Bertie and the Hairdresser Who Ruled the World

by Mike A Vickers

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem – it looks like Wilf is having a snooze. Some bloody guard he turned out to be!’

  Through the open sitting room window, the distant rattle of his steady snore wafted out across the garden. Wilf slumped on the sofa, head back, eyes closed, book open but abandoned on his chest. Bertie sat at his shoulder preening what few hairs remained on his sparsely-covered crown. The sight was rather comical. With roles reversed, it appeared the guarded was doing a substantially better job than the guard. To Doreen’s surprise, Celeste whistled shrilly – and Bertie’s head instantly came up at the sound. She flicked a hand signal and he jumped off the sofa, disappearing from view.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Doreen.

  ‘Just wait. You’ll see.’ Moments later, a blue head appeared in the cat flap. There was a lot of pushing and squeezing before he managed to lever his bulk through, and, once in the garden, scampered his way to Celeste, his long tail swishing from side to side. A powerful thrust of leg and casual flex of wing brought him up onto the fence post poking through the top of the hedge, one of his favourite perches. ‘Mummy!’ he chirruped happily. ‘Hello, Mummy!’

  ‘Hello, Bertie. Have you missed me?’ Celeste ruffled his neck feathers affectionately.

  ‘Missed? Yes. I’m hungry.’ This was a fairly common response from Bertie, ever the optimist. He suddenly spotted Doreen standing behind Celeste and peered at her with great interest, head tilting first to one side, then the other. ‘Hello,’ he said cheerfully. ‘My name is Bertie and I’m very pleased to meet you.’

  Doreen, although somewhat prepared for her first encounter having studied the numerous news reports featuring the big macaw, still found herself gaping. The bird was nationally famous – it was like meeting a celebrity – but this one had casually brought down the last government with a single sentence. Even so, she still could not believe her ears. His level of intelligence was astonishing.

  Celeste chuckled. ‘You’ve spent all morning destroying the foundations of my world, so please forgive me if I say it’s nice to return the compliment. We’ve both had a day of surprises, haven’t we? Go on, Doreen, introduce yourself. He won’t bite.’

  ‘Hello, Bertie, I’m Doreen,’ she said rather self-consciously, very aware the macaw looked alarmingly large now his face was at her own level. That wicked bill was long and curved like a scimitar. She hesitated for a second, then bowed her head respectfully.

  ‘Doreen,’ said Bertie ruminatively. ‘Hello, Doreen.’ He regarded her with that steady stare which unnerved so many people, then dipped his head in what could only be a return bow. Celeste raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Doreen. Yes, I like you. Do you have any nuts?’

  Doreen and Celeste stood in the library at Temple Hall. Celeste wore a heavy leather falconer’s glove, Bertie’s powerful claws encircling her wrist. He had been surprisingly docile in the car. Normally, he disliked travelling by road – he found the constant changes in motion disturbing – but to Celeste’s relief he displayed an unusual tolerance. Fortunately, Temple Guiting was a mere twenty miles or so from Prior’s Norton and he seemed to spend most of the time staring thoughtfully at Doreen. She could sense Celeste’s scepticism growing again and the two women barely exchanged a word during the brief journey. Doreen concentrated on her driving, but glanced in the mirror constantly, as if more interested in where she’d been than where they were going. On one occasion, a slight smile twitched her lips, but she said nothing to Celeste.

  The library was a long, low-ceilinged room with heavy oak beams overhead, each carved with flowery garlands dancing merrily along the timbers. Mullioned windows marched down one wall, the panes criss-crossed in leaded diamonds. The hand-made glass was very old – each pane was a subtly different tint of pale bluish-green. A fat black cat lay on one sill, curled up fast asleep in the sun, its long tail hanging limply over the edge. Bertie dismissed it with contempt.

  Panels of oak covered the walls, the wood polished to a sublime sheen, with a goodly number of bookshelves indicating the purpose of the room, all plain in construction but evidently sturdy. The books they contained stood to attention like disciplined warriors, their spines of finely tooled leather lined up in formal ranks. There were hundreds of volumes, big and small, thick and thin, pristine and moth-eaten. The overall impression was of a rather dark and serious room, with the exception of a large, exquisitely patterned Persian carpet spread over the uneven oak floorboards between several comfortable sofas. Thick and soft underfoot, it brightened the sombre atmosphere with a wildly exuberant splash of reds and creams, ochres and golds.

