The Wrong Rite

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “I’ll show you.”

  Bathrooms had come to the farm during the brief but opulent reign of Edward VII; nice, commodious ones with plenty of room to do what needed to be done. Dorothy enjoyed herself hugely. When they finally got back to the kitchen, Tom the Flicks was there too. Tom Feste, actually; she’d finally learned his real name though not yet his precise connection with the Rhyses. Not that it mattered, they all appeared to call each other cousins regardless of degree.

  Madoc was still the best-looking, Janet decided, comparing the three of them together. Dafydd was the handsomest, an entirely different thing. That made Tom the ugly duckling, which wasn’t fair. He wasn’t so bad, if you liked them tall and skinny and oozing personality from every pore. Magnetic, that was the word. Like those fancy gadgets that well-meaning people gave you at Christmas to stick on your refrigerator door. And about as useful, from what little she’d seen of him so far. His job on the films was supposed to involve production, but nobody seemed all that clear as to what he produced.

  Dorothy didn’t think much of Tom, that was plain enough. When he tried to chuck her under the chin, she turned her head away and primmed up her mouth, so exactly like her mother when Janet was miffed about something that Madoc burst out laughing.

  “Let her alone, Tom, she’s too young for you. What happened to Patricia, by the way?”

  “Good question. What happened to Patricia, Dafydd?”

  That must have been the blonde in the Daimler, trust Madoc to remember her name. Apparently Dafydd didn’t; he looked blank for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh yes, Patricia. She wanted to go to Swansea, so I drove her to the station and put her on the train. I assumed you knew.”

  “Clever you.”

  Meaning, Janet supposed, that Tom admired the way Dafydd had thwarted Patricia’s hope of being driven to Swansea in the Daimler. Or that Tom was pleased at having got the woman off his hands so effortlessly. Or that Tom was not pleased, and wanted Dafydd to know it. This wasn’t Janet’s kind of conversation. She stood up and reached for the diaper bag.

  “This has been lovely, but I expect Betty will be wondering where we’ve got to. We’ll see you later on, won’t we? Madoc, do you want to stay and visit awhile longer?”

  “No, I promised Uncle Caradoc I’d help him hang up his new sickle. Come on, Dorothy, say thanks to Aunt Elen and Uncle Huw. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help this afternoon.”

  There would be, for sure. They left the farm with their consciences clear and dawdled back toward the big house, taking time to sniff the apple blossoms along the way.

  After a while, Madoc asked, “How does Dafydd strike you this trip, Jenny? He seems a bit down in the mouth, don’t you think?”

  “It could be that he’s worn-out from the rackety life he leads; but if you really want to know, I’m wondering whether he might be plain jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of whom?”

  “You, of course.”

  “That’s a switch. What makes you say that? Is it because of you?”

  “I suppose I’m part of it, in a way. I expect it’s more seeing everybody making a fuss over Dorothy, and us being so well settled in our own house and, oh, you know. Dafydd’s used to being cock of the walk; now you’ve got something to crow about that he doesn’t. Dafydd’s what? Thirty-eight?”

  “Thirty-nine. Six years older than I. Good Lord, he’ll be forty his next birthday. I see what you mean.”

  “Then you’d better take him aside and give him a little brotherly talking-to about growing up, don’t you think?”

  “No, you do it. You know him better than I.”

  “Madoc, that’s ridiculous! I’ve seen Dafydd maybe half a dozen times in the four years we’ve been married: once here, once that time when he stayed overnight with us in Fredericton right after we’d bought the house, and occasionally for dinner in St. John or someplace when he happened to be passing through.”

  “But he talks to you.”

  “He flirts with me. Not because he’s interested, just from force of habit. I don’t think I’ve ever had two minutes’ worth of serious discussion with Dafydd about anything at all.”

