Trick or Treat Part 12

'So you wouldn't know anything about the sale of drugs to finance this treasure hunt?' asked Daniel in that same flat tone.

Cypress slid out from under Cedar's hands, ducking his plush head. 'No,' he said quickly. 'I got nothing to do with drugs. I never did. You know that, right?'

'You didn't in the past,' Daniel agreed. 'Theft, yes. Stealing anything that moved including two speedboats and a yacht which you sailed to Tasmania, yes. But drugs, not when I knew you.'

'And I don't now.'

'All right,' said Daniel. 'You know where I am. You probably still know my mobile number. You find out anything, you call me, right, Cypress?'

'Is there a buck in it?' the man asked hopefully.

'I don't know that there mightn't be,' said Daniel. 'And you can go on being Cypress.'

'Okay,' said Cypress, far too tractably, and slipped away, taking Cedar back into the pile of bodies on the floor. Several young women embraced him. Cypress had fallen on, so to speak, his feet.

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Meanwhile Meroe was scolding Barnabas. Her mouth was close to his injured ear. His blood was on her lips. She was berating him in a harsh, relentless stream of insults and exhortations which steadily became more, not less, unbearable as they went on. 'You fool, Barnabas, you lead-footed fool, you big jelly-bellied idiot! Do you think G.o.ds like being mocked? Do you think they'll forget this because your intentions were pure? What were your intentions? Barnabas! What have you been doing?'

Daniel and I watched, unable to think of a way of helping-indeed, unsure of who might need the help if we gave it. Cypress had escaped Daniel's attention but some of the people on the carpet were getting restless.

'Why's she biting him?' asked one child, pus.h.i.+ng a couple of boys aside and crawling to her feet. 'She shouldn't be biting him. Barnabas?'

'It's Meroe,' said an older woman, rubbing her shaved scalp with a narrow, dark palm. 'Best not to interfere with Meroe. Solitary. Powerful. Sibyl's Cave,' she added in a warning tone.

'Oh.' The girl bit her lip. 'I've heard of her.'

'Those Rumanians are feisty,' commented a boy in leather trousers who was almost as decorative as Cypress.

'That means full of beans,' said a woman wearily, shoving a couple of puppy-dog youngsters off her lap. 'I reckon that finishes communion for now. I'm going to slump into a nap. Coming, Celeste?'

'Yes,' said Celeste, a tired forty with red hair looped into a coil.

'Can we talk?' I suggested. The Meroe/Barnabas confrontation showed no signs of slowing down at all. Now he was yelling at Meroe and she was hissing like a Naga to whom an indecent suggestion has just been made by a pit viper of low manners and unpleasant a.s.sociations.

'Why not?' said the woman. 'I'm Selene. She's Celeste. Come next door. Barnabas wanted a council, but we didn't decide anything.'

'Only because he never lets anyone decide anything,' objected Celeste. 'I don't know what got into us, joining a G.o.ddess-based religion and ending up being pushed around by a man.'

'You have a point,' agreed Selene. 'It was because of Eugenia, really, that we got into it, and when she went to the G.o.ddess, I suppose we just stayed on...she was Barnabas's partner, a wonderful mentor. Oh dear, we have no manners,' she apologised, ushering us into a flat identical to the one we'd just left. 'You came with Meroe, yes? I seem to know you. You're the baker,' she said, her dark face lighting up. 'You're going to make the soul cakes. Your chocolate m.u.f.fins have frequently saved my sanity. I'm a teacher,' she explained. We sat down and she poured a cool yellowy infusion into small cups. 'Dandelion, want some?'

Daniel and I declined.

'I'm Daniel, this is indeed Corinna Chapman, the baker from Earthly Delights,' Daniel said. 'We came because Meroe might need back-up.'

'If she does, she's got it,' said Celeste. 'She's always been known to be very close to the G.o.ddess.'

'And you've come to town for Samhain?' I asked, talking about a pagan celebration as though I was commenting on the spring racing carnival.

'Celeste lives in Sydney and I live in South Yarra,' said Selene. 'The others come from everywhere-from little covens in Queensland to communes in microclimates in Tasmania.

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It's always a good feast, because although in Europe it's the autumn, here it's spring. And we are not going to open that debate again,' she added, as though in warning, flapping her hands.

'What debate?' asked Daniel, puzzled.

'Do we reverse the ceremonies' dates because we follow the seasons, or do we follow the seasons and reverse the dates?' asked Selene.