  However, the real focal point was a massive and solidly constructed stone fireplace bulging out of the panelling like the buttress of a mountain. The heavy lintel was charred black in the middle and stood shoulder-high above a deep grate, the stone beautifully carved with curlicued garlands of flowers to match the beams above. The fireplace was obviously used regularly and was certainly capacious enough to mount a respectable conflagration, one worthy of the attention of the local Fire Brigade. Even though a bright early summer sun now warmed the house, Celeste could still detect the faint aromatic acridity of wood smoke lingering in the air, a comforting smell which, when combined with the exotically bright carpet, seemed to subtly alter the character of the library, turning it into a homely and snug place, a room where one could curl up on the sofa with a good book or enjoy conversation and conviviality on a cold winter’s evening in front of a roaring fire. She liked the library’s serene, old-fashioned charm and comforting atmosphere. Doreen had referred to the Sisterhood’s library several times in the salon, but somehow Celeste sensed this was not what she had been brought to see.

  A door opened and two women walked in, one soberly dressed in long dark skirts and a matching knitted twin set, a frumpy, matronly figure with greying frizzy hair – a goodly portion of which appeared far too unruly to remain incarcerated within her bun and sprung outwards in all directions like excitable radio antennae. Her eyes, though, were sharp and icy blue, her cheeks cherubic, her lips firm. She looked like an old-fashioned, archetypal schoolmistress, someone who forced recalcitrant young ladies to learn physics or chemistry at a time in their lives where all that consumed them were boys, the latest mascara and learning how to light a cigarette without setting fire to their hair.

  The other, by way of complete contrast, was surprisingly young, perhaps no older than eighteen or so, a thin slip of a girl, skinny, leggy and angular, with no apparent hips or breasts to interfere with her boyish silhouette. Two long, braided, dusky ginger pigtails fell to the small of her back where a black scrunchy bound the ends together as one. Her clear, pale face was spattered with spectacular freckles, as if she’d been involved in a drive-by incident with a jar of Seville oranges. A smile hovered on plump lips. She wore no make-up when, in Celeste’s eyes, she really needed to, especially around her wan eyes. A good meal would probably do her no harm either, something with lots of fat and carbohydrate, followed by a giant pudding. Frankly, she looked as if she’d not seen any sunshine for months, but then as a redhead she had the skin type that didn’t appreciate exposure to ultra-violet light, as Celeste knew well herself. She wore shiny black patent slippers, patterned black tights under a red check miniskirt and a white T-shirt proudly bearing the immortal logo, Cover Your Boobs in Snopake.

  Not that she’d need much to achieve such a noble goal.

  Bangles glittered on each wrist, loops of silver-chased beads hung around her neck and silver rings occupied every finger and thumb, so she obviously appreciated jewellery, but not enough to have her ears pierced. Two more disparate figures could not be imagined, yet in one way they were identical – both she and her middle-aged shock-haired companion wore half-moon glasses perched on the ends of their noses.

  ‘Hello, Gaia, always nice to see you here,’ said the young girl.

  ‘Hi, Cutie. How’s it going?’

  ‘Pretty good.’ She pecked Doreen on each cheek and kissed the back of
her hand. Cutie’s companion tutted at the informality shown by her companion and chose to curtsy respectfully. Doreen nodded in response, looking suitably grave. Cutie giggled at her obeisance and turned to Celeste. ‘This has to be her. Celeste Timbrill, née Gordon. Welcome to Temple Hall, and welcome to Bertie as well. Gosh, he’s a lovely boy, isn’t he?’ Bertie seemed to swell with pride at her admiring praise.

  ‘Celeste, I’d like you to meet Geraldine Pye, known to all, inevitably, as Cutie.’

  ‘Hello, Cutie, pleased to meet you.’ Celeste used her left hand to shake Cutie’s right. Bertie occupied the other arm like a giant blue gargoyle.

  ‘Likewise. This is Martha, our very own Scrabble champion. A word of warning – do not engage her in a Sudoku challenge! Don’t be intimidated – she has been known to smile once in a while. She’s my assistant.’

  ‘Your assistant?’

  ‘Your confusion is natural,’ interposed Doreen as Cutie giggled behind her hand. It seemed she did a lot of giggling. ‘Cutie has been in charge of our library these last three years.’

  ‘Since I was sixteen,’ said Cutie proudly, ‘but I couldn’t do my job without Mama here.’

