Bertie and the Hairdresser Who Ruled the World (11 page)

‘Beats me,' breathed Doreen, ‘and if you don't know then how the hell would I?'

The kettle began to sing, summoning them from the pantry. Jenny brewed the tea in a white china teapot and they all sat at the table, mugs in hand. Conversation flowed freely, as it always does when four intelligent women gather to drink tea. Doreen's new shoes were greatly admired, Jenny grumbled about a plague of slugs rampaging through her seedlings and Sandra anticipated a satisfactory resolution to the Paraguayan crisis, but Maggie sat quietly, as she always did before entering the Oracle, preferring to take comfort from the joviality of the others. Jenny noticed her pensive look.

‘You OK, Mags?' she asked.

‘Yeah, I guess. Make sure you've got plenty of strong coffee brewed. I don't want to be so wrecked I miss lunch.'

‘Sure thing.'

There was an awkward silence. Each appeared wrapped in private thought, but Maggie knew they were all watching her discreetly, hoping for some clue as to what was about to happen. She didn't need to rely on her powers too much to perceive Doreen's sudden uneasiness or Sandra's quiet agitation. Alice's unexpected call had been disturbing. At least Jenny seemed unaffected. Although intimately involved with the administration of Temple Hall, her world was not so much dominated by political intricacies and subtle policy, as compost and rain and earthworms. There were times when Maggie envied Jenny's simplistic outlook on life, yet she was no fool. A born and bred country girl from Moreton-in-Marsh, she'd been with the Sisterhood these past ten years and there was no doubt the quality of the catering at the Hall had improved immeasurably since her arrival. Her intentions to remain there for the rest of her life were heartily endorsed by everyone who visited – Jenny's comestibles were legendary!

Maggie looked at her friend and, as always, sensed her serene contentment. Jenny was unfailingly cheerful. Happiness cloaked her like a glowing aura. It was soothing to be in her presence and normally she would have enjoyed a little banter, some inappropriate double-entendres or a few pointed remarks about Sandra's dormant sex life – but not today. Maggie drained her mug and peered out of the window, a distant look in her eyes. Something white and woolly ambled past in the distance, bleating forlornly.

‘You ready?' enquired Doreen gently.

‘Sure, let's go see if we can get anything.' Maggie scraped back her chair and, leaving the kitchen, threaded her way through the house and down the rear stairs to the cellar. Sandra and Doreen followed. There, beneath the Hall, was a place that pre-dated the medieval building above by over a thousand years. The Oracle was the place where the Pythia entered her trances, the place where she saw.

Maggie had been clairvoyant since childhood, worrying her parents with her strangeness and uncanny ability to glimpse the future. Naturally, as any caring and responsible parents would have done, they totally misdiagnosed their daughter's uniqueness and consulted an endless succession of doctors, specialists and child psychiatrists, searching for an answer to their problem. Maggie assured them there was no problem, but she still had to endure scans and tests and experimental drug therapies and something unpleasant involving jelly and electrodes. It was only after saving her parents from certain death in a car crash that they finally accepted their daughter's unusual gift. With the love they poured into her, Maggie blossomed. One day, just before her nineteenth birthday, she calmly packed a small bag, kissed her mum and dad farewell and took a bus to Malmesbury. She sat in front of the abbey, waiting in the sunshine until a complete stranger with gorgeous hair and very nice shoes walked past. ‘Hello, Gaia,' she called after Doreen. ‘I don't think you'll find Alice here.'

The shock on Doreen's face made Maggie smile. ‘Sorry to surprise you like that, but I just thought you might like to know what you're dealing with here. You can deny it all you like, but I know you've got something to do with a woman called Helen, that your real name is Doreen and that you are going to sit down next to me because you desperately need a medium!'

And that was how it had started. Maggie's arrival had been a godsend for Doreen. Alice was an extraordinarily accomplished clairvoyant, but the pressures had taken their toll and one night her mind had shattered in the Oracle, fragmenting horrifically, and she'd fled into the darkness. The Sisterhood had never been without a Pythia, so when Maggie made her dramatic approach, Doreen accepted immediately. She then turned to the problem of finding Alice, but by that time she'd gone to ground in London, living off the streets and befriending pigeons.