I took a moment to work this out. Autumn in Europe was spring here. Summer in Australia was winter in Europe. The north wind doth blow in England and they shall have snow, and what will the robin do then, poor thing, but sit in the barn and keep himself warm, whereas in Australia the north wind doth blow and we shall be fried to a crisp, and all the robin can do is try to find a drop of water in the bottom of a parched pond somewhere. But presumably in both cases it can hide its head under its wing (poor thing). The common verse of England has always added just another level of confusion to Australian children, plus the sneaking suspicion that they or the robins were living in the wrong country...or someone was... the poets, maybe?

'Oh,' I said. 'Right. What has been decided?'

'Better the communality of all the Craft celebrating the same ceremony all over the world, regardless of seasons,' replied Celeste promptly, 'than halving the celebration just to make it match. Not my view, but I agree to differ. Put on the kettle, Sel? I could do with another cup of tea.'

I liked these women. They seemed very sensible, unlike the lolling young in the other flat. Daniel had found a chair and was absent-mindedly scratching the healing wound on the back of his hand. He was smiling.

'What do you teach?' he asked.

'I teach maths,' said Selene. 'Celeste runs a tea shop.'

'Ah,' said Daniel.

We sat quietly while the kettle heated and tea was made. Through the thin walls we could hear the battle of the witches going on. There was an occasional crash. They were probably throwing things. Things which smashed very satisfactorily. I also heard youthful laughter.

'What is Barnabas doing that Meroe so objects to?' I asked.

'Treasure,' said Celeste. 'He has a plan.'

'I see,' said Daniel, gravely.

'And he did produce some sort of artefact on Williamstown beach the other night,' said Selene.

'Which was then immediately reclaimed by the Dark,' said the redheaded witch. 'Not to blurt out Craft secrets to the uninitiated, but you are friends of Meroe's. We don't like the whole thing, and if it wasn't for having promised to help, we'd be off home. We can always come in for the ceremonies.'

'You see, it's the young ones. They want concrete results from witchcraft. They don't realise that the changes a witch makes are in the universe of her self, not the outer universe. They have been watching Charmed and Buffy and Angel and they want to produce their own demons, preferably really s.e.xy ones. Even the most powerful witches never conjured demons like those girls from Charmed.'

'I remember when my shop a.s.sistants took up Wicca- Meroe wanted to travel to America to find and a.s.sa.s.sinate all the scriptwriters,' I said, laughing.

'Luckily, they forgot about it fast,' said Daniel. 'They were driving Meroe up the wall.'

'These will abandon it as well,' sighed Selene. 'Maybe one or two have the makings. Not more than that. But Barnabas is 141.

so charming and jolly and so convincing, and for a lot of them he is the perfect father figure.'

'They need a perfect mother figure,' objected Celeste. 'No one has come forward since Eugenia died. That's almost a year. We call her name in the ceremonies this Samhain. Who will replace her? Urania is not mocked, nor left without an avatar.'

'Well, if she isn't left without an avatar, then she won't be,' argued her friend logically. 'Someone will come forward.'

'We heard that Barnabas is into poisons,' said Daniel, less adroitly than usual. The seamless, sleepy voices of the elder witches were making him drowsy. And in any case, as he said himself, his timing had been off ever since Georgiana had arrived in our lives.

'Poisons?' Selene sat up. 'No!'

'I can't think where you heard that,' said Celeste.

'Perhaps I heard wrong,' Daniel confessed. 'It's been a bad day. A man threw himself off the roof next to us, thinking he could fly.'

'How terrible! Is that what brought Meroe here?'

'Perhaps,' I answered. 'Who can tell with Meroe?'

'Indeed. Really, you must have a gla.s.s of the plum tonic and a small working for cleansing. Death is so sticky,' she said, laying out a knife and a pot of cooking salt. 'The contamination hangs around for ages. Especially with a suicide. Such an unfortunate frame of mind...'

We sat as she sprinkled us with salt and drew around our right hands with the knife, and then she and her fellow witch sang a sad, antiphonal song, consisting of the names of the G.o.ddess. Urania, they sang, Artemis and Hecate, Kali and Leucothea. White Queen Sedna of the Snows, Mother Carey with her blizzards and her seabirds, Aphrodite the Stranger scented with roses, the Night Hag and stately Venus, Hebe and Isis, Nepthys, and Egyptian Nut who was, uniquely, the sky G.o.ddess, not the earth. And finally the song wound down to the oldest one, the first G.o.ddess, Gaia, who was the earth, wide hipped, big bellied, the womb of the human race, the nurturing breast of all humans, the opulent and voracious beginning of all things female.

