Chapter fifty-one

Tribyth

Julia had had a cold for weeks and no-one was able to shift it.  Ethian doctors didn’t seem up to much and there didn’t seem to be anything that they could buy that would shift her cough. It was keeping them all awake at night and Sebastian sighed every time that he heard it, implying that, somehow, it was his sister’s own fault. The only thing that Lily could think to do was to take her to Myfanwy, who seemed to have a potion, lotion or tincture for everything. Although Lily was keeping her second mentor secret, there was no reason why she shouldn’t have a grandaunt who she visited occasionally.

Despite her malady Julia was delighted to be taken to Western Eth. Her father was from Rhylan and she remembered with affection many family holidays there as a child. She was also keen to find someone who could cure her irritating cough.

They caught Lily’s usual coach through the outer settlements of Eth City and then on to Tribyth. Julia was still running a temperature and she was very uncomfortable. The fever began to abate as they approached the town and she was able to help drag their luggage to the old witch’s house.

Lily knocked confidently on the door. After a long pause, Myfanwy opened it in her long, once more remade, quilted coat.

‘Lil..’ she started and then caught sight of the other girl, ‘Molly! You’ve brought a guest… Unexpectedly’

Lily’s heart sank.

‘I sent you a message…’

Myfanwy stared at her as if she were lying.

‘A mail paper…?’

Lily shook her head.

‘We haven’t got any of those…’

‘A witch without mail paper… How odd…Anyway, I don’t generally answer ordinary mail. Too often they turn out to be bills…’

Julia stepped forward and smiled her irresistible smile. She shook the old woman’s hand enthusiastically.

‘It’s my fault’ she said, ‘Molly told me that you were the by far the best healer in Rhylan…and her favourite auntie. So, I persuaded her to bring me’

Myfanwy, who had been working towards being rather fierce, melted.

‘Healer… auntie…’ she mumbled, ‘well those are nice thing to say, Molly’

Lily shot her a glance at the ‘auntie’ comment, but Myfanwy didn’t seem to mind the untruth. Somehow Julia had found her mentor’s two weak spots. Lily looked across at Julia. I hope you stay on our side thought Lily, or we’ll be in trouble.  

‘I love your coat’ said Julia, softly, ‘I have tried to make similar things…’

‘Ah, yes, you must be Julia…’ said Myfanwy, grinning.

Julia nodded, looking quite serious now.

‘Yes – I’m your niece’s best friend…’

Myfanwy laughed.

‘And I’m sure that I’m glad of it. It is a tiny world, indeed’

Both girls looked puzzled.

‘Your mentor, Miss Glyde, is my nephew…’

‘Mr Floyd?’

‘Owen, yes… That’s him. A fine, gentle, man’

Julia looked back and forth between Lily and Myfanwy, clearly trying to make sense of family resemblances. Lily was wondering why, by the gods, Myfanwy had told Julia about this confusing web of non-blood relations. Perhaps she was paying her back for her temerity in bringing Julia along and pretending that her mentor was her aunt.

‘You all look so different…’ Julia blurted out and then turned bright scarlet.  This triggered a severe coughing fit. J

‘Different sides of the family’ explained Myfanwy smoothly, and entirely truthfully, when the hacking had stopped.

‘That doesn’t sound at all good’ she said, putting her hand up to Julia’s head, ‘let’s get you inside. I’m sure I have something for you’.  She led Julia into the house.

Lily was left outside with the luggage, wondering whether this had been such a good idea. Everyone will love her more than me she thought, despondently. With exaggerated heaviness of gesture she reached for the luggage.  I’m just the porter.

  Julia reappeared and grabbed her bag. She looked sweaty and shivery – the fever had obviously returned.

 ‘Sorry’ she spluttered, ‘we left you out here with all the stuff’

Lily sighed. The problem was that she loved her too.

‘No – you’re ill. You go on in and get better’

She shooed her back inside. She dragged the luggage in, bit by bit. Myfanwy made no effort to help her; she had more immediate and interesting problems to solve.

 

***

They had a lovely time, of course, because Myfanwy was a marvellous host when she chose to be and because it had started snowing outside, so all they could do was stay inside, talking, eating and drinking.  She had also given Julia a potion that was not only effective against her cough but also made her feel entirely wonderful.

Myfanwy had a copious supply of cider and an unlimited supply of tales – most of them relating to the amatory experiences of her youth (and middle age and some even later.) On the Saturday afternoon they sat there getting drunk, the two girls wide-eyed and giggling. The stories were wonderful because it seemed entirely plausible that they were all true.  Neither of the students had any great desire to be as experimental as Myfanwy had been but both of them were left with no doubt about the many advantages of being a witch. Reproductive complications could be, it seemed, entirely circumvented. Julia seemed to just take in her stride that Lily’s aunt was a witch. As usual, she was too carried away in the moment to ask many logical questions.

Julia was feeling a lot better, but halfway through this boozing session Myfanwy had to give her some more medicine.  After that, she was away with a posse of fairies. Myfanwy waited for a few minutes, cradling her flagon of cider, and then spoke to them as if addressing a classroom.

‘I’ve been meaning to show Owen something for some time, but you two bright students should be able to help me make sense of it. I’ll go and get it’

She went out and Lily could hear her rattling around in another room. Lily looked across the room to the large bay window. The afternoon was wearing on, but she could see quite clearly a vase of big red roses on a table next to the window and beyond that, on the other side of the glass, snowflakes falling steadily. The effect of contrast was mesmerising.  She shivered. Myfanwy returned holding something covered in a large sheet. She put the hidden object on the table.

