The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  ‘So Jesse Saunders morphed into Wanda Empiria, by means of a deed poll posting of a statutory declaration to that effect in the Witches’ Gazette, which she subsequently renamed Bewitched.

  ‘Jesse–Wanda is a very strong personality, and the opposite of Hecate in that she’s a masterful organizer. Never tell Hec I said so, but in my opinion she’s the perfect business person to lead the Guild: tough, resourceful, and forward-looking. Although her management style and agenda is a lot of flim-flam and hooey, and her knowledge of true magic is exiguous, it’s what people are accustomed to and expect these days. The Guild had to come out of the Dark Ages—the original Dark Ages, Hecate’s era in the Old World—if it was to survive.

  ‘What confirmed Wanda Empiria as unchallenged leader in the eyes of those who had wavered about pushing Hecate out, was a symbolic rather than meritorious occasion when she beat the equally pompous Byron Bymilunch, President of the Necromancers’ Union, at the annual Starlight Games by a hundred and three points. Empiria humiliated Byron on the moon circuits, where he was pre-eminent until his dining habits started prompting remarks that his waistline had ballooned sufficiently to be mistaken for the racetrack; and he missed going round all the markers, in a desperate attempt to capitalize on his competitor’s own addiction to Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

  ‘It’s not that Wanda has any natural sporting ability, far from it, but she inherited a fortune from her mother who started Intermagica, the overnight spell-delivery company, and could afford to hire the world-renowned skiing instructor Bob Slade to coach her in using her weight to body-slalom. There was some talk of performance-enhancing drugs, but the threat of legal action quieted that, and it’s best I don’t comment on the allegation. Although no witches are allowed up here, and I sweep downstairs for bugs, the eavesdropping kind only for the others are legion, in this business it’s best to assume that every wall has ears.’

  B.J. adjusted his gig-lamps so that the spring of the right arm of the frame, as well as the left, was now curled over the ear. ‘However one classifies it, Wanda Empiria’s victory of witch over wizard signified the defeat of a very important man; one that became a humiliation when Byron Bymilunch made the mistake of trying to bribe the judges to disqualify the winner. Considering that four of the judges were witches, that was pretty dumb of him. There was a scandal, Byron resigned, and Odo Ranunculus is now running the Union. It was a terrific coup for Wanda and boosted the witches’ morale no end, and she has reigned supreme ever since.

  ‘As soon as she was in charge, to placate those who were still loyal to Dame Hecate, Wanda Empiria née Jesse Saunders offered Hec a consultancy position supplying the Witches’ Guild with spells and enchantments: the ones that have to be bespoke because they aren’t available from the normal retail sources.

  ‘It was a masterstroke on Wanda’s part, because nobody can hope to match Hecate at spell-making, nor has anyone ever tried. It avoided making a public enemy of her, keeps her tied to the Guild where Empiria can keep an eye on her; and because the fees for the various categories of spell are fixed, at a very low rate, it prevents Hec from building the resources to get back at Wanda should she be so inclined. Which she isn’t: she can’t be bothered, even though Empiria isn’t fit to tie her shoes, were she to wear laces instead of heels.

  ‘I cringe at the way people address Dame Hecate these days, who aren’t worthy of grinding a pestle in her presence. Six hundred years ago, when she was still an exalted and revered figure, Empiria wouldn’t have dared to address her, let alone attempt to usurp her authority.’

  ‘What was Dame Hecate like, way back when?’

  ‘The ur-Hecate was a very different woman to the one you met below, in both character and person. She would have swatted anyone who stood against her, like a gnat. And even when I first met her in mediaeval times she was the most glamorous of women, tall and beautiful; not young, but youthful in the sense that one who is older than the ages seems ageless. You might expect someone of her legendary status to be dark-haired and pale with a voice like a raven, but Hecate was never that; she had long golden locks and bright flashing eyes, high cheekbones, and a soft and musical voice.

  ‘From that to wizened and hunched, and shrunken to half her previous size, is a transformation that I still haven’t got used to. Of course she could change her appearance any time she wanted, and I’ve asked her why she doesn’t, when people treat her in such a shameful way, as if she were a bag lady. She said it would be not just unbecoming, but “undesirable”; the way she says that word, “undesirable”, makes it clear there is nothing more to be said on the subject.’

