by S E Holmes
then.”
He gave me a cheeky grin, swinging the door wide. “I need to remember that trick.”
“What trick?” I scowled at him.
“The one where I get my way without further argument.”
I cuffed him over the ear as we entered, peering around curiously. He flicked the lights on. Illuminated by stark white fluorescence, the space was bare, more like what I’d imagined for Fortescue. A single bed sat unmade and almost an afterthought in the centre of the functional space. A long workbench, its top lined with felt, took up one wall to the left. On it rested dozens of guns, some dismantled for cleaning, others sitting in cases next to boxes of ammunition. The air smelled of polishing compound and chemicals.
“Bingo!” Smithy strode over to busy himself sighting down barrels and examining rounds, taking his time with selections, while I wandered.
She also had an assortment of high-tech bows and arrows mounted over the gun table on brackets. The other two walls to the right held open shelving that extended to the ceiling. Trays of yellowing bones, fixing jars containing what appeared to be floating human organs, and other specimens I dared not study, were jammed across every spare millimetre. Aunt Bea’s room resembled a police ballistics lab, or maybe the Anatomy Department, far more like an industrial workstation than a space for relaxing in.
Her qualifications were treated with even greater disregard than Fortescue’s, stacked haphazardly on a chair in the corner nearest a door which led to other rooms along a short hallway. At least she’d bothered to have the degrees framed. I picked each up in turn, all from Oxford University: Archaeology, Forensic Anthropology and Religious Iconography. Gun club medals were scattered on the floor, firsts in a range of events. Bea was a sharp shooter, a sniper.
Smithy sidled up next to me, pockets bulging with the butts of two pistols that dragged his boardies low on his hips. I was too disgruntled to notice the exposed sliver of firm tanned belly – much. He’d also collected a nasty looking modern crossbow for good measure, arrows jutting from a quiver slung over his back.
“That looks spectacularly practical in an enclosed place.” I snorted and shook my head. “I hope Seth’s prepared to stand still while you take aim.”
He blithely ignored the mockery. “I would’ve thought one of the most harmless things we could do was check out the bedrooms of a bunch of nice oldies. I’m used to being mistaken, but this? Bea has an AK-47. And let’s not mention the body parts. Why the old bones? They’re not fossils, are they?”
“You just mentioned the body parts.” I stooped to take a closer look at several pieces that rested on black velvet in sealed glass cubes, which occupied a cleared position on the middle level of tiers. “These are human. One’s a hyoid bone that’s snapped in half. It’s the little bone in the throat that moves when you swallow. The other is a jigsaw of reassembled cranium from an infant.”
I didn’t have to explain the baby’s death was not gentle, as Smithy’s face contorted in horror. Another dreadful artefact, only this one was strangely personal. I felt an intruder on something meant to stay private.
“The remains are charred, like the bone has been cremated. These in particular have been very carefully preserved.” He gazed at me quizzically. “Mrs Paget’s been teaching me Medicine for years and my great-aunt’s profession is keeping old things in their best condition. I just had no clue of the wider purpose.”
“Who would have, really?” He glanced down the corridor leading to a parlour. “Bugger! So many rooms. This place is a maze.”
“We’ve come this far, there’s no way I’m not going all the way. Besides, you’ve got what you came for.” And then the thought that had been trying to emerge finally hit me. “Guns are useless against Seth anyway. So are all weapons, in fact. I remember now. He told Raphaela that he’d been trying to do himself in for years. Nothing works while the Crone lives.”
“Yep,” Smithy answered casually, inspecting his fingernails. “Is it really necessary to check Bea’s bathroom?”
I glared at him, which seemed to be the main reaction he got lately. I was not entirely sure he’d earned it, just trying to do his best under testing circumstances, but I was too addled for nicety.
“Why the wild-goose chase, then?”
“Winnie, I’m not so stupid to think a mortal weapon can kill the right-hand man of the Crone. That would be just too easy.” He stared back at me, unabashed. “But Bea and Mrs Paget and Fortescue went out armed, so at least some of our enemies can be neutralised with a gun. I aim to be prepared for every circumstance. In any case, bullets will cause Seth pain and slow him down.” He looked like he’d enjoy that possibility. “I suppose there’s no point demanding that we hurry downstairs? We’ve already wasted so much time.”