‘I borrowed it from the Eth City Museum of Artefacts. I knew it was there; some of our spies tracked it down. It’s interesting in itself but it also belongs to someone even more interesting’

The word spies sobered Lily up immediately. What would Julia make of that? With relief, she realised that her friend was staring at the sheet covering the artefact as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. Lily guessed that she would remember nothing about this conversation in the morning.  

Myfanwy tugged the sheet from the object. It was a model of some kind: a polyhedral frame balanced on a single pivot, which was a metal rod with a small round base. Above it hovered (as nothing so bulky could balance on a single rod) a nine-pointed structure, with what looked like an odd green octopus at the end of every point. Next to the octopuses were small figurines of snakes, each one holding in its mouth a leaf of a different shape.

‘That’s so ugly’ giggled Julia

‘What is it?’ asked Lily

‘I think it is a model of the world…’ said Myfanwy

‘Why do you say that…Myf…an…thing?’ slurred Julia, now almost rendered insensible by a mixture of cider and medication.

‘Because that what it says it is…’

She lifted up so that they could see the base. On it was engraved the Archaic Elven words Skiophosi Sphaeroi.

        ‘Enneic Primes’ whispered Myfanwy, ‘there’s something in the number nine…’

Lily was bewildered.

‘Nine octopuses, nine snakes, nine leaves…’ Myfanwy continued, ‘but more importantly there was this with the artefact. She handed a small envelope to Lily. Inside was a note, written in a narrow, spindly female hand.  

 

Property of Macrocephalos of Oikonde, Please return to Braith Thomas, Archivist, Radical Numerologists, 17 Stanley Street, Eth.

 

Myfanwy turned away from Julia, who was now sprawled in her chair, snoring gently.

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d see what’s at that address now. Just in case. We need to find Braith’  

‘When you say “we”’ whispered, Lily breathlessly, ‘do you mean the Coven?’

 Myfanwy laughed.

‘Of course I mean the bloody coven. It can be your first project. I’d send a proper spy, but I don’t trust them to do a good job. I’m hoping that you will.’  

Myfanwy put away the strange object and then went to make an apple pie – something that she claimed to be good at but which she seldom bothered to do. Lily, full of alcohol and trusted to do something important, watched the snow drift against the bay window.  The fire warmed and lulled her.   

 

***

There was a soft knock on the door; Lily awoke from her dozy drowsing in front of the fire. It was almost dusk. Myfanwy shouted from the kitchen.  

‘Get the door, one of you. My hands are covered in pastry’

Lily struggled to the door and opened it just enough to see who was there. A slim redheaded young man with a neatly trimmed beard nodded at her: his face was unusually pale and his hair and beard unusually red. The snow was falling all around him and he looked soddenly cold. He had no coat.

‘Is Miss Myfanwy Williams here?’

‘Who’s asking?’ Lily asked, smiling inwardly at her recently-acquired Eth City idiom.

‘I am’ he said cautiously. His Ethian was tinged with something exotic, something she guessed was from the Far South.

‘So who are you?’ she asked. The young man nodded his head nervously.

‘I’m Arthur Ockham’ he said. He shuffled backwards slightly, clearly not wanting to seem too pushy.

‘And who’s Arthur Ockham, then?’ asked Lily. The cider had quite gone to her head, but she was rather enjoying its effect.

‘Umm..ahh...’ he stuttered, ‘no-one really – my mother is an old friend of Miss Williams, though’ He stopped for a second, ‘I think...’

‘Is Councillor Williams expecting you?’ she asked

He breathed in deeply. Lily got the strong impression of a gentle young man being brave. Where on earth had he come from? The accent and the hair colour really didn’t go together. Did they have gingers in Babalia?

‘No, but I really must speak to her, if it would be at all possible’

‘We’ll see about that…’

It was bitingly cold and so Lily closed the door against the wind.  Arthur stumbled forward into the bright glow of the sitting room. His gaze fell on the girl asleep in front of him.  He was transfixed.

 Julia’s black hair cascaded back over her chair. The light of the fire made her face glow as if she were lit up from inside. Arthur let out a little cry, as if he had just seen a long lost friend or an exquisite bird.

Julia opened her eyes. They seemed almost as dark as her hair. Lily thought she looked really beautiful, but nothing like her normal self. It was as if a consummate artist had painted her shape but guessed at her soul.

‘I’m sorry’ whispered Arthur, his voice almost gruff, ‘I didn’t see you there’ His shape was augmented by the shadows that crowded round the darkness of the wall behind him. 

Julia rose from the chair and stared at him intently; she seemed to be floating through the air, although that might well have been the effect of the mixed cough medicine and booze. Her expression scarcely changed – it remained serene but distant. Lily had never seen her meet a new person before without automatically turning on her searchlight smile. It was all a bit strange. 

‘I am here...’ she said, ‘...and so are you...’

‘Yes – we are here together...’

‘The night outside is wild,’ Julia continued, ‘and you have come far...’

She held her hand out, Lily presumed for him to shake it, but instead, and much to Lily’s shock, he took it gently, almost reverently, and kissed it. There was a moment when he seemed strangely reluctant to stop kissing it and Julia seemed equally reluctant to remove it. Lily had to pinch herself to stop herself from laughing. She felt like she was watching a rather hammy romantic melodrama.

Myfanwy walked in from the kitchen, towel in hand. She looked up at the young man and studied his face for a long moment. She smiled.

‘I know exactly who are, you poor dab. You’re the cause of such trouble and such joy’

 Arthur dropped Lily’s hand and straightened to meet her.

‘Councillor Williams…’

‘That’s me’

‘I need you to tell me who my mother is…’