Page 104 of Confounding Oaths
Miss Mitchelmore laid a hand on her lover’s arm. “Whatever that lady was, I am sure we will find her again. But for now I agree we should leave things in the hands of—” She looked around at the assembled soldiery and a look of dark realisation crossed her face. “Um, John … have you seen Lizzie?”
You might, perhaps, have expected me to tell you now what had become of Miss Bickle. As accustomed as you must now be after two volumes (you did read the first one? Yes?) of my brilliantly observed and artfully constructed narration, you must have the expectation that I would have flitted across nine worlds and located the good lady in order that I might assure my readers that she would do nothing entertaining without its being relayed to them.
Alas, even I have my limits. And Miss Bickle, it seemed most likely, was already within the court of Titania. And there I go only when sorely pressed.
Of course, I am writing this novel in retrospect, so Icouldtell you where precisely she had gone and how, when, and if she returned to the mortal world. But I choose not to.
Instead we follow Mr. Caesar, Captain James, and the Irregulars as they make their way across Hampstead Heath to their appointed meeting place. And having followed them, we watch them standing around waiting in the cold and the dark. I confess that I, too, am disappointed, but when one is setting up a magical working, one needs to consider all manner of logistical elements that do, in fact, take time to arrange.
I mean, I sayneeds to.But actually I would heartily recommend winging it. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
After longer than I would have liked but approximately as long as was expected, Barryson arrived in company with two men of unsavoury demeanour, the elder leading a brown draft horse that looked two days off from the knacker’s yard and the younger dragging a boar that looked rather more energetic.
“And who are these?” asked Mr. Caesar, not welcoming the intrusion.
The older of the two men smiled and stuck out a hand, which Mr. Caesar shook out of sheer social inertia. “Jim Cooper,” thestranger said. “Butcher, slaughterer, and victimarius. Think of Cooper’s for all your sacrificial needs. The lad’s my apprentice and won’t be no bother. You got your own knife”—he drew a long, brutal-looking blade from his belt—“or do you want to use mine?”
Mr. Caesar winced. “Could somebody else not do it?”
“She’s your sister,” Barryson pointed out. “You don’t want the gods thinking you’re afraid to get your hands dirty.”
As it happened, Mr. Caesar was, in fact, afraid to get his hands dirty. After all, for most of his life he had moved in circles where getting your hands dirty was punishable by immediate expulsion. But those circles held less power over him than once they had and besides, he owed his sister a little fear. He just thanked the fates that his costume hadn’t included expensive gloves.
“This pair for the gods of the north?” asked Cooper, indicating the animals.
Barryson nodded.
With the appraising eye of a professional, Cooper looked at the beasts, then the landscape, then back at the beasts. “Reckon them two trees’ll take the weight.”
“What weight?” asked Mr. Caesar, whose evening was spiralling from disaster to pure gothic horror.
“The bodies,” explained Barryson. “The gods’ll want them hung from the trees for a bit. We could just let ’em choke out without the knife-work, but then they thrash something awful.”
This was starting to go too far for Mr. Caesar. “I am not leaving two dead farm animals hanging from trees in a public woodland. It’s unseemly.”
“Don’t worry about it, mate.” Cooper waved Mr. Caesar’s concerns off with a morbid cheeriness. “We won’t leave ’em to rot, that’d be a waste of good meat. Once the gods’ve had their share me and the lad’ll take ’em down, stick ’em on the cart”—he pointeddown the hill to the little path where, sure enough, a cart was waiting—“and they’ll be sausages by lunchtime.”
With a fatalistic suspicion that he already knew the answer, Mr. Caesar asked, “Who’s going to buy horse sausages?”
“The unsuspecting,” replied Jackson.
Privately vowing never to eat a sausage again, Mr. Caesar turned quickly to Barryson. “Let’s get this over with. What do I actually have to do?”
Wordlessly, Barryson nodded to Cooper and his apprentice, who led the sacrifices each to their separate tree. When both were in place, the attendants binding their back legs with long ropes, Barryson called on the men to gather around the horse and place their hands on it. The places either side of the head, Mr. Caesar noted, were reserved for him and the captain.
“Freyr, Lord of Alfheimr,” Barryson intoned from his position at the rear of the horse, “bountiful one, take this offering and, y’know, just let us in because we’ve got a job to do and time’s wasting.”
It did not, to Mr. Caesar’s ears, seem an especially respectful way to address a deity, but he took it as his cue to act.
Which he would do. Any moment now.
Gently, Captain James closed his fingers over Mr. Caesar’s and held his gaze steady. “You can do this, John. Strike hard and strike true.”
So Mr. Caesar struck. With Captain James guiding him he cut stronger and deeper than he might have otherwise, but it was still a messy blow and the horse bucked wildly. Then the victimarii hauled on their ropes and, with the assistance of Callaghan and Sal, raised the unfortunate creature into the branches where its blood continued to stream down onto anybody who wasn’t quickenough to get out of the way. And also onto Barryson, who seemed to be deliberately trying to catch it in his bare hands.
Once he’d bloodied himself enough, Barryson paced between the two trees and smeared the bark of each with horse blood before bringing the group to the boar and repeating the same ritual.
“I”—Mr. Caesar’s voice quavered—“I think I should do this one alone.”
