by Holly Bell
Amanda got some good news. A text:
On my way home. Uncle Mike
Leo came. He was subdued.
‘Let me make you some tea,’ said Amanda kindly.
‘Are you OK to do that?’
‘Oh yes. I’m much better. I’ll be fine for the dance. Will you be there?’
‘I don’t think so. Actually, I came to say how much I regret what happened,’ Leo said contritely.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ replied Amanda. ‘Come with me to the kitchen.’
‘But it was,’ he insisted, following her. ‘You see, I knew Donna was setting something up. Only she said it was just a joke. She was just going to make a couple of floorboards a bit wobbly so Vic would fall on his face or something. She was so … insistent that she owed him one for leaving her. She’s always said she was his daughter. There was no father listed on her birth certificate, but Mum always said she was Doug Weathersby’s daughter. Only Donna didn’t want to believe it.’
‘So, I gathered.’
‘Donna was always a bit obsessive about it. I tried to get her to have counselling or therapy. And then her relationship fell to pieces, and she got worse. She manoeuvred us to Sunken Madley. I didn’t realise she planned it. Donna made out that Woodberry, my dad, just happened to be up the road. I didn’t recognise him. I was just a baby when he left.’
‘Have you told the police this,’ asked Amanda.
‘Yes.’
‘How did Donna get into the cellar without the keys?’
‘She visited the rector, swiped the keys, took an impression and put them back. Our grandfather was in the building trade; a bit of a crook. She picked things up off him. I didn’t know she was still in touch with him.’
‘The Recket papers?’ Amanda enquired.
‘Mum gave them to us. Asked us to find a way to make things right. Let the building owners know. Donna kept telling me to leave it to her, that she was working on it. And I was busy winding up my business and learning hers. I suppose I let it go when I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry. You could have been killed. I would never have forgiven myself.’
‘Well, no use crying over spilt milk,’ said Amanda bracingly. ‘I wasn’t, and it’s over.’
‘Yes, the inquest decided it was accidental death, and Vic isn’t pressing any charges against me.’
But it wasn’t accidental, thought Amanda, remembering Tempest’s flying leap, pulling Donna to her doom.
At that moment, the Lord High Executioner himself sashayed into the room and gave Leo a long, hard, head-to-toe stare, then sat down and glared at him in a purposeful manner until Leo became so uncomfortable that he stood up.
‘I think I should be going.’
‘Finish your tea,’ Amanda urged him, then followed Leo’s gaze. ‘Oh, I see. Stop that Tempest.’
Leo took a hasty sip but sat down.
'There is one thing I'm wondering about,' said Amanda casually. 'How could Donna resist the temptation to be there when it happened? I mean, see her plan come to fruition.'
'Oh, she had someone up in the attic who was supposed to be filming it for her, like she was going to post it on YouTube or something. I guess they must have done a runner as soon as they saw what was really going on.'
'I don't suppose you have any idea who it was?'
Leo shook his head regretfully. 'No. To be honest, I didn't want to know too much about it. I just wanted her to get it over, and, well ... get over it.'
'Yes, I see.' He finished his tea. ‘Will you keep the salon going?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know. I need a little more time to think. I’ll let you know what I decide to do, but I’ve closed it for now.’
‘OK,’ Amanda said understandingly, but thought, bang goes my New Year’s Eve Ball hair appointment! And after I’d psyched myself up to it, too. Ah well.
‘By the way,’ Leo was saying, ‘if you see Miss Armstrong-Witworth and Miss de Havillande, please thank them again for me. They contacted my mum and she called me and told me … well … what I told Donna. I don’t know how exactly they got Mum’s number. It’s not like she’s listed anywhere but … Miss Armstrong-Witworth said something about dear Sir Reginald Carpetworthy being so kind.’
‘Probably,’ commented Amanda. ‘Those two ladies have a lot of friends in all sorts of places, I understand.’
