Amanda Cadabra and The Cellar of Secrets

by Holly Bell

  ‘Robin Streeter?’

  ‘Yes. They said they didn’t know much about the history to the place. They were OK, but later, my foreman, Jan, he was … what is the exact word? … stern … strict. He is not usually like that. He told me it is better for me to concentrate on the job and not to ask so many questions. He said it nicely, you know, but he has never spoken like that before. I think they had complained maybe. I tried to ask around the crew, but they don’t want to talk or think about it. I think you should not go poking around the place, Amanda. I think there is something not right here. I do not want anything bad to happen to you.’

  Amanda took him at his word. ‘Thank you. Hugo. I understand. OK. I can’t go myself … but I know someone who can. Someone no one would notice.’

  ‘Who?’ he asked, curiously.

  Amanda looked down at her feet. Hugo slid his chair a little back from the table, so that he could casually see underneath it. A warm, furry, grey bundle was sitting on Amanda’s shoes, and was weighing him up with an acid yellow stare.

  ‘Your familiar?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Can you meet me again on Sunday, Amanda?’

  ‘Sure, we can confer again then,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘Would you like to see our famous orchard?’

  ‘I did not know it was famous,’ he said with humour, ‘but yes, please!’

  After the café closed, Amanda dropped Hugo off outside the Snout and Trough, and drove back to Orchard Row. She opened the front door and let Tempest in first, wondering how to approach him. Had he heard and understood what she’d said to Hugo about the ‘someone who can’?

  First she fed him a sachet of Monarch’s Minced Chicken, and waited nonchalantly for him to settle himself for a post-dinner nap on the sofa. She knelt on the floor and stroked him, uttering blandishments.

  ‘Who’s my handsome man, den? Who’s da most bootiful kittykins?’ He purred and closed his eyes.

  ‘Temmmpessst, … would you like to do something for Ammy?’

  He had not been deceived. He stopped purring and opened his lemon lamps on full beam. Amanda’s familiar directed them unwaveringly into her eyes. She knew in that instant that he knew. And now he knew she knew he knew.

  ‘Ok,’ she said, abandoning her coaxing. She whipped a shallow glass jar of caviar from her pocket. It was only lumpfish; she hoped it wouldn’t take the far more expensive sturgeon variety. ‘I’d like you to take a little walk. I need you to do some reconnaissance and I can’t go myself. Don’t pretend that you don’t know all about it.’

  He gave her a bored look that said it all.

  ‘So. You can have half of this while I run the bath, and then we can take a little stroll up the road to Lost Madley. We just need to find the air raid shelter and then you can come back home and have the rest of this delicious treat. Pleeeeease, Tempest? You know that I can’t do this without you. You know that without you your Ammy is just one helpless ickle witch.’

  Tempest sighed with the air of one much tried. Finally he uncoiled himself and led the way to the kitchen. Amanda picked him up, cuddled and kissed him.

  ‘Thank oo, Tempest!’

  She put him down on his favourite chair and served him half of the tin, at the table, then left the room. Tempest looked up from his caviar at her retreating form. A single word summed up his emotions:

  Humans!

  Amanda made her way upstairs into the bathroom. She ran the taps, and lit some candles. After a few minutes she was soaking under a quilt of bubbles, lavender scented, and slipping into her meditative state. Waiting for it to come.

  The vision.

  There it was. The kitchen back door, towering above, but blurred. The décor, a wash of greens and blues.

  Cat’s eyes.

  This was the unique nature of Amanda’s bond with her familiar, his ability to share what he saw with her. Most of her life with him, she had enjoyed it for recreational purposes to go to places, see things, that her physical limitations would not allow her. The freedom and experience that the gift had given Amanda had transformed her life. That was how she’d seen Lost Madley. Just exploring. But that had changed to something even more important a matter of weeks ago. And now, once again, together they were on the trail of something sinister.

  Into the dusk they went. It was strange, the pavement being so close, the garden walls so high. Tempest crossed the road onto the north side of Orchard Row, so that he could keep to the trees at the edge of the playing fields as he travelled east. At the top of the road, he moved from garden to garden, then crossed Hog Lane to the back of the green.

