The Night of the Solstice (6 page)

“No,” said Alys. “I'm sorry. But Charles is right. We'll never be able to dig up half these things, naked or not.”

Janie looked at her quickly. “You mean you're giving up?”

No! Of course I'm not giving up,” said Alys. “But I've been thinking all day and we're going about this wrong. The vixen expected us to mix up the amulet in one afternoon, like Morgana did. If the ingredients were that hard to find she'd be expecting the impossible.”

“Maybe they're growing in the garden,” said Charles.

“Not wulfenite and peacock coal and hornblende, they're not. But
think.
Where does a sorceress get the ingredients for her spells? She can't cross the Atlantic every time she needs European dwaleberry. She doesn't keep a nest of falcon chicks or a bowl of sunfish—”

“A laboratory!” A sudden light came into Janie's purple eyes. “She'd have a laboratory of her own. Or at least a storeroom for her stuff. I bet it's right here
in the house. Hidden, maybe, behind a false wall—”

“The cellar!” cried Charles.

“Damp,” said Janie. “Drafty.”

“Witches like drafts.”

“The towers!” squealed Claudia, knocking over a chair as she bolted out of the kitchen. Charles bolted the other way.

“Wait a minute, let's get organized,” said Alys, but they were gone. She looked at Janie, who was wearing quite a different expression than she had been these last few days.

“Faust did it in a library,” Janie said thoughtfully.

“There's a library on the second floor,” said Alys. “I'll go up there. You do this floor. Try not to get lost.”

Alys's warning to Janie was quite serious. There were so many dozens of rooms in the old house, and so many unexpected twists and turnings, that it was easy to lose the way.

The house was built like a hollow square enclosing a courtyard. The south and west sides of the quadrangle had been closed off. When their doors were
forced they revealed whole wings of little rooms which looked as if they had not been entered for centuries. All were empty.

On the north side, the ancient, smoke-stained kitchen opened into the three-story living room, which was easily the largest room in the house. The east side was where Alys and Janie were going now. Leaving the first-story rooms to Janie, Alys went up the spiral staircase in the northeast tower to the second story.

She emerged in a high arched hallway which looked down on the courtyard on the right and had a range of doors on the left. The first door opened on Morgana's bedchamber, which was dominated by a magnificent canopy bed hung with velvet draperies. In a recess, standing opposite one another, were two full-length mirrors. When Alys stood between these they reflected her, front and back, to infinity, so that the room seemed full of people.

The second room down the gallery had been converted to a study, the third was a sitting room, the fourth was the library, and the fifth held a great
spinning wheel. Each had its own mirror; some were beautiful, like the polished bronze sitting-room mirror, some ugly and strange, like the study mirror which was so tarnished Alys could scarcely see herself in it. Nowhere could she find any sign of a secret panel or hidden doorway.

The sixth room was different from the others. It was entirely bare: no tapestries, no wardrobe, not even a candle in the alcove. Only a very small bed pushed away in one corner.

It looks like a child's bed, thought Alys, and she wondered if Morgana had ever had a child, and if so why this room, this nursery, was now so empty. It looked almost as if someone had stripped it clean in anger, throwing away anything that might spark a memory.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a shout from the tower. “Alys, come quick! Charles says he's found it.”

She ran into Janie, who was doing the shouting, in the hallway, and they both hurried down the stairs and back to the kitchen. Here a long, narrow staircase led to the cellar.

Claudia was already down there, and she and Charles had their ears pressed to one wall. Close by them, glowing in the red sunlight that came through a small window set just above ground level, was a rusty mirror.

“Listen!” Excitedly, Charles beckoned them closer. With his other hand he thumped several times slowly on the wall, while Claudia added a furious counterpart of quick rappings.

“Now listen,” he said, and reaching an arm's length away he knocked again. This time the sound was different.

“And look!” he added. “You can see the outline, sort of, if you stand right. This crack is the side, and that one up there is the top. It's a door.”

“And this is the keyhole,” said Claudia. She had four small fingers stuck in a knothole.

