When Sir Francis had left, after several winks, nudges, and hoarse declarations of the need for utter secrecy, Lewis jumped up and did a buck-and-wing down the length of the library.
There were certain comings and goings over the next week, nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary to the unsuspecting observer, but significant. Sir Francis packed his present mistress, the children, and their nurses off to Bath, with a great many sloppy kisses and endearments. Guests arrived at odd hours: Sir Francis’s half brother John, and another elderly gentleman who turned out to be a Regius Professor of Civil Law.
Lewis, placidly piecing together ancient carnal acrobatics, scanned the household as he worked and picked up more snippets of information. He learned that the seamstress had been given a great deal of last-minute work to do, because someone’s costume hadn’t been tried on in three years and didn’t fit anymore. A young pig was driven over from an outlying farm and made a nasty mess in the kitchen garden, about which the cook complained; then Sir Francis himself went down and slaughtered it, somewhat inexpertly, judging from the noise and the complaints of the laundress who had to get the blood out of his garments.
The gardener was sent off with a shovel and wheelbarrow, and was gone all day, and grumbled when he returned; the footman and butler loaded a table and several chairs into a wagon, and drove them away somewhere.
Lewis was applying Parch-Fix to a codex purporting to tell the secrets of the Vestal Virgins when he heard the trumpets announcing a coach’s arrival. He scanned; yes, a coach was coming up the drive, containing five … no, six mortals.
He set the brush down and closed his eyes, the better to focus.
Jingling ring of metal-shod wheels on gravel, with dreadful tooth-grinding clarity. The hollow thunder of the horses’ hooves slowing to distinct clop-clop-clop, like the final drops in a rain shower, counterpointed by slippered feet crossing the marble floor of the entry hall in the house below.
Boom! Sir Francis seemed incapable of using a door without flinging it wide.
“Ladies! Ladies, my charmers, my beauties, welcome, welcome one and all! Dear Mrs. Digby, it has been an age! How d’ye do? By Venus and her son, my dear, you’re looking well!”
“La, bless you, my lord, and ain’t you the ’oney-tongued flatterer!”
“Never in the world, sweetheart. Sukey! Pretty Bess! My arm, ladies, pray step down, mind your gown there—welcome once again—ah, Joan, you did come after all! We’d have missed you sorely. A kiss for thee, my love—and who’s this? A new rose in the bouquet?”
“That’s our young miss. Ain’t been with us long. We reckoned she’d do for—” And here the voice dropped to a whisper, but Lewis made it out: “For our you-know-who.”
“Ah!” Sir Francis likewise resorted to an undertone. “Then a chaste kiss for you, fair child. Welcome! Where’s Mr. Whitehead?”
“I’m just getting my hat—”
“A word in your ear, my lord—’e ain’t well. ’ad a fainting fit and frighted us something awful. Sukey brought ’im round with a little gin, but ’e’s that pale—”
“I know, I know, my dear, but—ah, here you are, Paul! What a rascal you are, swiving yourself into collapse with a carriageful of beauties! Eh? I declare, you’re like a spawning salmon. Couldn’t wait until tonight, could you?”
“’Ere then, dearie, you just take my arm—”
“What nonsense. I’m perfectly well—”
“Bess, you take ’is other arm—come now, lovey, we’ll just go inside for a bit of a liedown afore dinner, won’t we?”
“Perhaps that would be best—”
“Yes, let’s give this rampant stallion a rest before the next jump. John! Have Mrs. Fitton send up a restorative.”
“At once, my lord.”
The voices louder now, because everyone had come indoors, but more muffled and indistinct. Lewis pushed back from the table and tilted his head this way and that, until he could pick up sounds clearly once more. There was Sir Francis, whispering again:
“—looks dreadful, poor creature. We ought to have done this sooner.”
“’E looked well enough this fortnight past, when ’e was down to London. My sister’s ’usband, ’e done just the same—sound as a bell at Christmas, and we buried ’im at Twelfth Night. Well, we must just ’ope for the best; that’s what my mother used to say, my lord. What think you of the girl?”
“A little obscured by the veil, but she seems a pretty creature. She’s observed all the … er … ?”
