Chapter 3 Fate’s Continued Interference in Matters It Does Not Understand
Fate’s Continued Interference in Matters It Does Not Understand
Aurienne
When Aurienne materialised at Rosefell Hall, she clung to the waystone to wait for her stomach to turn right way up. Waystone travel always made her woozy; successive dips into the graticule made her nauseated. The stars spun too quickly overhead. The gravel drive ribboned queasily away.
A piece of darkness detached itself from the waystone. It said, “Hiya.”
Aurienne did not pierce Mordaunt’s eardrums with a scream, but he would have deserved it if she had.
He was dressed in his deepest hood and blackest cowl. Only his pale eyes were visible among the shadows, along with a few artistically placed strands of hair, silver white in the dark.
He pulled down his cowl to uncover a scar-crossed grin. Aurienne had not foreseen the tingle of gladness that possessed her at the sight. As though she had missed it. As though it mattered to her. She quelled the feeling.
Mordaunt swept towards her in an elegant bow. “My saviour has returned. You’ll no doubt find it impertinent of me to tell you what a delight it is to see you again.”
“I wouldn’t if I thought you were sincere,” said Aurienne. “Spare me your theatrical ardours.”
The smile gave way to a laugh. Mordaunt had cast off the softness of their rooftop talk. He was himself again: debonair, arrogant, mocking. There was, however, a new thinness to his face. Cíele was right—he looked like he’d been ill.
“Have you been sick?” asked Aurienne.
“Why?”
“Your face.”
“How dare you?”
“Answer me.”
“I’m fine,” said Mordaunt. “Quite over it, actually.”
“What happened?”
“Stomach bug. Don’t start quizzing me about diarrhoea. It’s not manners.”
“You should tell me when you’re not well,” said Aurienne. “I’m your Haelan.”
“You’re my Haelan,” repeated Mordaunt. He passed a hand along his jaw. His smile lingered but his eyes were unamused.
Then, as one seeking distraction, Mordaunt gave Aurienne’s outfit a look of assessment—this she did find impertinent—and asked, “What look were you going for? Lonely Adventuress? Exploratrix?”
Aurienne gave his ensemble an identical look of assessment and asked, “And you? Widow in mourning? The remains of the deceased?”
And then they were at each other again, irresistibly, a pin to a magnet.
Mordaunt, vexed, called her a Paroxysm.
She informed him, on general grounds, that he was an Adhesion.
He called her a Vortex.
“Fiasco,” said Aurienne.
“Crisis,” said Mordaunt.
“Sybarite.”
“Malapert.”
“Furuncle.”
“Niminy-piminy.”
“That’s not a noun.”
“Neither are you.”
It was a fruitful exchange. It reminded Aurienne that Mordaunt was the most constitutionally irritating man she could possibly have been cursed with healing.
They glared at each other; aggravation simmered and spat between them. Mordaunt said, “I’ve so missed the pleasures of your company.”
He led Aurienne into crumbling, rambling Rosefell Hall through the kitchens, where he shed his cloak and cowl to reveal a wildly unnecessary—though splendidly cut—silver suit.
Aurienne was greeted by his motley pack of dogs.
Rigor Mortis (Great Dane), Arson (retriever), Perjury and Forgery (border collies), Outraging Public Decency (bulldog; prolific farter), High Treason (borzoi) and Crème Br?lée (whippet) all limped to her and collapsed around her feet. Tails flumped at the floor in greeting.
Diverse Felonies, an arthritic terrier who usually objected to Aurienne’s presence through vigorous, voiceless barks, greeted her with cheerful belligerence.
Crème Br?lée, the timid one-eyed whippet, permitted himself to be stroked.
Arson liberally coated her black clothes with cream fur.
High Treason, possessor of a long empty vessel instead of a head, leaned into her from behind and buckled her knees.
Mordaunt snapped out an instruction to sit, which his pensioners ignored as they smeared wet noses all over her.
Aurienne was also greeted by Mrs. Parson, Mordaunt’s steward—a sturdy, sensible woman, out of place in the household of a Fyren—and Mr. Parson, the groundskeeper, kindly and shy.
Mordaunt opened the door of the house’s sole usable sitting room. Perjury and Forgery herded Aurienne in.
The sitting room was in its usual state: it was a room of rococo exuberance in which an art gallery and an antique shop had fought. The antique shop had won; both had left debris upon every surface.
Aurienne cleared away the bric-a-brac on the coffee table—crystal bottles shaped like anemones, a terra-cotta horse—and replaced it with Grette’s pies from the Publish or Perish.
“Did you buy me dinner?” asked Mordaunt.
“Yes.”
“Romantic.”
“Economic.”
“What?”
“They were on offer, two for one,” said Aurienne. “Steak and ale or chicken and mushroom?”
