The Witch Queen (32 page)

“I’m not,” said Gaynor. “Honestly I’m not. I restore manuscripts. You can check.” She gave her work number. “I know Luc—Dana’s brother. He came here a couple of times with another friend—Fern Capel—who’d been in a coma too and was trying to help them. Support stuff. She’s not awfully well now, so I’m here instead of her. We just want to know Dana’s okay.”

“I’ll get back to you,” the nurse conceded.

Gaynor took the flowers to Fern, and they returned to their perusal of the papers, who were getting nowhere in their search for the mystery woman. Melissa Mordaunt was clearly a fictitious identity, but since the person behind it had no records of any kind—no birth certificate, National Insurance number, passport, or driver’s license—they were unlikely to track her farther than Wrokeby. Luc’s defection continued to baffle, but no one suggested he had been murdered, and the issue was clouded still further when someone in his office managed to shift responsibility for some dubious financial transactions onto him. Meanwhile, Kaspar Walgrim’s lawyer expressed remorse on his client’s behalf and called in psychiatrists to explain that he had acted while the balance of his mind was disturbed. Pictures appeared of Dana at various society events over the past several years, but the newspapers were beginning to abandon the carcass of the story for lack of meat when the clinic finally contacted Gaynor.

The following day, armed with more flowers, she drove down to an exquisite Georgian country house where those who could afford it retired to convalesce, generally from drug addiction, alcoholism, or nervous breakdown. Knowing a little of Dana’s history, Gaynor wondered if she had been there before. During the journey she had dwelt unhappily on the fact that this was Luc’s sister she was going to see, and although she had done her utmost to put that night at the lake out of her mind, she could not help feeling steeped in guilt. Dana’s opening remarks nearly sent her bolting straight back to London. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but I’m told you’re a friend of my brother. Have you any idea what’s happened to him?”

She didn’t resemble Luc, Gaynor thought, striving desperately for a natural reaction. She was a little thin and pale, which suited her, and had the type of good looks that result more from grooming than nature: well-cut, high-gloss hair, clear skin, manicured hands. There was none of Luc’s suppressed intensity or Modigliani bone structure. Unable to find a suitable answer to her question, Gaynor handed her the bouquet and hovered undecidedly by a visitor’s chair.

“Actually,” she said, “I’m only an acquaintance, really. I didn’t mean to deceive you, but it was too difficult to explain properly at the clinic. The thing is, Luc got in touch with Fern Capel—she’s my best friend—because he’d heard from a doctor that she’d gone into coma in circumstances very like yours. Luc thought maybe she could help him. I know she went to see you a couple of times when you were unconscious and she wanted to visit you now, but she isn’t very well at the moment, so she asked me. I’m sorry: does any of this make sense?”

“Nobody makes much sense right now.” Dana looked bleak. “Look—sit down. I could ask for some tea. They don’t allow alcohol here.”

“Tea would be lovely,” said Gaynor.

Dana pressed a bell and ordered the tea, and Gaynor, in a painful attempt to adhere to the truth, said: “I’m afraid I—I haven’t seen your brother in a while. I don’t think anyone has.”

“They’re saying he’s gone off with money from the firm,” Dana persisted, “but he wouldn’t do that. He’s unscrupulous sometimes, but not a thief. He’s not that stupid. He had a great life—plenty of dough—why quit for a few extra bucks?”

Gaynor mumbled: “I don’t know.”

“Some people came from the Serious Fraud Office,” Dana went on. It occurred to Gaynor that she was short of a real confidante and desperate to talk to almost anyone. “About Luc and—and Daddy. They said Luc might have debunked because he’d found out about Daddy, or been involved with his business affairs, but that’s nonsense. I told them, he would never just
leave
. Not without a word. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately, but when we were kids he always looked after me. He would never,
ever
run out on me. They didn’t believe me. They didn’t say so, but I could see it. They looked awfully cynical, and tired, and
sorry
for me . . .” She began to cry helplessly, trying to sniff back the tears. Gaynor groped in a flowered box for a wad of tissues and decided this was quite the worst afternoon of her life.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling like a criminal. Technically she supposed she was one.

“No . . . no.
I’m
sorry . . . I keep crying at people. They say it’s okay—therapeutic . . .”

“Of course it’s okay.”

