Vellum and Green Vitriol
Copyright © 2007, S. Y. Affolee
The Second Conjuration
Seal XVII
The Widow Fitzgerald stood just inside her doorway looking at me with rheumy eyes. "Yes, I know Archibald Chesterfield. He stays in Fairmont for a few months of the year. The rest of the year, I am not quite sure. Somewhere down south, I think. He rents a cottage from me. It's on the lake. I am not sure if he is here in Fairmont now, quite frankly."
The woman was tall and dressed in an old-fashioned style--a black dress with puffy sleeves that buttoned up to her neck--something that would not have looked quite out of place twenty years ago. Her gray hair was pulled severely back in the old style too and she walked with a cane--black ebony that was topped with a silver knob. Her hand clutched claw-like to its support. A ring with a very large black stone winked at me from her finger.
"Thank you for the information, Mrs. Fitzgerald," I said. "I think I shall see if Mr. Chesterfield is in--I am quite eager to see if he is in possession of the book I am looking for."
I almost missed the slight narrowing of her eyes. "I see. Well, before you pay Mr. Chesterfield a visit, would you like to come in and have tea with me?"
I remembered the old farmer's words, that the widow was a witch. I didn't believe in the evil eye--just personal bad luck. And I suppose witches did exist although I had been fortunate enough to have never been owned by one or run across one before. Sorceresses on the other hand, seemed to be fairly numerous--it perhaps it seemed that way since there had been a time when I had been owned by a succession of them. Unlike sorceresses, witches were not academic spell casters. They relied on more natural and folklorish ways. The widow, on the outside, did not look particularly fearsome. She looked like what she purported to be--a poor old widow.
Nonetheless, it would have been nice to have someone else with me to back me up. Rhys, unfortunately, was poking around town, claiming that he was going about trying to find clues. His talents had led him to believe that Blackthorne had been to Fairmont at one point. Passing through or staying, he couldn't say.
"Thank you for your offer of tea, Mrs. Fitzgerald," I said, trying to put on an earnest and polite sheen to my voice. "But I'm afraid I must decline. I have a prior engagement on having tea with, uh, Tabitha at the Bed and Breakfast," I lied. "I do not wish to inconvenience my hostess for anything that she had planned."
"I see. Well, even if you do not have time for tea, please come in. It will take me a while to find the key to the other cottage on the lake."
"A key?" I found myself stepping through the threshold. It was like stepping through a time warp back to the late nineteenth century, when Queen Victoria sat on the throne rather than King George V. The front parlor of the widow's residence was crammed full of over-decorated furniture and flowery accents. Lace draped over a floral couch. The legs of the chairs were discretely covered by cloth. Photographs littered every available surface, except for the mantelpiece which was home to a painting--the portrait of a lantern-jawed man with a haunted look to his eyes.
"I don't want to waste the opportunity to advertise the places I have up for rent," the widow called out as she went into the next room, presumably to find the key. "While you're out there checking up on Mr. Chesterfield, you might as well take a look at the other cottage. Who knows, you might find it to your liking and perhaps you might choose to rent it during the summer for holiday."
There was a small table next to the sofa that held a rather clunky lamp decorated with pewter angels at the base. Beside the lamp were three photographs--all of the same man depicted in the portrait on top of the fireplace. In one of them, he was standing next to an old fashioned horse drawn carriage. In the second, he was standing in some sort of room, posed in formal garb. In the third, he was wearing spectacles. And under his arm, he held a book. I bent over and squinted, trying to make out the book's title.
"Here is the key."
I almost leapt out of my skin at the sudden closeness of the widow's voice. But I managed to make myself straighten up slowly, as if I had not been disturbed at all. "That is very kind of you, Mrs. Fitzgerald. I cannot guarantee that I would ever rent your cottage, but I do have some colleagues who often take country holidays. I can mention this to them."
She gave me a thin lipped smile. "That is excellent." Her eye briefly landed on the photographs I had been examining. "I see you were looking at Victor."
"Your husband?" I asked hesitantly.
"Yes. Bless his poor soul, wherever it may be." She took out a white lace handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed her eyes. "He always had a rather delicate constitution."
"Ah, I see. I hope he went away peacefully." I felt a bit awkward, not sure that I was saying the right thing. I had no idea if the widow had lost her husband recently or, if like Queen Victoria, still mourning the love of her life after many, many years.
"I have no idea," she said, startling me. "He was a scholar, you know. He specialized in old books he called grimoires. I never paid much attention to that--books are simply books to me. I am no scholar--I don't know Latin or Greek. I only know English. Victor was quite intelligent--he had mastered five languages before he was twenty."
"Hm." I took another peek of the photograph where Victor Fitzgerald was holding the book. "Is that a grimoire that he was holding?"
She nodded. "He was obsessed with it. It was written in Arabic and called the Nacermon, or something like that."
My skin suddenly felt cold. "The Necronomicon?"
"Yes, that's it. How do you know it?"
"I'm somewhat of a scholar myself. You were saying before that you had no idea about your husband's death?"
"Oh, Victor." She sighed. "One day, he decided to go to Greenglass to do some research at its museum library. He seemed very excited--that he was on to some breakthrough. But he never came back. Some travelers found him lying by the side of the road. The local doctor said that he had died from heart failure. It was inevitable, given Victor's health, but still, it was quite a shock."
"I can imagine." I glanced up at Victor's portrait and haunted eyes. My intuition told me that his heart failure had not been the result of his health, but something else. "Tell me, Mrs. Fitzgerald. Do you still have the Necronomicon in your possession?"
"Actually, I do," she said, surprising me yet again. "I've kept it here all these years simply because, well, it was what Victor had always had with him." She went toward the fireplace mantle and took something off that had sat right beneath the painting. It was an old volume covered in leather--or maybe it wasn't leather--and an iron studded latch. There had been a title on the cover, but most of it had rubbed off. From what I could tell, it looked faintly Arabic. "But it's a rather ugly old thing. I can't open it since I don't have the key to it--I have no idea where Victor had misplaced it--and I wouldn't be able to read it even if I could."
"It does look rather ancient," I managed.
"To be honest, I never really liked it much," she said. "Victor would always study it, forgetting to eat and sleep. Perhaps it would be more useful in your hands since you are a scholar."
"Mrs. Fitzgerald, I couldn't possibly..."
She handed it to me. Numbly, I took it. The book itself was somewhat heavy and cold. I looked from the volume to the portrait. Strangely, the eyes on the portrait seemed to be looking at me now. Its gaze burned with some sort of unholy glee. I shuddered.
"The cottages are along Fairmont Lake. Just go south on Maddock Road. Mr. Chesterfield has rented the Sewell Cottage. The key is to the Tern Cottage which is right next to it. When you come back and I am not home, just drop the key off with the postmaster. He will see to it that I will get it back."
I found myself ushered out of the widow's house. For a moment, I stood outside, glancing at her house, the benign grocer's store beside her building, and then the grimoire in my hands. I wasn't a babe in the woods. I knew what I had in my hands was what some people would consider pure horror.
"Judging from the look on your face, visiting the widow wasn't that bad, was it? She wasn't truly a witch?"
I shrieked and swung the book around.
"Ow! It's me, Rhys."
"I don't like people sneaking up on me like that!"
"Sorry, Ana." He glanced down at my hands. "What's that?"
Not what, boy. Who.
Rhys jerked back as if someone had slapped him. I shrieked again and dropped the grimoire.
Stupid girl! Pick me back up at once!
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