The Witches of Chiswick

by Robert Rankin

  “I am one of your ancestors,” said Hugo Rune. “The most important of all your ancestors. I sought to recall the last member of the True Craft back here to aid me. But instead of him, I have you.”

  “You are one of my ancestors?” said Will. “Amazing.”

  “We are all doomed.” Rune’s great voice rattled the windowpanes. “And it is all the fault of your father.”

  “I’ve had enough of this,” said Will, rising from the straw pallet. “I’m leaving. I’ll go and find Mr Wells. Maybe he can get me back home.”

  “You are going nowhere, young man.” Rune glared down upon Will.

  “I am too,” said Will, adding, “you don’t frighten me.”

  Which was not entirely true.

  “Sit down!” shouted Rune. “If you are all that I have, then I will have to make do with you.”

  “You will do no such thing. I’m leaving.”

  Rune made certain complicated passes with his large hands and Will found his legs going weak at the knees. He sank back down onto the pallet.

  “I will speak and you will listen,” said the giant.

  “What have you done to my knees?” croaked Will, feeling at these now unfeeling articles.

  “A spell of temporary disablement. Curb your tongue, lest I strike it from your mouth.”

  Will kerbed his tongue and squeezed some more at his knees. He was scared now. Truly scared.

  “It has taken me years to work out the calculations,” said Rune. “To bring back the last in my line. Seemingly I am to be thwarted. But I will not be thwarted. If it is fate that you should be the one returned to me, rather than the one I called for, then so be it. I bow to fate. But I bow also to purpose. That it should be you, must have purpose. I will tutor you, boy. You will learn and you will play your part in defeating mankind’s greatest enemy.”

  “Please,” Will made pleading hand-wringings. “I’m sorry that I’m not what you expected. But it’s not my fault. Please just let me go. I’m no use to you. I don’t believe in magic.”

  “And your legs?” Rune asked.

  “The champagne?” Will suggested.

  Rune shook his head.

  “Then I don’t know. But what I do honestly know is that I don’t want to play any more. I want to go home. I want my mum.” And Will began to cry.

  Hugo Rune placed a great hand upon his shoulder. “My apologies,” said he. “I have frightened you. I understand that this is none of your doing. You are a victim of circumstance. But you are my heir. Not the heir I had hoped for, but my heir none the less. My blood is your blood and likeways about. You will not survive long in this time without my help. I will help you and you in turn will help me. What say you to this?”

  Will looked up at Hugo Rune. “I just want to go home,” he said.

  “And you will. I have promised you this.”

  “I want to go home now,” said Will, sniffing away.

  “That, I regret, is impossible.”

  Will took to sniffing some more.

  “It will all be made well,” said Hugo Rune. “I will make it well with your help. Trust me. I’m a magician.”

  Will groaned, dismally.

  “Come,” said Rune. “Follow me and I will show you something marvellous.”

  Will did sighings, but Will’s legs suddenly worked once more and Will rose and followed Hugo Rune.

  Rune led Will up further stairs, through a doorway and onto the flat roof of the tenement. Pigeons roosted, chimneys smoked, and London lay all around and about.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” said Rune.

  Will nodded dismally, then Will stared and then Will beheld and went, “Wow.”

  The sight was at once beautiful, awesome and terrific. It was of such a scale as to be dizzying. Acre upon grey acre of slate rooftops led away and away to wonder upon wonder upon wonder.

  The dome of St Paul’s glittering in the sunlight. The spires of St Pancras and St Martin in the Fields and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. It was a panoramic view.

  It was Victorian London, as Will had imagined it to be, as he had seen it pictured in engravings and lithographs. It was all there but there was more.

  Will gazed up. “What are those?” he asked.

  “Airships,” said Rune. “Electric airships. The very latest in transport for the upper classes.”

  “Of course.” Will nodded thoughtfully. Memories were there, in his head. Memories of the launching of the Dreadnaught and the death of his ancestor, Captain Ernest Starling of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers. A death that Hugo Rune had somehow been involved in.

  “And what are those?” Will pointed once again.