‘Well, I’m glad they have.’ He sighed, then noticed the ferocious feline had inched closer, and rose. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to rest. Take care. I’ll let myself out,’ he said, edging around Tempest.
She heard the door shut.
‘Naughty kitty,’ Amanda scolded mildly.
The front doorbell rang. It was Joan with a large, flat, rectangular parcel.
‘’Ello dear. This must be it, eh?’
‘Er …?’
‘Your dress! For the New Year’s Eve Ball. Oo, we are all so excited!’
It was clear that the villagers’ enthusiasm for the festivities had not been dimmed by the collapse of their church hall over their new hairdresser.
‘And your inspector will be there!’
‘He’s not my inspector,’ Amanda corrected Joan automatically.
‘Didn’t he look proper ’andsome on Christmas Eve? Oo he’s lovely! If I didn’t have my Jim! Shame you two missed the party. We did ’ave a laugh. And the music! Still, you were off detecting that Donna. Each to their own. One thing I will say: you two brought the house down!’ Joan went into a peal of laughter.
Amanda smiled and nodded, acknowledging the joke. She spotted the rector, who was hurrying along Orchard Way, in the direction of number twenty-six.
‘Amanda,’ Jane cried, waving a sheaf of notes.
‘Hello, Rector.’
‘Oh Joan, Amanda. I’ve had such news!’
‘Come into the cottage both of you,’ said Amanda, shepherding them into the living room.
‘Oh, I can’t sit down. I am so excited!’ exclaimed the rector. ‘I have just come off the phone with the insurance people. And it turns out we were insured for criminal damage as well as rot, and it means we should get enough money to pay for the new hall!’
‘Jane, I’m so glad,’ said Amanda, hugging her, and Joan joined in.
‘Can you believe it? And you know what I’ve decided?’ The rector paused dramatically.
‘No,’ said Amanda expectantly.
‘I’m going to have a Huf-Haus. No more old stuff. The church is old enough. No. For the church hall: new and modern. It’s shielded from the road by trees if the old fogeys don’t like it. But that’s what I want, and that’s what I’m going to ask for,’ said Jane with determination. ‘Will you back me?’
‘Yes,’ cried Amanda and Joan in unison.
‘Get those lovely boys back,’ enthused Joan. ‘We’ll see Hugo again and Yanek and all of them!
‘It’ll take time,’ warned the rector. ‘It has to be passed, and then designing and building it but ... it’ll be grand!’
‘Yes, it will,’ Amanda agreed.
‘We can put all of this behind us,’ added Jane.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Joan.
Amanda smiled, but thought ... if only it were that simple … if only I had not had to cast that spell ….
Chapter 51
Hidden Cards
'I’ve been thinking something you said, Dad.’
'Oh yes, son?’ responded Kyt, passing Thomas the roast potatoes.
'Well, you said, “There’s always hope”, and optimism is always a healthy thing, but I’m a realist, Dad. If the Flamgoynes have the greater numbers and the malice aforethought to stop at nothing, and the Cadabras won’t fight, and Amanda is all alone, how on earth are they to be defeated? They’re a law unto themselves and they seem to hold all of the cards.’
Kyt carefully spooned horseradish onto his plate, and very precisely cut up his carrots. Thomas spotted thinking-time manoeuvres.
‘Not quite, son,’ his father said at last.
‘Oh? Something you haven’t told me?’
‘Yes. You see, it’s not something I think you would be at all comfortable with, and you’ve had so much to take in already.’
‘Now you’re making me nervous,’ said Thomas.
‘I tell you what. Let’s wait until pudding, and, while we have our main course, you can tell me what became of Uncle Elwen's jacket, waistcoat, tie and shirt studs. How about that?’
'Agreed. Well … it was … you see, I got acid on the jacket, so I had to remove it. Then Donna was making a lot of dust to set Miss Cadabra’s asthma off, as I told you. I knew that some sort of mask would help with keeping it out of her lungs. Miss Cadabra had left her scarf upstairs, and every scrap of textile around us was deep in dust so …’
His father was grinning. ‘So you ripped your shirt off, sending studs flying, and wrapped it around her nose and mouth?’
