The entire rigmarole was so twisted and violent that it was somehow worthy of Albert Garrick, and Riley never doubted the story for a moment.
The magician sat again on the low bench, crossing his booted legs at the ankles. ‘My first scheme failed to an extent because it grew too elaborate. I was caught up in the mechanics and failed to plan for audience interference, as it were. Little Miss Savano –’ Garrick wagged a finger at Riley and leered knowingly – ‘I saw it, you know. The gleam in your beadies. Puppy love, ain’t it? Forged in the fire of adventure and brought to bloom by the wormhole. You can thank Albert Garrick for that, for who was it if not me who brung you two together?’
For this was the depth and breadth of Garrick’s hubris and pomposity – that he congratulated himself for introducing two friends whom he had plotted to murder for centuries.
‘But this new infatuation of yours will serve me well, son. For now, instead of forcing you to witness your so-called brother perish at my hands, I will force you to watch your Injun princess burn as a witch, before we see whether or not you can pluck your way out of the Cat’s Collar.’
Garrick stretched creakily to his full height, slapping his knees on the way up. ‘Simple, ain’t it? Simple as jam.’
Riley had enough steel in him for one little barb. ‘Simple as jam, less you touch Chevie. You touch her and yer gone into the wormhole, ain’t that so, master?’
As soon as he said it, Riley realized that he should have kept his trap latched.
‘Right you are,’ said Garrick, instinctively rubbing a thick silver cuff bracelet on his wrist, where it was almost invisible against his skin. ‘By times the wormhole calls to me, loves me and hates me all at once, but the silver kept her at bay till now. But that accursed Timekey could have me swimming in foam, right enough.’
He tapped Riley’s head. ‘My thanks to you for the reminder. It seems my very proximity is enough to light up that accursed device. So I will not lay a hand on your beloved. I will have my acolytes lash her to the pyre and the accursed Timekey can melt and run like tallow down the stake along with the meat on her bones.’
With that, Garrick spun on his heel and left whistling a merry tune, which it took Riley a few bars to recognize as a music-hall favourite: ‘The Mad Butcher’.
Fairbrother Isles. Geddit?
Constable Godfrey Cryer was watching over the prisoner in the town jail, which was reserved for troublesome reprobates who could not be trusted in the House of Unfortunates; it was little more than a woodshed with a stout door and a single-barred window overlooking the square’s gibbet and stocks. The jail was situated within stumbling distance of the Huntings Tavern, which historically supplied most of its occupants, who, though Puritan, were not against a tankard or two of a hot afternoon – or a cold one for that matter. Indeed it was said among Mandrake’s locals that the jail’s wooden bench had absorbed enough beer dribblings over the years that any prisoners who went in sober came out drunk from the vapours.
Since Cryer’s guard duty had commenced not one hour ago, three times already the constable had nipped round the back of the jail hut, where none could see him but the birds perched atop the town wall, for what could be described as either a gibbering weep or perhaps a gnashing series of sobs. Godfrey Cryer was enveloped in a whip-storm of emotions. Witchfinder Garrick had returned after a year-long absence, and this was what Cryer had wished for, had prayed for nightly, but now he felt that he was not worthy to serve Albert Garrick. Indeed, was not his lace collar being laundered this day? The very day that Master Garrick returns, his constable is found without a trimmed collar and with only his stout hat to proclaim him constable. What must Master Garrick think?
I am crying, thought Cryer. Cryer the crier is crying. It is enough to make a man weep. Oh, they would laugh now; how they would guffaw. Jeronimo Woulfe and all the rest who secretly scoffed at the very existence of witchcraft.
But now …
But now there was a witch barricaded in the jail and none could deny it, for she had the eyes of a cat, and all had witnessed them flash gold.
A demon dragged hissing from hell she was, without a doubt. Cryer’s chest swelled with a fierce pride in his master’s unprecedented accomplishment, but in that moment he felt the witch reach out to him, trying to exploit his sin, and Cryer’s very skin crawled.
