Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  Hearsay anyway, a lot of it. Some Fae said something to a frog who told a toad who told a witch who told the Coven Mistress, who couldn’t keep her pointy little nose out of things. Gossip is not nice and should be avoided in most circumstances in Nan’s opinion.

  She herself has yet to make a note having been in position for only thirty years, other than a line or two on the benefits of getting any agreement with the Union in writing, and making sure it’s signed by the right Minister. And stamped. Humans never seem to remember what they agree when it doesn’t suit them.

  At this rate, and given her planned composting date, she’ll have made all of six notes by the time she hands over her responsibilities. Marjorie had managed two or three dozens in her centuries, so the five here are most out of character. That’s the main reason she’s bothering with this fiddle-faddle. Even Black Agnes had only made four notes on the Horned King’s contract and that related to his assistance with the great pot-roast overthrow of 1241 when they’d sent the child eaters scurrying east.

  Nearly there.

  She crosses out the penultimate provision which deals with the deistic nature of any hobhorses involved in the agreed rescue and shakes her hand. The joints of her fingers hurt from all this work. At least she’s nearly finished with the negation.

  On the other matter, getting a feel for the Master, she has made less than no progress. Marjorie’s few notes have been so short and laconic that they’re not adding a brass farthing to her understanding of the man.

  It hasn’t helped that Marjorie’s position had been cut short just before the Catastrophe along with all her closest confidants in the great dying. That had led to quite the reshuffle within the Coven and a scramble to work out what she’d been up to in the days leading up to the loss of nearly a third of the sisterhood.

  And blammo. Big old catastrophe too, lots to do, too few witches to do them.

  Then there was the fact Grams had become quite the aficionado of cryptic crosswords as she’d got older. And she’d rewritten most of her notes as crosswords clues.

  Nan shivers at the thought of the horrible book hidden in the bookcase nestled up next to the atlases. Grams had spend most of the last two years of her existence either huddled up in secret meetings with her favourites or writing that ridiculous tome.

  Four hundred witch-related crosswords with wonky typesetting and clues that no one had been able to decipher. A chuckle. When one of the young ‘uns gets a bit big for the boots she hands them the book and leaves them for a month to solve one of them.

  Last provision. And it’s the one with her least favourite note. A replacement for something a lot more sensible most likely. The one that triggered the need for this silly investigation.

  Nan stares at the entry. It’s dated to just before Master Albrecht disappeared. The provision itself is a simple catch all confirming that the assistance required under the contract is a one-time dealy and that a polenta breakfast was included.

  Nan can see where the blasted woman burnt away the original note she’d left and the patching where the new one was glued in place.

  “N.B. A breakfast beside a death bed? The answer is before you.”

  She massages her knuckles. “Right, you. Now let me think back to those lectures on crosswords you insisted we listen to. So if you’ve got an N.B. it’s probably an acronym for something else. And the obvious thing is note well in Latin, but that would be too simple for you and you thought Latin sounded like someone chewing wasps, so it’s not that. Acronym…”

  Nan sneakily produces a well thumbed guide to cryptic crosswords from under the table and mutters a charm of concealment in case the old Coven head is watching from the afterlife somewhere in the woods. “There we go. North Britain.”

  A glance left and right and the book heads back up to the shelf. “And I got that all by myself!”

  Cheat books were definitely not on Grams’ curriculum.

  Not that it’s got her any further. “Though that’s useless. Something about Scotland? Haggis? Heather? The Nationalists? Glaciers? No she wouldn’t have known about those. Oh well… what’s the rest. A dance in the tropics? A breakfast? Masquerade?”

  Nan thumps her head against the great book of contracts. It’s the reason she uses a ballpoint. The old fountain pen ink used to leave a tell-tale mark on her forehead when frustration got the better of her.

  Aunty Clem walks by refiling the books from the shelf upstairs which they had left out for the Vampire. She hisses at a blood stain on the cover of a History of the Franco-Prussian War.