  Jenny pursed her lips. ‘How do Hecate and Empiria get along? In the circles they move in they can’t avoid meeting.’

  ‘Very badly, and you’ll be able to judge for yourself, because Wanda will be coming to the party tonight. You can’t miss her. Although she was no oil-painting as a young woman, she used to be handsome enough; now, despite the loss of her sylphlike figure to doughnuts, milkshakes, Turkish Delight, and bonbons, she still favours skimpy outfits that show a lot of bosom and leg. It infuriates Hec; she says it demeans the Guild to have a chairperson who looks like a floozy or streetperson, and arrives at public events wearing a short leather skirt and fishnet stockings.

  ‘There’s usually a brief and frosty confrontation. Despite Empiria’s status, she’s got a chip on her shoulder about Hecate being a triple goddess and the Goddess of the Lower World, to name only the greatest of her titles. No one can take those away from her, and Wanda can’t hope to emulate her former effortless superiority. For even now, despite Hec’s bumbling manner, underneath she’s still as sharp as she ever was, and despite her own bluff exterior Wanda knows it and is afraid of her. She can’t help but remember—how could she?—what the woman used to be.

  ‘But there’s no disputing that Empiria has been extremely clever in strengthening her position, in ways that Hecate could never be bothered with. Old Mother was never a good delegator. Shakespeare got that right in the Scottish play, which was intuitive of him, when he kept having her show up to check on the witches and interfere in their work, instead of directing policy and dictating memos at her desk. That’s what made Hecate vulnerable to a strategist like Wanda, who spends all her time plotting and scheming in her office instead of being out in the field.

  ‘To bolster her confidence once she reached the top, after Byron Bymilunch was disgraced and stripped of his Necromancers’ Union pension and benefits, Wanda bid for the right to buy out the contract on his familiar, a tiger called Chaudron. He’s an intimidating beast and very capable, not that Empiria was interested in anything but his regal and intimidating aspect. Chaudron cost her a fortune, and she had to throw a signing bonus and all sorts of incentives at him, out of her own pocket.

  ‘Some of the larger live ingredients have a habit of vanishing when Chaudron is around, but because he’s so good at his job the necromancers used to turn a blind eye. Even Hec, who has never suffered fools, is polite to Chaudron the tiger. There was one problem: as Chairman of the Guild, Empiria inherited a tenured familiar, a mangy old monkey called Fitzgibbon who was way over the hill and had lost a leg to diabetes. Seeing as Fitzgibbon wasn’t at all suited to the image Wanda had in mind for herself, she introduced him to Chaudron and left them together in the Guild library...to get acquainted, she said, and work out some sharing of responsibility arrangement.

  ‘When she came back, the tiger was looking very smug and there was no sign of Fitzgibbon, which indicated that one party had shared and the other partaken. Thereafter Chaudron, who always had a sweet tooth, wouldn’t touch anything with sugar in it. Keen to show her new familiar off, Empiria took to riding on his back, sometimes without clothes on. They make quite a sight, I gather, when there’s a full moon.’

  ‘She better watch out,’ said Jenny, ‘or she’ll end up like the lady in Edward Lear’s limerick.’

  ‘I don’t…’

  ‘

  There was a you
ng lady of Riga

  Who rode with a smile on a tiger;

  They returned from the ride

  With the lady inside

  And the smile on the face of the tiger.

  ’

  ‘Young, Wanda Empiria is not,’ said B.J., ‘in years or looks, despite all the work she’s had done. But if Chaudron isn’t fussy, and the Fitzgibbon incident proves that he isn’t....he couldn’t swallow Wanda all at once, though, there are meals on her for a month even for him.’

  ”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “

  ‘Back to Shakespeare and the Scottish play,’ said Jenny; ‘Shakespeare did make it all up, didn’t he? I mean about the witches, not the stuff he got from Holinshed.’

  B.J. raised his eyebrows so far that they seemed about to disappear over his cranium and join the ring of hair on the back. ‘Not a word of it. He was here for a week under false pretences, pestering us for information about what we do, on the pretext that he was conducting an inspection of the business, and needed to audit the accounts, on behalf of the Department of Guilds, Unions, Institutes, and Societies.

