Chapter 23
IT WAS NOT a situation in which even the most elegant woman would have appeared to advantage.
Laura Midsomer (née Lee, alias Lorelei) suffered further from having had insufficient notice of her marine excursion.
She was still clad in the everyday attire of a mortal woman, dressed in expectation of encountering nothing wetter than the British spring.
Her top half was clothed in a spencer, whose hardier material hid the curves her sodden dress could not fail to display.
The whole shining, sinuous length of her tail emerged from her dress below.
The men soon thought better of staring, however. This was Mrs. Midsomer’s native environment, and her anger rendered her incandescent with power.
“Blackguards!” she spat. “Fools! Weaklings! Is this how you defend me, Geoffrey, your wife whom you promised to protect, your familiar who pledged you her service? Are these your friends indeed the finest magicians in England, who have permitted a jumped-up chit and her pet beast to manhandle me?”
The pet beast in question peered over the side of the Cobb. An expression of astonishment overspread his countenance.
“Why, what’s this?” cried Rollo, but no one paid any mind to him.
Prunella was haloed in green light, the remnants of the power she had expended in her spell still clinging to her frame. The glow reflected in her eyes made them appear lightless and deep, giving her the remote look of a vengeful goddess.
She held out her hand, and a metal ball floated out of the wreck of Mrs. Midsomer’s dress.
It was wreathed in the same eldritch light that outlined Prunella’s form.
Within the depths of the orb was reflected an image of the sea, small but wonderfully vivid.
Waves crashed against the shore, and white flecks of seagulls wheeled around the grey curve of a minute sky, their lonesome cries echoing in counterpoint to the voices of the birds in the skies above.
“Our conversation was interrupted, Mrs. Midsomer,” she said. “This is yours, I think.”
“You know perfectly well it is,” snarled Mrs. Midsomer. “What business had you to take it?”
“Oh, I am always poking my nose into things that are not my business,” said Prunella.
“But on this occasion, I had better grounds than usual for doing so. I exercised the rights of an apprentice—” She lifted her eyes to Zacharias, and smiled.
“The rights of a friend. Are you the author of the attacks upon Mr. Wythe? That is all I wish to hear from you.”
“This is beyond anything,” cried Midsomer. “Gentlemen, do you mean to stand by and permit my wife to be interrogated by this—this—”
“Chit?” said Prunella helpfully.
“Magicienne,” said Zacharias.
The Presiding Committee stared at him.
“Do you require any further evidence of her abilities?” said Zacharias.
“As you have witnessed yourselves, Miss Gentleman has been trained in the strictest principles of thaumaturgical practise, and can justly be called no witch, but a magicienne. Though indeed I hope we can one day overcome this unreasoning dislike of witches—fine craftsmen and women, on the whole—no worse, taken as a body, than any illusion of thaumaturges.”
“Really, Zacharias, this is not the time to be lecturing the gentlemen,” exclaimed Prunella. “Cannot you tell that we are on the brink of extracting a confession from Mrs. Midsomer that she has been conspiring to murder you?”
“These accusations are baseless,” said Midsomer, crimson.
“I admit I moved for the Hallett when it became evident that Mr. Wythe was unfit to hold his office. That seemed to be my clear duty. However, the notion that I or my wife should have made any attempt upon a brother thaumaturge’s life is ludicrous! ”
“I say nothing as to your involvement. I can well believe you had little to do with it,” said Prunella graciously. “Your wife, however, is certainly a murderess.”
“You had better say: not a murderess yet!” said Mrs. Midsomer. “If my efforts to kill Zacharias Wythe have failed, it is only because I could not draw upon my full powers. My puling master insisted I refrain from wonder-working, lest I reveal my nature. Now I am in my true form, however—!”
“There, you see,” said Prunella to Midsomer. “She has been endeavouring to kill Mr. Wythe. She says so herself.”
To Midsomer’s credit, he looked as astonished as everyone else.
“I knew nothing of this, Laura,” he said.
“That is because you do not attend,” said Mrs. Midsomer waspishly.
“If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times. I did not come to your realm for my health. I came with one motive: to discover the sorcerer who murdered my beloved, and avenge his death. Once I am done we shall return to my home—to the glorious caverns my aunt the Queen has bequeathed to me, and their mysterious underground seas—so there was no need for you to be in such a pother about your silly Society. Even if you did become Sorcerer Royal you could not remain one for long.”