  They rose, dozens and dozens of them, higher than the spires of the churches, diminishing into the distance on every side, slender metal towers, surmounted by great steel balls, which flickered and sparkled with electrical energy.

  “Tesla towers,” said Hugo Rune. “The brainchild of Mr Nikola Tesla, who created them through the aid of computer systems invented by Lord Babbage. Power stations generate electricity, which is broadcast from these towers on a radio frequency. Wireless transmission of energy. No cables. It has totally revolutionised technology. There will be no internal combustion engine. Automobiles will be fitted with electric motors, which receive the broadcast electricity. No heavy batteries required, hence electrically driven flying craft and soon, we are promised, a ship that will voyage into space.”

  “Electricity without wires?” Will shook his blondy head. “Incredible. We have nothing like that where I come from.”

  “And there would be nothing like it now if I had not persuaded Mr Babbage to exhibit his Analytical Engine at The Great Exhibition in eighteen fifty-one. It was I who introduced him to Her Majesty, God bless Her, and suggested that she grant him Royal Patronage to develop his inventions for the glory of the British Empire.”

  “But he didn’t,” said Will. “I read all about Mr Babbage; he was ignored, his genius never received recognition. He was never given Royal patronage, he never met Mr Tesla and Mr Tesla never perfected his wireless transmission of energy.”

  “Not in the version of history that you were taught, which is not the version of history that you now personally inhabit. Tell me, young man, which version do you now choose to believe?”

  Will shrugged and shook his head once more.

  “I will teach you all that you need to know,” said Rune. “And together we will defeat the evil that seeks to deprive the future of these wonders.”

  “Evil?” Will shook his head once again. “You can’t defeat evil. Evil isn’t a something. It’s a concept. It’s not a thing.”

  “This evil is a thing,” said Rune. “A number of things. Thirteen things in fact.”

  “Thirteen things?” Will asked.

  “Evil in human form,” said Rune. “The Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild.”

  12

  “Now just hold on there!” Tim McGregor did waving his hands in the air. “Are you telling me that I am your brother?”

  “Half-brother,” said Will. “Different mums. And I’m just telling you what Rune told to me.”

  “But my mum and your dad? That’s disgusting.”

  Will shrugged and took a sip from his latest pint of Large. It tasted good. Not as good as Rune’s champagne but cooler though and good.

  “But if it’s true,” Tim made a thoughtful face. “Then it means that I am a descendant of Hugo Rune.”

  “We both are. If it’s true.”

  “But I am his magical heir. Me.”

  Will shrugged once more.

  “Cease with all these shruggings,” Tim told him. “This is incredible. I mean, Rune. Hugo Rune, the greatest magus of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

  “I don’t know about that. But hang about, Tim. You mean that you have actually heard of Hugo Rune?”

  “Heard of him?” Tim laughed loudly. And Will recognised that laugh. It was the laugh of Hugo Rune. “H
eard of Rune? The man is a legend in the annuls of the occult. The guru’s guru. The Logos of the Aeon. The One and Only. The Lad Himself. The founder of the church of Runeology.”

  “There is no such church,” said Will.

  “There was.” Tim nodded his hairy head. “It wasn’t too big a church. It only had a congregation of about six. Women mostly. Young women, wealthy young women.”

  “Sounds about right,” said Will.

  “Hugo Rune wrote The Book of Ultimate Truths. I have a copy.”

  “You have a copy of a book? You never told me this.”

  “You said you didn’t believe in magic. You’d have sneered if I’d told you.”

  Will all but shrugged, but didn’t.

  “But this is so brilliant,” Tim was now all smiles. “I always knew I was special. But Hugo Rune’s magical heir! Fantastic. So, when do we go back into the past? What do I have to do? Will I get to cast spells and stuff?”

  “I’m sure you’ll get the opportunity to try. But not yet. You have to hear all of the story-so-far first.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” said Tim. “Finish your pint. Where did you park the time machine?”

  “I didn’t return here in a time machine.” Will sipped further Large. “Time machines are old-fashioned. That’s not the way I travel through time now.”

