The Triple Goddess (159 page)

Jenny opted for politeness. ‘Well, ma’am, I can’t be sure. Jock McJoist—he’s the Clerk of Works—and I nearly fell down the stairs, we were so shocked when the door swung open. There was the most terrible storm the night before last, which did an enormous amount of damage to the fabric of the castle. So it was the perfect opportunity to look for the three windows, while my husband Otto is incapacitated with grief at the loss of all that is dear to him. Put another way, he’s drunk in the cellar.

‘We’d been looking for hours, when the staircase leading to your apartment appeared, where there’ve never been steps before; and then the door, but it was locked, and we sat down to consider what to do. In telling Jock about the origin of the Plantagenet name, I recited an old verse about the broom that begins, “Time was when thy golden chain of flowers...”, and wished out loud that my forebears would help me out...not Useless Eustace, of course...and they did.’

Hecate, looking surprised, said nothing for a moment. ‘Hm. I suppose that is possible. The third earl, Norbert, and I got along especially well. We diced and drank together every Wednesday evening, and one night after a lot of Drambuie, when I was on a losing streak and the petty cash box was empty—I couldn’t use witchcraft to beat him, it would have been unsporting, and besides, Drambuie plays havoc with my timing—like an idiot I bet my only door key, which was made of gold, in an attempt to get my money back.

‘Ever since then, after Norbert won the key from me, I’ve had to use a locking and unlocking spell, with a password that I change every few days, when I leave and come back. Today was one of those occasions when I had a senior moment and couldn’t remember the password, which is why I came in by the windows just now, to reset the PIN. The windows respond to a garage door opener that I keep clipped to my shawl.

‘Old Norbert dropped the key as he staggered downstairs at three o’clock in the morning, and came back later to ask me to help him look for it. I did a finding spell, but all it led me to was the box of gold glitter I use on Christmas cards. Not all magic is as sophisticated as you might think. From what you say, the Plantagenets must have come across the key at some point, and hung on to it. Can’t say I blame them, Norbert won it fair and square.

‘As for the stairs and door appearing, they only do so when the keyholders are in the vicinity. Which means that one or more of the Plantagenets must have been intrigued by what you were up to, followed you around, and obliged when you appealed for help. I, er, don’t suppose whoever it was left the key...do you have it?’

‘It disappeared as soon as the door was open. And I didn’t see anyone, which was odd. I’m on speaking terms with most of the Plantagenets.’

‘Probably because it was Norbert, and he didn’t want to run into me. Though I should have liked to have seen him; there’s no ill feeling on my part. So that explains that, but what about this storm? Oh, good gracious…storm! Of course!’

‘Ma’am?’

‘I remember now. I was in a grump the other day after Griselda’s familiar, a cat called Bratwurst, made a mess in the hall, not for the first time. It was the last straw after many things that have annoyed me recently, and I prescribed myself a quick break in Bermuda to get my head together...white sand and cocktails with little umbrellas in them, that sort of thing.

‘I hate flying at the best of times…not what one would expect of the Queen of the Witches, I know, but it’s always been that way. Also, time differences play havoc with my body clock, and Dramamine makes me sick.

‘Hurrying as I was to catch the end of a favourable tailwind, I bumped, literally, into Fanny Fiddle, who is Chief Financial Officer of the Witch’s Guild, as I was zipping over the moor on Harriet, my broomstick. Fanny was on her new company air conveyance, a Crosswind Cavalier, which looks rather like a Vespa scooter, and Harriet side-swiped the Cavalier pretty hard, doing some damage. Harriet may be made of wood and full of worm-holes, bless her heart, but she doesn’t like Fiddle any more than I do, and took full advantage.

‘Fanny Fiddle yelled at me, “Oi! Whither away in such a Mother Hec of a storming hurry? Look where you’re going, old woman!”
Toujours la politesse
, with Fanny.

‘I didn’t stop because I had been wanting to get back at her for delaying settlement of my spell invoices to the Guild. ‘So I yelled back, “Aroint thee, witch! Your payment is thirty days overdue, Fiddle, I’m charging you interest!”, and kept going.