  ‘Like a pair of saps or suckers, Hec and I were taken in and gave him everything he asked for.’

  ‘Sh...Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, was here at Dragonburgh, and you met him?’

  ‘You’re sitting where he did, in 1605. He didn’t call himself Shakespeare, though, at the time. Ledger-Bardwell was the name he signed his letter with, which was on proper stationery and full of officialese: Inky Ledger-Bardwell, Senior Inspector. After fending Hyphen Bard-well—the name should have made me smell a rat—off for weeks, for she’s no respecter of red tape, Hec agreed to receive him in hope of avoiding a fine or penalty. I’ll just say that, although we have to keep accounting books in order to submit our invoices to the Witches’ Guild, our income and expense records are largely to be found, or not, on scraps of paper. We don’t exactly run an orthodox business here, and have never paid a penny of tax.

  ‘Hec of course dumped Ledger–Shakespeare on me. The man ate up everything I told him, scribbling away and asking question after question, until I was hard put to keep a civil tongue in my head. Out of concern to divert him from paying too close attention to the numbers, I told him rather more than I should have done about the nature of what we do, and how we do it, and the things that have happened over time. Rather as I am doing today. And the more Old MacHeath single malt whisky...he asked for ice to put in it, unappreciative Sassenach that he was, of which we had none...that I plied Stinky Inky with, the more insatiable his appetite for anecdotal information became.

  ‘Of course I realized afterwards that I had made a huge tactical error in allowing myself to be led on. If I’d kept what I said dull and boring, Mr Bard-well would have left in a few hours, convinced that I was a lousy source of plot-worthy material. While in my defence I’ll say that Inky Ledger-Bardwell played the role part of Inspector of Guilds very well, even an accomplished actor like himself couldn’t keep up the pretence of being familiar with generally accepted accounting principles for long; for although he became a rich man he had no more of a head for figures, especially after half a bottle of Old MacHeath, than Hec or I.

  ‘Since as a dramatist Shakespeare rarely made up his own stories, preferring to appropriate and embellish existing stuff, he was highly motivated to pump me dry of information. I was the perfect milch-cow. So he ended up staying a week, hoodwinking us, and we didn’t dare chuck him out because Hec was worried about getting into trouble with the Guild for non-compliance with the law.

  ‘He didn’t offer us a penny for his accommodation and meals, and knocked back a great deal more of my twelve year aged MacHeath—he said whisky was new to him, they didn’t have it in Warwickshire…I mean London, he corrected himself…, and not a few bottles of the Plantagenet’s finest claret.’

  Jenny almost fainted. ‘B.J., are you saying that a bunch of what Shakespeare wrote in the Scottish Play didn’t come from his imagination...that he got all the local colour from you?’

  ‘The bastard sent us a final draft in his own hand a month or so later…I’d given him so much detail, and it’s only a short play, so it was a quick write. Hecate says that the manuscript is somewhere in one of her stacks downstairs, but in subsequent years I could never bring myself to look for it.

  ‘Hec and I were horrified by the play, of course; by which I don’t mean that we were taken aback by the plot and theme, only the ridiculous portrayal of Hecate herself. The witches were spot-on. I heard later that he’d made a ton of money out of staging it, and used it to build himself a fancy house in Stratford-upon-Avon.

  ‘I was in favour of prosecuting Shakespeare, if even that was his real name, for libel; but Hec didn’t want the publicity. Wanda Empiria would be all over her for it, she said, and take steps to reduce her income even further.

  ‘To hell with Empiria, I said, let’s sue the blighter; to which, after some humming and hawing, Hec said that there was no point.

  ‘Why not, I said.

  ‘Well, apparently when Mr so-called Senior Inspector Ledger-Bardwell was finally packed and ready to go, in her relief at his overdue but imminent departure, Hecate asked him in for a farewell glass of sherry.

