18
The Secret Known Only to Cats
Nestling the phone on my shoulder, I scribbled a note to Windflower, asking her to run down to records and bring back the folder on the Nibelungs. I could not find it in my computer, which meant it was among the thousands of files that had not yet been scanned into the system. Then, I stalled for time, asking Alberich about his family.
I need not have bothered. Windflower had returned with the folder before Alberich had even begun complaining about his ungrateful children.
As the dwarf king launched into his list of the offences that Hagen had committed of late, I nodded my thanks to Windflower and examined the file. My eyes narrowed. No. It could not be that simple . . . could it?
“So, you will provide the phoenix ash in return for six drops,” I clarified, when he had paused to breathe. “You have something to store the Water in, of course. It can’t just be stacked underground. Nor can you keep it in an ordinary bottle. You have a carafe of cut-crystal Urim to put it in?”
“I figured you would provide . . . ” he began.
I laughed. “There is not enough phoenix ash upon all the earth to entice me to part with one of my vials.”
“Ah . . . ”
“But, I’m sure you can work that out,” I continued off-handedly. “And, of course, you are prepared to guard such a treasure. You have a method to keep it from being stolen, a way to see that it isn’t carried off, as your ring was? The ring may be recovered some day. A thief has merely to drink the Water and, gulp, the drinker is stronger, faster, and wiser, and your wealth is gone.”
“Yes, well . . . ” he muttered, flustered.
“Water it is then . . . unless there is something you would prefer.”
There was a long silence on the other end. Then, Alberich said hesitantly, “There is something else we crave. Something you might be able to provide.”
“And that is?”
“Gold!” his voice was hot with greed.
“You mean ordinary gold?” I deliberately raised my voice in surprise.
“Ordinary?” he raged. “Gold is never ordinary. It is frozen sunlight, the solid manifestation of that which we cannot see, for we cannot view the daystar lest we turn to stone. It sings to us. So precious. So beautiful . . . ”
“You drive a hard bargain, King of the Dwarves,” I concluded when we had agreed upon the amount. “But I believe we have a deal. A pleasure doing business with you, as always. And . . . oh,” I finished casually, “tell your boys, I will throw in a bonus of thirty-five percent if they expedite shipment.”
Hanging up, I hit an intercom button on my phone. “Mustardseed. Contact our Arimaspian team and send them to raid the caves of the Hyperborean gryphons until they gather enough gold to pay our bill to the Nibelungs. I’m emailing you the details. Have the gold minted into bullion and delivered to Alberich in Iceland, presto. Then, have a company Lear standing by to receive the ash and fly it to straight to Mount St. Helens.”
I paused and took a breath “While I have you on the line, have there been any major archeological discoveries since I last checked?” I did not say more, but Mustardseed knew well what I wanted: discoveries that might include the scroll inscribed with the last of the Sibylline Books, the one that contained the secrets of the Order of the Sibyl. “No? A shame. Very well. This matter is settled.”
By that evening, the Chinese phoenix ash was on its way to Mount St. Helens. The spilt ash had been removed safely from the highway. Mab was in Elgin, Illinois, and I had dashed off a letter to the address Logistilla gave me for Erasmus. In it, I explained about the Three Shadowed Ones and the possibility of some tragedy before Twelfth Night, which loomed ever closer. I urged him to spread the word to any other family members with whom he might be in touch. There was nothing else I could do for my siblings until Mab returned tomorrow. I turned my attention to the matter of Father’s disappearance.
Every day that passed was another day my father spent as a prisoner, tortured in Hell, another day for the doom predicted by the fell spirit on the Happy Gambit and, again by Baelor, to grow closer. I did not know what the doom was, and I had not the slightest notion of how to rescue Father. It was like being told that one’s father was frozen on Pluto or spirited away to the Andromeda galaxy. There was no precedent for retrieving someone from such places.
My only hope was to discover more about the project Father had been working on when he disappeared. If I could figure how he came to be in Hell in the first place, maybe I could find some clue as to how to retrieve him.
While I was away, the weather had grown bitter. When I came home, I found that Ariel had lit the ancient diesel heater. The hum of it could be felt throughout the house, and the smell of petroleum hung in the air. Retreating to the lesser hall, where the pleasant cinnamon of the phoenix lamp overpowered the odor of fuel oil, I curled up in an armchair with Father’s latest journals, the ones Peaseblossom had brought back from Father’s island for me.
