Authors: Kerry Greenwood
‘Good,’ she said. ‘A blessing on our journey and our returning.’ She flung a pinch of salt over our heads. Then she led the way to the lane where a bright green car was waiting. Meroe loaded us into it, told the driver, ‘Yes,’ and we drew out into the street.
‘Williamstown beach,’ said Meroe, and shut down. She does this. She just withdraws. As it is no use talking to her when she isn’t there, I stared out of the window as Footscray Road flew past. I saw piles of shipping containers like Lego blocks, proclaiming strange ports—Murmansk, Rio de Janeiro, Haifa—and tall cranes straddling the trackway like daddy-long-legs.
I hadn’t been to Williamstown since I was taken to the Williamstown festival perhaps five years earlier. Even then I hadn’t explored, as I had been escorted by my annoyed then-husband James, who was there to judge a cooking competition and was in the throes of extreme indigestion and a near-terminal fit of the grumps. This limits one’s appreciation of landscape. But I remembered the greenswards down to the sea, the boathouses, the cannon on the foreshore in case of invasion from Russia, the yachts from many nations all lined up along the marinas, and the ice cream, which was first rate. Whatever James had said.
It appeared there was more to Williamstown than the Esplanade and the pier. We swept around the Time Ball tower and went uphill to a point no different from any other that I could see, but Meroe told the driver, ‘Here,’ and she stopped the car. We got out. The driver was a tall, lanky young woman in a blue sarong and swimsuit.
‘This is Neraia, our lifesaver,’ Meroe introduced me.
‘You must be freezing,’ I commented, shaking her hand.
She shrugged. ‘You get used to it,’ she told me. ‘Poseidon is my father, Galatea my mother. I like sea water.’
There didn’t seem to be any ready reply to this.
Where were we? It looked prosperous. Big houses lined one side of the road. The other was a verge with trees and rough grass, leading down to a rocky coast. I had no idea that such wild landscape existed so close to the city. The wind had dropped. It was dead quiet. On the calm salty air, I could hear chanting, and smell incense.
‘This way,’ said Meroe, and led us across the turf to the shore.
The sea foamed and splashed on sharp broken boulders. This was the blacksoil plain, of course, the rocks would all be volcanic. Black basalt by the look of it, and if anyone intended to ask me to tippy-toe out onto that slippery knife-edged barrier, they had another think coming. But Meroe gestured to me to sit at the edge of the sea and I sat, able to see all that was going on and probably invisible to the eye in my dark blue garments. Neraia shed her sarong and waded into the sea.
There were twelve naked people in the water, pale as moonlight. I shivered in sympathy, but they seemed to feel no discomfort. They had formed a ring, hand in hand, and were chanting in an unknown tongue. ‘Evoe! Evoe!’ they called. ‘Poseidon Evoe!’
It was cold and oddly boring as well as uncomfortable and interesting. I shifted my weight as different bits of my spine impacted the gravel I was sitting on. In fact, since nothing whatsoever seemed to be happening, I scooted uphill until I was sitting under a thrawn tree, where the ground was hard but not actively pointy. Three people on the shore were tending a small, hot fire, on which they were burning an incense that smelt seaweedy and musky. It was not a nice smell but it was compelling. The chant was heating up. Meroe was standing with her wrap drawn close over her head and her arms folded, concentrating hard, like a fisherman’s wife watching for a returning boat.
The wind picked up. The waves creamed and then folded. There was a slap and splash of water. Out at sea the lights of the big ships moved slowly on their voyages out or home. And the sea existed, uninterested in these brief, fragile humans who could not survive underwater for more than a couple of minutes. Who were these importunate idiots, I wondered, to dare to call upon the lord of the sea? They could all be obliterated with one casual slap of a sea-monster’s paw.
I didn’t like my train of thought. I also didn’t know where it had come from. I stood up. If Poseidon resented being summoned, I wanted to be out of the backwash when he annihilated the coven.
The chanting was rising to a shout. The figure in the centre, crowned with shells, suddenly vanished and the whole ring was dragged underwater with him. Neraia slid forward like a seal. But they came up again, after a breath-catching interval, shedding water, gasping and laughing. Meroe stood like a highly disapproving pillar of salt as the coven waded ashore and grabbed at wraps and towels and exclaimed at the cold.