“Yes, my lord, you may be sure of that. And you ’ave a boy?”
“A capital boy! You shall meet him presently.”
“Oh, good, ’cos I didn’t care for t’ other young gentleman at all … .”
Lewis sneezed, breaking his focus and sending a bit of Vestal Virgin flying. “Drat,” he muttered. He got down on hands and knees to retrieve her from under the table and wondered once again, as he did so, just what exactly had happened to his predecessor.
Any unease he might have felt, however, was being rapidly overpowered by a certain sense of hopeful anticipation. A dinner party composed almost entirely of old men and nubile and willing ladies! Was it possible his perpetual bad luck was about to change, if only for an evening’s bliss?
He had repaired the Vestal Virgins and was busily pasting the spine back on a copy of A New Description of Merryland when Sir Francis’s butler entered the library, bearing a cloak draped over his arm.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but my lord requests your presence in the garden. You are to wear this.” He held up the cloak, which had a capacious hood.
“Ah! A fancy-dress party, is it?” Lewis took the cloak and slung it around his shoulders. The hood fell forward, blinding him.
John, unsmiling, adjusted it. “If you say so, sir. You want to go out by the east door.”
“Right-ho! I’m on my way,” said Lewis, and trooped off with an eager heart.
In the garden he encountered a huddle of other cloaked figures, and was greeted by the foremost of them, who in speaking revealed himself as Sir Francis:
“That you, young Owens? We’re just waiting for the ladies, bless ’em. Ah, they approach!”
Indeed, a procession was winding its way around the side of the house. Lewis saw five cloaked figures, and the foremost carried a torch held high. The gentlemen bowed deeply. Lewis followed suit.
“Goddess,” said Sir Francis, “we mortals greet you with reverence and longing. Pray grant us your favor!”
“My favor thou shalt ’ave, mortal,” said she of the blazing torch. “Come with me to yon ’allowed shrine, and I shall teach thee my ’oly mystery.”
“Huzzay!” said the old Regius Professor, under his breath. He gave Lewis a gleeful dig in the ribs. His elbow was rather sharp and Lewis found it quite painful. All discomfort fled, however, when a little cloaked figure came and took his hand.
They paired up, a lady to each gentleman. Sir Francis took the arm of the torchbearer, and led them away through the night in solemn procession, like a troupe of elderly Guy Fawkes pranksters. The line broke only once, when one of the gentlemen stumbled and began to cough; they stopped and waited until he recovered himself, and then moved on.
Lewis, checking briefly by infrared, saw that the procession was moving in the general direction of the high hill crowned by the Church of the Golden Ball. Most of his attention was turned on the girl who walked beside him. Her hand was warm; she was young, and shapely, and walked with a light step. He wondered what she looked like.
The procession did not climb the hill but wound around its base. Presently Lewis was able to drag his attention away from the girl long enough to observe another church that lay straight ahead of them, seemingly dug into the hill. As they drew closer, he saw that it was only a façade of flint, built to conceal the entrance to a tunnel.
The famous Hellfire Caves! thought Lewis, and his heartbeat quickened.
They entered through gates, to a long tunn
el cut through chalk, and here they must go single file. To his amazement, Lewis felt his racing heart speed into a full-blown panic attack; it was all he could do not to break from the line and run. He scanned the strata above his head: wet chalk, fractured and unstable. Plenty of rational reasons to fear this place; no need to summon demons from the unconscious …
The little girl reached forward and gave his hand a squeeze. It made him feel better.
They followed the tunnel gradually downhill, past niches opening off to the left, and then around in a loop that seemed to have taken them in a complete circle. It was black as pitch but for the torch flaring ahead of them, and silent, and damp, and cold as the grave. Another long straight descent; then a tight maze of turns and multiple openings where anyone but a cyborg might have had difficulty keeping a sense of direction. But now light showed ahead, down a straight passage, and Lewis picked up the scent of food.
They emerged into a great open chamber, well lit by flaring torches. Four figures stood perfectly motionless against the far wall. Each was draped in a black veil that dropped from the crown of the head nearly to the floor, in long straight lines. Each wore a mask. Two were black and featureless; two were painted in black and gold, resembling insect faces.
