BURNLEY

It started small, a thing I never planned.
This house, which you expect - rather, demand -
I polish every minute, neat as a shell
has become my cell.

It's tough, not going outside, making no sound
as your schoolmaster cane inflects each wound,
accepts the count of every bright switch I take.
Afterwards, I ache.

So, I've begun acting out my dissatisfaction;
I don't deny I'm wanting your reaction.
I tilt this picture of your beloved Burnley.
You're bound to punish me.

And so, each day I say what I am feeling,
your Burnley's pants-down, shockingly revealing,
the doffing of its frame a shade more acute.
I'm following suit.

I wonder when you learned that swollen flesh
splits more when hit - anoints your cane afresh
when left to rise, like bread, for half an hour -
with my red offerings, my dying flower,
my dying red flower.


© Sara Willow 2009

Butterflies

Butterfly kisses:
A thousand nightwings blooding
this revolution.

PRIMROSES

In an urban room
in a pot beneath a bed:
yellow primroses.

A child of the dark
rests his cheek, plumply, on glass,
making connections -

His fingertips, eyes,
the world outside, primroses -
and a pledge is made.



© Sara Willow

FRIDGE POEM

Candy kitty give me kisses
I like perfumed crazy flowers
You're god to my wild ghost



© Sara Willow

THE WORDS

Your words deal castles crammed with noise under
stone sky, blood bridge, no water. It's as if
you set me in your painting, where you are.
I know this place: we're scanning the same page.

I always knew your words would ruin me,
and you, only one paragraph ahead,
both of us chasing tangled story-lines,
skimming at speed vast chunks of frantic rhyme.

The ceilings were too wide, beyond meanings,
flinging our last words back as noise; pure code.
I tried avoiding you, but had no choice;
knew I'd admit your ending equalled mine.

Cipher this slick only connects one way.
I knew this; still I followed it, running.
I blame the words. If you had spoken french,
this bridge would not have been here. Or this sky.

The castle would have seeped silence, not blood.
No blood, no rhyme, no turning of the page,
and I would not be spinning poetry,
not here, not now, weaving these last few words.




© Sara Willow

We are amused...

First there was Tinyurl - but url-shortening is so last year, darlings. Big is the new small. For all your url-lengthening needs, why not try the dickensurl.com emporium? They even have a cut down version for Twitter, proving that one size really does fit all.

The dickensurl which leads back here is Mr_Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system

THUMBS

"If I wanted to create a surveillance society, I would start by creating dossiers on kindergarten children so that the next generation could not comprehend a world without surveillance."
- Andre Bacard, author of 'The Computer Privacy Handbook'

Prints. Lots and lots. Jane and Peter. Peter and Jane. I will tell you this if you keep my face in shadow. Your people will understand when they hear what I have to say.

I knew there would be trouble the day my sister's boy brought the letter home.

I knew there would be an outcry.

I came down from my attic to get a cup of water to soak my teeth. Could hear - what? Panic in her voice, I thought first - as I dithered on the landing, debated going downstairs. The excuse of bathroom water not safe for drinking, though it was, came to mind. I pushed open the kitchen door, my empty glass held out in front of me like a lantern.

"You! What do you want?" she said, then went right back to wailing at him, not waiting for my reply. I ignored her rudeness, went to the sink as slowly as I could, shuffled my feet on the Spanish tiles because I know it irritates her, but she did not notice this time. I messed with the cold tap as if it was a creature I had not encountered before, but she did not notice that either.

You know already what the problem was, of course. That is why you are here talking to me. It is breaking news, topical. They should have got the parents' consent first before they took what they took: a little piece of each child's soul, like a photograph, but better, because touch was involved, do you see?

And how it ended up in the wild, so to speak? Nobody knows, except that it was bound to, in time. A thing is only unique until it is copied. Let me tell you about a man, call him Simon, though that is not his real name. Simon was on the train from Fenchurch Street, though nobody knew that except Simon and one or two disinterested passengers. He did not have that despicable tendency the teenagers have of announcing to the world by telephone, "I'm on the trai-ai-ai-ain".

Simon was looking for something. His spectacles, probably, down the back of the seat. There was something down there, but too small, the size of his thumb. Already he could feel it was a thing filled with sap, far better than any lenses could tell him. One of those modern things, he had seen them in the Argos catalogue, what were they called? He found out later it was a USB stick. Flash or pen drive. Thumb drive.

Glasses forgotten - though he discovered them later, safe in his pocket - Simon spent the rest of his journey to Dagenham pondering how he could get hold of a computer. Being frugal, he went the second-hand route; he approached the local recycling group. The name of the school was not on the USB stick, but that did not matter, because Simon recognised - oh happy day - two of the names. A boy, and a girl. Their dates of birth. Most precious of all, like two blooms amongst hundreds of others, their thumbprints.

One Wednesday, the next week it was, he found himself down at the school without any real recollection of the route between home and here. Watched from the end of the street as they came gushing out of the gate, a river of thumbs. Which one are you? The stick was in his pocket, and so was his hand, stroking it, this phial of life, fizzing gently between his fingers.

It was enough. For now.

Simon hung on until the knowledge became too much; three weeks, or was it only a fortnight? Like last time, he did not see his two thumbs; instead he watched the others. By now he was beginning to ask himself the question: why the prints? To identifiy criminals, naturally, but what had whole classrooms of children done wrong? Nothing, he concluded. They were angels, innocents. Delightfully pure, unsullied. But the question remained, scratched away at his brain like an imprisoned rodent.

You ask about me? Yes, I have a job, but it is none of your business. You digress. I could tell you I work in a library, that I build computers, but at least one of those is untrue. It is Simon you want to speak with, truthfully.

Simon is not a scientist. He knows nothing about the human genome, or DNA, or replication. But he quickly discovered, by happy accident perhaps, how to copy information from one tiny device to another. And Simon has his friends, some might say devotees, waiting around this corner or in that pub, that deserted supermarket car-park. He did not do it for the money, you understand, though that came in nicely. He enjoyed playing God, or following in the footsteps of Mendel, if you are irreligious. The toothsome thing about all of this was that nothing was lost in the copying. Spread the love, Simon says. Simon says put your thumbs up to signal agreement. Simon says "Good, A-OK, go right ahead".

And they did.

But I am getting ahead of myself. That was later. First, he found a way to get inside the school building. He walked right in there, brash as the colour of summer. Flashed a thumb - somebody's - at the device to the right of the door. Simon is not a teacher or a teaching assistant or a caretaker. Once inside, it did not matter what he was. He belonged because he was inside the hive.

And they followed him as surely as if he had a flute. They supposed him for a caretaker, or a teaching assistant, or a teacher, maybe. Simon likes folding things, but he likes unfolding things even better. Things like boys and girls. Simon is not Japanese, but he likes to play at origami. Imagine, small squares of coloured paper between his hands, folding, unfolding, like a film played forwards-backwards-forwards-backwards, losing nothing in the translation.

I knew there would be trouble the day my sister's boy brought the letter home. But it was too late, already much, much too late, by then.

The day the children disappeared: you cannot say you were not warned. You signed the warrant with their thumbs, without asking their mothers first. Nobody knew. But you cannot say you were not warned. And you cannot pin it on me. I do not know where he is. No matter what Simon says, I am not his keeper.

Simon got rid of the computer, of course; he knew he had to. He was not wedded to it; it was a tool only. He paid cash for the newspaper ad, and what if its new owners did collect it from the house he lodged at? He left home the same day, after telling his so-called landlady certain truths which were bound to make her throw him out. I expect he followed my advice and covered the hard drive with Norito-prayers made out of zeroes.

***

In another part of the city, the computer: inside the home of another absent child, quietly knowing, remembering to itself all of the things it has seen.

His thumbprints, the ones on the outside, quietly glowing, dreaming to themselves, dreaming of their approaching day, their approaching day of dust.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 24

Taligás has procured a long black coat with many pockets. He smiles his crooked smile, tucks it tight around himself. It is not new; it has mildew at the hem, but he likes it all the better for this. It comes to him with a history and the satisfaction of a job well done. He remembers her face... and promptly trips over the hem. No matter, he thinks, as he digs himself out of the dust. He will get a needlewoman onto shortening it tomorrow. In the meantime, he will be careful.

On the battlements, Erzebet paces. She will not admit to being wrong, but still, she thinks, it is a pity the Zitchi girl is dead. None of the others were as juicy, nor screamed so sweetly, before or since. Since Zitchi, she feels seven years creeping up on her with ease on each single morrow. Only this morning she detected a dowager's back in the mirror. It was slight, but it was there. And smashing the mirror and using the glass to slash her latest maid's visage has done little to suppress her disenchantment.




Thurzó knows everything there is to know about lunar eclipses. Of course, he says to himself as he heads to the river again. It is today. It is written. A partial one only. He looks up. But this is not quite as foreseen; the moon is as a bloodshot eye. He shivers.

Aliz is thinking deeply, but not so deeply she misses his arrival. She has squatted in her skirts with a knife and a bowl on the edge of the camp. She sees him, solemnly watches his approach, the wineskins on his shoulder. Does he feel the extraordinary weight of her gaze on him?

She has hidden herself behind a good tree. He comes up to the tree, looks around the trunk and down at her sitting in the long grass. "Hello, Aliz," he says. She grins up at him like an idiot, seems unable to move. "Come," he says, helps her to her feet. Together they walk down to the river and into the camp.

The food has turned the night salty and running with juice and with herbs, down their throats, overspilling onto their chins. The wine flows like a river of rubies. Overhead, the lunar circle widens degree by bloody degree like a woman widens when a child must be born. The stars come out. And it seems to Thurzó that the only thing left waiting to happen must be the arrival of a comet or a shooting star, but he knows that cannot be; it has not been foretold. She is sitting on the other side of the campfire, there beside the cymbalom. He cannot stop looking in the direction of the cymbalom. And it seems to her that he cannot stop looking at her, and yet she is unable to meet his gaze.

When the last of the food has been consumed and the bones thrown to the dogs and the last of the grease licked from fingers, there is still the music. The ghost of Old Man Nagy strikes up the cymbalom, or is it Raoul of the red rage? Another man takes the fiddle, and there is a deerskin drum to honour the spirits of all the fallen deer, including the one they have just eaten. There is a drunken pipe, but it does not last beyond the first song.

Up at the tree where Aliz sat earlier with her knife and her bowl, a man is crouching in a coat as good as invisible against the sky. But why? Nobody tells Taligás No, is why, but that is not the whole story. Everybody underestimates Taligás, is why, but that is not the whole story either. There is a precious particle of story which Taligás keeps locked inside his head, cherishes, nurtures, feeds, and above all, nobody but Taligás knows it is there.




And songs. Songs of travelling, songs of love. Songs of fire and of water. The cymbalom never stops, thinks Thurzó, as he watches Raoul's hands from across the circle. He wonders how he can keep moving his hands hour upon hour, how he can layer the notes that way, have three harmonies - at least - going at once when he only has two hands. He cannot know the answer to this, which is that Raoul is dancing a duet with Old Man Nagy, and also that the cymbalom itself has spirit, as all things do.

She is in you - she is in all of us.
She wants your body, she wants your mind.
And when she finds you, and when you let her out
Then she will get you, get you - you can't escape this time.

Aíya, Aíya, Aíya, Aíya.

She is a cold heart, she is a shadow,
She will betray you from deep inside,
And when you hear her calling you quietly
Then you will let her, let her - and you can never hide.

Aíya, Aíya, Aíya, Aíya.

She will take you - she knows you want her to.
She wants to wake you, make you the same.
You know you want her, you know you want her to
When you start sleeping, dreaming, and calling out her name:-

Aíya, Aíya, Aíya, Aíya,
Aíya, Aíya, Aíya, Aíya,
Aíya, Aíya, Aíya, Aíya.

The truth is, Raoul is bewitched, thinks Thurzó. Each time he gets to the chorus, sings the Aíyas, he does this strange thing with his voice which sends shivers up Thurzó's spine. It is as if his voice exists on two or three planes at once, vibrates between them, builds energy, the kind of energy you need before a scream, and yet the scream never comes, it exists as a promise only. Not a promise - a prophecy whose fulfillment is inevitable.

Aíya!

And yet - after the second verse Thurzó is singing the Aíyas too, and the final time it comes around he feels almost like he has a new religion. It cannot be the Bull's Blood - he is a big man who finds it difficult to sink enough to get drunk. It cannot be the company - he has spent time with the gypsies before. Or can it?

The signs and portents in the heavens? The eclipse is done now; it fizzled like an anticlimax years ago in the penultimate song. Thurzó realises the other musicians have gone to bed, most of the gypsies have gone to their caravans in fact. He does not see Aliz there, slumping half-asleep against the legs of the cymbalom. There is some mumbled chatter from the stragglers by the fireside, but it is winding down with the embers. He really should be getting back to Piest'ány.

At that moment, the skies brighten and Thurzó cranes his head upwards: a meteor storm, ah, but it cannot be! The sky has turned from midnight to purple, stripy and swirly like a painting as yet unpainted in the mind of a man not yet born, with balls of light and stars like fireworks. The Carpathian mountains are black jags against the sky, the distant town's rooftops and spires are silhouetted too.

Aíya!

And he really should be getting back to Piest'ány, but finds he cannot take his eyes away from the stars, or his heart away from the sensation of someone's hand reaching into his chest between his ribs and squeezing, squeezing, massaging him back to life even though, until this moment, he had not realised he was dead. The sensation is not unpleasant, he thinks. And then he does stop looking at the stars; he lowers his head and discovers his eyes are pointing like a compass at the source of his rebirth, the cymbalom. And he has no idea why but he finds himself getting to his feet as hurriedly as he can, taking three strides across the circle - jumping the fading fire as he does so. He arrives at the cymbalom and stretches out his hand -

Aíya!

- and finds it clasped in return by that wizard Raoul, who has laid down his hammers and now grasps Thurzó's hand in both of his. Raoul locks eyes with Thurzó, lifts his hands to his mouth and places a warm, soft kiss atop Thurzó's thumb.

