Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
It was still raining when Duncan got to Crawgate, hard enough that he held on to his hat and ran splashing through puddles from the tram stop to the pie shop’s awning for cover, in hopes that he could shelter there until the worst was past. True to his word, Arthur had found him a broad-brimmed gray fedora from somewhere in the Doorbell Club’s dressing room, a little bent and battered and smelling suspiciously of French perfume, but it did the job. His hair, at least, stayed dry.
Safe under the awning, he took the fedora off, shook the excess water from brim and crown, glad that Arthur had prevailed upon him to take it after all.
Coarse, abrasive drumming on the angled canvas over his head, as if it were gravel being poured there, not water.
The rain sluiced and curtained off, hit the pavement in sheets, splattered back up.
He moved farther in to avoid getting splashed.
A couple of customers came out of the shop: a young shopgirl in some liveried apron he didn’t recognize, a big, untidy man in a workman’s jacket and boots, and an elegantly dressed old woman whom Duncan thought at first might be a witch come down for a late lunch, until she bumped against him and he felt not even a hint of the faint sensual charge that witches, in his experience, tended to carry around with them.
“Oh dear! I am sorry, young man,” she excused herself, brushing lightly at his sleeve as if she might have stained it. “I was just trying not to get splashed. You know, I think this is the worst rain I’ve seen since the Forests erupted. We had storms like this back then as well.”
“Too bloody right!” said the workman, angling for some attention from the girl at his side. “You know who I blame? That lot up the hill.”
The shopgirl said nothing.
“You know who I mean, love, eh?” He jerked his head at the upward slope of Crawgate. “Bunch of twisted old women squatting up there, cooking up their potions and strife. No offense meant, ma’am.”
“Oh, I don’t live around here,” said the elegant old woman vaguely.
“What happens if you don’t settle and have a family, like. Get a good man to provide for you, have some kids. It’s what women want, you know. What makes ’em happy.”
The shopgirl looked resolutely out into the rain.
The scruffy man pressed on, undeterred. “Too much gallivanting these days. Those flappers don’t know it, but they’re playing with fire.
It’s all fun and games, innit, until suddenly it’s not and you’re on the shelf and it’s too bloody late.
That’s how you end up like them up there, all bitter and dried up. Know what I mean, love?”
The shopgirl looked now as if she were contemplating a headlong dash out into the thick of the storm. Duncan took pity on her.
“You ever met a witch?” he asked loudly.
The workman swung on him. “Eh?”
“I was just wondering if you’ve spent time with witches.” He met the man’s stare amiably. “You seem to be a bit of an expert.”
The man’s mouth flapped soundlessly. Out of nowhere, something electric came scuttling down Duncan’s nerves with the hunter speed of Mebhuranon’s spider in the park.
The muscles in the pit of his stomach twinged, a faint shiver of mauve light seemed to blast outward in his field of vision, wash over everything, put a momentary sparkle on the rain before it faded down the street.
“I expect you’d better be going,” Duncan murmured. “No time to stand around.”
The man’s mouth twitched at one corner. His eyes seemed to defocus, lose their heat. “I’d best be going,” he agreed in slurred tones. “No time to stand around.”
He backed away from Duncan, out from under the awning, got hit in the face by the sluicing rain off its edge, barely seemed to notice.
He turned away without even wiping his face, blundered off across the street, weaving slightly.
Duncan blinked, still trying to rid his vision of the afterimage of mauve radiance.
He looked at the shopgirl, the old woman, saw they were both staring oddly at him.
“Well,” he said breezily. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon. Maybe our eligible friend had the right idea. Ladies.”
He fitted his borrowed hat back onto his head, turned up his collar, and stepped out into the downpour. The two women watched him go without a word. He tipped his hat to them, then set about trudging up the hill toward Sal’s place, buffeted by sweeping, wind-driven curtains of rain.
He was pretty much drenched by the time he reached the witch’s door.
He hit the buzzer, waited for the door to yawn magically open, squelched irritably up the stairs.
The customary black cat showed up on the first landing with its inscrutable jade gaze, but he stared it down with such malevolent intensity that it hissed and slid back into the shadows, out of his way.
“You took your sweet time.”
Sal, leaning over the landing banister rail, bundled up in a black and dark green gown he hadn’t seen before, hair up and sloppily pinned. It gave her a faintly oriental air.