  ‘As they sat together on the horsehair sofa—Hec magnanimously took the end with the broken spring—the Inkster adjusted his hairpiece, sidled up a bit, winced with pain…the only pleasure I derived from this farce was knowing that Hec’s spring came close to emasculating him…and said, “Dame Hecate, ma’am,”—he knew how to turn on the charm, did our sweet William—“I never realized there were spells for so many practical things, like dealing with troublesome neighbours, and barking dogs.”

  ‘I’d tossed him a few bones like that in my cups the night before.

  ‘“Aw, heck, Hec, it won’t be long,” he said, “before your witches can cast sophisticated spells to…oh, I don’t know…do such things as speed up tax refunds, win lawsuits, and gain immunity from prosecution for libel, slander, plagiarism, breach of copyright, and illegally obtaining confidential information while impersonating an official.”

  ‘“Fiddledee,” said Hec, putting down her third glass of Williams & Humbert’s Dry Sack; “I made that one ages ago. Help me down with letter ‘I’ of ACES,”—that’s the Authorized Complete Encyclopaedia of Spells I was telling you about—“I’ll show it to you if you like.”

  ‘Well, Ledger-Bardwell liked, and they went to the bookcase, hauled down the relevant tome and turned to the spell for Immunity.

  ‘“Wow,” said Inky–Bill, all eyes. “Neato. That’s so cool! Wouldja mind if I jotted it down? I’ve got a brain like a sieve.” Bardwell’s style of speech could grate rather. “The Inspectorate would be most impressed, and probably give you preferential treatment and special consideration in recognition of your dedication to your craft, and perhaps even...no, that should do it.”

  ‘“Knock yourself out,” said Hec, pouring more sherry; and Inky–Bill did.

  ‘When Shakespeare got back to London, he forged a prescription—if you look at the cack-handed signatures of his on record they’re all different, and the spellings; I gathered later that he used to check into hotels and sign the register under assumed names, and leave early in the morning without paying before anyone was up—and took it to a wizard in Finchley, who sat Shakespeare down, called in his wife who knew enough to make the spell up, then cast it on him.’

  B.J. scowled. ‘Hec knew this because the Bard pinned a note to that effect to the draft of the play that he sent us.

  ‘So we ended up having no prospect of recourse against the blighter. How I wanted to get my hands round Mr Shakespeare’s neck when we learned how he’d gulled us. Or sicced Volumnia onto him, literally with both beak and breakfast.

  ‘It was only when I looked into this Shakespeare’s modus operandi that I found out how, because he lacked the invention to come up with the plots and characters for his plays, he lifted them from oth
er people’s copyrighted works, and plagiarized their language: words, phrases, sentences; even whole sections of speech, dialogue, narrative, and description. He was a shameless pillager of the written word.

  ‘Apparently, at the time that Shakespeare came to us, he was close to being charged on multiple counts of libel. Rumours to this effect were flying faster than a witch on her way to Happy Hour at the gin-mill, and he was desperate to save his reputation by writing a really good play, the originality of which—with a curt nod to Seneca, Hector Boece’s Scotorum Historiae, Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft, King James the First’s Daemonologie, and Erasmus’s Colloquia—might give people second thoughts about taking him to court.

  ‘To avoid risking jeopardizing his legal situation further, Shakespeare decided to adopt an alias and false profession, and visit one of the remotest parts of the British Isles; a place where people such as ourselves were unlikely to have heard what was going on down south in dramatic and literary circles. His supposition was correct, and into the bargain he won himself not just a get out of gaol free card, but carte blanche to do as he pleased thereafter in pilfering his material. He went on to write Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, in the composition of which he helped himself to North’s Plutarch, Greene’s Pandosto, and...’

  ‘As to The Tempest,’ Jenny said, ‘it’s authentic, except for some pamphlets he might have come across about Bermuda.’

  ‘That’s not true; he got everything from Hecate over the fourth glass of sherry when she told him about one of her Bermudian breaks, like the one she just got back from. Hec’s always gone there for her vacations, she’s a creature of habit in that respect, not least because Prospero’s an old necromancer flame of hers. She was due to leave the following day, when Shakespeare was out of the way, which is why there were travel brochures all over the coffee-table. It also explains the free-flowing drink, because, in addition to being delighted at seeing the last of Inky Ledger-Bardwell, Hec was in holiday mood and more loquacious than usual.