  The headlamps of a passing car illuminated Muttring Lane while Tempest crept behind the shrubs near the last house. All clear. He ducked from bush to bush in the garden of The Elms, home of Irene James and her famous model daughter, Jessica. Soon he was into the trees of Madley Wood.

  The cat picked up speed then abruptly stopped stock-still. Amanda could see that he was nearer to the ground. He must be crouching, she thought. He remained motionless for what seemed an age. The bath water was beginning to lose its superheated edge, but Amanda knew better than to urge him on.

  There was a flicker of darker in the darkness, a jerk forward, a thin pale flailing tail, then … ugh ... some sort of rodent was in Tempest’s jaws, then falling and trapped under paws. He watched it wriggle, unharmed but alarmed.

  The paws lifted and the rat-shaped shadow scuttled away to live another day. Tempest stood up, and continued along Lost Madley Lane. The building site came into view. The security lights were on. There was at least one person on duty. The cat skirted the trees on the other side of the track until he was opposite where the concrete platform ended, and the ruins began.

  He crossed over to them, and began a systematic tour, up the lane of Lost Madley, picking his way around rubble, splintered and broken wood, glass, abandoned textiles, dust and cobwebs. It was impossible to make out where one house ended and the next began, until the last untidy mound was passed.

  And here it was, a hump in the ground, half covered by the fallen debris from the last dwelling, a depression shadowing darkly into its mouth.

  ‘Yes, Tempest, yes. Good boy,’ breathed Amanda. He scraped away with his paws, digging out a bigger hole. He leaned in and down into the depths of the old bomb shelter, hard to see even with cat vision, but surely large enough for the whole hamlet.

  ‘That’s it. Good. Clever kitty. Come home, now, Tempest. Have the rest of your luxury snack.’ He withdrew his head and she had a view of Lost Madley, down the length of the lane, stretching to the concrete of the research-centre-to-be.

  But Tempest was not finished. He was out on the tiles. It was still playtime. Caviar would be there when he got back. He padded and crouched, swiped at a moth, and pursued a spider along the ruins.

  He was nearly at the building site, when a favourite quarry whistled and whirled past him. He gave chase until the bat disappeared into a narrow horizontal crack in the ground, just beside the slab. Tempest got a paw into the crevice and clawed away, until he could get enough of his face in to get a look at what lay inside. Big enough for a bat to take refuge in, it might have other interesting occupants.

  Needles of faint light were finding their way in through other cracks in the rubble. Enough to see a room-sized cavity crisscrossed with fallen beams, and piled with chunks of plaster and stone. Impossible to see more, or to enter. Tempest swept some small loose rocks back over the entrance and lost interest. He crossed back to the trees and padded homeward.

  Amanda reflected that she’d need Tempest if she wanted to find the hole again. She opened her eyes, leaned forward and ran the hot tap, thinking. She’d have news on Sunday for Hugo.

  Hugo … he was certainly a new and wonderful experience. They made a good team. Someone like him could be a real partner in life. Like Senara and Perran, like the Bergstroms. Something she’d wondered if she could ever have. But, Amanda had no illusions. In a matter of days, Hugo
would be leaving. Still, there was no harm in day-dreaming about ….

  There was a rattle at the kitchen door. His Highness had returned. With a sigh, Amanda got out of the water, dressed and went downstairs to give Tempest the other half of the bargain.

  As she watched him devour the caviar, then follow her to the sofa for a snuggle, it struck her that she did have a partner, one who shared her magical world.

  ‘I can always be myself wiv oo, can’t I, pwecious?’

  Tempest purred in answer.

  ‘Yes, oo is my handsome boy, isn’t oo?’ Not tall, not dark or fair, but …‘Oo is sooo handsome, my kitty.’

  Tempest thought that, for all her human failings, his witch had, at least, got that right.