"What do you think of the fireworks?" says Raoul.

Thurzó opens his mouth to speak but finds he has no words.

"I laid them on just for you," says Raoul.

"I have no doubt of it," says Thurzó.




Thurzó leaves for Piest'ány just before dawn, unseen. Unseen, that is, except by Aliz, who has spent a cold night's vigil under the cymbalom, her heart in bits. And she was very cold, for it is early in the year, and the waters of the Váh, bloated with ice, give off a frozen white cloak as they rush past.

What a shame for Aliz, that she did not possess a long black pocketed coat to keep her warm.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 23

And here's a thing: the face of the girl is changing. From a certain angle and a certain light, she could be anyone. But it's not about her face, and it's especially not about a picture of her face made out of paint in another century. The force that made him paint the picture, ah, it might be about that. The voice of the woman standing beside him now, the epitome of truth and goodness, the deep honeyed throat of her voice - it might be about that too.

And he lifts his eyes from the painting, knowing where it is that they have to go now. And as he takes her hand she has a new peace about her. She follows him home, goes into the drawing room where together they put the lights on and shut the curtains against the cold, but she can't shut out that aching down in her bones. It's November, true. Yes, that must be all it is.

And he talks. And he talks and he talks. About Zitchi, about everything he knows about her, about everything there is to know or might even possibly be surmised, about the things he doesn't know, about his hopes and his fears and the ways in which he's let her down twice already, and about the terror he feels in his heart at the possibility of maybe fucking up for a third time. As he talks, he drinks a gallow-glass of blood-red wine, and then another.

Vanna doesn't drink because frankly, he's creeping her out. She knew he was obsessive, but this? What if he doesn't get his way? What if there is no Zitchi, or what if there is, but he can't bring her back? What then?

And what if there is, and what if he can? What will happen to Vanna?

Again, the overtiredness is seeping in, and it's almost like she hears the distant wail of the banshee the same way a bat would: under the skin. He's sounding maudlin now, she thinks, but she does as she's told and she refills his glass. The bottle is empty but he bids her go down in the cellar for another.

"There is no cellar; you live in a flat, Henry!" she says. But his face has clouded over and he waves his hand at her, dismissively.

"That's what you think," he says, but he's thinking of another house; he must be? "All right, in the bedroom then. There's a wine rack in the bedroom - you've seen it? And while you're in there, bring me my statue of Sekhmet."

This can not end well, thinks Vanna, not if he's going to invoke Sekhmet: Scarlet Lady, Avenger of Wrongs, Goddess of Blood. Apart from anything else, he can't possibly know what he's doing. But all right, I'll do what he says. Once more, and then I'll go to sleep. And off she trots, into the bedroom.

But: he must have been in here before her, when they got back from the library, maybe? There are candles burning on every surface; on the bedside tables, the bookcase, the tallboy, two candles either side of Sekhmet's statue on the dressing table. Candles gloating in finger-bowls. Someone's pulled the sheets back on the bed; it waits for an incumbent. The curtains are drawn back too; on either side of the Georgian sash windows dark red velvet pools, where they've been cut too long for the drop. And a moon wanes silently outside the window, casting its shaft of sepia light onto the brazen whiteness of the bed.

Vanna has seen this before. She's in the painting.

So, all I have to do here is wait, she thinks, but she's wrong. She'll have to do a whole lot more than wait before the night is done. For a psychic, she's pretty dense at times. In other words: this cannot end well.

Vanna sits on the edge of the bed, starts thinking about Zitchi. Wonders whether she's coming through by herself this time, or whether she has what it takes to deliberately channel her. And in the continued absence of Henry she wonders whether she should grab the nearest bottle of wine and get back into the drawing room before he realises she's dallying.

At the same time she's having these thoughts, she's got a sense of it all being unreal again, and of none of this mattering. In a moment, she thinks, destiny is going to get changed, dragged kicking and screaming in the blink of an eye into the tomb of all hope.

Yeah. But that's just melodramatic. Gothic hogwash. And she starts to chuckle softly to herself at her daftness. OK, you silly moo, just get him his wine and then we can all go to bed

kicking and screaming

we can all go to bed

And he's here, framed in the doorway. "What are you doing? You've been gone forever."

She giggles. "I was just getting you your wine. I've not been gone that long. Here it is - oh!" She looks down at her right hand but the bottle's not there because she's not actually picked it up from the wine rack. Thing is, thinking hard about doing something's not the same as actually doing it.

He glowers, leaning against the door jamb, his right hand in his pocket, almost casually. "I've come for you, Zitchi."

She looks up from her hands and into his face, and she realises he's not looking at her, but beyond. Or - he is looking at her face, at the space her face and her body occupies in this room, but it's as if his eyes are flickering like black flames, shifting back-and-fore between here and the abyss.

And then she looks at his hands, or tries to, but she can't see them, because they're in his pockets. And in that instant, she knows. She knows that inside his right pocket inside his right hand he has the pink pearlised gun.

face pockets face pockets

And she knows she has to get out of that room before he shoots her.

"What's the matter?" he says.

There's a quaver of delight in his voice. He knows she knows, is savouring the moment in its long, drawn-out glory. This is better than the especial pulling-out of fingernails.

And she looks into his eyes and she thinks, arbitrarily, that he's quite, quite mad. Not that that matters either way.

"What's the matter? Do tell..." he says.

And she knows - she doesn't know how she knows - but she knows that she absolutely MUST NOT mention the gun or allude to it in anyway, because if she does, it'll be like she's summoning it, and then he'll use it, or the Banshee will.

"Nothing," she squeaks.

"There clearly is! Come on, what can it be, I wonder? Are you afraid, perhaps, of some Little Thing?"

And she absolutely must not mention... or even think about... so in a tiny voice she says, "I need to go to the bathroom."

He grins. "Of course! Hurry up then, and come back soon, won't you?"

So she moves towards the doorway, but he makes no effort to move out of the way. This is an old building with big doorways, but Henry's a big chap. There's enough of a gap between him and the door frame for her to squeeze through without too much trouble, but then -

- but then, oh my god, she'll have to turn her back on him. Oh. Shit.

She has an idea. It's not even a half-bulb idea as ideas go, but it's all she has. "After you!" she says to him, her voice bright with hope.

He chuckles, like he'd anticipated her. "No, after you - I insist." And he still makes no move away from the doorway.

"No - you first."

"No, you; I insist."

What would Zitchi do? She has no idea.

Come to that, what would Bathory do?

Vanna doesn't really want to go to the bathroom, but by this stage she's almost pissing herself in terror. She knows - that word again - that he has the gun, that he's gonna shoot her as soon as she turns her back and quite possibly even if she doesn't, that he knows that she knows, and that above all, the bloody bastard is bloody enjoying every bloody minute of this.

And then - then he does something she wasn't anticipating. He takes his right hand out of his trouser pocket, unfurls it slowly and rests it flat against the top panel of the door. He looks at her looking at his hand, and he smiles like a lizard.

And she's barrelling out of the bedroom, elbowing him in the guts as she goes, rushing to the front door where bizarrely she has the foresight to grab her handbag, and down the two flights of stairs, round and down, out to the Jag and get in and start the engine up first time lovely well it's a Jag after all...

And as she leapfrogs backwards out of the drive she looks up at the big picture window at the front of Henry's drawing room. Henry is there, gazing out into the night, his face contorted into the staring eyes and open mouth of the Banshee's scream.

She knows the only place she can go this late at night is Pete's house. It's not until she pulls into his road with its derision of burnt out cars and detritus that she realises: Fuckfuckfuck but Henry is left-handed.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 22

Hungary, 1591

Gáspo Thurzó is nobody's cousin, although everyone claims he is theirs. One such cousin is Taligás the carter, the one with the ruined thumbs. How his thumbs got ruined is another tale, but after he sold the cart to Erzebet's henchwomen he made but one more, remember? He would never starve, for now he sells stories - the kind of stories people pay him not to tell.

Unlike Gáspo Thurzó, Taligás has many cousins who are quick to deny him. Brothers, too, and he would have a wife, but her name is better left unsaid. He said it himself once, into the wrong ear. Now she is dead.

Gáspo Thurzó hates no one, but if he did, Taligás would be top of his list. Instead, whenever he is forced to think of him he shakes his head.

Gáspo Thurzó has a profoundly rich, deep, singing voice, like rocks sliding away from lazarine tombs.



It's ironic, thinks Thurzó, as he looks down at the top of the greasy head of the snivelling creature before him. "No," he says, "I will not give you any money."

"Oh, but Master, you see the information I have will benefit you greatly!" and he rubs his thumbless hands together in anticipation of coinage.

"I am not your master, nor anyone's. What makes you think I have not seen this knowledge already?" He immediately regrets the question, for it prolongs the time he has to spend in the snotbag's company.

"Oh, but Mas - but, Your Worship, you cannot have, and see, I have proof!" He rummages around in his trousers, produces a piece of tallow candle with toothmarks in, assorted fluff (grey), and is searching for more but seemingly, in vain.

Thurzó banishes him. Since this has no effect and the denizen of the abyss is still there, Thurzó leaves his own chambers and heads for the marketplace. He chooses some food, enough to fill a massive sack. Considers having his beard trimmed, but discards the idea as purespun nonsense. He knows that Taligás will, at this moment, be riffling through his things, but this does not bother him needlessly. He hefts the sack over one shoulder and strides off in the direction of the river.



"Uncle Gáspo!"

"My, how you have grown, Yosjka! You were only this big - now you are just like your father."

"Ah, and with the same worries..." Yosjka looks over his shoulder, grins affably. "But - how long has it been?"

"Your mother was still alive, I remember. I was a young man myself then."

There is pain in Yosjka's eyes, but he says nothing of it. "Ha! You were never young, Uncle. Come and meet the tribe," and he slaps Thurzó on the arm, turns away quickly.

"Wait," says Thurzó, and hands him the sack, "No, it's not much. You may as well have it, it was going to waste."



In the centre of the group of caravans, the women are making gruel. They fall upon the sack like wolves upon white-tailed deer. There is even a haunch in there. One, a handsome woman with shiny hair, comes forward to clasp his hands. "Thank you," she says, looking up at him, then she drops her eyes.

"You're welcome, Aliz," he says.

"How did you know my name?"

"I remember you. You're about Yosjka's age, aren't you? Are you married yet?"

"No," she blushes, "And you flatter me. I'm older than him. I remember you too, but then, everyone remembers you, Uncle Thurzó." She seems embarrassed from such a long speech. She turns, continues helping the other women prepare the food. When she thinks he's not looking, she steals a glance at him, at his straight back, his tangled beard.

He sees her looking, but to spare her blushes, he pretends he doesn't.




Thurzó has to go back into town, he says, to sort out some business, but first, Yosjka says, he must meet his brother.

"This is Raoul".

At first, Raoul scowls, won't meet Thurzó's gaze. Instead, he carries on working on the cymbalom, says nothing. He seems to be repairing a tenon joint and tightening some strings, and for a time, Thurzó stands there in silence, watching. There is something in the younger man which the older recognises, understands. After a time, he goes over to the cymbalom, places a forefinger where a knot is being tied.

After another time, he leaves.

"Tonight," calls Yosjka behind him, and "A party - you will come?"



Once more to the market, this time for skins of Egri Bikaver - bull's blood wine. Then, various matters of the day, the lowest of which is Taligás and the mess he will likely have left at Thurzó's dwelling. Thurzó is rarely surprised, but this time he is; everything is tidy as a pin, just as he left it. All his papers in order. Not that there were any to interest the scumball, but... Hmm, he thinks, and now he is slightly suspicious. What is he planning? He looks closer, and realises that he was mistaken; there is something missing after all. But what?

He claps his hand to his forehead. Of course. But that was some while ago, last year anyway, and came to nothing. What on earth would the carter want with Fredek Agaroz Ecsed?

He sighs. It is too late in the day to set out for Lesethe, or to expect anyone else to. Tomorrow then. Though he is reluctant to line the pockets of a worm, he supposes he will have to get the letter back. It is a trifle though, and he quickly puts it out of his head.

It is rare for anyone to be a step ahead of Gáspo Thurzó.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 21

And now - now they've gone into the bedroom and come back out again, now they're going to the library. What did we miss? Nothing much; it was momentous for both of them but in different ways, for different reasons. Henry will never tire of hearing Zitchi's voice, even if he has to shag Vanna. Vanna will never tire of Henry making love to her. Except - she's not stupid. She knows he wasn't making love to her.

Guildford Library smells of paint. Of white Snowcem, to be precise. And the woodblock floors have that back-to-school stickiness of bonfire toffee.

At the Witt microfiche machine, Henry's leatherbound notebook flashes out of his top pocket. Except - he's written it down wrong, so he wastes almost an hour looking for the wrong name, sliding the viewer in all directions, ironing the records. Because it's not Zitchi he wants, it's Zichy. Mikhail Zichy. And even then they don't find him straight away, because it seems Ellie has misled them. Not Mikhail Zichy, but Mihály.

"So why did she tell us Mikhail?" asks Henry?

And straight away the answer comes to Vanna inside her head, without Ellie spelling it out, just as she said: "That was his other name when he travelled to Russia. He disappeared there. Why Olga is the first zina." She looks at him, startled at herself.

"But look - he's far too late for Zitchi, and too early for Olga. He was alive 1827 to 1906, it says here. Zitchi was alive in the late 1500's."

"He died, then reincarnated. Kept the same first name, took Zitchi's as his surname, more or less, so they were married in name at least. A kind of pledge. Then he painted pictures which were from visions he had of rescuing her. But he still failed to save her in that lifetime."

Henry looks at Vanna, and even though he doesn't have a perceptive bone in his body, hadn't until now at least, he says, "This is my last chance then, isn't it?"

"Yes," she says.