In the center of the room, looking incongruous, was a dining table set for ten.
Sir Francis’s voice boomed into the silence, shattering the tension with echoes:
“And now, a pause in our solemnities! Supper in Hell, my friends! Though I promise you, you shall not be long tantalized. Tantalus, hey? In Hades? D’y’get the joke?”
“What a witty fellow you are, my lord, to be sure,” said the lady with the torch dryly. She threw back her hood to reveal a svelte woman in early middle age. Her hair was a flaming and unnatural red. Painted, plastered, and upholstered as she was, she had nonetheless maintained a certain charm.
All the party now threw off their cloaks, and Lewis blinked in surprise. The gentlemen, himself excepted, wore white jackets and pantaloons, as well as extraordinary floppy blue and red hats embroidered on the front with the words Love and Friendship. The ladies wore white robes, cut in what must have been intended as a Greek fashion; all save the youngest, who, like Lewis, wore ordinary street dress. Her features remained hidden by her veil, however.
“It’s cold in here,” complained a buxom wench somewhat past her prime. “Why couldn’t we done this at the abbey? It’s ever so nice there. Remember the times we used to have?”
“I know, my dear, a thousand apologies—,” said Sir Francis. “But the abbey’s not so convenient as it was, I fear—”
“And we ain’t a-doing of our sacred rites in no profane place, Sukey Foster, so just you shut your cake ’ole,” reproved her mistress. She cast a somewhat anxious eye upon Sir Francis. “All the same, dearie, I ’ope I’ll get a cushion to put under my bum this time? That altar ain’t ’arf cold and ’ard.”
“Everything has been seen to, dear Demeter,” Sir Francis assured her.
“Very kind of you, I’m sure, Lord ’Ermes,” she replied. Gazing around at the assembled party, she spotted Lewis. “’Ere now! Is ’e the … ?”
“Yes,” Sir Frances replied.
“Well, ain’t you the pretty fellow!” Demeter pinched Lewis’s cheek.
“Might we perhaps sit?” said the old professor. “My leg is positively throbbing, after that march.”
“Yes, please,” said Whitehead faintly. He looked sweating and sick, a ghastly contrast with his clownish attire. Lewis scanned him, and winced; the mortal was terminally ill.
They shuffled to their places. To his disappointment, Lewis found himself seated far down the table from the little girl in the veil. The masked figures, who had been still as statues until now, came to life and served in eerie silence. A whole roast pig was brought from a side passage, as well as a dish of fruit sauce, loaves of barley bread, and oysters. Chocolate was poured from silver urns. (“No wine?” said the professor in disappointment. Sir Francis and Madam Demeter gave him identical looks of disapproval, and he blushed and muttered, “Oh! So sorry—forgot.”)
Lewis, cold, hungry, and depressed, took a reckless gulp of chocolate and at once felt the rush of Theobromine elevating his spirits.
They feasted. Perhaps to make up for the lack of alcoholic cheer, the mortal party became terrifically loud, in riotous laughter and bawdy witticisms that made Lewis blush for the veiled girl. She sat in silence at her end of the table, except for once when she began to lift her veil and:
“’Ere! Just you keep your face covered, girl!” said Madam Demeter.
“’Ow the bloody ’ell am I supposed to eat anything?” the girl demanded.
“You pushes the cloth forward, and slips little bites under, like you was a proper lady,” explained Sukey. “That’s how I done it, when it was me.”
The girl said nothing more but folded her arms in a monumental sulk. Lewis, well into his second cup of chocolate and with his cyborg nervous system now definitely under the influence of Theobromine, regarded her wistfully. He thought she looked enchanting. He wondered if he could rescue her from her degrading life.
How to do it? … Not enough money in the departmental budget. They’d all laugh at me anyway. But what if I went to one of the gambling houses? I could count cards. Prohibited, of course, but the Facilitator class operatives do it all the time, for extra pocket money. Nennius himself, in fact. Win enough to set her up with, with a shop or something. Poor child …
“Have another slice of this excellent pork, my boy!” roared Sir Frances, reaching across to slap meat on his plate. “And you haven’t tried the fruit sauce! It’s sublime!”