  “Oh,” said Tim. “So how do you do it? By magic?”

  “No, not magic. It’s done by vegetable, actually. But all that’s a year on in the story.”

  “A year on?” Tim scratched at his hairy head. “Are you telling me that you were there in Victorian times for a year?”

  Will nodded. “Haven’t you noticed that I look a bit older?”

  “I’m a bloke,” said Tim. “Blokes don’t notice stuff like that. Although, perhaps, now that I look at you closely. You didn’t have those big Victorian sideburns yesterday, did you? And you are dressed in Victorian costume, which you weren’t when you went to the toilet on the tram.”

  “The sideburns took me nearly a year to grow.”

  “I’m loving this,” Tim rubbed his hands together. “I didn’t like the bit where I got killed next Friday night. But I assume I’ll be dodging that.”

  Will nodded.

  “So I love all the rest. Especially the magic. He actually cast a spell on your knees, did he?”

  “I suspect the champagne was drugged,” said Will.

  Tim laughed once more. “It was magic,” he said. “Rune was one of the greatest magicians of his, or any other, age. He spoke every language known to man and could play chess blindfolded, against six grand masters simultaneously, and beat every one of them, whilst engaging in, shall we say, congress, with a woman in an adjoining room.”

  “So he told me,” said Will. “Although I never actually witnessed such a competition.”

  “And darts,” said Tim. “He played darts with the Dalai Lama. Hands-off darts. Using his powers of telekinesis.”

  “I never actually saw that either. Although we did visit the Dalai. Nice chap.”

  “You visited the Dalai Lama?”

  “With Rune. We travelled for nearly a year. Rune was always on the move. Outwitting the forces of evil.”

  “Witches,” said Tim.

  “Creditors,” said Will. “Rune never carried money, you see. He said it was beneath him to do so. He said that he offered the world his genius and all he expected in return was that the world should cover his expenses. We stayed in a lot of first-class hotels. But we always had to leave them speedily and stealthily, and under the cover of darkness.”

  “But all the time he was teaching you his magic?”

  “He informed me that I had to grow physically before I could grow spiritually. I spent all my time dragging his steamer trunk about.”

  “Oh,” said Tim once more. “But you got to see some amazing sights, I’ll bet.”

  “That’s true enough and we did it in style. We journeyed across the Victorian world, always travelling first class and always failing to pay for our tickets. We crossed China, where we were the honoured guests of the Mandarin. We had to leave in a rush though, because Rune engaged in, as you put it, congress, with a number of the Mandarin’s concubines.”

  “Top man,” said Tim. “But there must have been some purpose to all this travelling, other than for evading creditors.”

  “I’m sure there was, but Rune did not see fit to confide it to me. I learned a lot though, which might well have been the purpose. I learned how to handle myself, how to mix in society, and it all came in very useful. Shall I continue with the story?”

  “Please do so,” Tim raised his glass. “But promise me that when you’ve done, you’ll definitely take me back into the past with you.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I need your help, Tim. You’re the only person I can turn to. There’s big trouble going on back there.”

  “Right,” said Tim. “So continue with your story.”

  “Right,” said Will. “But you must understand that although being with Rune was never dull and did involve a high risk factor, which I found personally appealing, I was trapped in an age that wasn’t mine and an age that is not how our history records it. There were wonders back then, scientific wonders, in England at least. It was all very confusing to me and I was homesick. Can you believe that? A chance at real adventure and I got homesick. I missed my mum and dad, and you too.”

  “Nice,” said Tim. “I suppose.”

  “And I still didn’t understand why the truth about Victorian times had been covered up. I wanted to know a lot. Rune said that he had engineered it for me to return to the past, although it was you that he really wanted. And that the intention was for me to aid him in his struggle against the forces of evil, which came in the shape of The Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild. But he wouldn’t confide his plans to me.”

  “Does it all become clear in the story?” Tim asked.

  “Sort of,” said Will.

  “Then perhaps you should continue the story now. Then we can both, you know, whip back in time and stuff. Eh?”