Flames burned merrily in the great hearth. The old heater sent hot air through the radiator vents, but the lesser hall was still drafty. A fire did much to increase the room’s cheer. After a time, the heat made me thirsty, but I hesitated to call the butler, as I dreaded yet another conversation about whether or not I would free the Aerie Ones. Theoretically, I could have fetched my own cup of tea, but though I had lived in this mansion for well over fifty years, I had only a vague notion of the whereabouts of the kitchen.
Nearby, my familiar, Tybalt, Prince of Cats, lay curled on a great rosy silk pillow with gold tassels, twitching as he dreamed. He had stalked into the hall earlier in the evening, announcing he had come to keep me company. Apparently, napping was his idea of companionship.
Tybalt had been able to confirm that Father was in Hell. When I returned from Seattle, he told me one of the feline guardians of Kadath had overheard a dark peri discussing the matter with a cacodemon.
As I was scanning a treatise Father had composed on the subject of the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, Tybalt opened a single golden eye and stretched. At least, if I spoke to him now, he could not accuse me of sending the Dream Gods scurrying.
“Ask Ariel to send a servant with a cup of tea, would you?”
Tybalt lifted his proud black head and looked to the left, down the length of the tapestry-hung hall. Then, turning his head slowly, he gazed to the right, examining the hearth and the phoenix lamp. Finally, he fixed his golden gaze upon my face and asked: “Were you addressing me?”
“You are the only one here.”
Lithely, he jumped to the floor and sat before me as proud and dignified as a statue of the Egyptian goddess Bast.
“Do you take me for an errand-kitten? I am a familiar. It is a calling with a long and respected tradition. I do not perform errands. Perhaps you have momentarily confused me with your flunky, Mab.”
“No danger of that. Mab does what he’s asked to do,” I answered. “So, just what are you supposed to do, O Familiar?”
“Advise you on arcane matters and guide you through the supernatural so that your soul does not wander astray.” The cat stretched.
“Ah, but isn’t fetching messages to and from the spirit realm also a duty of familiars?”
“Indeed.”
“While Ariel is not technically in the spirit realm, he is a spirit. Thus, bringing a message to Ariel, even one so simple as to prepare tea, is within the duties of a familiar.”
“With cats, technicalities make all the difference,” replied Tybalt.
I could have made an issue of it, but I decided it was not worth the effort. Tybalt had been with me for centuries. His manners had always been atrocious. Under any other circumstance, I would have dismissed him for his impertinence, but he had been a gift from Father.
In the old days, before we had our staffs, calling upon Father’s magic had required the casting of intricate spells. One Christmas, after we had suffered a few magical mishaps, Father presented us with kitten-shaped familiars. (This was back in Milan, so there were only the four of us: Mephisto, Erasmus, Theo, and myself. Later, he gave familiars to Cornelius and Logistilla as well. The other three, Titus, Gregor, and Ulysses, never took enough of an interest in magic to need one.)
Last I had heard, Erasmus, Cornelius, and Mephisto still had their familiars—Tybalt particularly hated Erasmus’s familiar, Redesmere, whom he considered his dreaded rival—but what had become of Theo’s cat, I had no idea. As for Logistilla’s, she had taken to changing its shape every few years. For all I know, it might have been one of the spider monkeys or the marmoset.
Since I no longer practiced ritualistic magic, I no longer needed a familiar. Yet, somehow, I had never gotten around to banishing Tybalt.
Aloud, I said, “The Three Shadowed Ones have predicted a doom will fall upon my family by Twelfth Night. The date is getting closer and closer, but we don’t yet have any inkling of what the threat might be. Have you heard anything?”
Tybalt’s tail twitched with annoyance. Apparently, he did not think much of fell spirits who threatened his humans. It gave me a warm feeling. For all his arrogance, Tybalt was fiercely loyal to my family.
“Not as yet,” he said, “but I can inquire.”
“Perhaps you can help me with another matter. I’m trying to unravel the mystery of my father. . . . ”
“I am very good at unraveling things,” interrupted Tybalt, absently batting at the pillow’s golden tassels.
I smiled at that. “I’m trying to puzzle out what my father was up to. What do you make of this poem?”
I read from Father’s journal.
I invoke the consort of Divine Zeus,
Mother of the nine sweet-speaking Muses;
Free from the oblivion of the fallen mind,
By whom the soul is joined and reason increased.