The man with the crown of shells was imposing. Solid, big, wide shoulders, a broad face with a black beard. I was nose to loin with him as he climbed the back. Nice loins, if a little chilled and shrunken. He laughed hugely and opened his hand to show us what Poseidon had sent him.
‘Success!’ he boomed. ‘What do you say now, Meroe?’
‘What I have always said, Barnabas,’ she replied tartly.
‘Where luna shines, there is silver,’ he said.
In the palm of his large hand was a jewelled plate, fully the size of a cigarette packet. It was studded with precious stones. Cabochon, not faceted. Hard to tell colour in the moonlight but they might have been emeralds. It looked very old. A fragment of chain hung from each top corner. I wondered what it had been. Not the usual run of pendant, that was for sure. Meroe looked at it without touching.
‘And how do you explain this?’ she asked. I had never heard her voice so harsh. She was croaking like a crow with tonsillitis.
Barnabas laughed again. He would make a wonderful Father Christmas, I thought, a big jolly man in a red robe.
‘Jealous, little witch?’ he teased, and swung the object up out of Meroe’s reach.
Just then a lot of things happened at once. Meroe stepped back and tripped, falling into me so that we tumbled together under my tree. Five, or perhaps more, men in, I swear, black clothes and black balaclavas attacked the coven in a running assault, moving very fast along the edge of the sea, leaping from rock to rock, and landing on Barnabas so hard that all the breath went out of him in an ‘oof!’. Then they were gone. So was the pendant. I heard a car start and roar off into the night. Meroe and I untangled ourselves and drew away from Barnabas, who was getting his breath back. His accusing finger shot out.
‘You!’ he shouted at Meroe. ‘You did this!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she answered with the sort of chill which starts ice ages. ‘I don’t know who your attackers were but I suggest you dismiss this working properly and go home to scry for your treasure. As I shall do,’ she said, withdrawing up the hill. He seemed about to follow, in which case he was going to get a kick on the shins, at least from me, but he thought better of it and turned back to soothe his offended coven.
‘You take the car,’ said Neraia to Meroe. ‘I’d better talk to the nymphs. They don’t like violence.’
She chose a place further away from the escalating argument on the shore. I saw her dive in, straight as an arrow. Meroe took the keys and we got into the car and moved off just as we heard sirens.
‘Well, I can tell you one thing,’ I said. ‘That was the most unmagical magical thing I have ever seen.’
‘Yes,’ she said, turning the car into Melbourne Road. ‘Odd, isn’t it? There’s such a lot of latent magic around that it’s curling my hair, but none of it was in that working. Barnabas usually does better than that. Of course a lot of his success is pure personality. People like big, jovial, confident witches.’
‘Yes, but, Meroe, what about the men in black? I saw them. Didn’t you?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said airily, as we turned off Melbourne Road for the city. ‘I saw them.’
‘Who were they?’
‘I don’t know, as I told Barnabas. Some emanations from the underworld, perhaps.’
I didn’t think so. Few emanations from the underworld say ‘bugger!’ when they slide on slippery rocks.
‘They were humans,’ I stated.
Meroe shrugged. ‘Someone must have been talking,’ she said. ‘Nothing more likely with these loose-tongued, undisciplined witches. Mention the word
treasure
in a cellar at midnight and someone will hear it. They were organised, I’ll say that for them. That was a textbook assault, along, in and out with the jewels and no one injured. Except Barnabas’s pride, which could do with a puncture.’
‘I have seen that sort of jewelled plate before somewhere,’ I told her.
‘Oh, so have I,’ she said. ‘It’s an ephod. Read Exodus,’ she said, and disappeared into one of her silences for the rest of the way home.
It was too late to read Exodus, but I put the Bible out on the table so I could check up on it after I finished baking. At least it was Friday, and I did not have to get up on Saturday, because I close Earthly Delights for the weekend. There aren’t a lot of people about in the city and I need the rest. Best Fresh, I had no doubt, would be operating. With only one worker and a shop assistant, it wouldn’t cost the chain a lot to keep the shop open. But there it was.
I was coming down from all that maritime excitement. A few hours’ sleep would have been nice, and I was only going to get two. I fell into bed and grabbed them while I could.