And, "Here, let me have a go," she says, taking charge of Henry for the second time that day. And of course she's better at it than he is because she has none of his faffage. Her new calmness can't prevent his pacing though, or his pulling at imaginary threads on his cuffs. She ignores him, concentrates on the rows and columns, the pages of photographed text, the paintings. Ah, those paintings; most of them deeply erotic. Does she feel a new respect for Henry, for the soul who created that unusual beauty at a time when such art must have been mostly forbidden?

Or does she wonder whether this is all too fantastical for words, something she should discard as poppycock, or turn her back on as evil?

Vanna thinks all of those things, certainly, and also a smidgen of something else, which is this: how am I going to turn this to my advantage? He doesn't see, but she blushes to herself there in the library, silent save for his pacing. Well, there again, she thinks, he's happy enough to use me for his own ends; why shouldn't I? And he carries on pacing up and down and she carries on sliding the stick, until she's seen enough.

"Right," she says, "Come and look at this now." They both bend their heads to the darkened screen-hood. "It's like being at the cinema, isn't it?" says Vanna, then when she notes his frown, she says, "Are you ready for hot-dogs? Or popcorn?"

And if Zitchi's brow is white as any lover's, Henry's brow is the opposite of that right now. He tries to take the stick away from Vanna, but she's enjoying this. "Don't snatch!" she says, and she keeps possession of it. But relaxes her throat, feels the shiver climb her spine, and drops into Zitchi's register.

"Mihály?" she says.

Henry's eyes glitter. "Yes! Oh, Zitchi, is that you?"

"Can you tell me what you were doing here, my love? What were you thinking when you painted me so? You know that never were we together in this way, for my papa and mama forbade it."

But now Henry merely looks confused. "I don't remember," he growls, then louder, "I don't remember! I - DON'T - REMEMBER!"

The librarian's disapproving shoes approach across the woodblock. Vanna knows what she's going to say:

"If you can't be quiet, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

But there is another painting by Mihály Zichy, the one they came for, and Vanna shows it to him now. The Angel and Tamara. Except that it's called The Demon and Tamara. Why the girl in the painting is called Tamara, she doesn't know. Just because Vanna's a medium doesn't mean she knows everything in the whole world.

But both of them recognise the girl in the painting. And both of them recognise the face of the demon too.

The demon has Henry's face.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 20

Hungary, 1591

As near as can be spoken by Western tongues, his name is Raoul, which means wolf counsel. Five hundred miles or so may not seem far to have progressed in one lifetime, but his people have come from half a planet away; from the rice-fields of Burma and the foothills of the Himalayas, from Madras, where they danced under a turmeric sun, from the Hindu temples of the south where the Tamils turn their wheels, from all of those places and from more places besides, where they were mindful of each other and trod lightly on the earth.

Once upon a time, they gathered in Rishikesh in the north of India, at the source of the great turquoise River-Mother. (Names are important; Rishikesh is the sound she makes as she rushes from the mountains.) This was in the days before the bridge was built, all of them in their covered carts and their caravans, and while the planets turned like cogs above them, they set off on their journey.

They left behind the Hindu temples and the fat silver fish which swam in the Ganges, and if it seemed to them that the further they travelled, the leaner it was, well, they knew that it was their destiny as sure as they knew the words of the River-Mother, as sure as they felt the clunk and whirr of the giant rocks overhead. And so, like them, they moved. But being human, they hoped that before too long they would come upon another turquoise river.

Raoul's half-brother is Yosjka, which means God rescues, and whilst it could be said that the gypsies do not worship your god or mine, it is also true that Yosjka has experienced personal salvation in his own lifetime. To him, his dead mother Sarkosi is a goddess.

Much has happened in Raoul's seventeen years. Their father, Djordji, drank himself to death, or at least, almost to death, then took himself off one night into the Turkish Occupied Zone. Raoul's mother - and we do not even remember her name - did not survive his birth. Some say she did not want to stay to compete with Sarkosi's sainthood. Some say she could not stay where she was not loved. Yosjka, at thirteen, found himself largely responsible for the care of an angry baby. As Raoul grew into the shape of his red rage, Yosjka withdrew into his, and the colour of his was white.

Raoul has taken over from old man Nagy on the cymbalom. He has the knack for it, and the wolf which is in him swims downstream from his heart, down his arms and out through his fingers, hits the sinews of the cymbalom, runs away. Even old man Nagy was startled at his protegé, because he had thought that he'd heard - or at least imagined - every tune that ever there was. Then on his deathbed, Raoul serenaded him with a curtain made out of devils.

And that should have been the end of it, except that Raoul is convinced that the old man's spirit lives on, speaks to him through the cymbalom, tells him what he should do and where he should go. It's not his fault; Nagy was the nearest thing to a father to him - you cannot count Yosjka who is as wet as a blanket - and now that Nagy is gone, he falls asleep each night wrapped around the hard-soft form of his cymbalom.

For instance, Raoul has a memory. He has many memories, but this one he suspects is not his. He mentioned it to Yosjka once when he was very young, and knew in that instant he must never mention it again; a rich girl with a perfect face, laughing, standing on a chair in a market square. It can only be Nagy who told him - or was it Yosjka? The cymbalom, for once, is silent on the matter.

And now they have come, all of them, the Nagys and the Laszlos, to the might-be-turquoise River Váh. They have followed its course and wound up in Piest'ány, where its shores are made of rocky stones, none of them smooth, because each year's winter crunches them up with its teeth come springtime. It is that time of year now, and the river is loaded with houses of ice, rushing downstream like daughters of Rishikesh, overspilling Piest'ány's banks like tears through eyelashes.

The Crossed Thorns Inn has no rooms or food, or none for gypsies, but will they allow water for the horses, perhaps, in return for work? Yosjka knows better than to ask anyway, and shrugs at his brother's folly. He leads the horses to the river to drink. "You cannot rage at every man who refuses you," he says, turning his back. He does not need to see Raoul's eyes to know what lurks there.

Cymbalom skills, and songs, are things which get passed on from generation to generation like blood is, like a light passing from hand to hand. They settle on the banks of the tumultuous Váh, light a fire, and appease their hunger with songs learnt at the milk-floes of the River-Mother a hundred generations ago:

I asked if I may enter her
I asked if I may enter her
She said yes
I wondered whether it would make a difference

I asked if I may take away
I asked if I may take away
She said unless
I wondered whether it would make a difference

She said unless you give yourself
You may not take away
There must be no difference

She babbled stories of many years
She babbled stories of many years
She sipped my skin
I knew she'd never still her incantations

I gave my tears into her
I gave my tears unto her
She washed me away
I knew she'd never cease her incantations

I met the sand at the place she goes
The place she touches it
The place she washes it
With her incantations
With her incantations
With her incantations

And the way the cymbalom weaves its stairways, its halls and its corridors, it's like a kind of cloth is made, or a carpet, and Yosjka lets it seep into his mind and feels a kind of untidy peace, for tonight at least.

Tomorrow, they will go to see cousin Thurzó.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 19

Sleep, sleep... and then the yellowness of sunlight on her eyelids. She opens them, sees dust particles floating between here and the window, and the first thought she thinks is: Henry. The heavy drapes are still mostly closed on the safe dark of the room. It's just me in this big bed, she thinks, and stretches her arms and legs, a synchronised star, swimming. The outer reaches are cool, so he must have risen a while ago. What time is it?

Vanna can't wear a watch, or she can, but they always stop on her. (Sophie said that's her psychic nature stopping time, or the measuring of it anyway, because they don't allow time in the spirit world. But if they don't have time, why Zitchi's urgency?) She puts a foot out of the bed - gosh but it's a long way down like papa bear's bed - and scrunches her toes in the carpet.

At the window, the sun says crikey but it must be nearly eleven. The garden is crisp as a cake. Vanna's never been in Henry's garden, in fact she's not even glanced at it before. Should she go outside? How she knows she doesn't know, but he'll be back at lunchtime. She gets dressed and goes out, waits on the love seat.

The sun is directly overhead when he returns, all gruff in his Paddington Bear duffle, huffing and stamping his feet and rubbing his hands. He takes hers, pulls her to standing, puts his big arms round her and hugs her close. Vanna feels that warmth in her tummy, knows a rightness, feels a spark come alive.

"You'll do, as a radiator," he says.

He doesn't kiss her, though he did last night.

The lunch is in a Marks and Sparks bag on the kitchen surface. He doesn't ask, but she gets it ready anyway. He's too taken with what he's telling her to notice whether she does or whether she doesn't. Pacing, pacing, and flinging his hands around, his face beautific.

"You know my friend Piers? No, of course you don't; how could you? Old school friend as a matter of fact, still see him occasionally, well his wife, name of Susan, she works at the University, linguistics you know. Actually her name's not Susan.

"See, thing is, Piers got himself a Czech wife, don't ask me how, and whatever her name is, it's got lots of Z's and J's in it, so it's a lot easier for us chaps if we call her Susan. Even Piers calls her Susan."

"How does - 'Susan' - feel about that?" asks Vanna.

"I don't know! Intelligent woman, actually, speaks four or five languages: Czech, obviously. English is her second, couple of others, and then she speaks Hungarian." He says the word 'Hungarian' like you might say the word 'astonishing'.

"OK, I see where this is going..." says Vanna.

"Don't interrupt!" he says, mock-stern, but he can't be annoyed with her for the interruption; he's too excited. "Anyway, I don't think you do. Where was I? Oh yes, Susan. Speaks Hungarian; unfortunately it's her fifth language, but still. I played her the tape."

Vanna raises her eyebrows. She remembers the tape recorder, but she's not heard the tape herself yet. Not sure how she feels about a stranger listening to it, wonders how clever the microphone was at picking up... um.

Henry's either unaware of her discomfiture, or ignores it. "Well, you're not going to believe this; it's incredible. Although, given the nature of Zitchi - " he pauses, gazes into the middle distance. "Ah, um - where was I?" And now he seems to have lost his thread completely.

"Nature of Zitchi? You were telling me about Susan? The tape?"

"Oh, right. Well, Susan says the whole spiel is in Hungarian. Except for the French bits, of course. The rest is Hungarian, definitely, no doubt about it. And get this - it's not modern Hungarian; it's archaic. She thinks it's the Hungarian of around four hundred years ago. Example in English would be listening to Chaucer; all right, maybe not that far back; Shakespeare, say."

Vanna bends to put a dish in the oven, takes her time, considering. Closes the door properly then turns around to look at him.

"I don't speak Hungarian. I only know English, unless you count cerveza, cinicero, vino bianco in Spanish."

"Of course you don't, old bean. I didn't think you did for one moment. If you did, you'd speak the modern anyway. But you were out of it last night, truly. You should have seen your face."

I did see my face, thinks Vanna. And this is all the way through freaky and out the other side. "Oh!" she says, "I just remembered. I can say Yuroshka onegaishemasu - that means 'I'm so pleased to meet you,' in Japanese." She's babbling, natch.

"Bugger Japanese!" he says, then acts taken aback when she looks hurt. "All right, Vanna, I'm sorry. Let's keep our hair on. Thing is, this is pretty fantastic for both of us, I see that. Don't you want to know what you said?"

Not really, she thinks. Trouble with knowing something is that then you know, and all that. But he's clearly about to tell me.

"All right; Susan could only give me a rough translation due to it being sixteenth century Hungarian, but - hold on - " he rummages in his pockets and produces a leather-bound notebook. Starts reading.

The root of passion is this: the willingness and the capacity to suffer. For love of another or perhaps of oneself in another. I fight with my body for your body. I love life, suffer for life, for love. My search is for you, through whom I can live. Without you I can neither live nor love.

"Read it again," says Vanna.

"Sure - you said it a total of three times last night, on the tape." He reads it again.

Vanna doesn't know why, but her eyes are watering, and she feels cold. And then he reads it a third time, because he has to.

"She's talking about metempsychosis again, isn't she?" says Vanna.

"Yes, partly. And you were crying last night, too, by the third time. But you know, your voice - her voice - even though you were crying, you sounded so - what's the word - serene." Again, he gazes into the distance, remembering.

Vanna starts. "What do you mean - her voice?"

"Listen to the tape," he says.



And of course, it isn't her voice; it's Zitchi's, faint but clear, lower in pitch than Vanna's. Speaking musical words which have a rise and fall the same way a cymbalom does, a syntax, a shape and an urgency. There are other sounds which are unclear, and there is a white noise in the background which sounds like the whooshing of a November wind. A November wind in south-east England? Vanna wonders, then discards her cynicism: the tape is utterly convincing. Anyway, she was there, kind of; she remembers saying the words.

"It's done, then," she says, then wonders whether that was her speaking, or Zitchi.

And, "Let's eat," and wonders about that, too.



Afterwards, he insists upon an immediate board session, and she doesn't bother to disagree; she's wanting to get to the bottom of this herself. And she has a sense of being on a train now, a train without brakes, on a track whose parallel lines never meet because it goes on forever. He's told her about the French, too, and that at least sounded familiar to her, but perhaps that's because she's starting to feel like that about Henry. Does he feel that way about her? The answer comes immediately: Of course not. He loves Zitchi. He sees Vanna in much the same way he sees Olga - as a means to an end. He wouldn't even use the word 'feel' about either of them.

"All right, Ellie, are you there?" says Henry.

YES

"Do you have Zitchi there? Can I speak to her?"

WAIT

"Why do I have to wait? I need to speak to her, Ellie, I need to!"

SHE IS IN A BAD PLACE OPPRESSED BY BATHORY CANNOT COME NOW

"Oh, Ellie! Is she all right?"

NOT REALLY WOULD YOU BE?

"What can I do? I'll do anything! Can you tell her I love her? Can you speak to her, reassure her I'm coming to get her, maybe? Help me, Ellie!"

I CANNOT GET TO HER BUT CAN HELP WITH ZINA

As usual, Vanna's silent while Henry asks the questions. But now she finds her voice, has a need to speak.

"Why, Ellie? Tell me, why is all of this happening?"

MIKHAIL OWES DEBT TO ZITCHI
HENRY IS MIKHAIL ZICHY
THIS GOES BACK
SEE THE PAINTINGS
YOU DO NOT NEED THE BOARD NOW

"What paintings? What do you mean, I don't need the board?"

