The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  ‘The genius McJoist.’ Regretting her rudeness, Jenny raised an aggrieved voice and addressed the air a third time. ‘What reason can there be for a door to be first invisible and then locked against me in my own home?’

  ‘There’s no answer to tha’,’ said McJoist sourly; he was losing sympathy with his mistress’s mission, and the effect of the whisky had worn off.

  Jenny pointed to the great bunch of keys, the symbol of the Clerk of Works’ office, at McJoist’s hip where it jostled against the tools in his belt. ‘The keys, Jock. Try the keys.’

  The keys were so tightly clustered, in a ball, that they didn’t jangle as McJoist walked. Having carried them for so many years, for he never went anywhere without them, and being accustomed to lean to one side to compensate for the weight, for his tools were evenly distributed around his waist, meant that as soon as the Clerk of Works got home after work and unhooked the keys, he listed in the opposite direction. It was only later in the evening, when he had had his fill of whisky, that he returned to the vertical, as he marched ramrod straight to bed and toppled onto the mattress like a felled tree.

  But sober, in theory there wasn’t anywhere in the castle that McJoist didn’t have access to, and now he removed the keys from his belt, and in practised sequence tried every one of the larger keys that might fit the lock.

  But even the oldest of them, which looked as though it would have opened the entrance to a cathedral, didn’t fit.

  ‘Nae guid,’ he said; ‘and the wards are too heavy for picking.’

  Jenny shook her fist at the recalcitrant portal, and again spoke loudly, ‘This is my castle by blood inheritance. There will be no secrets from me at Dragonburgh, and nobody can deny me passage. I, a Plantagenet, command this door to open!’

  As they waited further, she sighed. ‘What a pain relatives can be.’

  McJoist felt a twinge of sympathy. ‘I’ve nowt to say to that, lass. It’s all in a flower, as I understand it, that’s a’. Jist a flower.’

  ‘The Plantagenet name is derived from plante genêt, Jock, meaning the broom shrub.’

  ‘Och aye? I know veggies, not plants. But I’ll tak your wud for it.’

  ‘It is true that we have any amount of Scotch or common broom, botanical name Cytisus scoparius, growing around here. But there’s more to it than that. It came to be adopted as the family name and emblem when Gefroi, Duke of Anjou, who was the father of Henry the Second, wore a jaunty sprig of broom in his helmet on the field of battle, to atone for an evil deed. Though others have it that it was because Fulk the Younger, Gefroi’s father, was scourged with broom twigs before the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.’

  ‘Dinna fash yoursel’, but I know of one muckle glaikit man in this castle deserves a guid scourging.’

  Jenny deflated. ‘Gosh, Jock, it would be too awful if we can’t get in. Let’s try something more practical. Could you take the door off its hinges?’

  McJoist inspected the grain and fittings, and consulted the tools at his waist. He shook his head. ‘Not with what I’ve got wi’ me. From the inside only perhaps, but I hae ma doots, for it’s so ancient the hinges’ll have seized up more’n my own joints. Likely the wood’s warped into the frame too. No, nothing short of a battering ram is going to shift this braw chunk.’

  The Clerk of Works reached for the steel-cased pocket watch in his frayed tartan waistcoat. ‘Crivvens, it’s much later than I thought. In fact, it’s about time for...’ And he gave the satchel a meaningful look.

  This time Jenny did not object to producing the whisky, and McJoist took a mouthful, and then another, for fear that he would not see the bottle again. But even whisky strength was of no use when in frustration he barged at the door several times as a last resort.

  ‘Michty me!’ he gasped, panting and defeated; ‘I’m fair puggled.’ In need of liniment for his bruises, he took another pull from the bottle, there being no other liniment on hand.

  The pair glared at the door as if they would will it open, and Jenny pouted. ‘I can’t believe that the Plantagenets have let me down like this, after leading me on by being helpful a moment ago.’