  Chapter 18

  Looking for Flamgoyne

  Here’s something new, thought Hogarth, observing Thomas standing before one of the bookcases that flanked the fireplace. Normally he was collapsed into one of the Chesterfield armchairs, head back, eyes closed, relaxing after the day, the week, the half-week, while Hogarth made the tea or got trays for them to eat their takeaways off.

  Now, what is he looking for? Hogarth wondered.

  Thomas was a reader. Had been as long as Hogarth had known him. But he only ever occasionally borrowed books from Hogarth’s library; an obscure volume on police work or an out-of-print novel.

  Thomas had once spent a weekend staying over while a sprained ankle had healed. Not, alas, damaged in the line of duty or even sport, but by a newly formed pothole in the station car park, much to the mirth of colleagues and juniors. Thomas had taken the inevitable ragging in good part. That was one of his most endearing qualities, reflected Hogarth, for all the gravity of the job he did, Thomas didn’t take himself too seriously.

  That weekend, Thomas had spent a good many hours reading on the sofa with his foot elevated. But today, he had two sound ankles, and the intensity of his expression, Hogarth judged, was not in keeping with a search for an airport novel.

  Hogarth manoeuvred to follow the direction of Thomas’s gaze to near the end of the second shelf from the top, to two books, one fat, one slim, wedged in tightly. They were the two books Hogarth had shown him that day, at least a year ago. It was the Sunday that Thomas had made an impromptu visit to Amanda Cadabra and had come back disturbed by what his senses had detected in her workshop.

  ‘Here’s your tea, lad,’ said Hogarth, interrupting Trelawney’s reverie.

  Thomas turned with a slight start.

  ‘Oh. Thanks, Mike.’

  ‘Seen something that interests you?’

  ‘Just browsing. Sort of.’

  ‘You’re welcome to.’

  Thomas sat down and stirred his tea.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking about those books you showed me ages ago, wondering if you had anything else, sort of, on the subject.’

  ‘The history of Cornwall? I’m sure I could find something if I knew better what you were after.’

  Thomas hesitated.

  Hogarth took a shrewd guess and offered him a way in. ‘Been doing some research, following what you and Miss Cadabra put together during your conference?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right. There’s nothing online about any Polgoyne or Flamgoyne family members. Nothing about the history and none of them is making any appearance on social networking sites, or any other sites.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to ask me because you want information that’s, er … purely secular, shall we say?’

  ‘Exactly. I don’t want it all clouded by the hocus pocus Cornish witch clans business.’

  ‘You could ask your father. It’s his family, after all.’

  ‘I did. He became tense, said they were distant relations. I asked what exactly the relationship was. He eventually told me then clammed up. I tried my mother. She just said, “ask your father”, and changed the subject faster than a speeding bullet.’

  ‘All right. What do you deduce from your conference with Amanda that you’re comfortable with?’ asked Hogarth, with a touch of humour.

  ‘I’m not being chicken, Mike. I just want to keep things clear,’ insisted Thomas

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Well, judging from my memories of the Flamgoyne mansion, and their uneasy alliance with the Cardiubarns, and Miss Cadabra’s recollections of her family’s grand establishment, I’d say they were, or are, both powerful families. Who’s to say if it’s still the case, but they had the trappings of wealth and the air of influence, in the past, at least.’

  ‘And their relationship to you is ...?'

  ‘My grandfather Jeremy Trelawney married Emblyn Flamgoyne. Obviously, my mother didn’t approve of her in-laws.’

  ‘Your mother wasn’t present at all, in the dream you had of being back at the Flamgoyne house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the in-laws are a sore subject even now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think it was a factor in your parents’ decision to divorce?’ Hogarth asked gently. He was aware of how close he was to the bone now.

  Thomas put down his tea. ‘Mind if I have a drink, Mike?’

  ‘Course not. Go ahead.’

  Thomas got up and went to the cabinet where the spirits were kept. ‘Join me?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Thomas knew the way that Mike liked his whiskey and handed him the glass. Unusually, on this occasion, Trelawney took his neat. ‘I’ve never told this to a soul. Not even to myself, when I could help it.’