‘Yes,’ said Thomas apologetically, catching his father’s humorous take on it.
‘Well done, son. Of course, every hero needs an excuse to take his top off.’
Thomas chuckled. ‘In my defence, I was wearing a t-shirt underneath. That is until …’
‘Until?’ prompted Kyt with lively interest.
‘Well, some acid had got on it and the paramedic in the ambulance said I should …’
But the rest of the sentence was drowned out by mirth.
Presently, Kyt Trelawney went to the bookshelves in the corner by the fireplace, drew out a volume and took from between its pages, a single sheet of paper. He brought it to the table and put it before his son.
Thomas studied it, then said, ‘I’ve seen this … no, I’ve read about this ... wait… Mike showed me a passage in a book describing this. It was on a wall that some cave divers found. The carving was thousands of years old. Yes, the man with the stag’s head mask, holding a wand in one hand and a staff in the other, standing by an oak tree.’
‘A man?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Good,’ remarked Kyt with satisfaction. Thomas was taken aback. It wasn’t like his father to be sexist. ‘Did Mike give this figure a name?’
‘No.’
‘It was a while ago that he showed you the book?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that makes sense.’
‘So who is this man?’ asked Thomas.
‘It is more a depiction of an office than a person. You see, this is a position held by many over the millennia, but the actual identity of each person who held it was never known while they were in office. It would only be revealed to one other person.’
‘So what is the office?’
‘The word was … Wicc’Lord.’
‘Oh come on, Dad!’ his son responded incredulously. ‘What is this? Star Wars?’
‘Now you see why I haven’t spoken of this to you before? Just open that realist’s mind of yours a crack and stick a wedge in it long enough to hear me out, and you might learn something useful,’ chided Kyt gently.
‘Sorry,’ said Thomas contritely. ‘All right. Yes. Open mind. Please go on. Wicc’Lord.’
‘The Wicc’Lord is a person with great magical power who subtly works for good. They never enter conflict openly but move in the shadows, tipping the balance at great need toward the light. They are our ace.’
‘OK. Let’s just say that such a person exists,’ conceded Thomas sceptically, ‘any idea who he might be?’
‘You assume it is a man, but more often it has been a woman. The gender assumption from the depiction and the word “Lord” have been great sources of protection for her.’
‘All right, who do you think she, he … to pick a pronoun, she, then, could be?
‘I have no notion, Thomas. That’s the whole point. It could be anyone.’
‘But you said that each Wicc’Lord revealed his or her identity to one other person.’
‘Yes, their successor, and so the baton of the office and the secret are passed down.’
‘So not necessarily a daughter then?’ queried Thomas.
‘Not necessarily, but could be.’
‘Then we need this person on our side. How are we to find them, recruit them?
‘We can’t. We must just trust that they know and somehow will help.
Thomas mused. ‘Wicc’Lord … a shadow ….’
‘Of course, we do have another card whose value is yet to be revealed,’ remarked his father slowly.
‘Which is?’
‘You,’ said Kyt simply.
“Me?’ His son was astonished. ‘All I can do is intuit and see things in teacups occasionally.’
‘You, Thomas, are the like the vintage motorbike discovered in a long-forgotten shed.’
‘Erm … not sure how to take that,’ he responded uneasily.
‘Look. Say you found such a motorbike in the grounds of … a property you’d inherited … what would you do with it?’ asked Kyt eagerly.
‘I don’t know… see if it would run, clean it up, tune it up and …’
‘Take it for a spin?’
‘Well … yes.’
‘See what it could do?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Thomas.
‘Well, we don’t know yet what you can do. What you might be capable of. With a little tuning up,’ explained Kyt.
‘Ah, I see. You’re hoping I’ll turn out to be a Harley or an Enfield,’ his son quipped.