  ‘I’m not your Mama, you cheeky girl,’ tutted Martha irritably. Celeste had a suspicion she did a lot of tutting.

  ‘We make the perfect team,’ said Cutie. ‘Mama knows everything about everything.’

  ‘And you’re good at computers, I guess,’ said Celeste.

  ‘Computers?’ Cutie was momentarily nonplussed. ‘Oh, no, we have no computers here. None at all.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Of course we don’t have any computers. Computers can be corrupted, they’re too unreliable, too delicate, too temperamental and are really excellent at losing information. Besides, they can be hacked by any spotty geek half my age. They are just too – too ephemeral. Around here we have a deep and healthy suspicion of anything new, like this latest generation of electronic books that’s being so aggressively marketed. I don’t like them at all. The great thing about a traditional book is that you can put it on a shelf, leave it there for five hundred years, take it down again, open it and start reading. All you need is light, conveniently provided by the sun every day. Could you do the same with an eBook? Don’t think so. Modern computers have only existed for thirty years and yet we all rely on them so totally that a simple software failure can bring a company to its knees in seconds. Can’t have that now, can we?’ said Cutie with a frown. ‘Oh, no, that would be catastrophic.’ It seems she did have a serious side after all.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Celeste. ‘You’re a librarian, but you don’t have any computers. How do you find anything?’ She peered around the room, surprised at just how many of the books appeared identical.

  ‘We use a good old-fashioned card system, cross-referenced against author, title, subject, age and language. It’s very simple and therefore extremely reliable, and still operates if the power goes off.’

  ‘A card system?’ exclaimed Celeste, obviously surprised.

  ‘It works for us. Actually, it’s worked very well for quite a while,’ she added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Sounds to me like you need to move with the times,’ observed Celeste.

  ‘But we do – we no longer use Latin!’

  ‘But surely a computer would help enormously.’

  ‘No,’ said Cutie decisively, shaking her head. ‘It wouldn’t, and you’ll soon see why. Shall we show them, Gaia?’

  ‘That’s why we’re here, Cutie. Do your thing, babe.’

  Cutie walked to a large oak panel beside the smoke-stained fireplace. An oval brass plate set into the floorboards at her feet marked the spot where Isaac Newton solved Fermat’s Last Theorem and invented the cat flap. She grinned over her shoulder at Celeste and reaching high above her head with both arms, pressed simultaneously on two innocuous wooden bosses. There was a heavy, well-oiled clunk and the panel unlatched, springing outwards an inch or so. Cutie pulled it back on great iron hinges to reveal a short stone passageway beyond. The floor was perfectly level, the walls perhaps an arm’s span wide, the ceiling a graceful arch overhead. Warm light glowed off golden walls.

  ‘Spooky! Scared of ghosts, Celeste?’

  ‘No, but I do want to make sure Bertie won’t be alarmed. What’s down there?’

  ‘Wonders beyond your imagination,’ whispered Cutie theatrically.

  ‘Do we really have to go in?’

  ‘Yes, we do, but don’t worry, the passage doesn’t get any smaller. It’s neither damp nor dark and there are no spiders. There’s a landing, then some stairs further in, but they’re straight and shallow and very easy to negotiate. We have a lovely sunny day as well so there’ll be plenty of light. Now, before we enter I have to ask if you have anything combustible on you?’

  ‘Combustible?’

  ‘Anything that can burn. Matches, napalm, pocket-sized tactical nuke, Boeing Dreamliner, anything like that?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘We take nothing in there that can burn and you’ll soon see why. Gaia?’

  ‘Thanks, Cutie. Before we go down, I want to impress on you that what you’re about to see can never be discussed or revealed. We’re going to show you something truly remarkable, something so amazing that even though I’ve seen it many times before, I’m still totally overwhelmed each time I come here. It’s important you see this because it will help you understand in a way I cannot explain with mere words. I’m placing absolute trust in you, Celeste, but I’m supremely confident my trust will be vindicated, even though you and I met only for the first time this morning. You have to give me your word you’ll never talk about this except to the people who you see here in this room, and even then you’ll always need to be discreet in case of wagging ears.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can give such a promise. It depends on what I’m about to see,’ said Celeste carefully.

  ‘There’s nothing bad or evil here. I’m not asking you to promise anything beyond your abilities. This is a good secret to keep. You’ll understand when you’ve seen.’