“The psychiatrist’s very kind—she’s quite young, you know, and not patronizing like some I’ve had—but it’s so nice to talk to a
real
person.”

“What about your friends?” Gaynor asked unguardedly.

“Oh, a couple of them came down. They were excited about all the stuff in the papers and kept sort of looking at me sideways, to see if I knew something I wasn’t telling, but I don’t. And Georgie’s always fancied Luc, but he didn’t reciprocate, so she was mouthing off about him. My best friend’s in Australia, having a baby. She’s phoned several times, but she’s nearly eight months gone and she doesn’t want to fly. I might go over there after the baby’s born.” She mopped her face with the tissues and glanced up blearily as the tea arrived. She didn’t say thank you, so Gaynor said it for her. “Tell me about your friend—Fern what’s-her-name. You said she’d been in a coma like me.”

“It was two years ago,” Gaynor said. “She was supposed to be getting married, and we went out for her hen night, and she drank too much and passed out and didn’t come around for a week.”

“A
week
?” Dana sounded mildly scornful. “I was out for months.”

“The thing is, there was nothing wrong with her. Like you. It was as if—“ Gaynor trod carefully “—her body was in suspension, and her spirit had gone . . . somewhere else.”

Dana’s expression froze into sudden stillness. “That’s how it felt,” she said. “I had such awful dreams. I was shut in a jar, in this huge laboratory. I kept banging on the sides and shouting, but no one came to let me out. I felt like an insect trapped under a glass. I was terrified they were going to perform some horrible experiment on me.”

Gaynor said: “They?”

“There was this woman who would come and peer at me sometimes. She was huge, or maybe I was very small, and she had this big red smile full of teeth, and black eyes—really wicked eyes, like looking into a dark cave when you know there’s something dreadful lurking down there. She always seemed to be wearing evening dress; all wrong for a laboratory. And there were these other faces, nightmare faces, distorted and leering, like an illustration for ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ in a book I had as a child. That picture always scared me so much I was afraid to go to sleep, but now it was as if I had, and the picture had turned into reality, and I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t wake up.”

“Fern had bad dreams, too,” Gaynor offered. “About a pair of witches, and a gigantic Tree that filled her whole world.”

“Sounds more fun than mine,” said Dana. “Lindsay—the psychiatrist—says it’s frightfully interesting and Kafkaesque.” A note of gratification flickered in her voice. “But at the time, it was so . . . not exactly real, but horrible, because I was stuck in the dream or whatever it was, and I couldn’t get out. Lindsay says it was symbolic, but it didn’t
feel
symbolic. Apparently it all has to do with my mother dying when I was young and my relationship with Daddy.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Gaynor said.

“I can’t believe he would do anything against the law. He’s always been so aloof, and stuffy, and high-minded about things. It can’t all have been hypocrisy . . .”

She sounded hopelessly bewildered, and Gaynor found herself thinking: She doesn’t love him very much, but she must have relied on him. He laid the rails that she had to go off.

She couldn’t think of anything to say in the way of comfort.

“How did you get out of the jar?” she asked eventually.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Dana. “That’s what Lindsay asked me. She said dreams of this kind have their own logic. I don’t know: I never had logical dreams before.”

“But you do recall getting out?”

“Not very clearly. All I know is, Luc was there. And someone else, I think, but I only remember Luc. His face was huge too, all bendy through the glass, and then it shrank back to normal size, and went far away, and I suppose after that I must have woken up. And now he’s gone . . .”

“I’m sorry,” Gaynor said for the umpteenth time. “So sorry . . . I’m sure he would have done anything for you. Anything at all.”

That evening, she gave Fern an edited version of the interview, and Will, later, a rather more detailed one.

“She seems pretty self-absorbed,” Gaynor told Fern. “She didn’t appear very interested in what might have happened to you. As far as I could make out, her psychiatrist thinks she had some sort of dream sequence symbolizing her relationship with her father.”

Fern attempted a rather shaky laugh. “If the Eternal Tree was a hallucination,” she said, “what the hell does that say about my family background?”

“The point is,” said Will, “there’s nothing you can do for her. She may be confused and upset, but she’s well off, well looked after, and in a month or so she’ll be winging her way to Bondi Beach to forget. You don’t need to agonize over her.”

“No,” said Fern. “After all, I killed her brother. There isn’t a lot I can do to make up for that.”