“Wait a minute,” said Janie. Nudging Claudia out of the way, she slipped sensitive fingers almost as small as her sister's into the hole. “There's metal in here… . It's some kind of a lock. If I can just push it right …”

With a soft
click
an entire section of the wall swung inward.

The small room thus revealed was illuminated by slit-shaped windows at ground level, and it had a mirror. Every inch of wall that wasn't window or mirror was shelves. And every shelf, from floor to ceiling, was stacked with rows and rows and rows of bottles and jars and vials and phials and retorts.

“Wow,” said Claudia.

“I'll bet half of those are poisonous,” said Janie.

“I told you witches like drafts,” said Charles.

Alys's sense of triumph was tempered with awe at the sheer quantity of bottles which shone in the last rays of the setting sun. “I'm afraid it will take us hours—” she began, but Claudia interrupted.

“Footprints!” she said, pointing.

It was true; the thick carpet of dust on the floor clearly showed a single set of footprints leading to the shelves and back.

“Morgana!” said Claudia, hugging herself with delight.

“Sure has little feet,” said Charles critically.

Janie, who had already stepped into the room to examine one wall of shelves, suddenly made a strangled sound.

“Alys.
Alys. Alys.
”

“Black widow!” cried Charles instantly, leaping to her side. “Where'd it bite you?”

Janie pushed him away and stumbled toward Alys. Her eyes were wild.

“Alys!”

“Take a deep breath and try again. Count to three.”

Janie clutched her by the shirt and towed her to the wall. “Alys, look. Look, Alys.” she said in a terribly controlled voice. “They're not labeled. No labels. Do you know what that
means
?”

“Sweet heavens,” whispered Alys, sitting down on the floor.

Everyone looked at the rows of shelves that towered above them, each shelf bristling with unlabeled containers.

“There must be a million of 'em,” said Charles.

“Probably only a few thousand. But it might as well be a million,” said Alys.

Claudia's lower lip trembled. Alys gathered her into one arm, shaking her head. They had come so close. Numbly, she took a bottle from the nearest shelf, one just off the floor. Inside the dusty glass she could see the wink of greenish powder. It could have been peacock coal for all she knew, or ground elephant's ear, or essence of deadly nightshade.

Charles, across the room, was whistling aimlessly. He took a bottle, shook it, peered at it, then replaced it. He looked up at the next shelf, and the one after that. He slapped his thighs a few times with open hands, flexing his knees. He picked up another bottle.

“Don't breathe it,” said Alys automatically, as he tried to take the stopper out. “It might be poisonous.”

“I can't even open it,” said Charles, struggling. “The cork's in tight.”

Alys twisted the glass stopper of her own bottle. “Mine, too.”

“Vacuum packed,” said Charles with a weak grin, and he bent to rap the bottle on the stone floor. “That's got it,” he said as the stopper came free.

“Good idea,” said Alys, rapping her own bottle.

“Stop!” shrieked Janie. “Don't anybody move! Charles, don't put that bottle back!”

“Janie,” began Alys mildly.

“Hold on to those bottles! Don't forget which ones they are! Oh, don't you see?” she cried as the others stared at her. “They're sealed. They're vacuum-packed. None of them has been opened in five hundred years.
Except
—”

“Holy cripes!” said Charles, astonished.

“Janie,” said Alys, “you
are
a genius. Claudia, do you understand? All we have to do now is try all the bottles, and the ones that open are the ones holding what Morgana put into the amulet. We did it. We actually did it!” She hugged Claudia hard, and Charles shouted, and even Janie smiled.

“But now we've got to work,” said Alys briskly. “We need some chairs to reach the higher shelves—”

“I'll get them,” said Charles.

“—and some candles, too. It's so dark that—omigosh! It's dark!
Dinner!
”

There was a mad rush for the stairs.

*   *   *

They ate dinner in a daze. Their parents were more than a little bemused by their sudden urgent desire for one another's company. It had been years, commented Dr. Hodges-Bradley, since all four of her children had spent an afternoon together.