  “What are you doing there, Nan?” She narrows her eyes. “And was that a muffled thump I heard.”

  “I don’t know dear. You should go and check that Hemlock’s not stuck in the laundry again.”

  “Nan…”

  “Oh all right. Yes. It was me. I’m trying to solve one of Grams’ old clues and you know how I used to sleep through the lessons. What’s the point of teaching us how they work when she was so very bad at coming up with them. But no, she would never ever stop would she. Persistent old bird.”

  A glimmer of an idea pops into Nan’s head. Clem had always been studious… “I don’t suppose you’d take a look dear Clementine?”

  Clem peers over. “Hmm. Yes, I for one did stay awake during my lessons.” A moment’s reflection and then an imperious tap of the finger. “I suspect she was coming up with a way to of direct you to “Polenta” which would be in her recipe book.”

  Nan narrows her eyes in turn, making things look easy was a terrible vice. “And how would you get to that then young lady?”

  Pah, what a spoddy egghead, a lesson in not making your elders look bad needed here? Nan’s eyes are drawn to Grams’ big book of witch crosswords before she dismisses the thought. Clem is trying to help. It’s not her fault if she’s… studious. And the revolting book isn’t even where it’s supposed to be.

  She’ll have to look for it next time she’s in the mood. She had it filed with the atlases.

  Clem points at the elements of the supposed ‘clue’. “Scottish Breakfast, lent. Power of attorney as a death bed so POA. Polenta.”

  Nan looks at the clue again. Her eyes glint. “Nonsense! Where did you get that from?”

  “I quite like crosswords, and Grams wasn’t half as bad as you make out. Had a few published you know. I get the odd copy of the Times of Newcastle from time to time to keep in practise and they run a good cryptic crossword, helps keep my English current for when we have to talk to the Onions.”

  Clem slots books back as she adds, “and she said the answer is before you. I think she left that one if the reader didn’t like crosswords. The word before “you” in the contract is ‘Polenta’ which was always a stupid thing to give a vampire for breakfast.”

  Nan chuckles to herself as she goes to get her recipe book from a spider-web haunted shelf. She carries the recipes she uses around in her head.

  “Polenta.” She looks it up in the cookbook. “Oh, it’s just porridge. Page 197…”

  Clem has finished with the books and gives her a glance as she leaves the room. “You didn’t know that?” She exits shaking her head.

  “Don’t hold with that foreign muck missy.” Nan replies to her retreating back. Porridge is porridge. Good with berries, or salt, or maybe with a touch of honey if you’re feeling fancy.

  Page 197. Slipped between the pages covering an overly detailed recipe for the breakfast delight is a note from Grams.

  “To whom it may concern.

  If you are reading this, I will probably be dead. Or you are just too scared to speak to me.

  If the first I am sorry for the stupid clue that got you here. If it’s you Nan I included a simpler one as I know you hate crosswords, slept through each of my symposiums on the subject, and due to the general drop in educational standards since the Great War, I suspect you’d never get it in a thousand Sundays.

  Not entirely your fault, except the sleeping. Lazybones. It’s not my best w
ork. I have no difficulty solving these wonderful riddles but for the life of me I can’t write them. However as has been noted by a number of my near-peers (as I have none who are actual peers) I can be stubborn and I am not giving up until I have mastered the form. It is one of my better traits.

  If it’s the second and you are seriously reading this whilst I am still alive, all I can say is “grow a spinal column”. You are a witch and you should act like one. Your ancestors burnt on stakes or were drowned in pools rather than give away one jot of evidence about our existence and you, pathetic girl, are too scared to talk to your coven leader who only wants the best for you?

  I would also point out that I’m the only one allowed to look at the big book of contracts (awful name, still better than the Latin original though or the gobbledygook it was in before that) and I’m going to find out anyway, so you’ve gained nothing through your lack of moral fibre.