“Thanks,” Lewis shouted back, leaning out of the way as a servant buried the pork in dollops of fruit compote. He leaned back in, took up a spoon, and began shoveling compote into his mouth, aware he needed to take in solid food.
No sooner had he set the spoon down, however, than the red letters began to flash before his eyes with all the vividness of migraine distortion: TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT!
“God Apollo,” he groaned. Peering down at his plate, he made out one or two gooseberry seeds in the syrupy mess, when the flashing letters allowed him to see anything. “What have I done to myself?”
He sat very still and waited for the flashing to stop, but it didn’t seem to; too late, he wondered if the Theobromine might have combined badly with whatever it was in the gooseberries to which his organic body objected.
Judge, then, with what sense of dread he heard the ping-ping-ping of spoon against water glass, and the creaking chair as Sir Francis rose to his feet to say:
“Now, my dears! Now, my esteemed brothers in revelry! Let us put aside our jollity! Our sacred business begins!”
“Huzzay!” shrieked the old professor.
“A little more decorum, sir, if you please,” said Madam Demeter. “This is a solemn h’occasion, ain’t it?”
“I’m sorry, my dear; it’s my sense of enthusiasm—”
“Quite understandable, sir,” said Sir Francis. “But we ought to remember that we have a new celebrant amongst us, who, though but a youth, has shown a true spirit of—er—Mr. Owens, are you quite all right?”
Lewis opened his eyes to behold a revolving wheel of faces staring at him, peeping in and out between the flashing red letters.
“Quite,” he said, and gave what he hoped was a confident smile. The smile went on longer than he had intended it to; he had the distinct impression it was turning into a leer and dripping down one side of his face.
“Ah; very well then; I think we’ll commence. Brothers and sisters! Let us drink together from the cup that will bind us in immortality,” said Sir Francis, and Lewis was aware that a servant was stepping up behind him and leaning down to offer something. Blinking at it, he beheld a figured wine krater, a modern copy, showing Bacchus rescuing Ariadne. He took it and drank.
Water, barley, pennyroyal … a memory buried for fifteen hundred years floated up
into his consciousness. Lewis tasted it again.
“The kykeon!” he exclaimed, rather more loudly than he had meant to. “And you’ve even got the formula right! Well done!”
In the absolute silence that followed, he became aware that everyone was staring at him. You idiot, Lewis! he thought, and meekly passed the krater to Sir Francis. All the others at table drank without speaking. When the empty krater had been placed in the center of the table at last, Sir Francis cleared his throat.
“The time has come. Behold my caduceus.”
This provoked a shrill giggle from the professor, quickly shushed by the ladies on either side of him.
“If you ain’t going to take this seriously, you didn’t ought to be here,” said Bess severely.
Lewis peered and made out that Sir Francis had produced a staff from somewhere and was holding it up. It was in fact a caduceus, very nicely carved, and the twining serpents’ scales had been gilded, and their eyes set with faceted stones that glittered in the torchlight.
“I speak now as Hermes, servant of Jove,” said Sir Francis. “I but do his immortal will.”
“And I am Demeter, goddess of all that grows,” intoned the lady, with a theatrical flourish. “’Ow weary I am, after the bountiful ’arvest! I will sleep. I trust in Jove, no ’arm shall come to my dear daughter Persephone, ’oo wanders on Nysa’s flowery plain.”
Sir Francis indicated to Lewis that he ought to rise. Lewis got up so hastily his chair fell backward with a crash, and he was only prevented from going with it by the masked servant, who steadied him. The veiled girl rose, too, and dragged from beside her chair a basket.
“I am Persephone, goddess of the spring,” she announced. “Blimey, what a lovely great flower do I see! I shall pick it straightaway!”
Sir Francis took Lewis by the arm and led him to the dark mouth of another tunnel, opposite from the one by which they had entered. Persephone followed on tiptoe, grabbing a torch from one of the wall sockets as she came. They went down the tunnel a few yards, and stopped. Persephone drew a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs:
The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007 Page 68