“It's—it's a surprise,” said Alys. “You know, Dad's birthday is coming. We're working on it again tonight.”

Mr. Hodges-Bradley looked pleased.

“Why, darlings, how nice of you,” said their mother. “But even so, I don't want Claudia out late.”

“Late, late, what's late?” gabbled Alys, seeing Claudia's mouth open to its widest in preparation for a yell.

“You know her bedtime is eight o'clock.”

“Eight? Eight? How about eight-thirty?” Claudia was now as purple as a beet. Charles was doing something to her under the table to keep her quiet, but he wouldn't be able to restrain her long.

“It's only this one night,” continued Alys feverishly. “I'll take care of her, Mom. Please, just for one night.”

Dr. Hodges-Bradley blinked. “Well … if it's
that important to you. But, remember, tomorrow's a school day.”

So Claudia went with them back to Morgana's secret storeroom. They brought from home the emergency candles from the kitchen cupboard and Claudia's Santa Claus candle that had never been lit and Alys's camping flashlight. Alys and Charles stood on chairs and tested the upper shelves; Janie and Claudia took the lower ones.

Alys made the first find, a bottle of bright golden feathers, whose stopper yielded easily to her hand. Triumphantly, she passed it down to Janie. Then Claudia found a bottle full of red crystals. Then Alys found another bottle, then Charles. Soon they were flying through the shelves.

“Uh-oh,” said Charles once, and Alys looked at him.

“An empty,” he said.

Janie moved to his side and Alys went on testing bottles. She had a terrible feeling about that empty. Maybe it had contained something easy like quicksilver or flyclub—but she didn't think so.

Janie told them when they had gathered thirteen bottles, but they went ahead and tested the rest anyway. Janie said it would help prove their hypothesis. Alys was hoping they would find another bottle to make up for that empty.

All the other stoppers were in tight. At last, with a crick in her neck, Alys stepped down from her chair.

“Well?” she said to Janie.

“We have exactly thirteen bottles. Problem: Twelve are full, one is empty. Question: Which one?”

At Janie's suggestion, they took the bottles to the kitchen and let her sort them. “Because,” she said, “if we can figure out what we
do
have, we can tell what we
don't
have.” Janie opened every jar, and when she was satisfied she'd identified one she made a check on the master list of ingredients. At last she'd examined all the bottles.

“It's just what you'd expect,” she said wearily, sitting back. “I can't be sure of telling those plants from one another, but I do know we've got all four. The feathers and the mercury are easy. The minerals are easy. These little brown things I think are
flyclub, and the bright things are sunfish scales. Which leaves …”

“The human bone. Naturally.”

“So we're back where we started,” said Charles.

“Not exactly,” said Janie. “We have twelve out of thirteen ingredients.”

“Yes, and how are we going to get the thirteenth?”

“There are ways,” said Janie, but she didn't say it very loudly.

After that, conversation languished.

Early the next morning Charles knocked at the door of his mother's darkroom.

“Come on in.” His mother was bent over the sink, her fair hair coppery in the red light. “What is it?”

“Mmmm,” said Charles, studying the ceiling with elaborate casualness. Then: “Say, Mom, do you get many broken bones at the office?”

“A few,” said his mother, amused.

“Well,” said Charles, “I mean, like, do you ever get people whose bones are sticking out of their skin? And maybe little splinters breaking off?”

“Cases like that go straight to the emergency room of a hospital. Why on
earth
do you want to know?”

“Oh, I just wondered,” Charles said vaguely. He wandered out again. He knew perfectly well what Alys would say, but he mentioned his idea to her anyway over breakfast.

Alys said it. “We are not going to lurk around any hospitals looking for injured people. You're as bad as Janie.”

Charles shrugged.

On the way to school, Alys said, “We need money.”

“Don't tell me. We're going to hire some grave robbers,” said Charles.

“No, I'm serious. Even if we don't have the you-know-what there's plenty of other equipment we need to actually mix up the amulet. The crucible of gold, for instance—”