TWO PAINTINGS
FROM ANGELS TO LOVERS
THE ANGEL AND TAMARA
YOU CAN SEE WITHOUT ME SPELLING IT OUT

And sure enough, Vanna gets an impression of the paintings, of one of them, anyway. Oils faded with age; a dark man with white wings lifting a woman from her bed to kiss her. Her bed, her whole bedchamber, is cobwebbed. She is wearing a garment which looks like a shroud, but then again, it looks like a bridal gown.

She gets up, starts collecting the letters, ignores him when he blusters, "Hey!" and "What?"

She stacks the letter-cards into a neat pile in the middle of the shiny table, takes him by the hand.

"Are we going to the library?" he says, "You know, look up the paintings or something?"

"No," she says. And leads him into the bedroom.

Zitchi - CHAPTER 18

Hungary, 1590

Lesethe is a millage - a village built out of two sticks. In that millage is a carter, but he does not make carts any more; his hands siezed up last winter. The penultimate cart he made is the one which Dorko and Illona have just pushed back to Castle Cjesthe, empty. Carts last twenty years or more, if treated well. This one is rotting at the joists.

Míhaly stands in the snow, his bride at his feet, gazing into the distance at the two crones until he can no longer see them. The wind has dropped, and sound carries on the mountainside, so he can hear their talk as clearly as if they were whispering in his ear.

I didn't think the mistress was going to let this one go, did you?

No, never. She was a dainty one. But I think she got to like it.

What about the screaming though?

Ah, the screaming. They say no, but they mean yes.

We've got a new one tomorrow, and another the day after.

He looks down at his feet, at Zitchi's broken body which somehow is still perfect in its brokenness against the packed snow, and he thinks of those words, the words they wrote together long ago and in another country. What were they now? Not that he has to think; they are imprinted on his soul.

... ma dernière à l'heure du coucher...

My last at bedtime; my last thought at the hour of my sleeping.

Was he her last thought then? He knows she is destined be his.

And her answer is in his right ear like the milky breath of babes at the edge of his hearing: Yes, my love.

You're my first thought each morning
my last at bedtime

You overflow my dreams
waking or sleeping

And I don't know whether
I can stop loving you

And I don't know if
I even want to

Mihaly turns his head, cranes round to look at the western face of Castle Cjesthe. High up, he senses a movement as a drape, perhaps, is pulled back from a window. There is a suggestion of an outline here, a sketch of pure high brow as white as any lover's, but he feels rather than sees her eyes on him. Feels her triumph burrowing into his flesh like a red-hot poker. Her. He knows it is Bathory watching.

There are vultures overhead, but they shall not have your body, my love. With his bare hands he begins to scrape at the snow, till they are bleeding and fiery from the hell of it. He cannot manage much of a grave up here at the end of all hope. The mountains are laughing at him, yes they are, and those eyes. He buries her maybe twice as deep as the drop of her. Not deep.

Three steps he takes before his blood curdles in his veins, and knows he cannot leave her. Instead, her father's gun, this gun, is sweet to the taste.

Is this whooshing noise the sound of the wind, or the bullet, rushing like a lover would towards the altar of its pleasure?

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 17

Later, much later, Vanna wondered however they got onto the guns. How could guns ever be contextual? But first, there was something else; there was the banshee. Remember the banshee? Vanna does.

They get the dictionary out - that book is earning its keep, she thinks - to discover that bean-sidhe, or banshee, to give it its English spelling, is a female spirit whose scream portends death in a house. Nice, thinks Vanna. Just what we need. From the Irish, apparently. As Ellie's parting shot, no less.

And then later that afternoon he's in his dressing room, and she's decidedly vague about this bit. She's standing in the hallway and he beckons her, "Come in! Come and have a look at these; you'll like these."

And what he's got there, a boy with his toy, is a drawer of guns. Revolvers or pistols or both, she doesn't know the difference, handguns anyway. Big ones and small ones and shiny ones and old ones. Guns.

And she feels like she has to keep her eyes on the guns, like if she looks away the room will move or the moon will change phase. The air is thick with it. But she makes her eyes move up a few inches and points them at Henry. He's grinning.

"Fantastic, aren't they?" he says, "I knew you'd like them".

"How many are there?" she says. Not that she wants to know, but it's something to say.

"Thirteen."

Unlucky for someone, she thinks. And then she thinks back to last summer, to Jane and Sophie in a field. What was it Jane said? Vanna shivers.

And boxes, and boxes, of ammunition, all different gauges. She wants to take her eyes off the bullets. Eyes not under Vanna's control, today.

"Hey, look!" he says, and he opens up his big hand and there's this pearlised pink pistol. "I'd let you have it," he says, "But it's extraordinarily rare, and worth a lot of money. Sorry!"

"No, you're all right, " she says, "I don't mind. Really."

He'd let her have it.




That night, she's in bed in the spare room, overtired but unable to sleep. She can hear him gently snoring in the next room, so she tiptoes to his doorway, peeps in. He looks smaller, somehow, in his big bed. Even from the doorway, she can sense his warmth, the darling toastiness of him. She wants to get in beside him but she hasn't the front for it. So she pads back, barefootedly, to her room. Sighs a few times. Turns over. Turns over again. Again.

Nobody stays awake forever and Vanna's not Nobody, so she falls asleep eventually. Sleeps fitfully, then deeply, but it's cold, very cold, icy even, and dark, with snow swirling. There's stone, and vultures, an unending sense of nothing, or nothing except terror. And then - from a long way away at first, but getting closer, closer - there's a scream, a scream like nothing she's ever heard before, deep and yet high at the same time, a double note almost, vibrating, oscillating, everlasting, a scream that curdles the blood, a scream that ends all hope, a scream that as it gets closer and then this close and then right here you realise is coming out of your own mouth and you can't get away from it and it's the Banshee and the Banshee is you and you are the Banshee and you are screaming and after this scream which never ends because it can never end and which you can't stop screaming comes death in this house and -

Vanna!

And you hear that name and you know it has something to do with you but even as you hear it you know you can't claim it and the scream remember the scream is wailing in your ears and in your throat and to your fingertips which are clutching at the night and the night is a curtain made of sorrow and -

Vanna!

And your fingertips your fingertips are clutching at your body, scraping your skin, tearing your flesh and you realise they're not your own fingertips they're the Banshee's but you are the Banshee and the scream, the scream -

Vanna! For Pity's sake! Come on darling, wake up! Wake up! Thank God! It's all right, it's all right...

And of course it's Henry, darling Henry, and he's got her, and she's safe. Isn't she?

She's wrapped up in him, she can't remember how he came to be here, but she's never been so relieved to see his face, and to feel his warmth, smell the clean biscuity boy-sweat smell of him in his 'jamies, but against that she can still feel the vibration of that scream at the back of her throat.

"The Banshee..." she says.

"I know," he says, "I heard her too."

"But it was me."

"Well - yes. But - no. It was just a dream, and then Bobby came out of the shower."

She laughs. He laughs. They laugh together. She still feels a tiny part of the terror. "Death in the house. It portends."

"Do you think so?" he says, stroking her hair. "I really wouldn't worry about that if I were you. You were just overtired." She looks up at him, into his black eyes. That's the nearest he's ever come to an apology, she thinks.

And he makes her a hot milk and she drinks it sitting up at the table, which still has the letters all round it from earlier. The X is on the floor though. Then they go back to bed, him in his room and her in hers. It doesn't take her long to fall asleep this time, but as soon as she does the Banshee comes back for an encore; the scream starts like a tickle at first and then a scratch and by the time it's audible Henry's shaking her awake.

"Come on, you daft banana," he says softly, and - like she can't possibly walk all by herself - picks her up and carries her into his bed.

And OK, so for a long time they cuddle and stuff. She's still freaked out from earlier, and he seems to realise that. He can be sensitive when he wants to be, our Henry. The tenderness builds, and by the time he makes love to her she is on the ceiling with - what? Some thing she doesn't quite have a name for. But that doesn't matter; it's - whatever it is.

And then another strange thing happens.

Well, firstly, the way he makes love to her: it's - it's not like anything she's known before. It's - kind of - strange. He keeps stopping, as if he's afraid of conclusion. But it's more than that. Oh, never mind, she thinks; go with it, it's nice anyway, he's nice, I'm falling for him... and then she stops thinking about it and all of a sudden she's looking down on herself from up there, up here... and she sees Henry's back moving, covering her, herself underneath and her face with her eyes wide open and her mouth open, moving, and she hears words, knows the words are coming out of her own mouth, but it's all right because the words are beautiful words, gentle words, Hungarian words and French words which she understands and yet doesn't understand at the same time, words she knows she's said before.

And he doesn't jump up suddenly, he stops slowly. He gets up and goes into the drawing room and comes back with a tape recorder. This time when they make love and she starts speaking the words, he says, "Zitchi, my love..."

And the Hungarian words, well, Henry doesn't speak Hungarian. He learnt French though, at his posh school. And the French words were

Tu es ma première pensée chaque matin
ma dernière à l'heure du coucher

Tu apparais dans mes rêves
de jour ou de nuit

Je ne sais pas
si je peux arrêter de t'aimer

Je ne sais même pas
si j'en ai envie

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 16

Hungary, 1590

Gáspo Thurzó looks at the oak tree and the letters A and E and sighs deeply within himself. He is an old man, too old perhaps; one who has seen too many things to be surprised by any thing any more, one who has learned the ways of the wise, but sadly too the ways of the terminally stupid. He suspects that what he will find, when he breaks the seal on the letter he now holds in his hands, will have more in common with the latter.

He is unprepared for the begging note in the words he reads.

He sighs. On the pretext of re-reading what he has already committed to memory, he takes a little more time to study, out of the corner of his soul, the young man who stands before him.

Aside from the mundane, such as the fact that he has the demeanor of a servant, it is blatantly obvious that this Míhaly is wedded, in spirit at any rate, to the Zitchi of this letter. Not in body though, thinks Gáspo. Interesting. History there; there must be. Planetary influences not quite right, stars not in line. And the future? Massive intervention by the malign. Inside his mind, he shakes his head to himself, sadly. Nothing he can do, nor should he.

Gáspo knows he will have to act, but the time is not yet. Any efforts he could make at this stage will cause no ripples in Cjesthe's pond. It must already be too late for Zitchi; this he knows. But what to say to the boy? Fredek Agaroz Ecsed is not a name to ignore out of hand. But it is a pebble next to the edifice of the house of Bathory.

Yes, yes, he hears himself saying. Don't worry. Nightfall, you say? Come come - why the drama? Tomorrow will be soon enough. I can get you a bed at the inn, you must be weary.

Míhaly is not a sharp chap, yet he knows he is being brushed off. The bluff note in Thurzó's voice gives him away. But what can he say? He is cold, and tired, and he is a servant, and there is only one of him.

He wishes someone would tell him what to do.

In response to the only guidance he's had for a week, he finds himself stopping at the Crossed Thorns Inn, a room over the courtyard gate. Out of one window he can watch the horses being brought in, brushed down, fed, stabled. Cross the room, look out the other window, see the road, see the river, see the watery sun setting behind the Carpathians.

Míhaly has a sense of time not really meaning anything any more. As he takes out his knife and watches himself cut some bread, it seems there is no roughness of crust or smoothness of metal under his fingers. Even the table - which has seen so many suppers with so many travellers - is not really there. There is nothing, already, nothing, and Thurzó knew that. He jumps up, and the table, for all of its not being there, clatters over against the wall.



He has not reckoned on the wind, nor the fact that he cannot find his way in the dark, yet he does find his way, eventually. Blind with cold, he approaches Castle Cjesthe as dawn breaks. Through the snow, there are shapes. A large shape, a cart maybe. Two people. He tries to run towards them, but the ice is in his lungs and he cannot take enough air to run. His breath feels like a knife.

Now he is closer he can hear their peasant chatter, and their laughter. They have a cart. There are shapes on the cart and they are hauling the shapes out onto the snow. There is more laughter, and one of the women breaks wind like a ratchet, and there is more laughter. The acrid stench of it comes to him on the wind and hits him, and he is shocked that now, now he is feeling everything again, and everything is real. Is that castle - that hulk of stone there, glowering through the sleet, is that where she is? Is Zitchi there, looking after her mistress, caring for her countess, helping her with her toilet and her clothing? He gets a sudden flash of Zitchi's pale beautiful hands, and now he does run, he runs the last few feet towards the cart, towards the old women.

Towards Dorko, and Illona.

But he doesn't look at Dorko and Illona, because he cannot, because he has seen their precious cargo. At his feet, his pearl without price. Zitchi my love. What are you doing? Wake up, wake up? Give me your hands, come on, come on, it's time to go. It's me, my darling. Wake up!

And why will she not? She is cold, she is curled, she is furled tightly like a bud, but look at me, her eyes are open. Staring. What's over there? Where are you gone?

Míhaly looks over his shoulder to see where she is looking but there is no one and nothing there. He looks at her beautiful hands and sees they are ruined, black with bruises, wet with pus, crabbed with scabs. He looks into her eyes and sees that she is not there. Her lips, swollen and split, are parted a little. Still, he tries kissing them. Then he puts his ear to her mouth and listens.

He cannot know that the last thing she said was "Míhaly".

HOUSE BY THE RAILWAY

A writer friend of mine, writerwench, said (of herself):-
"As a writer, am I constantly trying to get 'home' - real or ideal - through my writings? "

Here's an old poem of mine - railway theme again - in which I think I'm saying (of myself):-
"Yes, I am".

HOUSE BY THE RAILWAY

When I was four we left the house with the faery track
on the bank at the bottom of the garden.
Silver rails through woodland trails
but we never went back.

At twelve a change, a switch which ran
down the road by the station scene;
matchstick men sketched in black
under a sooty sky.

My father, an artist, almost bought
a big square house which lived by the track
and was painted blue; the only dab
of colour in parallel monotone.

Eighteen, a proud house of my own
built on a hill with a tunnel for an eye;
all night in the cellar the rumble and Who?
- the house kept letting the trains run through.