  ‘You’re asking too much o’ your cahoot of ancestors, lass, in my opinion, and this unco Scotch broom weed of yourn. There’s nothing beats a guid old-fashioned key for opening doors, ’less it be Open Sesame! These keys o’ mine are hundreds of years old, and a complete set for the castle. They’re never out o’ keeping of the Clerk of Works. I hang them on a hook over my hearth every night and lend them to no one. Even I couldn’t get one off the bundle.’

  Jenny pondered. ‘I’ve never before doubted the power of plante genêt. There’s an old poem about it that goes like this:

  ‘Time was when thy golden chain of flowers

  Was link’d the warrior’s brow to bind;

  When rear’d in the shelter of royal bowers,

  Thy wreath with a kingly coronal twin’d.

  The chieftain who wore thee high on his crest,

  And bequeath’d to his race thy simple name,

  Long ages past hath sunk to his rest,

  And only lives in the voice of fame.’

  ‘Verra guid, lass. Time to give up, I reckon.’

  ‘There’s more:

  ‘And one by one to the silent tomb

  His line of princes hath pass’d away;

  But thou art here with thy golden bloom,

  In all the pride of thy beauty gay.’

  ‘Losh, lassie!’

  A golden key had appeared in the lock, turned smoothly, and the door opened.

  Jenny raised her chin in triumph and addressed the air. ‘Thank you, Plantagenets! What a lovely key!’ She reached out to take it, but it disappeared. ‘Never mind,’ she said, unsurprised. ‘At least it’s open at last. Give me your torch, Jock.’

  McJoist took it out of his belt, switched it on and handed it to her. Pointing the beam, she saw before her a narrow entry way.

  Stepping inside, Jenny felt the air warm and dry against her skin. With the lanky McJoist following and peering over her shoulder, they were too taken aback to say anything, for it seemed that they were entering somebody’s dwelling.

  There was a bristle doormat, and a large square-sectioned umbrella and walking-stick stand. Underneath rows of wooden coat pegs on each side of the wall, about a foot above the carpeted floor, were lines of brass plates. Not only were they so small that Jenny almost missed seeing them, but, when she stooped, they were too tarnished to distinguish what might be engraved on them.

  They continued down the hall, with Jenny shining the torch before her and letting the Clerk of Works do the best he could to advance in her shadow. The further they went, the dimmer the beam became. McJoist broke the silence to swear that he’d put in new batteries only the day before, and ask for the torch so that he could check it. Fumbling it between them, he tightened the head and tapped the glass over the bulb, but it made no difference. After McJoist insisted on taking the lead, they moved slowly forward; but by the time they reached the end of the passage the light had gone out, and he sightlessly returned it to his belt.

  Before this happened Jenny had glimpsed another door that was partly ajar, and, using the wall as their guide and with her now in front, they passed through the opening. Their tentative footsteps sounded different on bare floorboards, and a faint but growing luminosity—whether it was artificial or as result of their eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, they couldn’t tell—confirmed that there were none of the rafters, tie-beams, and trusses angled to the floor that one would expect in an attic.

  Testing the conditions underfoot, Jenny found them firm, with no unstable patches, or evidence of dry or wet rot, or woodworm. The boards didn’t even creak. As she moved towards the centre of the room, she saw no evidence of destruction overhead, where the thunderbolts had struck the roof; instead of charring there was an aroma of incense. Despite the evidence of habitation at the entrance, the space appeared empty except for the accumulation of
centuries of cobwebs and dust, an eiderdown of ages that indicated that the loft, if a loft it was, was well insulated.

  Together they went into fits of sneezing; Jenny recovered first, and watched as McJoist stumbled and became clothed in a ghostly suit woven by generations by industrious spiders. The more he fought to free himself, the more tightly wrapped he became, until she took pity and helped him pull the strands away.

  Upon completing their investigation of the space, they had come across nothing except, in a corner, a small low table about the size that a child might use for a pretend tea party. On it, instead of tea cups and saucers, was a flowered ceramic flat candlestick holding a dirty stub of tallow candle-end that once had dripped grease.