It was very effective, beautiful and strange, and when it was over and the salt had been scattered, we felt better. We heard Meroe calling us in the corridor and bade our witches thanks and farewell. We descended into the lobby to wait for Meroe to complete one final blistering opinion on Barnabas's moral character.

'They were lovely women,' I said to Daniel.

He took my hand. 'Yes, they were.'

'And that was a very nice threnody,' I added.

'It was, indeed,' he said.

'Do you believe them about Barnabas?' I asked Daniel as we emerged onto cool, forested Parkville Street, rustling with possums having a day off from mugging commuters for their leftover lunchtime fruit.

'Not a word,' he affirmed.

'Nor me,' I said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Meroe still wasn't talking, so we went to my own apartment and I decided to do a little light housework-cooking and mending-while Daniel read aloud. I had only just rediscovered the absolute delight of being read to by someone who liked the book and was fluent and easy, and I was awarded an instant understanding of how those Victorian ladies had uncomplainingly crocheted their way through four thousand metres of eyelet lace in a lifetime. The hands move of their own volition while the ears are ravished, though in their case it was probably by Dr Johnson or Sir Walter Scott, while Daniel was reading Winnie the Pooh.

'"There's a thing called Twicetimes," he said. "Christopher Robin tried to teach it to me, but it didn't," he said.

'"Didn't what?" asked Rabbit.

'"It just didn't," said Pooh sadly.'

Oh, I knew exactly what he meant. None of this soul cake affair made any sense. Well, it did, but the nastiest kind of sense. Why sell lysergic acid so strong that it sent its users instantly insane? Economically, it was silly. The stuff must cost 143.

something to synthesise. Why, then, not dilute it to the usual dose and stockpile a lot of it for future demand? Presumably it didn't go off. I knotted the last st.i.tch in a tear I was repairing and bit off the thread. Daniel chuckled.

'Hmm?' I asked.

'I was just thinking how Georgie would see this scene,' he said, now a little warily, even though Georgie was agreed to be a safe subject. 'The perfect Victorian paterfamilias, reading improving literature to the Little Woman. George always said that Jews longed for the good old days of the patriarchy.'

'And do they?' I asked idly.

'No,' he said, very decidedly. 'For a start, if you're the patriarch, it's always your fault. No matter what happens, you get blamed.'

'Then again, you have all those wives and concubines,' I reminded him, rolling up his s.h.i.+rt for later was.h.i.+ng and taking up my blue spring jacket, which I had put away clean but b.u.t.tonless last spring. I had some beautiful ceramic cat b.u.t.tons to put on it.

'Never did them any good,' murmured Daniel. 'The wives just fought with each other over whose son was going to succeed. More people, less company. Did you ever read the Kipling story about King Solomon?'

I was touched and delighted that we had read the same books as children.

'"The b.u.t.terfly That Stamped"? Of course. We might read the Just So Stories after we finish The House at Pooh Corner. Go on about the disadvantages of patriarchy.'

'Then there's G.o.d. You have to have a special relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d if you're the patriarch, or how else are you going to produce water from the rock?'

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'And what's your relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d, then?' I had always wondered.

'Distantly polite,' said Daniel. 'So, George may keep her patriarchy, you can secure your b.u.t.tons, and I will continue on reading.'

And he did. The afternoon wore on, the ma.s.sed cats slept, the b.u.t.tonless became b.u.t.toned and the torn was patched. We were just wondering about a little dinner when Jones and Miller announced themselves and stomped up the stairs. I put away the mending and put on the kettle again.

They were, if anything, more grimy. And grim. But they accepted tea and packet biscuits and Daniel engaged them in light banter about what you could catch grubbing about in alleys in this man's city in these degenerate times.

'Oh, I don't know,' I said, having read some very interesting detective stories set in the twenties. 'You probably aren't going to get syphilis.'

'Don't count on it,' growled Jones. 'Got a favour, ma'am,' he said to me.

'Yes,' I said, considerably astonished.

'Wouldn't ask a cleanskin civilian but you're Daniel's lady,' said Miller.

'Yes,' I agreed.

'We went down to that Best Fresh place to check out the cake situation,' said Jones. He was worried, but he was also amused in some not-very-nice way. 'Asked the bloke if he had any cakes to spare so forensics could check 'em out. He was just about to hand over a big bag when some idiot told him about the stiff, and he went right up the wall.'

'And he's still there,' added Miller.

'And what do you expect Corinna to do about that?' asked Daniel, quite reasonably.

'Talk to him,' said Jones. 'She's a baker. He says only a baker can understand and she's the nearest baker.'