A hum, a rattle. A poem swings around the track,
and I’m a shaking bridge thinking of home,
another house on a network of track
which pulls the past back;

often late, sometimes missing connections
and sometimes running bang on time.

NEW ROAD

NEW ROAD

Day of the week: a road is being made
outside my window. Hot black desire is laid
in sheets, where once the farmer rubbed the soil
between fat fingers. That's covered now. Crops spoil,
left out to dry too long in the acid sun.
You can see - just there - his last words, left undone.

A magpie shrugs, heads for the lightning tree,
and mutters to himself of treachery.







© Sara Willow

The Book of the Day

Once upon a time there lived a man named Pippen. He had no mother or father - or none that was known - as he was found in a bootbox one day, on the doorstep of the Little Brothers of the Not Very Well Off, in a land we now know to be Essex. How he came to be there is a whole other story, especially the bit about the bootbox, since in those days there were no such things as boots, or not as we know them.

Pippen grew up at a time when no-one had figured out yet how to make moveable type. Every day he got up in the morning before the sun, made breakfast for the Little Brothers, went to mass, made dinner and supper for the Little Brothers, went to mass, went to mass some more then went to bed for a couple of hours before it was time to get up again. In between the mass and the making meals he had to dig vegetable marrows in the garden, and in between digging vegetable marrows he had to copy letters into a big book with a brass cover and a lock on the outside. He was aided in all of this by his friend, a raven named Qoth, who never lifted a claw but flew ahead of Pippen wherever he went, sought worms in the fattest part of the garden, and muttered imaginary numbers nightly into the dark corridors.

One day Pippen asked a Little Brother howcome these letters were so important - or so secret perhaps? - that they had to be kept under lock and key, or was it that the letters were maybe going to esca -

And after Pippen had picked himself up off the floor and got straight back to work, licking the pen into a fine point as he'd been shown to do despite the fact that the ink was known to have a cumulative and sinister effect on the human brain, the Little Brother told Pippen the story of why the Little Brothers had sworn only to eat vegetable marrows foreswearing all tomatoes for tomatoes are the devil's fruit, and why, indeed, the whole monastery was built in the shape of the sacred vegetable marrow.

It was about this time - or maybe it was a little later - that Pippen realised that a question does not always have an answer, or if it does, it may have the answer to a different question entirely. And so he reasoned that if he continued asking questions he might - in theory - learn much, even if it was a different bunch of stuff from that which he had originally sought the answers to.

He never completely learnt the art of conjugating sentences.

He did, however, by the time he was an old man with one white whisker on his domed and bumpy head, form notions of the Forming of the Universe, and of most other things and of the interlocking of the things, and he managed to write them all down in a book which he called

Pippenes Theorye of Everye Thinge.

He had to be very careful while he was doing it, so none of the Little Brothers would catch on to what he was up to. He had to keep up his usual speed and accuracy with the illuminated letters, which was not too difficult because these days he was faster at it than anyone knew. He had to filch a little brass, shaving it off the tomes he worked with when no one was watching. Brass is soft, luckily. He had to steal the small-hour drippings of candles from the library candlesticks, to make a wax mold in the only shape he knew how, out by the back wall of the vegetable garden.

Pippen's book was just about safely buried the night before the Vikings came through the mist and killed every last Little Brother by the method known as the Blood Eagle. Had they not severed his vocal cords they might have learned - though the question remains whether they would have cared, anyway - what Pippen's last three words would have been, the last three words which would make his book complete, without which it might so easily be misinterpreted.

Qoth, perched out of the Vikings' reach atop a pillar, knew the words, for Pippen had confided in him often as both of them scritched and scratched the letters onto parchment.

As Pippen gargled his last breath, Qoth laughed, dodging with ease the swipes of the Vikings' longswords, flapping like a pair of raggedy old leather boots might if boots had wings, swooping down suddenly in an opportunist's attempt at the nearest Viking's eyes.

Its black sense of comedy satisfied, the raven - munching on eyeballs - swept out of the library door, down the corridor, out and over the far wall of the vegetable garden, never pausing to glance even once at the spot where the book was buried. It carried on flapping its wings until it was well over the horizon, coming down to land stagger-fashion in another English garden, over the border in Kent, maybe. Somewhere where the hedgerows were mad with magpies.

What Qoth said next we shall never know for certain, although let it be noted that the magpie is a talkative bird, known for its liking for shiny things, and in those days unfettered words were as shiny as anything for miles around; shiner, even.

The magpie is also known for its voracious sexual appetite, its inclination to make whoopee at any time of the day or night or season of the year, no matter whether breeding season or nay. And with each birdfuck a word is given, a pledge, if you like, though the magpie is far too scurrilous a bird to be trusted with such an honourable word as pledge.

A word is given and another word taken, and by breeding of words and by featherous repetition and the intermixing thereof, a rhyme and a rhythm are born, and what are rhyme and rhythm if not the means of remembering, by rote, that which is?

And the rhyme begins:

One for sorrow, two for joy,
Three for a girl, four for a boy...

Please note, this is not the way Pippen's pages begin, nor the way they end. The way the story ends is in three small words which are absent - deliberately? Who can say? The book, if it is ever found, must be disentangled using the three word key, which means that its contents will be useless without it, or will masquerade as another tale entirely.

The magpies' rhyme, their constant chattering, their libidinous shoutings whilst practising creation between the leaves, there, do you see? There, if anywhere, is where to begin looking. Meanwhile, turn the pages, pull back the lens, zoom out, catch the hop vines as the sun sets, layer upon yellow layer of beery fug which is south-east England; see those scattered birdbones and grey, whiskery feathers between the rows, those remains which are the last of the day of our raven.

Further back still, and the Monastery is a few boulders, two or three uprights, nothing more. Anymore, it's anyone's guess where anything was buried, and what thing could that be, anyway?

Time team? Don't make me laugh. You could try over in that corner, the scrubby bit between those boulders where that bush is busy conjugating.

Dowsing's an old art; Geo-Phys isn't much more 'n a rehash of 't. You can spend three clever days deciding where a thing is, only to find out that's where it was. Who took it and where they went with it next? Arr, that's much harder.

UNTITLED POEM

The moon is on the silver tree.
Orion's dagger glitters.
I sit on the entrance-stone and wait
for you, whose dreams are coins
in another place. Climb out of your window,
gallop here on a beam of light.
Carry nothing.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 15

Henry leads Vanna up the narrow stairs at Athena. He holds aside a sequin-encrusted black curtain to let her go first into the attic room.

As they enter, Pete springs up, looking flustered, but seems to recover immediately. He’s pleased to see Vanna, in more ways than one. He shakes Henry’s hand, then gives Vanna a bear-hug.

She jumps back, embarrassed. Is that his -? She flicks her eyes downwards to his jeans. And Henry, either unaware or doesn’t care, has just shaken hands with him. Yuck!

“Me next punter’ll be here in five,” says Pete, winking at her, “but sit down, sit down. You want me to have a look in me big ball for yer, Vee?”

“Yes, she does,” says Henry, “And so do I, if it’s not too much trouble. You know why we’ve come, of course?”

“Vanna can’t keep ‘erself away from me!” says Pete.

Vanna doesn’t know which of them is worse: Henry, who sees everything and everyone as part of his own agenda, or Pete, who’s - what? Irrepressible, that’s what he is, at least where women are concerned. I’d be better off not trusting either of them, she thinks. But she does her best when he passes her the big ball to hold, tries to clear her mind and put her energy into it.

“That’s strange,” says Pete, “I can’t see too far ahead at all. There’s nothing in here.” He gives the ball a shake. “Still nothing. Wait though - I can hear something.” He lifts it to his ear. “Now that is what I call weird. It’s not often I get sound effects through me big ball.”

“What is it?” says Vanna. Henry, meanwhile, is tapping his foot.

“I dunno exactly,” says Pete, “But it’s like a - a whooshing noise. Like the wind, maybe. Can you hear it, Gel?”

She shakes her head. “What does it mean?”

He peers into the ball again. “I dunno that, Gel, neither. But what I do say is this: When you hear it - sometime soon it’ll be - then you’ll know.”

A buzzer sounds. “That’s me next punter,” says Pete, “so I’m afraid I’ll have to love yer and leave yer, ladies and gents.”

Henry’s glowering at him, his mouth in a sulk.

“Sorry,” Pete shrugs, “Nothin’ I can do. Come round one evening, if yer like.”



Vanna realises she’d wanted to ask Pete about Henry, but there wasn’t time, and anyway, could she have asked anything with Henry in the room? Probably not. But back at the house she can see he’s still upset, though whether because he didn’t get his reading, or whether because of all that stuff in the Sun Cafe about Zitchi, she’s not sure. Both, probably.

And ‘upset’ is an understatement, she thinks. Henry’s almost beside himself with urgency. He presses her to go back on the board again before she’s even got her coat off. He badly needs to know, she thinks. She wonders how Pam managed to stand up to him.

“I’m tired though, Henry! Just let me have an hour’s kip, then I’ll go back on, I promise.”

“You need coffee, young lady,” says Henry.

She tries to be firm, she does. But it’s almost as if he thinks she won’t do it if he lets her sleep. Ot that it’ll be too late, or something. Zitchi’s been gone four hundred years, she thinks. Another hour shouldn’t make much difference. But wisely, she doesn’t speak these thoughts out loud.

“Coffee,” he says, “and then we’ll talk to Ellie. All right, all right, if the coffee doesn’t wake you up, I’ll let you lie down. I promise. Now come on.”

So that’s me, putting my foot down against Henry, thinks Vanna. She still takes her time with the coffee though, while he wears a highway in the drawing room carpet, adjusts each letter by a micron, does his Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing thing. She stifles a giggle. He’s a sweetie, really, she thinks, and he can’t help it if he’s totally bonkers. Half-way down her coffee, she gives up and sits at the table.

Henry wastes no time. “Ellie, do you have Zitchi there? Can I speak with her?”

And, incredibly, she’s here. But the glass moves very slowly.

MY NAME IS ZITCHI AGAROZ ECSED

“Is it really you, Zitchi?” says Henry.

YES I COME FROM ECSED IN HUNGARY
MY NAME MEANS A CIRCLE OF OAK TREES IN A WOOD

Vanna has no idea at all what to make of this. Is it real? No idea. If not real, then what? No idea.

“Are you here, in this room, Zitchi my love?” says Henry.

NO
I AM IN FEAR AND IN PAIN AND I CANNOT LEAVE HERE

“My love! Where is ‘here’?”

HERE IS CJESTHE CASTLE
IT IS COLD AND DARK HERE
BATHORY IS HERE

Henry is crying. For a moment he seems unable to speak.

I HAVE WAITED FOUR HUNDRED YEARS FOR YOU

“I know, my darling. Hush now. We’ll ask Ellie what to do; she’ll know how to get you out of there.”

BYE

“Do you think she’s tired?” says Vanna.

“I think so,” he says, and his voice is softer than she’s ever heard it. “She’s probably weak, and oppressed by Bathory.”

“And it’s the first time she’s appeared on the board, isn’t it? I mean, she never came through in your sessions with Pam?”

“That’s true,” he says.

The glass moves.

YOU SHALL NOT HAVE HER SHE IS MINE

“Bathory!” says Henry, shocked, though it had to happen sooner or later.

YES

“Bathory, you are not wanted here. I command you to leave at once, and do not return!” says Vanna.

The glass is still, and the room feels empty.

“Has she gone?”

“Yes,” says Vanna, “I’m pretty sure of it. Don’t mention her name again though, not while we’re on the board; she might think we’re summoning her.”

“Let’s get Ellie back on here, quick!” says Henry, “Get some semblance of normality.”

Vanna laughs, “Normality?”

“Ellie, are you there?” he says.

ELLIE

“Thank heavens for that. Am I glad to see you, Ells old thing. Now, what’s the plan? How am I going to get Zitchi back?”

YOU NEED A ZINA

“Azina? is that a name?”

NO
A - the glass pauses - ZINA

“What’s a ‘zina’ then, when it’s at home? No doubt you’re going to tell me.”

ZINA IS A HUNGARIAN WORD
IT MEANS MANY THINGS

“Such as?” says Henry.

SHINING VESSEL
GOING BACK
GUEST
STRANGER
HELPER
HOSPITAL
GOOD HOST
SECRET SPIRIT

“She’s talking about metempsychosis, isn’t she?” says Vanna.

YES
NEED A WOMAN IN THIS TIME AND PLACE TO BECOME THE ZINA
HENRY YOU MARRY ZINA
ZITCHI WILL ENTER ZINA

“Right,” says Henry, “I’d already worked some of that out with Pam. Hence Olga. She’ll do, won’t she?”

PROBLEMS WITH OLGA

“I know there are. Like her visa application.”

YOU CAN GO TO SEE THE MEP

“Yes, yes, I know. Let’s not go down that road again, not for the moment anyway. Let’s just say, Ellie - imagine, if you will - that we can fast-forward, and I’m holding Olga’s visa in my hand. Will she come? Because there seems to be some doubt in the matter.”

SHE MIGHT NOT

“Go on.”

SHE WILL NOT WANT TO BE THE ZINA

“That’s easy then. I won’t tell her.”

“You can’t do that!” says Vanna, “You have to tell her what she’s letting herself in for.”

“I don’t see why,” says Henry, “I mean, she’s the one who wants to marry me to get herself out of Russia, get herself a British passport, get herself a better life as a British doctor. She doesn’t love me, she’s using me; I’ve always been fully aware of that. She uses me, I use her. Perfectly acceptable transaction.”

“What do you think about all of that, Ellie?” says Vanna.

ETYMOLOGY OF WORD ZINA ENCOMPASSES CONCEPT OF WILLINGNESS
RESCUE OF ZITCHI MAY NOT WORK IF ZINA IS UNWILLING

“A-hah!” says Henry, “May not, or will not?”

MAY NOT

“Well, that’s our answer then. Don’t breathe a word to Olga and cross our fingers that it works. Worth a try.”