“Not even if you give me those lost-puppy eyes.”
At the end of the hall, we stepped through into a cosy library filling three walls with small, unmarked books bound in black leather. Some of them were falling apart with age. Another wall was completely taken up by a huge chart, the written detail packing its surface so dense and miniscule, two loupes on chains swung from the roof either side. Pressing one of the magnifying glasses to heavy fabric, Smith bent to inspect the chart’s content, his back to mine.
Meanwhile, I pulled an edition out at random and gingerly turned the delicate pages, scanning snippets of neat cursive writing in red ink that had faded over the long expanse of time. I blinked in disbelief as the book’s meaning became clear.
“These are biographies. Fanny Montgomery. She died in 1632 of tuberculosis. It’s so sad, she was only fifteen.”
Replacing the first, I got on tiptoes to select another. I heard Smith inhale sharply and started to turn in his direction. His hands were upon my shoulders, ushering me forcefully back along the corridor to Bea’s bedroom before I could fully comprehend what was happening. The little book flung out of my grip and tumbled to the floor, where the cover ripped from its spine.
“Hey! Cut it out.”
“You don’t need to see anything else,” he said. “We’re done here.”
I narrowed my eyes over my shoulder in accusation, trying to twist from his grasp. “What don’t you want me to see?”
“Trust me, please!” he pleaded. “It’s for your own good.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” I wrenched free, exploiting the fact he’d rather release me than risk a bruise.
Smithy groaned. “I’m the son of a judge. You don’t think I’m qualified?”
“You really think keeping me in ignorance is the best approach?” I challenged.
He grudgingly shook his head. I collected the little book from the floor and returned along the hall to stop in front of the chart. He followed, joining me to take the book from my hands, before carefully reassembling it and replacing it in the gap on the bookshelf.
By the time he stood next to me, I was already busy scrutinising what was obviously an intricate family tree extending back to 900AD. The vast stretch of centuries up to the present was noted in minute script along one side. At its top, three names glittered in gold leaf, distinct without the need of magnification: Isadore, Rose and Dexter. The title ‘Order of the Sacred Trinity’ rested above Rose and Dexter. Isadore, their sister, was circled in red ink. I peered down at the legend across the bottom, and then back up to apply the key.
“Isadore was the original Keeper. She was present at the beginning. Rose and Dexter started the Trinity. All the rest are descended from these three. It’s so staggering, I keep thinking I’ll wake up.”
“Yeah, when the psychiatrist comes to change the drip,” Smith muttered unhappily.
Applying the lens, a name in spindly gold caught my attention. “Fanny.” She was there, her lifeline cut short. In fact, after scanning more names at random it became clear: all the lifelines were remarkably short. “Not a single person lived to see their thirties.”
“High mortality was the norm back then,” he said without conviction.
“Maybe, but this death toll is pretty ruthless.”
I bent closer and inspected entries in turn, each bearing an inscription noting how the person died. Everyone was despatched in a grisly, agonising way.
“No, it can’t be.” Until that point, I hadn’t really understood Smith’s reluctance for me to see this chart.
I pulled away and rubbed my eyes, then returned to the impossible name that had riveted my focus through the jeweller’s glass. From the perspective of my measly seventeen years, Fortescue had always seemed ancient. But even my exaggerated estimate would not have placed him at over seven hundred years old.
“Can this really be true?” I fixated on Fortescue’s entry, as if a hard gaze could generate a proper explanation.
“Apparently the old boy was around when Saint-Saëns made the top forty.”
“Fortescue had a wife,” I said. “She died in 1405 during childbirth and so did the baby. Her name was Anna. He wasn’t even born into the Sacred Trinity. Anna was one of Rose’s kin.”
“No good can come of this, Bear. Let’s just go downstairs.”
But I was mesmerised. “Here’s Aunt Bea. Beatrice Lumiere born circa 1470. Some of her relics are younger than she is.”
“We ought to go easy on them—” He quickly swallowed the rest. I knew he could not finish that sentence because it ended in my fragile, beloved guardians crumbling to dust and blowing away on the slightest breeze.