“You had no choice,” said Will.

How often had she heard that phrase? Her face twisted. “There’s always a choice,” she said.

She had been back at work for a while now, struggling to concentrate although the world of PR appeared completely surreal. The launch party for
Woof!
magazine was due in a few days, with a full complement of celebrities and their pets, most of which seemed to have even more rarefied tastes and eccentric habits than their owners. Fern felt so detached from the action, she found it curiously easy to retain what was left of her sanity. But the nights were difficult. She would lie staring vacantly into the darkness, trying not to relive that final moment, blanking out the terrible wonder of their lovemaking, thinking about nothing till her head ached from the strain of it. Every evening she drank a glass of wine too much in the hope that it might soothe her, or warm her, or chill out the pain. If it
was
pain. Mostly, it seemed to her that her life had ended when she ended Luc’s, and the rest of her days would be filled with emptiness and the taste of dust. Gaynor dosed her with Mogadon, and Rescue Remedy, and kava kava bark, all of which Fern took meekly, and then she would laugh a little, or cry a little, or sleep a little, but the emptiness inside her devoured both laughter and tears, and sleep would not drive it away.

“I’m really glad about you and Will,” she said once, with something approaching true feeling. The two of them were alone together; Will was out charming a commissioning editor.

“I didn’t know you’d noticed,” Gaynor said candidly.

“Of course. I suppose . . . I’m afraid to say too much. Everything I touch turns to ashes these days.”

Later that evening, Skuldunder arrived. Fern didn’t notice him before he materialized, perhaps because she didn’t want to look.

“The queen is coming to see you,” he announced from under his hat brim, his one visible eye straying toward the chardonnay on the table. Evidently he had acquired a taste for it.

Gaynor glanced at Fern, who said nothing, and spoke for her. “We will be honored.”

Mabb duly appeared, garlanded with dying flowers and carrying a particularly vicious thistle stem by way of a scepter. Her eyelids were painted purple with iridescent spots that spread over her temples, and her customary rank odor was mingled with overtones of what might be Diorissimo. Gaynor saw Fern flinch slightly as the smell hit her. (“The perfume was a mistake,” she admitted afterward.)

“Greetings, your highness,” she said, adding bravely: “You are most welcome.”

“I show you great favor,” Mabb declared, perching herself on an armchair. “My loyal subject here, the Most Royal Burglar Skuldunder, has told me how you commended him for his courage in the witch’s house.”

There was a note of doubt in the assertion, so Fern responded: “Yes.”

“I have also heard how your companion slew the giant spider, aided by my burglar, and how, with Skuldunder’s help, you stole the demonic head from a sapling of the Eternal Tree.”

“Absolutely,” Fern said faintly.

“And now the witch is dead.” It was not a question. News of the events at Dale House, or some of them, had obviously reached Mabb. “It was a great feat,” the queen continued. “She was mighty among witchkind, but you proved mightier.”

“Not really,” said Fern. “Everyone has their weak spot. I found hers. I am not—“ she shivered “—in the least bit mighty.”

“You don’t look mighty,” Mabb agreed. “You have not my regal presence, or the mien of one of the great. But by your deeds you are known. You will be the most powerful and most dreaded of Prospero’s Children—you will be as Merlin, as Zarathustra, as Arianrhod of the Silver Wheel. None will be able to stand against you. Therefore I salute you, and cement our allegiance.” She made an imperious gesture, and Skuldunder disappeared, reappearing an instant later holding a curled shard of tree bark piled with herbs, a few wildflowers, and a small green apple.

“Thank you,” Fern said. “I’m afraid I haven’t anything for you right now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mabb declared magnanimously. “You were unprepared. You may send your gifts later, with my subject here. This apple is from my special tree,” she added. “No other in the world has the same sweetness.”

“Thank you,” Fern said again.

Gaynor felt it was time to rush into the breach. “How is the house-goblin—Dibbuck?” she asked. “Will he be able to go back to Wrokeby now?”

Mabb’s face seemed to darken. “None of goblinkind will go there for an age and more,” she said. “When all the spirits are driven out of a place by some great evil, it brings the abyss very close. Sometimes, it is an act of sorcery; sometimes, a mortal deed. Mortals talk loudly of honor and chivalry and the code of war, but they surpass werefolk in evil, when they wish. Are not the witchkind mortal, at birth?”