His father smiled. ‘No, Thomas, I think you might turn out to be … a Triumph.’
***
Amelia leaned back from the crystal ball in front of her.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she said seriously.
‘No way of stopping them?’ asked Amanda.
‘It’s done, sweetie. They know Sunken Madley is the epicentre. I warned you. One too many casts against humans: The Manor, Lost Madley and now the precincts of a holy place.’
‘Why didn’t they react the other times? Why was this one so crucial?’
‘Because the spell was loosed and then a presence in this dimension vanished,’ explained Amelia.
‘But I didn’t kill her!’ insisted Amanda.
‘But it looks like you did,’ Amelia replied softly.
Her niece looked around the room, as though for answers. ‘What am I to do? When will they come for me?’
‘They are not coming for you, my darling; they are coming for your village.’
‘How do I fight them?’
‘You do not fight them,’ Amelia responded patiently. ‘You are a Cadabra. Cadabras do not strike out, they defend.’
‘All right,’ said Amanda more calmly, her strategic mind beginning to click in. ‘How do I defend the village then?’
‘You will have help. The crystal shows that clearly,’ said her aunt encouragingly.
‘Who? Who will help?’
‘That is not shown. But I think I know where you can start.’
‘Where?’ queried Amanda eagerly.
‘Do you remember the story I told you long ago when you were, oh, about thirteen? When you were asking about your grandparents’ past?’
‘You called Grandpa and Granny “Romeo and Juliet”, yes, I remember.’
‘And do you remember how Juliet came to know that Sunken Madley would provide them with a safe refuge?’ Amelia asked.
‘There was a friend of Juliet’s — Granny’s — that she met during the war…. Yes… her name … you called her Viola.’
Amelia waited for her niece to process this.
‘Viola – Viola is still there?’ Amanda continued. ‘In Sunken Madley? Viola must have been a witch, or, at least, a magical person, or how would she have known the village was safe? Although, all she would have had to have known … was the legend about the cottage … but she helped Granny and Grandpa back then and might help me now. You’re saying, find Viola?’
‘Can you think of a better starting point?’
‘Who is Viola? It could be anyone … anyone old enough … Let’s see. Mrs Uberhausfest said she and
Granny had been friends for over 50 years and she’s always looked out for me. Gwendolen? I don’t think Granny was a particular friend of hers. Cynthia de Havillande? I often thought she and Granny were as like as two peas in a pod! I don’t know …. If I had to put my money on one, … I’d say … Miss de Havillande.’
‘All right.’
Amanda looked hopefully at her aunt. ‘Do you know who it is?’
‘No, sweetie. Your grandparents never told me.’
‘Well, I have an open invitation to The Grange practically. Maybe I can somehow intimate to Miss de Havillande that I know who she is? Although … what if it’s Irma?’
‘Then I expect Cynthia won't know what you’re talking about,’ replied Amelia.
‘I suppose so. You know,’ said Amanda, reflectively, ‘I really like Irma, she has that get-up-and-go spirit that I admire about Granny, although it can be a bit much at times. Hm … I will have to think about this … and tread carefully. But it’s a start.’
***
Vera and Harry walked along the beach at sunset.
‘So did young Mikey get off all right?’ Harry asked. ‘Airport run pretty clear?’
‘Yes. He was glad to be going home, I think, in spite of his fondness for your cooking, my love,’ replied his wife affectionately.
‘Hmm … do you think he’s going to be OK?’
‘I think so. But what do you think?’ she asked, watching his face.
‘Hard to say but …. my feeling is yes.’ Harry shook his head ruefully ‘He treats everything as though it’s one huge game organised expressly for his amusement.’
‘I know,’ agreed Vera.
It was getting dark. They tacitly agreed to turn back. The lamp outside their house glowed invitingly.
‘But yes,’ said Harry reassuringly, ‘I think he’ll be all right. I think she will too …. in the end.’
They smiled at one another, and, linking arms, walked towards the light.
Chapter 52