‘And Fanny bellowed after me, “You bent my fender! Hit-and-Run Hec, that’s who you are! I’ll report you to Wanda”—that’s Wanda Empiria, the Chief Executive of the Witches’ Guild—“and she’ll have you put under lock and key! Gaolbirds don’t get paid. When you get out, if you get out, I’m deducting this repair from your next cheque!”

‘”Lock and key”...that’s when I remembered I’d left home without locking up. Not wishing to lose the tailwind, I threw the spell behind me to put on the password, with a great deal of vim because it was from twenty miles away, and against the wind. And Fanny’s shouting “Mother Hec of a storm” must have got tangled up with it.’

Jenny felt dazed. ‘The place nearly came down about our ears. You could have returned to find the castle and all your precious things in a pile of rubble.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, it was built to last, with a System Restore feature.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Jenny. ‘The oddest thing, though, was that all the damage was confined to the renovations done by my husband—his so-called improvements—and the new stuff he had brought in.’

Hecate looked scornful. ‘Improvements and additions! The castle shall remain as I intended it to be when I designed and constructed it. Nothing shall exist except that which was meant to exist. On a lesser scale, you saw how things tidied themselves up in here just now after I breezed in. It would be the same anywhere else around here, too.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
, as Alphonse Karr put it: “The more things change, the more they are the same.”’

Jenny was amused by Hecate’s description of the room as tidy. ‘Of course! Although I slept through the great storm, the servants swore that the original parts of the castle suffered a great deal of damage during the night. Come daylight, that proved not to be the case.’

Nodding with relief at the assurance of the castle’s built-in obsolescence, and recalling how her inspection of the room had been interrupted, Jenny’s eye lit on an envelope on top of a teetering pile of newspapers and magazines. It had “P.D.T.” scrawled on it in green ink.

‘Excuse me, Hecate, if you don’t mind my asking, but what is P.D.T.?’

‘How do you know about P.D.T.?,’ said the old woman sharply; ‘have you been reading my spell books? I’ve frazzled people to a cinder for less. Although you don’t have the skill, everything in those books is a trade secret and highly confidential. Perhaps you are a spy after all!’

‘Don’t worry; apart from a glance at the title of the book on the desk, which has to do with some fantasy about dragons, I haven’t read anything. No, I was looking at that envelope.’ Jenny pointed at it.

‘Aha! I’ve been searching everywhere for that.’ Pouncing on the envelope, Hecate knocked the pile over and the item vanished in the drift. ‘Double drat.’

Jenny started picking up sheaves of material. The newspapers were crumbling with age, and the print so faded as to be unreadable, and some of the magazines had been nibbled and shredded by small teeth. Interspersed with everything else were old notebooks and jottings on torn-out leaves and paper scraps.

‘You needn’t bother to do that,’ said Hecate; and she raised her arms and the wings of her overstretched cardigan. Jenny shrank as a mini version of the earlier tornado arose. Although neither of them were touched, and not a hair was turned out of place that wasn’t already, the matter that had been disturbed was flung to the ceiling.

Abruptly the commotion ceased, and items floated downwards and settled in their former positions. Hecate picked up the envelope and turned it over to check that it was still sealed; it was, with the stamp of a small dragon impressed in gold wax over the flap. She put the envelope in a drooping pocket and patted it.

‘That really is a useful trick,’ observed Jenny.

‘Like I said, it’s a fact of life not a trick. Useful, certainly. Usually I know where my stuff is, but when Volumnia got out of her cage she must have moved the P.D.T. to spite me for forgetting to feed her. I punished her by sending her upstairs to join the rest of them,’—Hecate waved towards the iron steps—‘but I couldn’t find where I’d put down the P.D.T.’

Jenny looked at the bent bars of the cage. ‘Who is Volumnia?’

‘Volumnia is a vulture, and since you ask, P.D.T. is powdered dragon tooth. Dragon tooth is the crucial ingredient in all the more complicated spells; no witch can be without it if she wants to brew anything more complicated than rum punch. P.D.T. costs a fortune, and because Fanny Fiddle, the Guild accountant, never processes my reimbursements in a timely fashion, I’m always on the verge of losing my credit with the wholesalers. For my personal expenses alone, I need every penny I can make to supplement my pathetically inadequate pension from the Witches’ Guild. Now that so much classic wand-work has been replaced by cheap QuikSpells, and gadgets from the superstores, it’s a wonder I can keep body and soul together.