‘Witch,’ he shouted, pounding on the wall behind him. ‘Begone. Leave my mind!’ Though, of course, the only thing stirring in Cryer’s mind was his own imagination.
‘I think you already left your mind, Crybaby,’ said a voice behind him. Godfrey Cryer whirled round with such speed that his hat spun a quarter revolution further than his person.
‘Nice look, Crybaby,’ said Fairbrother Isles, for it was he who had spoken then and now. ‘Hat all askew and such. Very constable-like.’
Cryer straightened himself, his tunic and his hat. Then he scowled that he should be so compromised by such a fool as the African man, Isles, with his weirdness of speech and softness of head.
It was true that Fairbrother Isles’s shaggy appearance did nothing to dispel the general opinion that he was indeed an arch-dolt and slave to the grog. For as long as Cryer could remember, the man had made his home in a shack in the fens. Though Cryer had never cared about the man enough to brave the abomination-infested bogs, he had no doubt that the shack reeked even more than Isles, which was a considerable amount.
The duffer in question stood, or rather leaned insolently on the jail wall, with his customary smug grin skulking behind a spade of beard, which remained as dark as his own skin in spite of the rampant grey in the unkempt hair that was brushed back from his forehead. His boozy habits had set his frame running slightly to fat but he was a broad man nonetheless and Godfrey Cryer had often given secret thanks that Isles put up no resistance when thrown in the jail or stocks. He was a maudlin drunkard, given to rambling and fantastical weepy stories about ships that could fly or paintings that moved, or how much he missed creatures that he named hot dogs.
‘Isles,’ snapped Godfrey Cryer, ‘begone from here. Important matters are unfolding. Witchfinder Garrick has called an assembly and you’d best be attending.’
Isles made no move to leave. ‘Witchfinder, whatever. I have a bone to pick with you, Cryer.’
Godfrey Cryer cared for the man’s brazen tone not one bit nor his bone comment for that matter – Cryer was well aware that his skin’s tone and sheen lent him a bone-like quality.
&n
bsp; ‘Bone, is it? You have a bone to pick with me? That is not the way of things, Isles. A sot-pot does not pick bones with the town constable.’
Cryer attempted to loom over Isles, but the man seemed of greater heft somehow on this day and even greater uncontriteness than was normal.
‘Yeah, well, this sot-pot is supposed to be spending the night in that jail, right? That was the deal. I was disorderly, so I spend a day in the stocks and a night in jail. You pronounced that, Cryer. You cried it loud and clear.’
Another mocking of his name in a day overflowing with mockery was too much for the constable and he lashed out with the back of his hand, the very boniness of which he was sure would raise a pleasing welt on Isles’s cheek. But the blow did not strike flesh, only the wooden wall of the jail as Isles’s head moved sharply out of reach.
Cryer cried out, which drew a chuckle from Isles even as he chopped the constable’s neck with the side of his hand in a move that would be known as the brachial stun by US marines in several hundred years. Cryer dropped like a falling log.
Fairbrother Isles chuckled again and thought how long he had been waiting to knock Godfrey Cryer on his backside and how it had been well worth the wait.
‘Crybaby,’ he said, and stepped over the fallen constable to the jail door.
Isles checked for any eyes that might be pointed his way, but the street was deserted.
‘All packed into the House of Unfortunates,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Attending the great weirdo Albert Garrick’s magic meeting.’ Isles did a little spooky face here that would have earned him a lashing had Cryer been conscious to witness it, but Cryer would not awaken for several minutes and it would be several more minutes before he had gathered the courage to admit to Witchfinder Garrick that he had failed in his duty. While it was true that the Witchfinder had no official authority in Mandrake, being a mere freelancer, Godfrey Cryer had witnessed Master Garrick perform such feats that he revered the self-proclaimed Witchfinder as he would Saint Peter himself.