  I hope you like Siberia because that’s where you will be going once, I find out who you are. Our eastern cousins can toughen you up and you can try and persuade them to stick to the covenant and stop eating children.

  To the point though. You have been reading about Master Albrecht and the contract we have made to help him. That means the old Fraud has popped up again even though his own people buried him when they had finally had enough of his crack-pot schemes.

  I assume that you will have had the decency to complete the contract in full, though you may have been asked not to do the bit with the Polenta. The man hates Polenta and I only included it to get him back for that nasty trick he played to get that Helene woman back.

  And now you’re reading this warning. Good. Here it is.

  The key thing for you to remember when dealing with the sack of unmentionables that is Master Albrecht is that he is an enormous ham. An extremely powerful ham. Of judgement, he has none. Common sense the same and he lacks entirely the normal aspects you would expect to see in a vampire of his age. He must have bumped his head when he was created.

  The man has left a trail of thoughtless destruction behind him since his inception (Addendum not that we know when that was exactly, Black Agnes says that when she knew him, he spoke some archaic Greek dialect by choice until no one could understand him anymore when he switched to execrable Latin, so that’s likely close to the source on his origins. He is inordinately proud of his language skills though that belief has no basis in reality whatsoever.)

  So taking that into account I’d suggest you do a little more reading into him. There’s a book down in the wine cellar called the ‘big book of personalities’ which again, may sound clunky but I won’t have Latin spoken in this house.

  And have someone tail him around for a bit. That would be sensible. You may as well get the experience first hand. Thinking about it, if I am dead when you’re reading this then I’m almost relieved at not having to deal with him.

  In the spirit of acting like a spirit, given the dead do not truly speak, here’s a pointer or two.

  First, he talks too much. It’s like being trapped in a room with a thesaurus with ideas above its station. Ignore most of what he says as he just likes listening to his own voice and NEVER get him started on the burden of duty the old owe to the young, or the importance of family, or how much better he makes things when he can just get the time to put his mind to it.

  Given his history it’s all just window dressing to hide the fact he’s a walking ego.

  Building on that foundation, if you’re trying to work out what he’s really up to, pay attention to what he doesn’t say and the things he doesn’t do. I’m not sure the man himself is aware of what his intentions are sometimes. It’s a side effect of the memory. Vampires are supposed to remember everything, and he… doesn’t.

  Lots of gaps but the shadows are still there influencing what he does and why he does it.

  For example we think he had a family at some point but he just blanks any questions about them now without even realising he’s doing it, and he can get angry if you refuse to leave the subject be. Maybe that’s why he’s obsessed with ‘helping’ humans? Couldn’t say. What happened to them? Couldn’t say.

  Third. You’ll have known that I was passed a poisoned chalice when Agnes moved on. Omens suggested that there would be a great catastrophe whilst I was in charge and that it would be a ‘Great Darkness’. Hasn’t arrived as of the date I’m writing this. (UPDATE - Krakatoa! (Crossed out). Addendum - I did have a nasty moment when Krakatoa exploded but that all blew over, little vulcanism joke there) so if I’ve not added anything here then I’ll have missed the main event.

  NOTHING MORE IS ADDED HERE. UPDATED TO 2004. Book of Legends? World-bearer. Not you Nan.”

  Nan growls. Even beyond the grave…

  “That means you get to deal with it. Whatever it is. Albrecht is back? He’s involved. Even if he doesn’t realise it. Agnes thought second or third tier of cause and effect based on the interplay of contract and obligation she had drawn up in a spider web on her walls.

  So I added a couple of lines to the contract at the same time as the Polenta clause to make sure that we’d get him to come to us when he did get out. Chance to do some digging, call it a going away present.

  Last bit of gossip which I picked up from the girl Helene is that he wrote an autobiography back when his memory wasn’t so bad. It’s kept by the Masters who, as of this date, are holed up in Paris running their silly little political games. If you can talk to them, do, Serah is a reasonable sort for a blood sucker and with Albrecht gone her and her lanky secretary will be in charge.