  “Neither have I, that I can remember. Dafydd was just that much older, you see. When I was a kid in Canada, he was off at school in England. When I was at school in Winnipeg, he was already studying voice in London; and so it went. You know, love, it’s a funny thing. Back at your brother’s farm, I can wander out to the barn with Bert and pretty soon we’ll be sitting on a couple of upended milk pails. We’ll get to talking about taxes or plumbing or whatever, and wind up solving the riddle of the universe. With Dafydd, it’s just polite chitchat. We’ve nothing in common except our parents and the relatives. I’m fond of him, I suppose; but when it comes down to cases, Jenny, I don’t really know my own brother at all.”

  Chapter 6

  “WELL, IT’S HIS LOSS, not yours.” Janet couldn’t bear to see Madoc looking glum on such a lovely morning, not over a lightweight like Dafydd. “I expect sooner or later some nice, tough-minded woman a lot like your mother’s going to take him in hand and straighten him out. What about your cousin Tom, or whatever he is? Are he and Dafydd friendly? Really friendly, I mean, like you and Bert. I should think they’d have more in common, both being in the entertainment field, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Perhaps they do, though you’d better not let Mother hear you calling grand opera ‘the entertainment field.’” Madoc was smiling now. “Tom’s no relation to us, but he and Dafydd knew each other as kids. Whether they pour out their souls to each other, I couldn’t say. What they really appear to have in common these days is a taste for flashy cars and persuadable women, though at least Dafydd has sense enough not to marry every third one who comes along. God knows what Tom’s paid out in alimony by now.”

  “It doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent in his pocketbook, if that Daimler’s any sign.”

  “Oh, they make big money on the flicks. Besides, if Tom gets hard up, he can always come and sponge on Lisa.”

  “Does he?”

  “He comes. I don’t know whether he sponges. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Making judgmental remarks unsupported by evidence was not a habit of Madoc’s. Janet wondered a bit, then changed the subject.

  “Speaking of Lisa, she wants us to visit. Are we supposed to drop in whenever we feel like it, or wait to be properly invited?”

  “Let’s get Dorothy bedded down for her nap, then drop. If Lisa’s still chopping leeks, we can say we’re just out for a walk and mustn’t stay because Betty expects us back to lick the spoons.”

  “I hope she doesn’t.”

  Uncle Caradoc’s kitchen door was standing open now; the day had turned warm as they’d known it would. Somebody was holding forth inside; Janet recognized the plummy voice as Bob’s. She raised her eyebrows at Madoc, he shrugged back as best he could with Dorothy trying to climb over his shoulder, and they went in.

  “Properly speaking, the coelcerth should be ignited by a spark achieved by rubbing two pieces of oak together,” Bob was insisting.

  “This is after the nine men with no money in their pockets and no buckles on their belts have collected the sticks from the nine different kinds of trees?” That was Gwen, being flip.

  Bob might not have realized she was pulling his leg. Anyway, he refused to be disconcerted. “‘With no metal on their persons’ would perhaps be the apter phrase. The sticks would by now have been more or less symmetrically arranged within the perimeter of a circle cut in the turf. One stick would catch the spark and be used as a torch to kindle the coelcerth.”

  “The coelcerth being the Beltane fire, right?”

  “Or the balefire, as it is sometimes called. There may be two fires instead of one.”

  “Oh, not two fires!” That was Mary, all set to pout. “You’re not going to do two fires, Bob?”

  “My only hope is that there will be sticks enough for the one fire, since we
are unable to assemble nine men to do the gathering.”

  So this was the real reason why Dafydd and Tom were hiding out at Uncle Huw’s, and why Bob was casting that baleful glance at Madoc.

  “But you’re still going to rub the two pieces of oak together, aren’t you?” Gwen really was a minx. “How long will it take you to get a spark?”

  “Till hell freezes over,” muttered Dai. “He’ll use a match, he always does. Plenty of matches, and maybe a dash of petrol.”

  “Not petrol, Dai,” Madoc protested, “unless your uncle’s planning to commit a particularly unpleasant form of suicide. I’ll make him a fuzz stick, Canadian style.”

  “How jolly, the fuzz will make a fuzz stick. You are fuzz, aren’t you, Madoc?”

  Dai, who’d barely opened his mouth all last evening, must suddenly have decided to be the life of the party. Janet wished he’d go back to being sullen. Madoc was taking the callow youth in stride.