‘Dragons’ teeth are very difficult to come by; firstly because we’re at the mercy of the dragon cartel, and secondly because, with new dental techniques and better diets, the dragons aren’t losing their teeth as frequently as they used to. They es-chew sugar, as it were, and some of them go so far as to floss and brush; which under other circumstances would be highly desirable because a dragon’s breath, or exhaust as it’s called, in addition to being searingly hot when it’s aflame, can poison you if you’re not wearing a respirator with a special filter in it.

‘As a result the consumer pays through the nose, so to speak, to induce these newly health-conscious creatures to have their teeth removed. Many of them will only part with their wisdoms, because they’re not necessary for eating; but powdered wisdom isn’t as potent as incisor or canine, so one needs more of it.

‘It doesn’t end there. Dragons who are prepared to give up their cutting teeth insist on getting a porcelain crown in return, the cost of which is horrendous...a full-grown male’s tooth is very large. To which has to be added the crippling fees and surcharges demanded by the dragon dentists. I can’t say they’re exorbitant, because the dangers are considerable, and they earn every penny. There aren’t many professionals prepared to don a helmet and fireproof bodysuit and give a dragon a root canal. Dragons are filthy-tempered beasts, the females even more so than the males, and make the worst patients. One twinge and they’ll bite your arm off. The amount of anaesthetic the dentists get through would put an army to sleep in the middle of a battle.

‘Fortunately a dragon’s flaming breath goes out when it’s unconscious, and the exhaust fumes stop, so the dentist can at least take off his asbestos suit and mask while he’s working; remembering to put them on again before it wakes up; or better, be on his way and out of sight before the dragon stirs.

‘You’d have thought that snaggle-toothed creatures like dragons could afford to lose a few molars; and they can, but they make a fuss out of sheer bloody-mindedness. They understand about supply and demand, and know that the cartel limits the number of teeth in circulation in order to keep the prices up, and hence its profit. The dragons get in on the act by holding out for ever more riches to add to the treasure hoards that they sleep and nest on—the Dragon Bank is the safest bank in the world: it has never been robbed, interest is zero, and withdrawals are rare—and gifts and other inducements.

‘And the Dragons’ Mutual Society that the creatures all belong to has rules that make the removal of each dragon fang like what it literally is: pulling teeth. Any draca or wyrm, worm, to use the Anglo-Saxon or Old English, and archaic names, for dragon who is caught negotiating a back-door trade is killed, and has its choppers extracted and impounded for trading on the free market, with the members of the Dragon Mutual sharing the proceeds.

‘You should see some of the hoards of gold and jewels those guys are sitting on: the stacks are so high one needs climbing gear to get to the top and make an offer, whereupon if the dragon doesn’t like the terms it can just tip one off. They hate to haggle. The hoards are very unstable, there’ve been many nasty accidents, and a number of brokers have been killed falling off the really big heaps or being buried in treasure-slides.

‘The largest species of dragon,
Humungus armada
, is mad, bad, and dangerous to know, as Lady Caroline Lamb said of Lord Byron. The Humunguses have memories longer than elephants, and if you’ve offended one it’ll hunt you down and airbrush you with its breath until your entrails crackle.

‘But despite what you’d think of such fearsome beasts...I exclude the miniatures of the
Parvus esmeralda
variety, which are attractive and docile and make good pets...dragons are delicate in health. They’re prone to all sorts of diseases and infections and ailments, and bad backs, and problems with joints and ligaments. On top of it all they’re hypochondriacs, so being a dragon doctor is an exhausting occupation, and almost as fraught as being a dentist. Because dragons won’t go to clinics and surgeries, and insist on being treated at home, newly qualified doctors are accompanied on their rounds for a year by experienced physicians, who help them get to know their patients and give them practical advice on how to avoid antagonizing or hurting them; the results of which are sadly predictable.