ONE CHANCE ONLY IN YOUR LIFETIME

“Now, how did I guess you were going to say that, Ellie?” says Henry, “All right, so what if I do tell Olga what she’s letting herself in for? I could choose my words carefully, play it down a bit, that sort of thing.”

OLGA HORRIFIED
WILL NOT COME

“Khhff!” says Henry, throwing his hands up in the air, “What’s the point? Why am I even putting myself through this? It was you who suggested Olga in the first place, Ellie, and you know it, back on Pam’s board.”

NOT ME ANOTHER SPIRIT
YOU ASK QS WE DO OUR BEST

“You’re right, it was Pam’s guide. Whatever. And I am grateful, truly I am. But where is Zitchi in all of this? What am I going to do to save her, if Olga’s no use to me?”

“Henry, I’m getting really tired,” says Vanna.

“Yes, yes, just a little longer. I can’t stop now.”

THERE ARE OTHER ZINAS

“There are? For Christ’s sake, tell me who!”

THERE MAY BE TWO OTHERS
ONE IS VANNA

Vanna skips a beat. “Maybe -” she says.

“And the other?” says Henry, ignoring her.

NEW WOMAN AT WORK SOON
YOU DON’T KNOW HER YET

“I need a wee,” says Vanna.

Henry sighs. “All right, Ellie, thank you. We’ll leave it there for now. Any final words of wisdom, before we break?”

BEANSIDHE
BYE

“Bean sid he?” says Vanna, “What’s that?”

But Ellie’s gone, and the glass is still.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 14

Hungary, 1590

Almost twelve months have passed since their daughter left Ecsed, and Fredek is worried. His wife has taken to her bed-chamber and is refusing all sustenance, even a thin gruel, so distressed is she by the rumours. Fredek thinks the stories may well be of no consequence; they are probably spun from peasant unrest at the recent raising of taxes. The Turks have much to answer for, with their bloody - and expensive - wars. And there is always peasant unrest over something.

And is it not true that the Countess Erzebet’s Uncle is the King of Poland, or was, until a handful of years ago? Two more of her Uncles are Voivods of Transylvania. She must be beyond suspicion. No, the rumours cannot be true, he thinks; it is not possible for blood as blue as hers to turn bad. He will not countenance it.

There are other stories too, and in these, he does believe. The time Erzebet re-homed a destitute family in one of her villages, when their house burned. Another time, when she supported a young woman who had been raped and beaten, personally nursed her until her strength returned, tracked down the villain and ensured he was hung. She must be beyond suspicion.

And yet, truth or lies aside, he fears his beloved Margareta will starve herself to death if she does not receive news of Zitchi soon. Perhaps it would have been better, even, if he had allowed her to marry the servant. The boy is honorable enough. They would at least have known where she was, and Margareta would still be well. Fredek sits in the library by candlelight, considering. Finally, he takes out his quill and writes. He presses the letter with the family seal - an oak and the letters A and E - then sends to the Lodge for Mihaly.

Even if the news is good, he thinks, it may be too late for Margareta.




Mihaly has heard the rumours too, with mounting concern for his beloved. He remembers that day in the woods not long after her departure, and the feeling he had then that some thing was not well. But that was all it was; a feeling, not a certainty. Even so, how he wishes he had acted upon it then.

Two things stopped him. Firstly, he had neither money nor a horse of his own for the journey. The other reason was that, although he is an honorable man, Mihaly is a servant. As such, he is unused to making his own direction. Rather, he waits to be shown or told what to do. Where Zitchi led, he would follow, but once she had gone he was lost. Even so, he curses himself for a fool.

It is late at night when her father calls him to the library. The room - so full of memories for Mihaly - looks different in the candlelight; more sombre. He accepts the letter, and the mission, with a lightness in his heart that he has not felt since she left. But his mood soon changes when Fredek explains to him for a second time just what he expects him to do.

He will leave at dawn. Besides the letter, there is a map, with towns and villages marked where he may rest his horse overnight, or change the horse, if needed. There is more money than Mihaly has seen before. There are miles, and more miles for him to ride, and this is the cold time of year, so there are furs. Fredek would go himself if he could, but he cannot leave Margareta, you understand?

Mihaly understands. It is up to him now.




The document is signed with her name and a drop of her blood. Although her limbs ache and her wounds weep, Zitchi is joyous in the certain knowledge that soon, she will leave this place and return home. She pictures their faces; Mama, Papa, Mihaly. She weeps hot tears of relief.

Erzebet smiles. Does Zitchi think, then, that she will part with her darling so lightly? “Tomorrow,” she promises, but tonight, for the last time, Zitchi must share her bed.

I am tired, so tired of this, thinks Zitchi. She is tired of everything she has seen, of all those other girls who came, fresh-faced and clean, only to be broken into smaller and smaller pieces until they turned grey. Once they were nothing, actual death had no meaning. She is tired of the stenches and of the screams, of hearing herself scream and not knowing how to stop. And the pain. She is tired of all the pain and cannot bear, any more, to look at it, cannot bear to look at the ways, all of the ways in which it is possible to die. “No more,” she says.

“Yes more,” says Erzebet, as she bites Zitchi’s fading face in the big bed. “And no, you cannot go home. Did you really think for a moment that I would let you go? You are mine.”

Zitchi is far, far beyond being able to feel shock at this. And no, she didn’t really think. The only hope worth holding now is that Erzebet will allow her to die soon.

As the sun begins to rise Erzebet leaves Zitchi on her own to regain her strength, or some of it. This is the way she plays her game of blood. Play, rest. Eat, sleep. Drink, re-fill. But even though Zitchi’s blood has been the sweetest so far, everything must end. Erzebet will allow her a day or two to herself - alone with just the thoughts in her head - and then she will play the end-game. The end of all hope, for most of these maidens. The cage.

“Dorko! Ilona!”




It is almost three hundred miles by road from Ecsed to Castle Cjesthe, avoiding, as one must, the zone to the south which is full of Turks. In places, the roads are frozen, rocky and wanting repair.

It is almost a week before Mihaly crosses the River Váh and reaches Lesethe, the nearest village to Cjesthe. Lesethe is set at the foot of the White Carpathians, and from the village centre he gazes upwards, sees the castle above him like a giant’s tooth on a rocky outcrop, glowering. He stables his horse at the inn, buys food and attempts to strike up conversations with the Innkeeper, stall-holders, anyone. No one will say anything about the castle or the Countess. Would any of you, if she owned your homes, your land, your lives? Time then, to deliver Fredek’s letter.

Mihaly hires another horse and rides south six miles to Piest’ány, a large town on the same side of the river. There, he finds a distant cousin of the Thurzó family, Gáspo, and hands him the letter.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 13

Thursday, crack of sparrow, and Henry’s on the phone to the OPCS woman. “Did you have a good holiday?” he asks her.

“Yes, thank you,” she says, a little stiffly.

After some preamble he asks her Ellie’s question: How many British visas have been granted to Russians in the last twelve months?

She’s not keen on answering him, he can tell. First she says that such a request should be applied for in writing, and he should expect it to take at least fourteen days, because they have a backlog. And anyway, she’s not sure if she has the correct information to hand at the moment, and she’s just returned from Spain, and her colleagues have been using her desk while she was away, and and and...

In other words, she doesn’t want to tell him. (Sensitive material, or jobs-worth?) But Henry has had a lifetime of getting his own way, so he’s a persuasive chap, and he’s used to arguing the legal toss - it’s his job. Item by item he deconstructs her excuses. He clinches it when he reaches into his armoury - remember Henry’s armoury? - and uses Sympathy with a capital S. Oh, and Flattery, big time.

Vanna hears the conversation. She’s eavesdropping whilst trying and or pretending not to - come on, we all do it - and she thinks he’s overdoing it, laying it on with a trowel; the woman will never fall for it. But she does.

And the answer to the question is: None. Zero. Zilch.

Henry’s taken aback, obviously, and he asks the woman if she’s sure, and she is, and he asks her Why, for heaven’s sake? And she says she doesn’t know why, they just collect and store the data.

Henry sits with his elbows on the Ouija table and his head in both hands. “No wonder Ellie said there was no point,” he says. “But why none at all? The Cold War ended. The legislation’s in place. You’re entitled to have your wife living with you in Britain.”

“I wonder whether it’s the same for people in other countries,” says Vanna, “or just Russia?”

“I should have asked her for the stats for France,” he says, “or Italy, or Poland, or Outer-Fucking-Mongolia. I’ll bet the bureaucrats give visas to eye-tyes.”

“But it’s kind of irrelevant, though,” says Vanna. “Though - you don’t think it would be worth going ahead with your application anyway? I mean, just because there were no Russians allowed in last year... Maybe this year they’ll start issuing them?”

“I doubt it,” he says. “It’s as Ellie says. No point. But what am I going to do? Olga’s essential. I need her; without her as my wife, it won’t work.”

“What won’t work?” asks Vanna, but he doesn’t seem to hear her, caught up as he is in his own misery.

Vanna feels sorry for him, she does. But she’s just realised that, actually, she feels somewhat relieved at the prospect of no Olga. She’s starting to wonder whether Henry’s the one Pete saw in his crystal ball. There’s something about him; his vulnerability, perhaps. Yes, I could fall for you, Henry, she thinks.

He’s clearly doing his own head in, so she decides to try to cheer him up. She makes two coffees and brings them through. He’s sitting where she left him, absently tugging his fingers through his hair. She sets up the Ouija, deals the letter-cards around the table edge. “Move your elbows for L, M, and N,” she says, “We’re going to talk to Ellie.”

“What possible good will that do?” he says.

“Who knows? She might have a way. Come on.”





“Ellie, I’ve just been speaking to the OPCS, and it’s not looking good for Olga,” says Henry.

I KNOW (says Ellie) NO VISAS ISSUED LAST YEAR TO RUSSIANS

“That’s what they said. But how could you know?”

I KNOW MANY SECRETS

“I’m beginning to understand that, Ellie. But why none at all? Is it coincidence? An anomaly, perhaps? Or policy?

POLICY

“And is the situation going to improve, do you think?”

NOT IN THE NEAR FUTURE

“Then what am I going to do? How am I to get the visa?”

THERE IS ANOTHER WAY

For the first time since the phone call, Henry sits up straight. “Really?” he says. “What’s that? If you think you’ve got a plan, Ellie, I’m all ears.”

MEP

“What’s ‘mep’?” says Vanna.

MEMBER OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
GO SEE MEP FOR SOUTH EAST
ASK HER TO SORT VISA

“Ellie, I don’t mean to be difficult,” says Henry, “But that simply won’t work. Firstly, MEP’s are busy and important people, so they’re unlikely to be able to spare the time for a hack lawyer like me. Secondly, it’s not their job to process visa applications. Thirdly - is there a thirdly? - oh yes, thirdly, what makes you think an MEP would succeed when normal channels are bound to fail?”

GO SEE MEP FOR SOUTH EAST
HER NAME IS CAROLYN DOVER
IT WILL WORK AND YOU WILL GET THE VISA

“Carolyn Dover, hmm? I can check that out easily enough, see whether the name fits the seat. Why would she agree to see me though?”

SHES ALREADY MET YOU

“Really? I don’t remember meeting her. When was this?”

DINNER PARTY AT THE LINKS LAST YEAR WITH YOUR WIFE

“Ex-wife, Ellie. Christ!” he says, clapping his hand to his forehead, “That wasn’t the night she told everyone about the brains, was it?”

NO
DIFFERENT NIGHT

“That’s a relief,” says Henry, laughing. “I can’t place Carolyn Dover though.”

This time, the glass shoots off before he’s finished speaking. Vanna’s noticed that today the words are coming much faster than before.

SHE WILL REMEMBER YOU WHEN YOU RING HER FOR AN APPOINTMENT

“And she’ll give me one?”

NO BUT SHE’LL GIVE YOU AN APPOINTMENT AS SOON AS YOU LIKE

Vanna smirks, but the joke goes over Henry’s head. He purses his lips, considering. “It’s worth a try, I suppose,” he says. “Wait though. Getting an appointment is well and good, but what am I going to say to the woman? I don’t know her. She’s not a personal friend or anything. I might recognise her when I see her but that’s not going to be enough. Why should she want to help me? Assuming she’s in a position to, which I doubt.”

I KNOW MANY SECRETS

“Yes, old bean, you said. Do try not to repeat yourself. Are you going to tell me one of them?”

TELL HER YOU KNOW ABOUT GILES CLINTON BROWNE

“Who’s he?” says Vanna.

HOME SECRETARY

“Ah, right,” says Henry, “Of course he is. What about him?”

HES GIVING HER ONE

Both of them laugh. “Nice turn of phrase, Ellie. Very lady-like. But so what if he is? This day and age, that sort of thing goes on all the time. Nobody bothers about it. Are you honestly suggesting -” The glass speeds across the table.

BOTH OF THEM ARE MARRIED WITH CHILDREN
THERE ARE OTHER ISSUES TOO
IT WOULD BE VERY DISTRESSING IF IT GOT IN THE PAPERS

“Ellie, I’m shocked,” says Vanna, reproachfully.

“”Right,” says Henry, “So let me get this staight, Ellie. What you’re suggesting is that I go and see this Carolyn Dover, and ask her to wangle an under-the-counter visa for Olga, no questions asked. If she won’t help me, I slip it into the conversation that I know about her and the Home Secretary. A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, and all that malarkey. If that doesn’t have the desired effect, I then insinuate that the pair of them could soon be looking at themselves in the tabloids. What makes you think a newspaper editor would even believe me? I’ve not got a shred of evidence; I don’t think the word of a disembodied spirit on a Ouija board would quite cut it, do you? The whole fiasco is preposterous in the extreme. You’re bonkers, Ellie, you really are: totally fucking bonkers.”

YOU WOULDNT HAVE TO ACTUALLY GO TO THE PAPERS
MOST LIKELY SHE WILL WANT TO HELP AS SOON AS
YOU SAY ABOUT HER AND THE HOME SEC

“And what if she calls my bluff? I don’t think I can bring myself to do it, I really don’t.”