  “Oh yes, I’m fuzz, if you don’t like the sound of policeman. We get called worse, often enough. A fuzz stick isn’t a truncheon, if that’s what you’re thinking; just a piece of kindling wood that’s been frayed around the edges to make it ignite more quickly.”

  Gwen skipped over to the box where Betty kept bits of kindling she might need to restart the coal fire in the Aga should it go out, which it seldom did, winter or summer. “Here’s a likely faggot. Let’s see you fuzz it.”

  “Very well, Gwen, on to the fray.”

  Madoc took out his jackknife and began making short, slantwise cuts into the wood, keeping them close together and not detaching them so that they curled back and would indeed present a tempting snack for any spark ambitious to become a blaze. He worked neatly and quickly; by the time he was through, the stick was a mass of whitish curls.

  “Ooh, that’s lovely!” cried his sister. “Much too pretty to burn; it’s like a miniature tree. Does he make them for you, Jenny?”

  “Sometimes. He whittled a whole grove of baby ones this past Christmas to hang on our tree as a present for Dorothy. Fuzz sticks are mostly for when you’re out camping and can’t find any dry tinder. This isn’t one of Madoc’s better efforts; you may have it for the Beltane fire if you want, Dai.”

  Neither Dai nor Bob appeared to be overwhelmed with gratitude, but Mary was ecstatic. “Thank you, cefnder. This will be my first time to jump over a fuzz stick.”

  “I have tried to explain, Mary”—Bob spoke with the weary impatience of one who has had to say the same thing far too many times—“that it is inappropriate for you to anticipate. The correct procedure is for cakes to be baked, some of oatmeal and some of brown meal, then broken into fourths and placed in a bag. Each person in the gathering should draw a piece without looking, and only those who get the brown pieces should leap three times through the fire. However, as it appears we are not to have our oatmeal cakes nor our brown cakes and the fire will not have been laid with proper ceremony, this may as well become just another case of who wants to leap and who does not.”

  “Count me among the nots.” Iseult had finally graced the gathering, in cream-colored gabardine pants and a matching tunic that had its neckline cut in a capital V. She also wore a good many golden chains, presumably to keep her pectoral area warm. “Where’s Reuel?”

  “He asked for sandwiches and went off to the downs.” Betty was putting great platters of sliced meats and salad on the table. “It is yourselves you must be helping, I have more to do. And no time to be baking white and brown cakes for heathen rites,” she added rather snappishly. “What is it that Dorothy will be wanting to eat, Mrs. Madoc?”

  “Nothing, thank you, Betty. She had porridge at Aunt Elen’s. I’ll just take her upstairs, she usually has her nap about now.”

  Sir Caradoc and Sir Emlyn volunteered in chorus, bass and baritone, to sit with her if Janet and Madoc wanted to go off somewhere. Janet was charmed.

  “Why don’t you do it together? She’d love having two handsome men all to herself. Wouldn’t you, Dorothy?”

  Sir Caradoc would drop off, too, Janet suspected. So would Sir Emlyn, like as not. And what if they did? Surely one or the other would wake up if the baby cried. Lady Rhys was indicating that she’d be downstairs in the drawing room fixing the flowers, or else in the dining hall scraping up candle wax. She’d come to the rescue should her services be required, as they very likely would.

  While they were settling the baby-sitting question, Madoc had been making Janet a lovely sandwich to take upstairs with her. She thanked him and excused herself.

  “Come up in half an hour or so, whenever you’re ready. I doubt whether Dorothy will take long to drop off, after the busy morning she’s had.”

  She’d had to raise her own voice to make herself heard over Bob’s, he was still on about the Beltane fires.

  “It is sympathetic magic, you know. Symbolically, the fire is meant to burn up the witches.”

  “That doesn’t sound madly sympathetic to me,” drawled Iseult. “Would somebody pass the mustard?”

  Presumably someone did. Janet couldn’t wait to find out, Dorothy was beginning to fuss.