Four am and I rose and did the zombie routine which gets Horatio fed, me washed and dressed and partially caffeine-enriched and down to the bakery without the intervention of any higher intelligence. Such as it is. Jason was already there, Goddess bless him, the mixers were all on and the orders book laid out on the counter.
‘Captain on deck!’ he said, springing to his feet and saluting.
‘Carry on, Mr Midshipman,’ I said.
‘Permission to make an observation, sir?’
‘Go ahead,’ I said warily.
‘You look like crap, sir!’
‘It matches how I feel, Midshipman. I was up until all hours with a magical problem of Meroe’s.’
I poured myself another cup of coffee. The first ones had gone down without touching the sides. Jason gave me a considering look from under his white cap.
‘All the bread is on, muffins are ready to be mixed, we’ve just the fairy cakes and the carrot cake. You could grab a couple more hours’ sleep,’ he suggested.
‘Nice thought, but I can manage. Thank you, Midshipman.’
‘You said there was a magical problem, Captain?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a horrible thing stuck to the door of Insula,’ he told me. ‘I saw it when I went out to empty the bin. Maybe it’s a curse or something?’
‘Show me,’ I said, and he led me round to our elaborate front door.
Horrible was right. A lump of red tissue, smelling strongly of blood, was fixed to our beautiful Roman ironwork. I didn’t want to, but I examined it more closely with the aid of my torch. It was, I judged, a sheep’s heart, wound around with barbed wire. It had thorns or nails stuck in it. Altogether as nasty an object as I had seen since I last saw the Attorney-General smiling.
‘I’m going to put on gloves and get this off,’ I told Jason. ‘Someone might see it and have a heart attack—sorry. Then we can take it to Meroe when she wakes up.’
‘You’re going to touch it?’ He recoiled.
‘Only as much as I have to,’ I said, hurrying him back to the bakery. ‘Go get me a cardboard box and the red-handled pliers.’
I left Jason to compound muffins in the nice safe lighted bakery and went back to the door with my pliers. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make sure that this... thing, this fetish, was going to be hard to remove. It was pitch black, and I could feel a cold breath down the back of my neck. The dark lane developed odd clunking and cracking noises, like footsteps. I wished that someone was with me, even the Mouse Police. I had to hold the torch in my mouth to see what I was doing because I needed to use both hands, and I wondered what the police patrol would make of me if they saw me.
Eventually I untwisted all the wires and dropped the heart, with a sickening thud, into one of my nice cardboard boxes, and I took it away. What to do with it? The person who had attached it to our door meant us ill, that was clear. The whole object was soaked in malice. I didn’t want to take it inside.
I left the box by the back door in Calico Alley, peeled off the thin plastic gloves and dumped them in the bin, and washed my hands very thoroughly with rose-geranium scented soap and water.
‘You got it?’ asked Jason nervously.
‘I got it. It’s outside. Not to worry, Jason. If this is a magical duel, we’ve got Meroe on our side.’
‘Oh, right,’ he agreed, a smile beginning to dawn on his face. ‘We do, don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ I affirmed.
‘Boy, is that dude going to be sorry,’ he said.
‘He is,’ I agreed.
The Mouse Police had investigated the box, sneezed, and left it alone, which led me to believe that it wasn’t just a lump of meat, upon which they would have dived with cries of joy. On the occasions I have brought them the trimmings from a steak, for instance, there has been a scrimmage which would have disgraced a parliamentary banquet or Roman orgy. I rescued it from the hands of Ma’ani when he came to collect the bread. It is no part of my charitable duty to curse the homeless. When he saw what was in the box his face drained of colour, leaving it grey.
‘Bad magic,’ he stammered, backing away.
‘Yes, and when Meroe sees it, the curse will be winging its way back to the sender with additional postage,’ I told him. He smiled.
‘That Meroe!’ he said admiringly. ‘She’s a strong-minded woman all right. Good morning, Corinna,’ he added. He hefted the sack of bread and went away down the alley, keeping to the side away from the object.
8
6
Jason said hopefully, ‘Can I go and call Meroe? It’s seven am, she ought to be up to feed the cat by now.’
‘No, she gets to sleep as long as she likes,’ I said firmly. ‘You’re safe in here, Midshipman. Show some command of yourself, man!’ I snapped, and his spine, I swear, stiffened. After he has read his way through Hornblower I am getting him onto the works of Patrick O’Brian. I always wanted to be the captain of a sailing ship.