SHE WONT CALL YOUR BLUFF

“And how is she going to swing the visa, even? That sort of thing isn’t within her remit.”

SHE CANT BUT THE HOME SEC CAN

“Ellie, I simply don’t believe this,” says Henry, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t even believe I’m having this conversation with you. It’s cellars and ‘X marks the spot’ all over again”.

THE COINS ARE THERE I CAN SEE THEM
YOU ASKED ME FOR ANOTHER WAY TO GET THE VISA

Henry sighs. It’s been a long day, and it’s not yet ten in the morning. It’s true, he did ask her - for which I can only blame myself, he thinks - and she’s given him the answer. An answer, at least. But his head aches. “I need some time to think about this,” he says.

Good, thinks Vanna; he’s going to finish now. She feels tired. Not physically, but her mind’s all tangled up in tentacles. “I could do with a break,” she says, putting her hands in her lap.

“All right,” says Henry, “but just one more question before we knock it on the head. Are you still there, Ellie?”

YES

“Good. Look, assuming I manage to get Olga’s visa - by whatever means - will she come? Will she marry me? Because as you probably know, Ellie, according to Vanna the tarot said that maybe she won’t make that final journey.”

PROBABLY NOT

“What? So now you’re saying she won’t come anyway? Then why go through all this blasted hoo-hah of getting her a visa?”

THERE IS A CHANCE BUT ONLY TINY
YOU HAVE TO TRY
YOU MUST KEEP TRYING

The glass stops, then starts again.

YOU OWE IT TO ZITCHI





“Who’s Zitchi?” says Vanna.

“I’m taking you to lunch,” he says, “and we can talk then. You can call in to see Peter at his shop afterwards if you like.”

At the Sun Cafe, Henry begins his story.

“Zitchi is, or was, a young Hungarian noblewoman who lived in the late sixteenth century. She was probably only fourteen or fifteen when she was invited to the court of the Countess Erzebet Bathory, to be her Lady-in-Waiting.”

“Erzebet Bathory - but that’s the woman in that book of yours.”

“Yes. Bathory later became known as ‘The Bloody Lady of Cjesthe’, ‘The Blood Countess’, and ‘Countess Dracula’; this last name because she spent her childhood at her parents’ castle at Ecsed, and Ecsed is relatively near to Transylvania, home of the Dracula legend, of course. In her lifetime she tortured and murdered hundreds of young women, many of whom were from noble families. Some historians say there may have been as many as six hundred killed, but nobody knows the true number, nor most of the names. Zitchi was one of them.”

“If nobody knows the names, or most of them, anyway, how do you know?” says Vanna.

“Two reasons. Firstly, her name is mentioned - very briefly and in passing, admittedly - in the book, which is based on the records of Bathory’s trial, many letters, and other papers. In the book, the way it’s worded is that she probably wasn’t killed but might have been, and since her family were silent on the matter, no one is sure either way. The point is made that if their daughter had been one of Bathory’s victims then surely they would have spoken up, but they didn’t. Personally I think that there might have been something else at work, such as politics, or more probably, fear. My belief is that they said nothing because they were afraid.”

“So you don’t really know if this Zitchi was a victim or not, then?” says Vanna.

“On the contrary. I have proof that she was.”

Vanna raises her eyebrows, makes a silent question with her eyes. He sips his wine.

“I acquired the book when I was at Cambridge, I don’t remember how. I didn’t get round to reading it until early this year, but when I did, Zitchi’s name leapt out at me. I had a strange feeling that I’d heard her name before, and that it held great significance for me. But I had no idea why. It’s not a common name, certainly not in this country, and I’m sure I hadn’t come across it in the everyday sense. I carried on with my work and put Zitchi out of my mind. But sometimes at night, just as I was falling asleep, her name would come into my head. Then after two or three months of this her face would appear as well, and it was a face I recognised.”

“You actually saw her face in your bedroom? Who was it?”

“No, her face was in my mind. And I don’t mean I recognised her from somewhere else, I mean I knew that I knew her. It’s difficult to explain. I realised that she was trying to speak to me, so I began studying the occult every spare moment I had. I thought it might help, but as you know, I do not have the gift. Then one day I went into Artemis - that’s the New Age shop in the High Street - and met Peter. He was giving Tarot readings, and he was able to give me some information about her. Not much though, I have to say; his readings are usually a hotch-potch of business advice, family, money, what-have-you. All good stuff and useful in its own way, but not what I needed the most. Some Thursdays he made no mention of Zitchi at all, even though I stressed how important she was. At other times there would be a brief mention, some snippet of little consequence.

“But, through Peter, I met Pam, and Pam is a Medium Extraordinaire. I had weekly sessions with her on the Ouija Board for several weeks, and I learnt so much about Zitchi -”

Henry’s voice fades; he is lost for words at once. Vanna watches him gaze at the space above her head. Like there’s something there a long way off, and yet he can see it clearly. Something beautiful. Or someone.

He returns to their table in the Sun Cafe, discovers his wine-glass with surprise, held in his hand halfway between the table and his face. The waiter arrives with their food, and they begin eating.

“Well, anyway,” he says, clearing his throat, “I now know that she’s real. I know it. And I know that I’m in love with her. But she is in a terrible place, and in such pain.”

My God, thinks Vanna. This is something she’s never come across before. “What I don’t understand,” she says, “is how she’s able to contact you, how you can know her and be in love with her, when she died - what was it - four hundred years ago?”

“Yes, about that,” says Henry, “Pam says it was around 1590. But her spirit can’t rest, you see, so that’s why she’s here.”

“ But if there were - hundreds you said - of women murdered by Bathory, why aren’t more of them here, in spirit? Why just Zitchi? And why you; why does she want you?”

“I don’t fully understand it myself,” he admits, spreading his hands. “But Zitchi is special in countless ways. And the main difference between her and all those other poor girls was that something additional happened to her before she died. Something worse, much worse even, than the torture.”

“What was that?” says Vanna.

“Pam discovered, through the board, that Zitchi was special to Bathory. She was the first noblewoman to be captured and tortured. Before her, Bathory had cut her teeth on peasants, quite literally, I understand.”

Vanna shudders.

“Because she was Bathory’s first victim of noble blood, Bathory kept the torture going for longer, kept her alive in an ever-weakening state, and Zitchi watched some of the later girls die. Pam thinks that Bathory was in love with her, in her own depraved way. She may have made Zitchi share her bed, although Zitchi remained a vigin in the strictest sense of the word. That was important, because Bathory believed the blood of virgins, and especially high-born virgins, had magical properties, and so she would bathe in it.”

Vanna has stopped eating. She doesn’t think she can finish her lunch. “It’s hard to understand how a human being could be so evil,” she says, “especially a woman.”

“I agree with you,” says Henry, although he seems to be managing his own lunch just fine. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, by the time poor Zitchi was near to death, she had suffered at Bathory’s hand for months, much longer than many of the others ever did. And still Bathory carried on. Apparently, Zitchi begged her to spare her, but not only that, she begged to be allowed to go home to her family. And Bathory replied that because she loved Zitchi she would indeed spare her, on one condition.”

Henry’s finished his food now, and is searching for the waiter. Does Vanna want pudding? No? Or coffee perhaps? He orders two coffees.

“What was the condition?” prompts Vanna.

“The condition was,” says Henry, “that Bathory would spare Zitchi’s life and let her go home, in return for Zitchi’s soul. So that when, eventually, Zitchi did die, Bathory could be with her for eternity.”

“But that’s appalling! I wouldn’t do it!”

“Maybe so, but you don’t know how you’d react in that situation. Imagine extreme pain for months and months, and the terror. You’d probably sign anything.”

Vanna’s silent.

“Now,” says Henry, “I don’t know the process by which Bathory got hold of Zitchi’s soul; all I know is that she did. There may have been a ritual of some kind, or a document. I don’t know. What I do know is that once she had it - Zitchi’s soul, that is - Bathory went back on her word and killed her anyway.”

“Never trust a psychopath, that’s what I always say,” says Vanna, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

The attempt backfires. “It’s no joking matter,” says Henry, huffily. “Because of Bathory, Zitchi is still captive, and in torment.”

“Sorry,” she says. “Did you find out anything else, on the board? Did you manage to speak with Zitchi herself?”

“No, sadly not. After a few weekly sessions, Pam had to go into hospital for a woman’s operation. She was quite ill for some time. Then, just as she was beginning to get better, Peter found himself another woman, and now they’re going through a divorce. It’s a damned nuisance from my point of view, because I still have lots of questions. About Zitchi’s early life, for example. About why she’s relying on me, of all people, and not another man. What’s special about me? Also, I’d like to find out more detail about how I’m going to save her.”

“Save her?”

“Yes. I’m determined to do it this time.”

“What do you mean, ‘this time’?”

“I don’t know what I mean. Sometimes I get a sense of deja vu.”

“Everyone gets that though,” says Vanna.

“You’re probably right,” he says.

“So then, how are you going to save her?”

“It’s complex. Very complex. Do you remember me mentioning metempsychosis?”

“Ye-es,” says Vanna.

“Well, I need someone to take Zitchi’s place, only not exactly. As I said, it’s complicated. But anyway, that’s where Olga comes in.”

“Olga? What’s she got to do with it?”

“The metempsychosis. Come on, you know what the word means; I saw you looking it up in the dictionary,” says Henry.

Vanna hadn’t known he had been watching her.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 12

Hungary, 1589

There are many other girls, but none so entrancing as the raven-haired Zitchi, thinks Mihaly, as he steers his bay through the narrowing wooded paths. Rings of sunlight pierce the dusk between the leaves. The mare jumps ice-chunked streams with ease, the muscles beneath its skin rippling in the yellow gloom.

He remembers her as a baby, swaddled against the cold as his mother carried her from the big house to their lodge at the gate. How his mother nursed her in their only chair by the wood stove, while he clung to her skirts. How he wondered at the infant’s shock of fair hair, which later fell out in wisps and grew back dark.

He remembers the kindness and gentility of her parents, who never spoke harshly to her, nor to him. How, one exciting day, they said he could come to the library in the big house, sometimes, so their daughter might practise her French and German conversation. How he hated Zitchi’s governess, her narrow back like a rod, the whap of her stick if he got his lessons wrong. But fear was a good teacher, and in the end he learnt well, though his mind was never as nimble as Zitchi’s.

Zitchi: the shape of her name in his mouth. When was it, that moment when he knew beyond doubt that he loved her? And did she love him then? (No, that came later.) They were in the library conjugating French verbs, and the revelation hit him all in a rush, so he scribbled the words on her slate: Je t’aime. She scrubbed it out quickly with her cuff, looked up guiltily at the lurking governess. Said nothing.

Mihaly urges his horse on, even though there is barely a path now. The darkening wood suits his mood. Ah me, he thinks. But he knows there is no point moping at her father’s refusal; it is not seemly for a Lady to marry her servant. The world turns. But the miles, the miles, and the forests between them, keep him from sleeping.

But. He cannot conceive of a lifetime without her. She gave him comfort when his mother died, held his arm at the graveside. Does she think of him when she wakes? Does she dream? Suddenly he has a sense of her frailty, her transience. Is there anyone who will care for her? Is she cold where she is, in that hulking stone castle, way, way away in the cruel mountains? Dare he follow her?

Mihaly turns his horse around, and presently, he reaches the edge of the wood. He looks up: a crescent moon has risen. Do you watch the moon, where you are? he thinks. Do you know that the same moon you see, so do I? Does that thought stir your blood?


There are many other girls, and Erzebet has ways. She has her own connections, those of her husband, those of her mother and father and of her sisters and brother. When you think of it, the whole of the Magyar nobility is an extended family, criss-crossing the kingdom like a net from Csaktornya to Ecsed.

There are many other girls, also, in the Viennese court. Most of them have been properly educated in the manner of the day, so that even if they cannot speak Hungarian, they are bound to be fluent in French. Erzebet has spoken French since childhood.

Erzebet’s ways include Dorko and Ilona, and other servants who know far better than to defy her bidding. Until now, the crones have only obtained peasants and needlewomen for her, it is true. But with a little elocution she is sure they may also approach the nobility. They have her absolute authority, after all, for every family in Hungary knows the name of the Countess Erzebet. The word of a wizened old crone is a rune, when that word is Bathory.



Zitchi, the first of many other girls, looks up at the crescent moon over Cjesthe. The moon is in her inscrutable phase, and says nothing.

Zitchi reaches with three fingers to trace the furrows on her face. She touches the newly-formed crusts; the surrounding skin feels puffy and hot. She cannot comprehend why Erzebet struck out at her; one minute she was attending in her bed-chamber and the next... But afterwards, that terrible smile on Erzebet’s face - what was it? A bubble of bliss, but before that, what? Discovery? Enlightenment? She does not know, but it chills her like the creeping dark.



There are dungeons cut into the rock beneath Castle Cjesthe. From somewhere under the mountain, you can hear water trickling. It freezes into ice-seams, then melts in the warmth of the jasmine oil lamps. When the lamps are taken away, it freezes again in the deep dark. Ice, water. Freeze, seep, flow.

Tonight, the lamps are alight and flickering along the wet grey walls. Jasmine is a sickly-sweet smell, pervasive and strong, cloying. Even so, it cannot cover that other stench. If you have not smelt the collapse of flesh as it drops from the bone - and Sarika hasn’t - you cannot imagine it, and believe me, you don’t want to. But the hot stink of it gets behind your eyes, in your nose and your throat, makes you retch. It shrieks of ruin, of defilement, of spoiling and sinking, and of the end of all hope.

In one dungeon, suspended from the ceiling, there is an iron cage. It is lined with blades which are sharpened daily. The cage - from knife-tip to knife-tip - is the measure of a girl, standing.

Sarika has bruises on bruises, and is clearly weakened by all that has happened to her in the few short weeks since she came to Cjesthe. Dorko leads her, naked and shackled, to the door of the cage. There is a brazier, and there is a red hot poker.

Then there is a girl in a cage.