  The Clerk of Works took a petrol lighter from his waistcoat, and, before Jenny could tell him not to be so stupid, flicked open the top and grated the wheel against the flint with a calloused thumb. The sparks ignited a flame like a blowtorch, which McJoist applied first to the wick, and then to a black briar pipe that he removed from one of the many loops on his leather belt, and stuck in his mouth. The partially filled pipe was so coked from use that it seemed to have melted like the candle, and McJoist’s horny untrimmed nail was of the same yellow translucency as the tallow on the table when it was lit.

  Overhead an attercop’s web parted in the heat, and again they sneezed, three times each. A guttering light appeared, under a column of acrid smoke that merged with that, equally foul, from the pipe.

  As the shadows, like the covers that maids lay over furniture in unused rooms, were removed, Jenny suddenly felt very proprietorial about the place. This was her adventure, and she wanted to be alone; so after sincerely thanking McJoist for his hard work and companionship, she told him that his assistance was not required further, and that he might return below to enjoy what remained of his day.

  The Clerk of Works tamped the bowl of his pipe with a nicotined finger. Although the thought of the stew that awaited him, and what went with it, was very appealing, he was doubtful about leaving his mistress in an unfamiliar, and possibly dangerous, place that did not officially exist; and he said so.

  ‘I’m a Plantagenet, McJoist, and quite capable of looking after myself in my own home. And it’s clear that my predecessors are paying attention to what’s going on, or we’d never have got in. They wouldn’t let anything happen to me. But again, Jock, I’m most grateful for everything you’ve done this afternoon. I could never have managed on my own.

  ‘One thing before you go, and this is very important: on pain of my consigning you to the deepest, dankest dungeon in the castle, for a year and a day—or even the secret trapdoor one, the aptly named oubliette—you are to tell no one, and I mean no one, what we’ve been doing, and where I am. The most gruesome event in the books I wrote will be as nothing compared to what I’ll inflict upon you, in person, Jock, should you breathe a word about any of this.’

  The old man puffed hard on his pipe, then removed it from his mouth. ‘What about light? It’ll be getting dark soon and there’s nae electricity. You could be biding here a’ nicht.’

  ‘I’ve got more candles in my satchel, as well as another sandwich and bottle of water. I never go on investigations round the castle without provisions and other essentials. Here, Jock, take one of them with you, since the torch isn’t working.’ Jenny opened her satchel, removed one from a box, lit it from the tallow, and handed it to her faithful retainer.

  ‘And this as well, Jock, you’ve earned it.’ She gave him the bottle of malt whisky, now less than two-thirds full, and without comment he fitted it in the padded leather pocket on his belt that he had made for just such a purpose.

  After a final glance at Jenny to assure himself of her resolution, and shielding the flame with his hand, McJoist walked towards the door of the room. When he reached it, the full beam of the torch at his waist, which had not been turned off, illuminated, wavering at first and then increasing in power until it shone at the floor like a spotlight. He turned round.

  ‘Go, Jock, go,’ she said.

  After pausing, he shrugged. ‘I’m awa’, then.’ Blowing out the candle and sticking it behind his ear, McJoist took the torch from his belt and left.

  No sooner had the Clerk of Works gone, than the tallow candle’s flame grew in intensity…and then went out, leaving the room illuminated with natural light. There was no longer a spider’s web in sight, and the floor, which had been coated with dust and dead beetles, was clean. The area began to fill with the outlines of objects, and then the shapes were hatched in, shaded and coloured by some frantic invisible artist or medium; until Jenny found herself standing in the middle of a chamber filled to bursting with furniture and many strange artefacts.

  When she looked to the source of the daylight, she was transfixed by the sight of three stone-mullioned windows, the lights of which were so clear that there might not have been any glass in the apertures. They were not like any of the other castle windows in size, relatively small and oblong, but rather raised images of the “casement high and triple-arched” of Keats’ Eve of St Agnes; or those “charmed magic casements, opening on the foam |Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn” of the Ode to a Nightingale.

  Threading her way through the furniture to the windows, Jenny could see the lower parts of the castle, and the outcrops of the rocky pedestal that Dragonburgh was upon. There was no doubt about it: she had found the missing room, or rooms, the un-towellable apertures, the location of which had confounded the various building sleuths that the young Eugénie had called in ten years before, and the possibility of the existence of which had been denied by the latest of a long line of clerks of works.