All thought belongs to thee,
All-powerful, pleasant, vigilant goddess,
’Tis thine to waken from lethargic rest
All thoughts residing within us, neglecting none.
From the dark oblivion of night, you enlighten the inner eye.
Come, Blessed Power, wake thy mystic’s memory of the holy rites
And break the chains of the River Lethe.
Tybalt tilted his triangular head, “‘Ode to Mnemosyne’ by the poet Orpheus?”
I jerked my head up in surprise. “Orpheus wrote this? You mean a real ancient Greek man named Orpheus, the man who spawned the myths? Wasn’t he the founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries?”
“Indeed,” replied the cat.
I quickly flipped through the journal pages, glancing at several earlier essays. Father had copious notes on the Eleusinians and their rituals, stuck in amidst the many drafts of his metaphysical treatise on Death and Rebirth, and the various renditions of what I had taken to be his poetry. But if these poems were actually Eleusinian prayers . . . perhaps I had discovered a theme.
“Do you know anything about the ancient Eleusinians?”
“Certainly. They were a cult of ancient Greeks who tried to imitate the secret of cats.”
Despairing at receiving any help from this quarter, I sighed. “Tybalt, not everything in the world relates to cats.”
Tybalt rose gracefully to his feet and began to stalk away. “If my wisdom is not appreciated, I will withhold it. No need to waste water trying to fill a sieve.”
I sighed again. “Please. Continue.”
Tybalt stepped onto one of the large silk pillows and walked three times in a circle. Taking his time, he settled down comfortably, pausing to lick a back paw and scratch an ear. Finally, he raised his proud head and spoke.
“The Eleusinians wished to discover our great secret—how to pass through the gates of death and be reborn without forgetting one’s former self. By ancient covenant, cats are allowed to pass over the River Lethe nine times without drinking of its waters. The Powers That Be hold that if a cat is not wise enough to learn to stay out of trouble after nine tries, he might as well be sent back tabula rasa.”
I had to hand it to him. When one looked at it that way, the Eleusinians were trying to learn the “secret of cats.”
“That matches what Father has written here. His treatises and the Eleusinian rituals both deal with death and rebirth. So, these poems are actually invocations—possibly all written by Orpheus—to Mnemosyne, Persephone, and Demeter. They were the goddesses worshipped by the Eleusinians, weren’t they?”
“The Maiden, whose proper name I will not utter lest her attention be drawn nigh, was the key to the Eleusinian mysteries,” Tybalt replied loftily. “As the wife of the God of the Dead, she had jurisdiction over Rebirth. If you should happen to be family, she would be inclined to grant you a favorable pleasant next life. The Eleusinian mysteries involved a ritual to make one the adopted child of the Grain Goddess, the Maiden’s mother . . . and, thus, a member of her family.”
“You mean, the Eleusinians convinced Demeter to adopt them, and then hoped to be judged favorably and given good lives the next time they were born, due to nepotism?”
“That’s the basic idea,” replied Tybalt. “Except they hoped for more than just a good life. They hoped Persephone would make a special exception for them and allow them to be reborn without having to drink from the Lethe—so they could keep their memories.”
“Did it work?” I asked.
“For a time,” replied Tybalt.
“What finally went wrong?”
Tybalt tilted his head, his gold eyes bright and fixed. “These days, most of those who wish for a better life appeal to a higher power.”
“Hmm . . . ” I ruminated over what Tybalt had revealed. “It seems everything in Father’s latest journal revolves around one project. In fact . . . ” I flipped through some more pages. The crisp paper turned easily beneath my fingers, “the only thing he mentions that is not related to rebirth is his horticulture project.”
Tybalt eyed me evenly. “Would that be the horticulture project in the Wintergarden?”
“Here?” I cried. “In our Wintergarden?”
“I accompanied him when he went to check on it, last time he was here. He was kind enough to put down some shavings for me to capture.”
“Interesting! I’ll have to go down there and take a look,” I mused.
The Wintergarden was technically in Prospero Mansion; however, it was not on Earth. A journey there could take as long as four days. I made a note to make time for such a venture.
Tybalt stared into the fire. His body tensed, as if he were preparing to spring forward and bat at the dancing flames. Then he turned his head and regarded me again, saying, “The Eleusinians vanished long ago. I had thought the Eleusinians’ lore vanished with them, for they were good at keeping secrets. How is great Prospero gaining his wisdom concerning their rituals?”