Now Maggie stood before the entrance to the Oracle with Doreen and Sandra on each side. She hesitated. ‘Do you know, I can see why Alice didn't like this place. It really creeps me out,' she said softly.

‘Me, too,' murmured Doreen, ‘so we'll keep it as short as we can.'

‘Don't let me dribble too much.'

‘We won't.'

‘And I'll need coffee. Lots of coffee. I definitely don't want to miss lunch.'

‘Jenny's already grinding the beans,' said Sandra. Maggie nodded. Doreen pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped into the Oracle.

The place was old. Properly old! At well over four hundred years, Temple Hall was itself old in the traditional sense, but the Oracle beneath the Hall was ancient. The modest chamber where the Pythia made her pronouncements exuded age. Time had laden the atmosphere with a heavy aura of history. The Oracle was a subterranean Roman crypt built on a knotted confluence of ley lines, and Temple Hall had been constructed over it, protecting and incorporating it, absorbing the masonry into its own structure, but the Oracle was not an original part of the house and had stood alone for centuries before the Hall foundations were laid.

It was not a large chamber – only the Pythia and a few attendants ever entered – and in construction resembled an early Romano-Christian baptistry, windowless, bare, ascetic and rough, with a few plain circular columns here and there to support the arched roof. This was fortunate. Archaeologically inclined visitors, although few, needed to see the Oracle as something else and there was no greater disguise than to hide it in plain view as a small private baptistry. The Sisterhood had spun a yarn that it was the original temple for which the village of Temple Guiting was named, but the actual truth was far more astonishing and carefully hidden away from prying eyes. However, such structures were occasionally attached to houses of elevated status and so it excited no undue interest to find the Hall had been built over the site of the original chamber.

Maggie followed Doreen, ducking her head as she passed under the low lintel, her gaze already distracted. The Oracle smelt musty and faintly aromatic. Doreen lit several bronze oil lamps of exotic design, their dim light casting wavering shadows. Sandra closed the door behind them and stood guard. Doreen squeezed Maggie's arm reassuringly. ‘You OK, honey? You look anxious.'

‘Anything to do with the Ginger Ninja disturbs me. I can feel it already without the smoke and booze.' Maggie knew she was only a fraction as talented as Alice and frequently questioned her abilities. This self-doubt made her nervous.

‘You'll cope. I'll start the fire.' She handed Maggie a stone pitcher. ‘Get this down your neck, girl!'

The sweet smell of apples rose from the pitcher. Temple cider, made from apples picked from the Hall's own orchards, was potent enough to floor a charging hippo! Maggie sipped while Doreen busied herself building a fire.

The flagged floor of the chapel was bare and unadorned but for a small circular pit in its centre. This was passed off as the font to any outside visitor, the heart of the baptistry, but the stonework was charred and blackened, signifying the use of fire rather than water. Doreen piled dry branches into this pit and soaked them in oil. A match ignited the flames with a muted whoosh. The wood crackled and slumped as the fire settled. Smoke rose in a swirling column, strong and pungent from the sappy timber. The wood was juniper, cut from the upland forests of ancient Lycia in south-west Turkey. Sandra and Doreen waited for the initial surge of flames to subside, then brought forward a tall iron stool and placed its tripod feet into small recesses carved into the stone lip of the fire pit. Maggie shimmied herself up onto the crude seat and relaxed with her eyes closed, wreathed in smoke as the green juniper needles hissed and spluttered beneath her feet. She took another long draught of the strong cider. Then another. Smoke filled the Oracle, billowing back and forth before finding escape up the chimney above. The stones surrounding the chimney throat were blackened from centuries of use.

Doreen waited. Maggie needed to fall into her oracular trance, coaxed there by the narcotic juniper smoke and gut-rot cider. Frankly, there was nothing scientific about the process, nothing that could be quantified or corroborated by measurement. It would without doubt fail the most basic empirical test and to any reasonably rational mind was a load of old hokum.

Like bending spoons, watching water flow uphill and charming warts, it shouldn't work – but it did. Spectacularly.