  One thing was perplexing: if such a thing were possible, the elevation of the windows seemed to be much higher than that when seen from below. The prospect, the view that they commanded, was even more dramatic than that from the great terrace at the top of the castle. The colours of sky and sea and rock seemed more vivid and sharply defined than Jenny had ever seen them on the most perfect days.

  With difficulty she tore her eyes away from the vista, and returned to the centre of the room. Despite the shabbiness of everything, there was a feel of lived-in comfort to the place. Items were tidily disarranged, in the sense that each article gave the impression of having been where it was for so long as to have acquired a right of permanence. Jenny was unable to dismiss a sense that she was trespassing, though she was so far as she knew still on her own property. Nonetheless she was intent upon making an inspection of everything, meticulously amongst such apparently random placement so as not to miss anything. She was fearful that everything would disappear as quickly as it had materialized.

  But where was she to begin her survey? Because she was standing right next to it, after setting down her satchel she began with a desk, on which sat a leather-bound tome that was open to a vellum page marked in the cleft of the spine by a fork-tailed scarlet ribbon.

  ”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “

  Now, of the many things that are impossible, one is that you cannot come across a chapter in an old book called Fiery Breath: Efficacious Salves for Third-Degree Burns without being at least a little interested. That feeling is only likely to be reinforced when you raise the cover of the book to learn the title, and see on the front in faded gilt the words, All You Need to Know about Dragons.

  The heavy oak desk it was on was the kind that used to be found in serried ranks in public school classrooms, with a one-piece wooden frame on runners with a footrest, a hollow interior for class and exercise books and miscellaneous items under the lid of the writing platform, and a built-in seat that prevented the pupil and his learning from being parted. The reading and writing surface was much gouged and scraped, and carved here and there with initials, and hearts with arrows through them. There was a hole for a removable inkwell in the level strip along the top at the right-hand corner, suitable for right-handed children, beneath which the top sloped like a lectern
.

  There being no drawers, when one raised the lid amongst the volumes that one was likely to find in such a desk would be the Bible, Collins Dictionary, and Kennedy’s Latin Primer. On the latter, the word “Latin” would have been emended by humorous childish hand to “Eating”; and on the flyleaf, overflowing from a die-stamped lined square with all but the last crossed out, would be the names of those boys who had been for so many school terms in possession of the copy.

  The books and other contents of the desk could be arranged so as to leave hidden compartments, and miniature corridors, for things one didn’t want other people to find, such as chocolate bars and pet mice. In an environment where there was little privacy, the pupils treasured these secret spaces, and rearranged the blocks frequently to mislead any who, in the absence of the owner, might take the opportunity to search for whatever was concealed.

  That Jenny only briefly attended to the book did not betoken a lack of interest in it. On the contrary her heart jumped; but when everything around one is out of the ordinary, single items don’t stand out as being more unusual than others, and there were so many other fascinating things in the room vying for her attention. Hence her determination to be methodical in...“casing the joint” was the phrase that occurred to her, because she felt like a burglar with no time to lose. The room had the air of a place whose occupant had only stepped out on an errand, or to fetch something from another room; if he or she returned to find her there, Jenny could not think what excuse she might offer for her presence.

  The furniture was not of good quality, and very old. There were worn leather- and chintz-covered chairs; standard lamps with singed and crooked shades; and a lumpy sofa with a spring poking through the fabric, at the higher end to that where whoever used it habitually sat. The fireplace grate in its tile surround was filled with half-burnt logs, ash, cigarette ends, and partly incinerated paper. On the hearth to one side were an electric cooking-plate with a frayed cotton flex, a dented pan, a cracked plate, and an empty can of Heinz baked beans. In front of the sofa a low veneer coffee-table, ringed and stained, had on it three unwashed mugs, a bent spoon, a jar of Maxwell House instant coffee, and a tin of Marvel powdered milk.