  Hogarth waited.

  Thomas had yet to take a sip, but the sight of the golden liquid in the tumbler seemed to give him courage.

  ‘It’s not like my parents ever got on. Not since I can remember. But there was this one night. It was my 10th birthday. I’d had the cake, the presents, and, I suppose. I’d overdone the treats and couldn’t sleep. You know?’

  Hogarth nodded.

  ‘I heard their voices in the kitchen downstairs. Nothing unusual about that. I went to the landing. I remember squatting and holding on to the bannisters. They are quite quietly spoken people, my parents. Their voices were more like a murmur. And then it came. Like a shriek. My mother. Just one word. Full of hate and accusation and desperation.’

  Thomas stopped as though the word stuck in his throat.

  ‘What was it, lad?’

  Thomas looked up, white-faced. ‘Sorcery.’ He sat, hunched over in the armchair. ‘The next thing I knew, they were telling me they were getting divorced, and if it were OK with me, I’d spend term-time with dad and hols with mum.’

  Suddenly his demeanour changed. He sat up, frowning.

  ‘Wait. There’s something more. I remember this now. It was before ….Yes, she said it more than once, to my father: “We had a deal!”’

  Abruptly Thomas stood up and looked around for his jacket.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mike, I have to go.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Hogarth smiled.

  ‘Yes. To London. And this time my mother is going to answer my questions!’

  ‘Good luck, lad.’

  Thomas was out the door and starting his car as Hogarth stood listening and looking up at the bookcase. He said aloud to himself,

  ‘But will you like what she tells you, Thomas?’

  Chapter 19

  Resolution

  On Sunday, Amanda gave Hugo the latest report. Hugo had nothing new to tell. As they walked between the Hormead Pearmain apple trees, she saw the sun shining on his hair.

  ‘May I ask you a personal question?’ she requested.

  Hugo smiled. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Your hair …. erm … brown with golden roots. Unusual.’

  ‘Ah, yes … I had no time before I left. I colour my hair brown. You know? Blonde hair and blue eyes and Bavarian? People tease me and say, have I just walked out of an Oktoberfest theme party!’

  Amanda laughed. ‘I understand.’

  ‘May I ask you a
personal question too?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered readily.

  ‘What is your gift? Your, er … talent?’

  ‘Levitation.’

  He stopped and stared at her.

  ‘No. Really?’

  ‘Yes. Why? Is it yours too?’

  ‘No. No, I have nothing like that. Can you show me? Please? I have never seen this.’

  ‘But you know other witches. You must have seen it used before?’

  ‘You really don’t know, do you?’ Hugo marvelled. ‘This gift is very rare. You are very special, even among witches.’

  ‘Noooo. I find that hard to believe,’ Amanda answered sceptically.

  ‘How many other witches do you know?’

  Amanda paused and counted: Granny and Grandpa, Aunt Amelia and the Bergstroms.

  ‘Not many,’ she admitted.

  ‘And your grandparents, never told you how extraordinary it is?’

  ‘Well, it runs in Grandpa’s family, you see, so I suppose it didn’t come across as anything out of the ordinary. I thought all witches had a special skill. Now, you should meet my aunt. Her divination skills are amazing. I’m just hopeless at that. But sure, I can show you levitation. What shall I do?’

  Hugo looked up at an infant green apple just out of their reach. He pointed.

  ‘Can you get that?’

  ‘Hmm, what about the one next to it? It looks like it’s been got at by a bird or something. The farmer won’t mind if I pick that.’

  ‘Ok, that one is fine.’

  Amanda looked at the stalk and said simply, ‘Beterrac.’

  A crack appeared in the stem, and the little fruit came loose.

  ‘Fleotneiyn,’ Amanda added quickly, and it hung in midair.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ she said, and Hugo spread his palm.

  ‘Sedaasig ynentel,’ she said. And it sank gently, and landed in his hand.

  He applauded. ‘Now that is something to tell the family!’

  ‘I had no idea it was considered so spectacular,’ Amanda responded, taken aback.