious gilded coach which swayed and thumped with every turn of its wheels. Out one side window he could see red-lit fountains, out of the other, black cypresses and hedges of dark yew and tree peonies laden with darkly scarlet bloom. The pavement beneath the carriage wheels was black, polished to a leaden glimmer, over which the wind chased red petals as though toying with drops of blood.

‘Cattermune’s,’ said the driver, climbing down from his high perch to open the door. ‘You here for his birthday fete tonight or for the celebratory hunt tomorrow?’

‘Both,’ said Mondragon, wiping traces of road dust from his lips and returning his handkerchief to his cuff. ‘‘I have an invitation somewhere …’

‘No matter. Here come the footmen now, so it looks as though you’re expected.’

Indeed, a flurry of footmen had come out of the door and were scurrying across the pavement to gather Mondragon’s luggage, of which he seemed to have an exorbitant quantity.

‘Careful, oaf!’ he demanded, as one of the pallid footmen allowed the stacked cases to totter. ‘Cattermune’s birthday gift is in there. He won’t thank you if it’s broken!’

The footman turned, if anything, slightly paler.

‘What’s your name, my man?’ said Mondragon in a more friendly tone.

‘Green, sir.’

‘Green, eh. Something familiar about you, Green. Do you remember seeing me before?’

‘You have a very distinctive face, sir. It does seem familiar, but I couldn’t say where we might have encountered one another.’

‘I know we have, Green. Would you by any chance have a friend named Marianne?’

‘Mary Ann? The wet nurse? Funny you should mention her, sir. Why, I saw her just today.’

‘And Dagma?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know any Dagma, sir.’

‘Hmm. Mrs Zahmani?’

‘Mrs Smani? The layette seamstress. Now how would you have known about her?’

Mondragon intercepted an angry and suspicious look from a liveried supervisor who was hovering in the background. ‘She was in service with my family. They both were. Come, now. Gather up my bags. Can’t stand here all night.’ Folding the great, winglike panels of his cape around him, Mondragon followed the footman into the great hall. So, Aghrehond didn’t know him. Which meant that Marianne wouldn’t know him either. Difficult to make contact under those circumstances, he thought. He thought so even more after several members of the Cattermune family had introduced themselves to him, taking his long, agile hand in their own short, fat ones, tickling his palm with their curved fingernails, smiling with sharp teeth at his polite greetings, their whiskers twitching, only slightly. The women couldn’t really be said to have whiskers. Only the tiniest hint of whiskers. Freckles at the corners of their mouths from which the finest gossamer protruded, visible only in certain lights. But they all had the Cattermune teeth. Mondragon smiled and nodded, bowed and murmured, before escaping to follow the footman up the wide sweep of stairs to an upper hall.

‘Your room is just down here, sir,’ said Green. He and another footman had carried up the baggage. Now the other footman bowed himself away as Green opened the door and began carrying the cases inside to dispose them about the room. ‘Will you be wanting me to unpack for you, sir?’

‘Just those two,’ Mondragon said, indicating two cases. ‘The others are for …’ What in heaven’s name was all this luggage for? ‘For later journeys and eventualities.’ He went to the window and looked out across the courtyard, letting his eyes drift up the façade which confronted him. Story after story, window after window. A movement at one of the third-floor windows caught his eye. Pale faces there. He turned and fumbled in one of the open cases, returning to the window with a pair of binoculars.

‘Green,’ he said. ‘Tell me who that is.’

Green came to stand beside him at the window. Mondragon passed him the glasses, pointing.

‘Oh, that’s Mary Ann, sir. The wet nurse for the Cattermune infants.’

‘She had a child of her own, then?’ Mondragon growled in his throat, thinking of the threat to the child, of not being there when the child was born.

‘Oh, not yet, sir. No. Soon, probably. We are all assured the Cattermune’s young wife will be having her own very soon. The woman with Mary Ann is Mrs Smani, the layette seamstress.’

‘There are three women there.’

Green put the glasses back to his eyes. ‘The other one is the nursery maid, sir. Fanetta. They would be in the nursery maid’s room. When we had … when we had supper together last night, she mentioned having a room which faced the courtyard.’

‘She is pregnant,’ said Mondragon.

‘The Cattermune’s young wife? She is indeed, sir, to the consternation of some members of the family, I’m told.’

‘I don’t mean Cattermune’s anybody. I mean that girl, Mary Ann.’

‘Oh, yes, sir. Unmistakably. Quite, ah, rotund.’

‘I would like to meet her,’ whispered Mondragon.

‘Oh, sir. Quite improper.’ Green’s words were belied by his expression, which was full of unconscious surmise.

‘I know that. Therefore, we won’t do anything precipitant, will we, Green. No. I know I can trust you. Meet me here, tonight, after the birthday dinner. We’ll talk about it then.’

From the high window in Fanetta’s room, Mary Ann continued to stare down at the window in which she had just seen a face. Not only a face, but a face looking at her – a face which had used glasses to look at her more closely.

She was interrupted in this pastime by sounds from the nursery hallway, thumpings and loud expostulations issued in a hard, baritone voice with unmistakably metallic tones in it. Fanetta opened her door, peeked out, then shut it, leaned against it, and said in a terrified voice, ‘It’s the nanny. The Cattermune nanny has arrived.’

The door vibrated to a thunderous knocking and the sound of the metallic voice. ‘Fanetta! Fanetta, I know you’re in there, so don’t play silly games. Come out here at once and bring the others with you.’

Gulping, smoothing her apron, wiping away tears which had appeared at the corners of her eyes, Fanetta complied. Waiting for them in the hall was an enormous woman of uncertain age clad in the ritual garb of nannies: a dark suit, impeccably brushed, with a watch-pin upon the lapel; a snowy white shirtwaist; sensible dark shoes and stockings; and a flat straw hat set squarely upon her head. She carried an umbrella with which she now poked the terrified nursery maid, making her squeak in fear.

‘So, Fanetta! What have you been up to, eh? Sedition and sneakery, no doubt. Crawling about through the walls?’