“Storm held me up.” He’d called ahead to her from a phone box in the street before he took the tram, and by rights should have been there a while ago. “It’s fucking biblical out there. Whole city’s drowning.”
“Well, you certainly seem to be.” Squishing one arm of his coat in her fingers, wrinkling her nose at the water that oozed out of the fabric.
“Nice hat, by the way. Come on, get in, get that off, get your coat off, too. We’ll see if we can’t warm you up.
Got visitors. We’ve all been waiting for you, darling. ”
She bustled about him as they went into the apartment, helped him shrug himself out of the coat, noted the weight of the two Webleys in its pockets with the faintest raised eyebrow but no comment.
She hung the coat, ushered him forward down the hall and into the living room.
Every lamp in the room was on, cheery pools of warmth and radiance on walls and side tables to push back the miserable gray rain-light seeping in from outside.
There was a good fire crackling in the grate, and from some gathering of bowls and paraphernalia on the low lounge table, a curious sludgy popping sound Duncan had never heard before.
A faint odor permeated the room, sweet but not entirely pleasant, and maddeningly familiar.
“Duncan, this is Nimble Shanks Annie Spence.” Sal gestured at a gaunt, long-limbed woman of about fifty, who sat folded on the sofa in ankle-length black lace skirts, a grubby white men’s shirt, and a waistcoat.
She was stirring the contents of a tiny steaming cauldron with a long steel fork.
She nodded at Duncan without speaking. Sal pivoted about, gestured again.
“And of course you’ll remember Jeremy from before. ”
Duncan looked at the ex-apprentice warlock impassively. “Hello, Jerry.”
Ewart bobbed his head, shifted in his armchair, and swallowed.
Sal went and sat on the sofa beside Annie, waved at the remaining free armchair.
Duncan lowered himself into it, eyes mostly on the cauldron, which he now saw was suspended on an iron tripod over a small alcohol burner.
As he watched, Sal picked up a small slab of something yellow and dropped it into the pot.
Nimble Shanks Annie stirred, the slab began to soften and melt into the mixture.
“What is this?” Duncan asked suspiciously.
“This is fondue,” said Sal. “It’s from Switzerland. Would you like some?”
“You’ll want a bit more wine in it,” Annie opined. She had an oddly soft, melodic voice that didn’t suit her appearance at all. “Really.”
Sal picked up an uncorked bottle from the table, sloshed a measure into the tiny cauldron.
Annie withdrew the implement she was stirring with, spiked a small cube of what looked like smoked ham from a plate on the table.
The mixture in the pot bubbled sluggishly, the largest bubble popped and released the maddeningly familiar odor into the room again.
Cheese, Duncan realized suddenly. They were melting cheese.
“You’re hungry,” said Nimble Shanks Annie with no hint of a question in her voice, and plunged the ham cube on the fork into the melted cheese mix. “You want to try?”
“Look, I didn’t come here for dinner, I—”
Sudden blotch of hunger in his stomach. He had not, after all, found time to eat on the way across town.
He sighed. Annie smiled and hauled out the cube of meat, now wrapped around with a thick coating of cheese that trailed long tendrils back into the pot.
She wound these up by twirling the fork handily round three or four times, then reached across the table toward Duncan.
“Open wide,” she said, and he did.
The ham-and-cheese combination, spiced with wine and other elements he couldn’t quite make out, exploded in his mouth, put an itch in the hinge of his jaw and a desperate squirt of saliva onto his tongue. He chewed and swallowed in a kind of rapture.
“Good, isn’t it?” said Nimble Shanks Annie placidly. “Gift from a customer of mine a few years ago. He said he thought it suited me. Are you going to tell him the bad news, Sal, or am I?”
Duncan looked from one to the other of them. “Bad news?”
“Yes, I’m afraid we have some new information for you, Duncan.” From somewhere, Sal found another long steel fork, spiked a small cube-cut piece of bread from another bowl, and dipped it into the cheese. “Regarding your new Sword and Orb allies.”
“It is not the Order,” Ewart said weakly from his armchair. “Our founding principles are sound and just. I myself…the vision is transcendent…this is not…”
He faltered to a halt as Duncan nailed him with a stare.
“Bainbridge intends to betray you.” Sal, nibbling on the cheese-coated bread. “It seems he has a working relationship with Colonel Hardy and the Forestry Commission after all. And is playing both ends against the middle, so to speak. Jeremy here was kind enough to bring us the news.”