  It was thoughtful of Betty to have put them in the red room, pleasant to be alone with her baby for a while, to sit in a low slipper chair by the window with the soft breeze coming in, to watch the sun turning the hills to golden green, to eat her good sandwich while Dorothy kneaded and sucked and made gentle grunting noises like a happy piglet. A neat illustration of supply and demand.

  She’d got the baby tucked into the cradle and herself decent by the time the proud grandfather and the delighted great-great-uncle tiptoed in like two policemen strayed from The Pirates of Penzance, and she was free to go. She gave them each a kiss, reminded them to yell for Lady Rhys if their charge should wake up, and left them to cope as they might.

  Her husband was, as she’d expected, still in the kitchen. Megan had appeared from somewhere and was washing pots for Betty, Madoc was trying to help and getting the shy girl all flustered. Janet chased him off to make another fuzz stick and offered to take over the pot-washing. However, that only flustered Megan further, they might as well go fluster Lisa instead.

  Madoc was quite willing, this was not a day to be sitting around the kitchen stove. He presented his fuzz stick to Betty, who tucked it up carefully in a corner of the dresser next to the Staffordshire cow, and they went.

  “How far is it to Lisa’s?” Janet asked. “I didn’t even get to meet her before, did I? I didn’t remember her at all.”

  “It’s not much more than half a mile. You won’t mind walking that far, will you? And no, we didn’t see Lisa last time. She was off somewhere. Looking at tortoises, probably. I told you about Tessie, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did. We’ll have to get some of her books for Dorothy when she’s old enough to read.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, love. Tessie’s a fairly uninhibited type, as tortoises go, we don’t want to give the kid notions. Jenny, do you think it’s going to be tough on her, having a cop for a father?”

  “I expect likely she’ll manage. Look at that sheep, smack in the middle of the road. It’s got blue paint on its neck. That’s not Uncle Caradoc’s mark, is it?”

  “No, his is a red splotch on the left hip.” Madoc remembered that all too well. “I don’t know whose this one would be. Somebody will cope with it, sooner or later.”

  On her previous visit, Janet had marveled over the way sheep were allowed to graze wherever they took the notion. She’d seen them in dooryards, churchyards, along roadsides, on the lawn of the town hall. She’d been startled one morning in Bangor, where they were staying at a rather classy hotel, to see a sheep with its nose pressed against the bathroom window, watching her brush her teeth. She didn’t see much point in trying to shoo this one over into the meadow, it would only wander back again if it took the notion. Drivers in rural areas were used to keeping a lookout for sheep; if they weren’t, they soon learned.

  “Good thing
they’re such docile creatures,” she remarked.

  “Not always.” Madoc wished the subject hadn’t come up. “A ram can be as mean as a billy goat. Worse, because they look so sheepish you don’t think anything’s going to happen. One of Uncle Caradoc’s rams got me in the seat of the pants when I was a kid. I flew about six feet and landed in a mudhole. Mother was not pleased. She’d have thought I knew better than to go around teasing a poor, innocent sheep.”

  “You must have been a sore trial.” Janet slipped her arm through his and rubbed her cheek on his sleeve.

  “Oh, I was. You’re not planning to leap the balefire, are you?”

  “Perish the thought. I’ve got nothing against witches. I wouldn’t mind watching Mary, though. It’ll be tomorrow, won’t it? How late will they start?”

  “Not late. Shortly after the sun goes down, I expect. Perhaps the idea is to bring back the light. I’m not much up on folklore myself, I hear enough of it from crooks. Anyway, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go and watch, if you want to. We could take Dorothy, for that matter. At least in later years she can say she’s been.”

  “You’re thinking this might be the last time, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose so, Jenny. How could I help it?”

  “Uncle Caradoc looks fairly spry to me, dear. Of course we never know what’s going to happen.” Janet could hardly help thinking of her own parents and that logging truck her father hadn’t happened to notice quite soon enough. “Uncle Huw wouldn’t want to keep up the Beltane fires?”

  “I shouldn’t think so, he’s not too big on pagan rites. I suspect the main reason he and Aunt Elen stayed away from dinner last night is that Uncle Huw finds Bob’s gassing about folklore something of a pain, and particularly can’t stand Mary when she gets on about her leaping.”