“But I had no notion your beloved had anything to do with Zacharias Wythe,” protested Midsomer.
“You would know if you had only listened!” snapped Mrs. Midsomer.
“My beloved was not called Leofric when I knew him. A mortal gave him the name—the first Sorcerer Royal. How he loved that mortal! ’Twas for his sake that he went away from me, and lived out his life in exile from Fairyland.
To serve the Sorcerer Royal was the only desire of his heart, and Zacharias Wythe killed him, the traitor—the villain—the murderer! ”
Her voice rose to a shrill pitch that blended with the wind, whipping the waves into a frenzy. The magicians clapped their hands over their ears. Mrs. Midsomer planted her palms on the ground and flipped herself backwards off the Cobb with effortless strength, splashing into the water.
Midsomer shouted, “Laura, what will you be at?”
“She is growing,” said Zacharias, as the wind howled, and thunder cracked the heavens open. It began to rain, big fat drops falling out of a darkening sky.
“I think she has lost her temper,” said Prunella composedly: her aura was keeping her dry.
· · ·
FOR a brief period after Mrs. Midsomer vanished, there was nothing to be seen amid the surging steel-grey waves. Rollo hauled himself onto the rocky end of the Cobb, and thrust his head over the wall, seeming to have something of great importance to communicate.
“I say—” he said, but he was not permitted to finish his sentence.
Mrs. Midsomer burst out of the waters behind him and rose into the skies, growing with inconceivable rapidity.
Her bulk seemed to fill the world, blocking out the horizon and casting a shadow over the magicians huddled on the wall.
The enchantment appeared to encompass everything upon her person, for as she grew, so did the fronds of seaweed draped over her, and the pretty amber pendant on her breast expanded till it was itself the height and breadth of a grown man.
“Midsomer!” roared Lord Burrow. “Look to your wife!”
“He can hardly miss her,” remarked Prunella.
“Think of our fishing—our ships—they will be overturned if her antics are not stopped,” said Lord Burrow. “Exert your influence, man. Govern your wife!”
“If you think, sir, that is within my power to restrain Laura,” said Midsomer wearily, “then all I can say is, you must not have been attending.”
“Murderer!” howled Mrs. Midsomer. She drew from the amassed storm clouds a bolt of lighting and flung it at Zacharias.
It split the air with an almighty crack, and would have smashed the wall had Zacharias not fended it off with a spell.
The bolt went into the sea, and steam rose from the bubbling waves.
“This is outrageous!” said Prunella. “The creature ought to know when she is beaten.”
She leapt nimbly off the Cobb before anyone could stop her, and was borne up by a white horse—a steed shaped from the froth on the waves and animated by magic.
“Hup hup!” cried Prunella, driving her heels into the creature’s flanks, and off they went, cantering over the heaving seas, while Prunella shouted impertinences at Mrs. Midsomer.
“Damerell, pray persuade her to return,” gasped Zacharias. Staving off Mrs. Midsomer’s hexes required all of his attention. They were wicked spells, fiendishly complex and prickly with malice, stinging his hands as he disenvenomed them.
“Miss Gentleman will do very well,” said Damerell, scarcely sparing a glance for the small figure vanishing into the grey murk of sky and sea. “You, however, want aid. Watch your head, there!”
Zacharias escaped being exploded only by Damerell’s intervention. The chantment ricocheted off Damerell’s counter-spell and detonated a pile of rocks at the end of the Cobb, where Rollo sat with his shoulders up around his ears. He jumped, and bawled out:
“Poggs!”
“Rollo, cannot you see that we are busy?” said Damerell. “If you wish to make yourself useful, you might go and find Miss Gentleman, and shield her from the attacks of that sea-woman.”
“But that is what I have been trying to say, only no one would attend,” said Rollo, injured. “She ain’t a sea-woman. She’s Lorelei, my own third cousin twice removed.”
“You don’t mean to say you are related to the wretched creature?” said Damerell.
“Known her since I was out of the egg!” said Rollo.
“Lorrie had a frightful temper even then. She ate one of my brothers on a rampage, and he was a mere dragonet, not more than a week old. He had broken her favourite doll, but I don’t call that a meet response, do you?
Still, that is Lorrie all over! My aunt gave her a right set-down over it.
Aunt Georgiana was the only creature Lorrie would ever listen to.