The Lady of These Ruins is not revolted by the all-pervasive stink of putrefaction, rather, she embraces it. She enters the room, an apparition in a pale robe. Ilona winds the pulley and raises the girl, in ceremonial fashion, to the ceiling. Slowly, silently, Erzebet sits on a footstool under the cage.

Ilona and Dorko dance around the bars. Each brandishes a poker, and there are others cooking in the brazier. They taunt the cowering girl, jabbing at her with fiery iron. When she recoils, her skin splits open on the blades. Her blood drips. Then it splashes. Then it spurts onto Erzebet, who receives the supplication in silence, her eyes glazed.

When at last Erzebet recovers from her trance, a transmutation has taken place; her white robe has become a red robe. And the cage contains a corpse, slumped, impaled.


There are names, and then there are no names. In between, the names get lost, remain unspoken. Except, for a while, by families who wonder and wait, but then less, and then less, and then never.

And then there are no names.

ZITCHI - CHAPTER 11

Henry wants them to go on the board again later, predictably, but Vanna’s not having any. She refuses point blank, quotes Pam’s rules. He sulks like a petulant child. She offers to cook him dinner. He refuses. It gets later and later, and in the end he orders a Chinese takeaway, and produces a couple of bottles of wine from the cellar. Vanna’s no idea what kind they are - when he announces their heritage it’s all dutch to her - but they look old. Dusty, anyway. “Delicious,” she says.

Henry grins, and rattles off a bunch of wine history, geography too, probably. He’s warming up again bit by bit, with the wine. He starts telling her funny stories about his ex-wife and her constant obsession with swanky dinner parties. Vanna giggles; the wine’s getting to her too.

“I once told my wife that it had been scientifically proven that men and women had different-sized brains,” he says, “but she didn’t believe me. I told her, no, it’s true, seriously, scientists have found out that the male brain is significantly larger than - and therefore superior to - the female brain, no really, it was in The Lancet only the other week. That’s why most scientists are male, obviously. Q.E.D. But she wouldn’t have it. Reckoned it was just down to larger body size, if it was true at all.”

“So what did you say then? Did you manage to convince her?”

“I said that some human biologist or other proved - with a gigantic statistical sample - that even given the larger male frame, the male brain was still bigger than the female brain, proportionally. But I think the clincher was when I told her that they’d also found out that the negroid brain was smallest of all, even smaller than a white woman’s brain. She believed me then.”

“No! That’s terrible, Henry! And completely untrue.” Vanna’s horrified.

He grins. “I know,” he says, “Of course it’s bloody untrue. But I was sick of her banging on all the time about how clever she was and how much better than me she reckoned she was in every conceivable way, and how she could go on Mastermind for goodness sake. She was always going on about bloody Mastermind. Funny thing was -” he stops to light his cigar, takes a couple of puffs, “Funny thing was, she didn’t mention it for ages, but then a month or so later we were at a dinner party, massive house, big table, must have been twenty or thirty VIP’s there, including a judge and the local mayor, and she just came out with it.”

“What, you mean she -?”

“Yes. She was talking to the judge at the time, if I remember. She said, ‘Did you know, some famous scientists have recently proved that the negro brain is significantly smaller than the caucasian brain?’ and the room went utterly quiet. Everyone stopped eating, fork halfway to mouth, and looked at her. And someone said, ‘Mrs Tunstall, that is an appalling thing to say! Where on earth did you get such a piece of abject nonsense?’ And then she said, ‘Oh, my husband told me,’ and then everyone stopped looking at her and looked at me instead. And no one would talk to either of us for the rest of the evening. Except the judge, and he said, ‘Good for you, dear boy, I have long believed that to be true.’”

“Well, that just serves you right, Henry,” says Vanna. He can be quite nasty, she thinks.

Henry’s grinning like a schoolboy.




Later though, she senses his mood darkening again. She tries to think of something to say to cheer him up, or at least get him talking. She looks around the room, sees his bookshelves, and wanders over to have a look. “These are all leather,” she says.

“Yes. I got some chap to bind them all for me when I was at Cambridge, got him to take off the original covers and redo them with leather and gold blocking. Don’t worry, none of them are first editions. Wasn’t all that expensive, as a matter of fact, and they go well with the panelling in here, don’t you think? Have a proper look, if you like. Read anything you like while you’re here.”

She looks at the titles, takes the odd one or two down. They’re beautifully bound, though it’s a shame they all look the same, she thinks. Most of them are classics. “Have you read all of these, Henry?”

“Most of them, at some stage,” he says. “Those top two shelves are the Occult ones.”

“What’s this one?”

He narrows his eyes. “Can’t see from here,” he says, “What’s the title?”

“Necronomicon.” She hears his hissed intake of breath.

“I know I said you may read anything, and it’s up to you of course, but I shouldn’t read that one if I were you. Seriously. Very dangerous book. Very disturbing.”

“Disturbing in what way?”

“It’s demonic. Contains all the names of absolute power, and words which, if you say them out loud, will conjure up demons from the abyss.”

“You don’t take that seriously, do you?”

“I most certainly do, and so should you, if you’re sensible. Nietzsche said, ‘If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’ The Necronomicon is the abyss in book form, or a window onto it, at least, and I should know. I keep meaning to get rid of the darned thing, get it out of the house. Evil book. No, don’t open it for Christ’s sake! Put it back on the shelf would you? Good girl.”

“What about this one next to it? The title’s ‘Erzebet Bathory’.”

“Ah, now that one’s pretty sinister as well. Not as bad as the other one, but there are some terrible things in there. Definitely not bedtime reading.”

I’m starting to see a pattern here, thinks Vanna.

She starts leafing through it. There are photos of paintings and engravings. One is entitled ‘The Cachtice portrait of Erzebet Bathory (unknown date)’. Incredible dress, she thinks, and how much must those pearls be worth, if they’re real? Another is a map of 17th Century Hungary, with hundreds of unreadable place names. She can make out ‘Moravia’ in the top left, and ‘Transilvani’ on the right, and that’s it. There is also a family tree. “Who was she?” she says.

Henry sighs. He’s on the brandy now, lying stretched out on the Chesterfield. “She was a Countess who lived in Hungary from 1560 to 1614. She was known as ‘the Blood Countess’. I’ll tell you about her, if you like, but tomorrow,” he says.

“Are you all right? You seem a bit - down.”

“It’s Olga,” he says. “I despair of ever bringing her over here. Especially if Ellie is right about there being no point in my applying for a visa. And having to wait until Thursday to find out more is killing me.”

“Do you love her very much?”

“No, I don’t, I don’t love her at all. I only met her the once, as I said, in a shabby restaurant in her home town. People like me don’t use dating agencies, least of all Russian ones, and as I said, I’m deeply ashamed to have done so. But it was a necessary evil in order to meet a woman who was suitable.”

“I don’t understand then. Isn’t she your fiancé? Why do you want to marry her if you don’t love her?”

“It’s a long story,” he says. “I will tell you about it, I promise, but not tonight, I feel too upset. Suffice to say I have an important mission for her, of which she knows nothing, and that’s the way it must stay. Actually, “important” isn’t right. It’s a vital mission, in every sense of the word. Absolutely vital.”

Vanna thinks, what is he talking about? It seems a bit unfair of him, to plan something for Olga and not tell her about it. But he’s not in a good mood, so she keeps that thought to herself. “I don’t understand,” she says, again.

He turns raises his head and turns to look at her, his black eyes gazing into hers. “Have you heard of metempsychosis?” he says.

“No,” she says, and she has to turn away from his face. She shivers. “Good night then, Henry. See you tomorrow.”

He says nothing, sweeps his hand at her dismissively.






Vanna wakes early on Wednesday, and is surprised to discover she’s slept well. She hasn’t dreamt either, or if she has, she can’t remember. She dresses quickly and goes into the drawing room, half-expecting to see Henry on the sofa where she left him. But the room is empty.

She goes over to the bookcase, and digs out a dictionary. Turns to M - mete, metempiric... metempsychosis: the transmigration of the soul, esp. the passage of the soul after death from a human or animal to some other human or animal body. From Gk. metempsychosis, from meta “change” + en “in” + psyche “soul”. Pythagorean word for trans-migration of souls at death.

What was it Henry said last night? Her mind’s still fuzzy from the glasses of red wine she had. Head-achey, even. She goes into the kitchen, finds some aspirin and knocks them back with a glass of water. She eyes the coffee machine warily, decides it’s completely unknowable, and puts the kettle on instead. Leans against the worktop, thinking. What did he say?

He was in a bad mood, she remembers. Upset about maybe not being able to bring Olga over. Needs her for his special mission. No, not special - vital, he said, and he said it twice. Doesn’t “vital” just mean “important”? Oh, and “life”, it means that too. Was he trying to say it was “life or death”? She tuts. He’s always so darned melodramatic, she thinks. And what - on this earth - has metempsychosis to do with Olga? She carries her cup of tea back into the drawing room, picks up the dictionary again, and looks up “vital”. There are several definitions, but the phrase which jumps out at her is essential to the existence.


When Vanna protests at going on the Ouija board again so soon and cites Pam’s second rule, Henry points out that after all, she’s only here for a week or thereabouts, and once she’s gone he’ll have to manage without her. And Pam has said she won’t do any more sessions with him for the time being; she’s too stressed emotionally with her ongoing divorce. And he really does need Vanna’s help to sort his life out, he can’t do it otherwise, and he’ll make it worth her while. And she’s amazing, no really, she’s got the gift and what would he do without her? In the end she agrees to go on the board once per day, but once only, and for no more than an hour each time.

First off, Ellie’s in a sassy mood this morning. She sidesteps Henry’s questions about Olga and tells him about some buried treasure instead. She reckons there are some very old coins, possibly Roman, hidden behind a wall in the cellar at Henry’s work. They’re valuable, though she won’t say how valuable, and they’re just sitting there, waiting to be discovered.

Henry’s not having any of it. “Yes, yes, this is all very amusing, Ellie,” he says, “but may I be frank with you for a moment? All of this is ludicrous in the extreme. Come on now, admit you’re having a joke with us, hmm? No hard feelings, I promise you.”

But Ellie says REAL NOT JOKE and, to be fair, she describes the cellar perfectly. She knows its shape, approximate dimensions, the number of steps down (which would need to be checked, Henry says, since he can’t recall how many there are), which file archives are kept where, and she reminds him about that old desk against the far wall and the terrible trouble they had getting down the cellar steps. You name it, she’s seen it. And she tells him to the nearest brick exactly which bit of wall he needs to excavate.

And on the one hand, Henry and the other two partners own the freehold to the building, and there are such things as metal detectors. On the other hand though, Roman coins would have to be declared as Treasure Trove and - for crying out loud - that’s irrelevant, since the whole thing is preposterous and he doesn’t believe a word of it. Very funny, Ellie.

Ellie still insists she’s not mucking about, and then Vanna comes up with the idea of Ellie giving them a piece of information which can be proved, to show good faith. Anything will do, but preferably something they know nothing about, which is nothing to do with anything they’ve already talked about, and which can be checked out at - oh, let’s say - the local library?

Henry shrugs. “I’m game,” he says, “but are you, Ellie?”

YES THEN YOU WILL BELIEVE ME ABOUT THE CELLAR, says Ellie.

“Sure.” says Henry, “Fire away”.

CASTANEDA

“What’s that?”

WRITER CARLOS

“Never heard of him, have you, Vanna?” She shakes her head.

WROTE DON JUAN

“Ah, well I have heard of Don Juan, of course,” says Henry, “but I’ve not read any books on him. Vanna? No? All right then, what about this Castaneda chap, Ells old thing?”

GO TO GUILDFORD LIBRARY GET CASTANEDA BOOK OPEN IT YOU WILL SEE TODAYS NEWS

“Fine. We’ll do that and get back to you. That all?” he says.

YES AND ALSO LOOK FOR MESCALITO


In the Jag, on their way to the library, Henry witters on. What if there is no Castaneda book? What if there are several? How will they know which is the right one? What if, what if. Vanna drives.

Naturally, the book is there, and it’s the only one, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. Henry checks for the index so he can look up ‘Mescalito’, but there isn’t one. He shuffles through a couple of times, impatience written on his face like tomorrow’s tabloid news. “Big deal,” he says, “So there’s a Castaneda book in Guildford library, just as she said. Is that it?”

Vanna gently removes the book from his hands, and starts looking through it herself, but slowly. First she closes it then opens it again to see whether it wants to fall open on a particular page, but it doesn’t, not really. It seems fairly new, like it’s only been read once or twice at most, and whoever read it before knew how to be nice to books. She starts at the beginning and turns the pages, not reading it but allowing her eyes to settle where they will on the words as they go past. Henry, meanwhile, is tapping his feet, shooting glances left and right, and muttering about the time.

Around two-thirds of the way through, Vanna finds a cigarette paper, wedged between two pages, between the last page of one chapter and the header page of a new one. The header page is blank except for the words, “Tuesday, November 1st”. She turns over the page. The chapter begins, “The next day...”

In Guildford library, in this world, yesterday was Tuesday, the first of November.

Today is Wednesday the second.

Today’s news. Just as she said.

And further down the same page, Don Juan speaks of the drug mescaline, which is present in the buttons which grow on the peyote cactus. Does mescaline equal Mescalito? They check the reference section and discover that Mescalito is the peyote plant’s spirit, and is said to reveal himself - to people who eat the buttons - as a laughing green medicine man.

So yes, they’ve found Mescalito. Just as she said.

“Of course,” says Henry, “It doesn’t mean there any coins. But she knows that cellar inside out, backwards forwards sideways. What’s the point of this little tangent? Absolutely nothing, I’ll be bound. A complete and utter red herring.”

“Maybe so,” says Vanna, “But you’ve got to respect her, pay attention to what she says. Maybe that’s her point. And how did she manage it? Not just the correct date, which is a one-in-three-six-five chance, but the correct day of the week too. And in the book she said it’d be in. And how did that Rizla get in there, like a bookmark, in just the right place? Put it all together. What are the combined chances of all of that?