“According to this journal, he has been summoning up the ghosts of the dead and invoking the lesser messengers of the Greek gods in order to question them.”
Tybalt froze mid-yawn and fixed me with a bright golden stare. “Summon the gods? I am no Mab to chasten the curious, but even by my standards, Master Prospero skirts dangerously near the line between daring and foolhardy. No cat would be so foolish as to trouble the gods! That might attract the interest of their father, horned Alastor—a fate I would only wish upon a dog, or Redesmere.”
“Alastor is the king of the elves,” I said. “You are thinking of Jupiter.”
“Mortals!” Tybalt eyed me disdainfully. “Your cumulative knowledge amounts to almost nothing. A bit here, a tiny glimpse there. You weave it together and declare that you have figured out the universe. All your myths and gathered lore are but hints of the truth; a truth that can only be glimpsed by eyes that dare not blink.” He lowered himself regally, so that he sat in the posture of the Sphinx. “As for Alastor and Jupiter, the two are the same. Alastor is his name when he rules over the Seelie Court. The Lord of Heaven is what he is called by his children, the Greek and Roman gods. His Scandinavian children call him Odin. None of these names, however, is what he is called among my people.”
“And by what name do you call him?”
Tybalt turned his head and began washing his shoulder. “That can be of no interest to you, as you are not a feline.”
Sometimes, there is no point in talking to cats.
The fire crackled. A log floated by, carried by an Aerie One. I read on, picking my way through passages written in Homeric Greek, a language I had not used in decades. On the pages beyond were sketches in my father’s steady hand; pictures of the “Gate of False Dreams” and the “Gate of True Dreams,” a sketch of Charon, the ferryman of the river Styx, and renditions of Eleusinians at their rituals. A rough sketch on a following page showed Father’s horticulture project. It seemed to involve sprouting a cutting of some kind.
As I was studying the sketch, Tybalt leapt up onto my chair again. Settling upon the arm and beginning to wash, he asked casually, “Has Mab gone to hunt down the saboteurs?”
“What saboteurs?”
“The ones who destroyed our truck.”
“The truck with the phoenix ashes? What makes you think it was sabotage?”
“We familiars hear things.”
“Interesting . . . ”
Ariel’s voice interrupted, fluting softly. “Mistress, there is a visitor at the front portal. He refuses to surrender his name.”
“Maybe he’s one of the saboteurs,” suggested Tybalt.
“Or a policeman with grim news,” I said, standing. “Or a Jehovah’s Witness. They have been here three times in the last two months. Was he wearing a uniform, Ariel?”
“He was not a Beefeater, if that was the direction of your inquiry,” Ariel replied.
I sighed. There were disadvantages to having servants who did not get out much. “Bring the magic mirror, Ariel, the one that shows the house and grounds.”
With a whoosh, a large oval mirror in a highly-polished peachwood frame flew into the lesser hall and came to rest on a marble stand made especially to hold it. I knelt before it.
Gazing into its misty gray depths, I chanted, “Mirror, mirror, on the floor, show me who is at the door.”
The mirror’s misty surface cleared to reveal the imposing facade of the front of the mansion. Snow swirled over the granite stoop. A lone man stood with his back to the mirror. The collar of his elegant charcoal cashmere overcoat was raised against the cold. His coat was so well-tailored that it emphasized rather than hid his lithe and athletic build. His expensive black kid gloves matched his coal black hair. He wore no uniform and carried no Bible.
“He shows remarkable understanding of the First Law,” Tybalt observed, referring, of course, to the First Law of Cats: Always look good. In cat etiquette, this extraordinarily important law was followed by two others: Always have at least three escape exits, and When in doubt, wash.
“I had not realized saboteurs could be so . . . catlike,” he finished, washing.
Almost as if he had heard Tybalt’s voice, my mystery visitor turned to glance down the gravel driveway stretching from the house, through the tall pines, to the road a quarter of a mile away. He now faced the mirror, his vivid brown eyes focused somewhere beyond us. I stared at his face, saying nothing.
“But then, he looks more like a statue than a saboteur,” Tybalt batted at the image in the mirror.
I continued to say nothing. The hall seemed to be shaking, though I suspected it was caused by the beating of my heart.
“Show him in, Ariel.” My voice sounded somewhat breathless to my ear. Tybalt tilted his head and fixed me with an inquiring golden eye. “It’s all right,” I said. “I know him.”