  “Right,” said Will once more. “I’ll tell you the lot. I have to or you won’t understand. It’s exciting stuff. You’ll enjoy it. And when I’m done you’ll understand what you have to do and we’ll return to the past together. Are you all right with that?”

  “I’m all right with that.” Tim raised his glass a little higher. “A toast?” said he.

  “A toast?” said Will.

  “To the future,” said Tim. “Which might lie in the past. And to our mutual ancestor, Mr Hugo Rune.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Will.

  And he did so.

  “The champagne to your liking?” asked Hugo Rune.

  Will studied his glass. The light that fell upon it came from one of the crystal chandeliers that hung from the ornately gilded ceiling of the Café Royal, Piccadilly. It was November, the year was eighteen ninety-nine.

  “Somewhat inferior,” said Will, as he viewed the rising bubbles in the golden liquid. “I would hate to take issue with the wine waiter over this.” Will now studied the label on the bottle. “However, I would suggest that this is not a Chateau Rothschild, but rather a Chateau Vamberry.”

  Rune nodded approvingly. Tonight the guru’s guru, The Logos of the Aeon, The One and Only, The Lad Himself, wore full Highland dress, for reasons of his own that were not explained to Will, but which were probably something to do with it being Friday. With a tweed bonnet with brooch and eagle’s feathers, ceremonial dress tunic of crimson damask, a kilt in a tartan of Rune’s own design, a dirk in his left sock and silk slippers on his feet, Rune, as ever, cut a dash.

  Will was smartly turned out in a black satin evening suit, white tie and patent leather shoes. Neither he, nor Rune, had actually paid for their apparel.

  Will glanced all around and about at his surroundings.

  The interior of the Café Royal had come as something of a surprise to him, as he had expected the full V
ictorian over-the-topness: gilded columns, ornate statuary, marble fireplaces and Rococo furnishings. But there was little of the Victorian left to the decor, except the ceiling and the crystal chandeliers.

  The Café Royal had gone post-modern.

  The chairs and tables looked to be of the IKEA persuasion. The crockery was white, the cutlery had plastic handles. The walls of this famous establishment had been stripped of their decorative plaster mouldings, painted in pastel shades and hung with huge canvasses.

  “The work of Richard Dadd,” said Hugo Rune. “Her Majesty’s favourite artist.”

  “And one of mine too,” said Will. “But Dadd never painted pictures like this. These paintings look more like the work of Mark Rothko. They’re just big splodges of colour. They’re rubbish.”

  Rune put a finger to his fleshy lips. “Mr Dadd is a most fashionable artist,” said he. “His latest portrait of the Queen hangs in the Tate. Three gallons of red emulsion slung over a ten foot-square canvas. Not my cup of Earl Grey, to be sure, but fashion is fashion. And by the by, Mr Dadd sits yonder.”

  Will turned to view Mr Dadd. “Which one?” Will asked.

  “Short fat fellow, sitting with that womaniser, Wilde.”

  “Oscar Wilde?” Will asked.

  “That’s the chap; dabbles a bit in theatre, when he’s not bedding some countess or another.”

  “But I thought Oscar Wilde was gay.”

  “Oh, he’s cheerful enough.”

  “I mean, as in him being a sweeper of the chocolate chimney.”

  Rune laughed loudly. “Quite the reverse,” said he. “A big ladies man is our Oscar.” And Rune caught the eye of Wilde and waved. “Evening, Oscar,” he called.

  Oscar Wilde made a face and raised two fingers at Rune.

  “Commoner,” said Rune. “Still bearing a grudge over the twenty guineas I borrowed from him.”

  “Do you know anyone else here?” Will asked, as he viewed the fashionably dressed patrons of the Café Royal.

  “Indeed,” said Rune. “Most, if not all. See that tall fellow lounging by the jukebox; that is Little Tich, who has found fame with his ever-popular Big Boot Dance. And there, the gaunt creature with the long black beard. That is Count Otto Black, proprietor of the Circus Fantastique, who has found fame through the exploitation of freaks, foul fellow that he is.”