  And I’m sure the Family’s kept its own records. Pop out to the Catacombs and see if they’ll give you access.

  Um. Anything else? Don’t get him started on his plans and don’t help him with any he comes up with whilst he’s with you. They are all stupid and never work.

  Oh. Don’t tell him that I said Serah is a reasonable sort. He doesn’t like anyone getting overly independent and that would show we spoke. He famously went through the old Masters like a hog through a trough whenever they showed any sign of dissent. I’d rather not get her killed if he parsed through that cheese-grater brain of his that we had a divergence of interests.

  The secretary. Don’t trust Serah’s secretary. He is a miserable sort and will just quote endlessly from some funny old Vampire rule book he’s got laid up somewhere whenever you try to get him to do anything.

  I think he might have written the bloody thing too as it always has a specific rule for the exact situation you’re in.

  Though I suppose he’ll be long dead by the time you’re reading this. And they’ll have another secretary in place who doesn’t stink of death.

  So. That’s that. Incidentally if you’re going to use the recipe on this page, I’d suggest frying rather than baking the Polenta. It tastes awful that way but is bearable with a little marmalade if you’re really hungry or have irritating guests who you want to cause the most atrocious stomach cramps.

  If you did manage to get Albrecht to eat the stuff, well done. I’m a little worried he’ll pick up on the ridiculousness of giving a vampire porridge. Though, I’ve already written this note and I don’t believe I want to rewrite it so, tough. Best wishes to the coven and good luck from the other side.”

  Nan puts the note back and closes the recipe book. Then she picks up a biro and carefully crosses through the entry for Albrecht’s rescue contract in the big book of contracts sitting atop her working desk.

  She looks at the clue one last time. Then she frowns and crosses through that too, writing below it.

  “Just look in Grams’ cookbook under “Polenta” and save yourself two hours. Nan.”

  If that counts as one of her entries in the big book then she’s content that she has improved the lot of posterity.

  After a satisfying grumble she steps outside for a bit of a sit to clear her head, on her favourite rocking chair out on the decking. The one with the cat basket underneath.

  Putting in
the deck had been one of her better ideas and the workmen from the village on the border of the world-wood had been rather nice about the quality of her baking too. Right pair of charmers they had been.

  She watches over her domain. Watching was a motif of the day. Everyone watching everyone else. Hemlock up a tree watching Clem, who is watching the chickens with a couple of the children. The chickens seem to be watching the woods as if there is something in there that they don’t like. Maybe the wild hunt’s on one of its jaunts across the ages?

  Seeing Nan, Clem wanders over.

  “Anything interesting.”

  “Not enormously dear. I’ve sorted out the books though, so they actually make sense and got rid of that stupid contract finally.”

  “Did you get rid of Grams’ clue?”

  Nan smiles. “I’ve left it legible, if someone really wants to get caught up in that old lady’s mind-mazes they can have a go. You quite like those old cryptic crosswords don’t you Clem dear?”

  “Already solved it Nan.”

  “I know Clem. I’ve always been more of a straight to the point sort of person. Nicer to save a little time, do what you want rather than strain over the details. Tell them what needs to be done not all this clever clever stuff.”

  The chickens have lost interest in the woods and are scratching away at the dirt. It’s a bright day in the forest. It could almost be a dreary Sunday afternoon in the old world. Clem shouts at the children who are dropping half the corn on the floor as they throw it to the chickens and they scurry to rescue the tasty treats.

  “Any change to the plans?” The aunt asks.

  “No dear. Ariadne can do her thing and we can sit back and enjoy this nice day. Grams said that the Master might have some links to the Catastrophe so that old chestnut might get solved if we let things be.”

  “He’ll solve it?” Clem could not sound more dubious if she tried.

  “I don’t think so, dear. Not much to be done about it now. Maybe if he’d woken up a bit earlier? But Grams says he’s a bit of a flake so. There’s that.”

  Clem looks a little disappointed.