Lord Burrow gave him an incredulous look, but with the advent of the thunder-monster the sea had been thrown into even greater tumult. The sheets of rain falling unbroken from the sky seemed as though they would cause a second Flood. The strivings of Mrs. Midsomer and the thunder-monster so infused the place with magic that every wave bore a crest of green foam, every magician was outlined in light and the opaque vault of the sky was a livid green, reflecting the unearthly glow of the battle below.
“Damn your impudence!” said Lord Burrow. “Do you mean to blackmail me at such a time as this?”
“You and Mr. Midsomer both,” said Zacharias.
Midsomer was huddled in a corner, watching his wife and familiar in terror. He looked up at the sound of his name.
“If Providence permits us to survive this calamity, it will behoove me to report an unlawful summoning to the Society,” said Zacharias. “I understand Mr. Midsomer proposes that the Hallett be undertaken. It could be done at the same meeting.”
“We will not survive,” said Midsomer, with a slight improvement in his spirits. “So the point is moot.”
“It strikes me that my report could cause some awkwardness for so well-known a family as the Midsomers,” continued Zacharias.
“My sister Polly would not like it, if that is what you mean,” said Lord Burrow. “So you will keep quiet about this business of summoning a familiar—a froward familiar at that; you ought to have chosen a more peaceable creature, Geoffrey—you will keep quiet, will you, Wythe, and sort out this business, at a price?”
“I only desire your support at the next Society meeting,” said Zacharias. “I require no more than that you and Mr. Midsomer should vote as I vote, second any nomination I make, and shout down any proposal contrary to my wishes.”
Lord Burrow glowered at him. “And we are to lend our names to any harebrained policy arising from your proposals, I suppose?”
“If you think it right to do so. I hope you will, but my price is your support for the space of one meeting only,” said Zacharias. “For what I intend, a single meeting will suffice.”
A fisherman’s hut close to the shore burst into flames, despite the extreme wetness of the weather. Lord Burrow said:
“If you can stop them, you may have whatever you want, and be damned to you! The Hallett will be withdrawn, and we shall vote on whatever blockheaded reforms you desire.
“It is the sorcerer’s way to gain his point by main force, after all,” he added bitterly. “But you will have to perform your side of the bargain first!”
“It shall be done,” said Zacharias.
Damerell was about to put the finishing touches upon a convoluted curse implicating even the neighbours and casual acquaintances of Mrs. Midsomer’s descendants unto the seventh generation when Zacharias interrupted him.
“Come, man, pull yourself together,” said Zacharias. “There is no need for this. If you are concerned for Rollo there is a simpler way to put a period to the scene, and she will help you recover him, I am sure.”
Damerell stared at him, bemused at having been pulled so suddenly out of his incantation. “What?”
“I have begun the spell, but it requires more work, and I should be grateful for your assistance,” said Zacharias. “We must make it a watertight chantment, else it will be bound to fail—for she is not what anyone would call complaisant.”
24
GEORGIANAWITHOUTRUTHhad been having a lovely day. She had passed the morning in visits, gossiping and testing her wits (and in one case, her claws) against her friends and enemies. She had then engaged in some light exercise, hunting down her dinner—a white hart with a blood-red star on its forehead, which wailed in a human voice as she devoured it.
Since creatures of like strangeness were so often to be found in the forests of Fairy as to have lost all their novelty, this impaired her appetite not a jot, and Georgiana returned to her cave in an excellent humour. She curled up on her hoard of gold, but as she was about to float away on billows of sleep, she was rudely torn from her slumbers.
The geas laid upon her could not be gainsaid. The spell was devilishly well constructed, and despite all her efforts Georgiana was borne irresistibly along by it, hurtling along secret ways across the worlds, growing crosser and crosser with each unwilling wingbeat.
The originators of the enchantment had not even bothered to disguise their identities, and by the time Georgiana descended uponLyme Regis, she had prepared some rich words for Paget Damerell and that upstart Sorcerer Royal. She would not quietly endure the insult of being summoned to attend to a magician’s pleasure, as though she were any trumpery fairy or slubberdegullion spirit, so greedy for power that it was willing to pledge itself to a mere mortal. Oh no! They would soon discover why she was named Without Ruth.
The sight that greeted her upon her arrival was sufficiently appalling to distract her from her wrongs, however.
“Lorelei,” she trumpeted, “do I indeed find you in a tantrum? For shame! To be two thousand years old and still so naughty!”
Mrs. Midsomer’s churning tail ceased its operations with comical abruptness. The whirlpool it was working up died down abruptly. The mists veiling her form were blown away by a gust of wind, and the sun shone out of the clouds, illumining her abashed countenance.
“Cousin Georgiana!” she exclaimed. “I—I thought you never visited the mortal realm.”
“That shows how much you know,” said Georgiana snappishly. “I come and go as I wish. You surely did not thinkIwas subject to the Court’s restrictions upon travel?”
“Oh no, no,” said Mrs. Midsomer. She had already begun to shrink.