Mordaunt chose the steak. They ate. Mordaunt said his pie was lovely and tender, unlike Aurienne. She said her crust was superbly flaky, just like him.
Aurienne extracted materials from her satchel. She laid a map of Glastonbury Tor—the outcrop upon which the Druids had built their stronghold of the Faerwundor—on the table.
“We were meant to pool our information on the Faerwundor tonight,” she said. “I brought what I could find. What have you got?”
“I’ve got a plan.”
“Show me.”
Mordaunt fished about in his pocket and pulled out a bit of paper, which he gave to Aurienne. It said:
Plan:
Make a plan.
Aurienne delved deep into the font of her patience.
“Your plan is to come up with a plan?” she asked.
“Bit shit, isn’t it?”
“It’s well shit,” said Aurienne. “You are riding my last nerve.”
“My favourite place to be,” said Mordaunt.
“But at least you’ve been inside the Faerwundor. That’s something.”
“Er—I haven’t, actually.”
“You haven’t? But you killed the Druids’ Seer.”
“I killed him at a restaurant,” said Mordaunt. “In London.”
“A restaurant?” repeated Aurienne.
“It was his birthday party.”
“You killed a man at his own birthday party?”
“Obviously: I knew he’d be there. What?”
Aurienne and Mordaunt stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. The gap between their principles yawned wide.
“So many of the things you do frankly erode my faith in our species,” said Aurienne.
“I’m not convinced we are the same species,” said Mordaunt.
“Immoralist.”
“Valkyrie.”
Aurienne pressed fingertips to the bridge of her nose. “Right. Excellent. Perfect. So we’re going into the Faerwundor blind.”
“Not that blind,” said Mordaunt, pointing to the table. “You’ve got a map.”
“Exterior only. We’ve got a few Druid contacts at Swanstone—they’re a major source of plantings for our medicinal gardens—but I daren’t ask for too much information about their headquarters.
All this map confirms is Glastonbury Tor’s position over three ley lines and that two watercourses cross somewhere within it, which coincides with Widdershins’ translation notes for the Begbéam moon. ”
Widdershins was a professor who claimed to have translated the inscriptions on the Monafyll Stone, an ancient obelisk depicting a healing pilgrimage to be followed at the full moon.
Aurienne and Mordaunt had harassed the man in his own home to obtain his translations, which described the pilgrimage in the vaguest and most unhelpful terms. Aurienne was using Widdershins’ notes to guide her interpretation of the data—it being understood that by “data” she meant a quantity of ill-sourced, poor-quality, unverified anecdotes describing miraculous healings at the full moon.
This was the sum total of the research project upon which Mordaunt’s healing was predicated: maps with scribbles on them, fabricated translations, and anecdata. Ludicrous.
Ludicrous, and yet.
Frankly, the most ludicrous part of it all was that, following this poorly conceived “treatment,” Aurienne had arrested Mordaunt’s seith degeneration.
Somehow, on the basis of fairy stories and healing sessions at the full moon, they had done something heretofore medically impossible and stopped the progress of an unstoppable disease.
That was immense. A triumph. Or a coincidence.
It was too late to be sceptical, but too soon to celebrate.
Aurienne looked up. Mordaunt had placed two heart-shaped nipple pasties over his eyes.
No: the most ludicrous part of it all was him.
“La vie en rose,” said Mordaunt, looking about.
Aurienne had been using the nipple pasties as markers on her map.
She plucked them off his face. “Focus, please. The two watercourses may be subterranean. There’s a persistent legend that Glastonbury Tor is hollow—that there’s a large cave system within the hill.
Some myths suggest that passage to Annwn can be found down there.
The Celtic Otherworld,” she added, in the face of Mordaunt’s blank look.
“A paradise of eternal youth, where disease is absent.”
“What are all those wiggly bits going round the Tor?” asked Mordaunt, tapping at white lines circling the Faerwundor. “Fortifications?”
“That’s the labyrinth I’d mentioned to you.”
“Not much of a labyrinth,” said Mordaunt. “Looks more like a spiral.”
“Whatever it is, we’ll have to go through it. It’s the only way to the entrance of the Faerwundor.”
“And what’s in the Faerwundor itself?”
“I don’t know,” said Aurienne. “It’s the Druidic headquarters, so I imagine it’s fairly rustic.
A stone tower full of herbs and pestles and things, like an old-fashioned apothecary.
Maybe an altar or two. Almost ninety percent of my data for the Begbéam moon points to dawn as the best time for a healing.
I suggest we meet at three in the morning to give ourselves time to get into the Faerwundor to attempt it. The nearest pub is the Hairy Hodmedod.”
“All right.”
“I wish we could’ve entered the Faerwundor by legitimate means.” Aurienne sighed. “This would’ve been so much easier.”
Mordaunt emitted a disdainful tut. “Legitimate is boring. It lacks Incident.”
“How do you propose we proceed, then?”