  Celeste hesitated for a moment then nodded, and having committed herself suddenly felt a powerful surge of curiosity tinged with bone-deep excitement. A tingle skittered down her spine. Something at the end of that passage called to her on a visceral level. She stroked Bertie’s head and muttered a few words of comfort to him, but he was craning his neck, peering into the tunnel with a steady stare, his interest already consumed. Celeste followed Doreen through the open panel and into the passageway with Bertie on her arm. Cutie stepped in behind her and Martha brought up the rear.

  The panel closed with a snick and Celeste looked around in surprise. The tunnel was sealed yet remained bathed in light, but she could see no windows or lamps of any kind. Instead, bright shafts of sunlight poured in through circular apertures set in the roof and walls. The women descended a short flight of stairs into a small hexagonal chamber, each wall perhaps ten or twelve feet wide. More openings in the vaulted ceiling provided illumination, each dazzling spot of brilliance about a foot in diameter and regularly spaced.

  The masonry around her was still as fresh as the day it was cut, the sublime honey-cream Cotswold limestone glowing warmly in the golden subterranean sunshine, the joints between each carved block barely visible. The floor was black marble and worn smooth down the centre from the shuffling of thousands of feet. She became acutely aware that this place was old beyond measure. A further passage led off to the right. An inscription was carved into the arch overhead.

  Non nobis solum.

  ‘That’s Latin,’ she said, looking up at the chiselled words.

  ‘It is indeed,’ replied Cutie. ‘What do you think it says?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. My languages are English and Portuguese.’

  ‘It was put there by the master mason who made this place. He knew his Cicero. It’s part of a longer quote and means, “Not for ourselves alone”. Quite appropriat
e, I think you’ll find.’ They passed under the arch and proceeded down the tunnel. Celeste peered into one of the wall apertures as she passed, shielding her eyes against the brightness. Intense light was funnelled down a long polished metal tube set in the rock before streaming out horizontally across the passage. ‘This is amazing. Where does the light come from?’

  ‘Just you wait,’ Cutie murmured conspiratorially, ‘just you wait!’

  They reached another flight of stairs after perhaps fifty yards or so. Again, a number of tubes clustered in the arched ceiling provided ample light. Celeste could easily see to the bottom of the stairs as she began to descend. ‘There are ninety-nine steps,’ said Cutie. ‘Never figured out why, but I guess the Sisters had a sense of humour. However, we do know from our records that the master mason argued for a nice round hundred. Romans, eh, always so conventional!’ They negotiated the stairs carefully and proceeded along another identical passageway. Celeste had a good sense of direction and guessed they were directly under the low hill she’d noticed rising up behind Temple Hall. They were now easily several hundred feet below ground.

  The passage ended and they stepped out into a huge chamber, an enormous subterranean cavern. Light flooded in through scores of tubes set in the domed ceiling high above their heads. The space was vast, well over two hundred feet across. It was such an astonishing and totally unexpected sight that Celeste simply stopped dead in her tracks, gaping uncontrollably. Cutie scampered past and twirled across the floor as if dancing, her arms spread high and wide, her eyes closed, a dreamy smile on her face.

  ‘Welcome, Celeste! Welcome, Bertie!’ she called, her girlish voice echoing. ‘Welcome to The Temple, the library of the Sisterhood of Helen and beyond all doubt the greatest repository of knowledge on this good planet Earth!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  It took some time before Celeste was able to gather herself. Eventually, the numbing plateau of shock receded and she began to take in details. The Temple was cloverleaf in shape, with six identical apses radiating out from a central domed rotunda like petals around the heart of a flower, each with massive, curving limestone walls. The blocks were cut square and true and finely chiselled to produce a rough but pleasing effect. These curving apses were themselves of significant size, with great hemispherical ceilings and colonnaded entrances, while the heart of the Temple was circular with the domed roof above supported by a ring of smooth grey granite columns. Arches sprang in all directions, leaping from column to column overhead. Over the ages, small white stalactites had formed in some of the joints high above, but the building was still sound and the roof looked solid enough to support mountains. The craftsmen who had assembled this structure were seeking strength and longevity, but had still managed to create a building of simple grace and elegance, even though the entire interior was devoid of any decoration but for a line of bold inscriptions running around a frieze at the base of the central dome: Latin, Greek, Arabic and other ancient tongues Celeste did not recognise. There was a quiet heaviness that spoke of centuries, but Cutie’s happy humming seemed to breathe life into the ancient stones.