The Pythia drained the pitcher with another long swig and handed the empty to Sandra. She wiped her lips delicately. ‘That's a strong one,' she muttered. ‘Jenny must be spiking it with gin!'

‘Better not,' replied Doreen.' I don't want you falling off that stool again.'

‘I can hold my drink, Gaia,' she retorted. ‘Well, most of the time, anyway.' She composed herself and closed her eyes. ‘Remember, I'm not as plugged in as Alice. Something might come my way, but it might not.' Maggie had a healthy respect for Alice's gift. She saw where Maggie couldn't – and she was very aware that Doreen knew this as well.

They waited. Minutes passed. Sandra put another branch on the fire, even though the atmosphere inside the Oracle was already thick. She coughed behind her hand. ‘That's nasty,' she whispered to Doreen. Maggie was almost entirely obscured within the rising column of blue-grey smoke. ‘I don't know how she stands it!'

Maggie groaned softly and Doreen silenced Sandra with a flick of the wrist. They both leaned forward, instantly attentive. The Pythia spoke only once and, for some reason Doreen could not fathom, electronic recording instruments only ever picked up static inside the Oracle, so it was important to listen to every word Maggie uttered.

‘We must move with care,' she intoned, her voice entirely flat and empty. ‘Men are plotting.'

‘Here we go,' breathed Doreen. The Pythia dived straight in, no messing. This was about James Timbrill. ‘Tell me of these men,' she asked in a louder voice.

‘There are five. They are avaricious. One lies close to death.' There was a pause. ‘One of the others is responsible.'

‘Are they near?'

‘Lingfield.'

‘Yes?'

‘12.15. Dirty Laundry.'

‘Thank you, Pythia,' Doreen said gravely. This was a reliable and useful extra source of income for the Sisterhood. The only trouble they had was finding a betting shop within a fifty-mile radius that had not banned them for life. ‘And the five men?'

‘Look to the rising sun.'

‘The sun rises in the east,' said Doreen.

‘Yes, to the east. Not far. I see glass towers beside a winding river.'

‘A city?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me more.'

‘A bridge that rises and falls.'

‘London?'

‘Perhaps.' The Pythia was invariably enigmatic. As always, this required precise questioning.

‘Is the bridge old or new?'

‘Many say it's old. We would say it's new.'

Doreen considered this. The Sisterhood had such a long history that they more or less regarded anything later than the sixteenth century as still under warranty. The ambiguous answer probably meant the bridge was at the very least Victorian. ‘Can you see more?'

‘A strong place of many walls filled with brightness.'

‘The Tower,' murmured Sandra. ‘The Crown Jewels.'

‘Yes.'

‘The men are in London.'

‘Yes. They control the lives of many. They own much, they desire even more.'

‘Businessmen?'

‘Their power comes from money. Money is their god. They seek more. Foolish, foolish men, but very dangerous,' warned Maggie ominously.

‘What has changed? Why have they stirred? Why now?'

‘Something new disturbs them, something we must protect at all costs.'

‘Will there be conflict?'

‘Yes.'

‘When will the conflict come?'

‘It has already started. They have attacked once, they will again. The man has already suffered. His woman is next and those dear to her. She needs our help.' This confirmed Alice's assessment. It seemed certain that Celeste Timbrill was in peril.

‘How can we help?'

There was a long silence. Maggie's eyes suddenly opened despite the stinging smoke, but her gaze was dull and distant. She inhaled the acrid vapours without coughing, even though Doreen and Sandra gasped asthmatically and fought for breath. Her trance was deep and of an intensity Doreen had never seen before. Wary of the potential for disaster after Alice's catastrophic breakdown, she was prepared to shove Maggie off the stool at the first sign of distress, but the Pythia remained serenely calm. ‘I cannot say what I see. The visions are so strange,' she murmured eventually.

‘Try again.'

‘It darts here and there like a feather in the wind. It speaks like a child. It has no guile.'

‘Is it a child?'

‘No.'

‘What is it?'

‘It tells the truth.'

‘A man?'

‘No.'

‘A woman. It must be a woman.'

‘It is not human.'

‘How can that be?' protested Doreen, nonplussed at the unexpected answer.