In last week’s tale we left Doc Willoughby somewhat alarmed, when the ghost of Granny Bucket told him that the only way to rid himself of the ceremonial horn was to blow it again.
As the last notes of the horn died away, Philomena, Granny, Doc and Durosimi waited in silence.
A full minute passed, and Doc was just about to make some caustic remark when Granny Bucket raised a ghostly finger to her lips.
“There,” she said quietly.
At first it was difficult to be sure what they were hearing. A distant rumble, perhaps. Then another. The faintest flicker of light followed, briefly illuminating the far wall of the snuggery.
“Thunder and lightning?” Doc whispered, his voice doing him no favours. “What can it mean?”
“That’s hoofbeats you’re hearing,” said Granny, with unmistakable satisfaction. “And that isn’t lightning either. Those are sparks; sparks from extremely well-shod hooves.”
Doc went very pale indeed as the sound grew louder. With each beat, the air in the room seemed to tighten. The candles guttered, shadows stretched and warped, and shapes moved where there ought to have been none at all.
Even Granny gasped, leaning back as the snuggery filled – and yet did not fill – with the presence of a huge black horse and its rider.
The horse was magnificent, coal-dark and powerful, its hooves striking sparks from the very fabric of the room. The rider upon it was both beautiful and utterly terrifying: flaxen hair billowing beneath a winged helmet, silver breastplate gleaming like a storm-lit sea. For a moment it seemed that horse and rider were larger than the room, larger than the inn itself. It was as though they occupied the sky rather than the space before them.
Then the rider spoke.
At once, impossibly, they were all back in the snuggery of The Squid and Teapot.
“Whose idea was it,” she said coolly, “to summon me into a room with a sloping floor?”
She glanced about, one eyebrow lifting.
“Really? Come on… own up.”
The silence that followed was broken by a polite cough, as though someone was clearing their throat in preparation for a speech. No one had noticed Reggie Upton wander in.
“Good Lord. You’re a Valkyrie,” he said. “Brünnhilde?” He ventured this with the cautious hope of a man testing ice.
The Valkyrie looked at him.
She did not glare.
She did not bristle.
She merely regarded him in the way one might regard a person who has confidently addressed you by the wrong name in public.
“You have got to be joking,” she said. “Brünnhilde wouldn’t get out of bed for this. She has standards.”
Reggie coloured faintly.
“I thought… well, according to Wagner…”
“Yes,” she said crisply. “We’re all familiar with Wagner. Enormous man, full of opinions, very loud and a bit too imaginative for his own good, sometimes.”
She glanced around the snuggery again, taking in the low ceiling, the sloping floor, and the horse, who chose that moment to snort disdainfully.
“This,” she went on, “is not an operatic matter. This is procedural. Anyway, it’s my turn. I’m on a rota.”
Granny Bucket beamed.
“Now, I’ll ask again,” said the Valkyrie. “Which of you summoned me here?”
As one, Doc and Durosimi pointed to each other, and said in unison,
“It was his fault.”
The Valkyrie glared at them, but before she could comment, Reggie Upton said,
“I must admit, I had a hand in this too.”
Maybe it was Reggie’s gallantry in sharing the blame, for the Valkyrie’s features softened a little as she listened while the confessions were made.
Durosimi spoke first, plainly and without embellishment. Doc followed, rather less plainly. Reggie, to his credit, waited until the end and then cleared his throat.
“I should add,” he said, “that the decision to place the horn in the museum was, at least in part, mine.”
The Valkyrie regarded the three of them in silence.
Then she rolled her eyes.
Turning deliberately away from them, she addressed Philomena instead.
“It takes just three men to cause this sort of havoc,” she said. “Why am I not surprised?”
Philomena did not answer. She merely inclined her head, which seemed to satisfy the visitor.
The Valkyrie dismounted with an ease that made it clear the horse was an extension of her rather than a conveyance. The animal snorted softly and shifted its weight, causing the floorboards to creak in a way that suggested they would be filing a complaint later.
The Valkyrie gestured toward the horn.
“That object was laid down deliberately,” she said. “Boxed, weighted and left. Not lost and not hidden. It was parked.”
Her gaze returned briefly to Doc.
“It was not meant for possession. Still less for curiosity.”
Doc swallowed.
“What… what should we do with it?” he asked.
She sighed. Not impatiently, but as one sighs at a task that should never have been necessary.
“You will return it to the marsh,” she said. “The same place. As close as makes no difference. It must be boxed again, but properly, this time. No speeches. No ceremony. No audience. And above all…”
Her eyes flicked to the horn.
“…no further blowing.”
The horse stamped once, sharply.
“If you do blow it again,” she added, “I will not be the one who answers.”
That, everyone present understood, was not a threat so much as a statement of policy.
Philomena hesitated, then said, “And if anyone asks who gave the instruction?”
The Valkyrie considered this, as though weighing how much courtesy the situation merited.
“Astrid,” she said at last. “That will be enough.”
Reggie blinked.
“Ah, Astrid,” he said weakly. “I once had a horse called Astrid.”
The Valkyrie regarded him for a moment.
“Yes,” she said. “Quite.”
She swung back into the saddle, pausing only to glance around the snuggery one final time.
“And for future reference,” she added, “if you find something that has been boxed, weighted, and left alone for a thousand years, just leave it.”
With that, horse and rider diminished impossibly, shrinking to fit the room, the inn, the night beyond – and then they were gone.
The silence that followed was profound.
Granny Bucket smiled.
“Well,” she said. “That went rather nicely.”
They chose the morning carefully.
There was little fog, which was unusual enough to feel like permission, and the tide was on the turn, neither coming nor going, but pausing, as though prepared to listen. Philomena came along, partly to ensure that things were done properly, and partly to make sure that no one said anything unnecessary. Granny Bucket declined, claiming that she had already done her part and that the rest was “just tidying up”.
Durosimi and Doc, fearing the consequence of not helping, volunteered to box the horn up again. It was not elegantly done, as neither possessed the skill or inclination for that, but it was thorough. The mouthpiece was stopped with wax and cloth, the lid secured, the whole thing weighted with a stone. No one spoke while they worked.
At the edge of the marsh, Reggie – who had decided that no one else could be trusted with the task – rolled up his trousers, took the box and waded out until the water almost reached his knees. He did not hesitate, but placed it carefully where the mud was deepest, pressed it down once to be sure, and stepped back as the water closed over it.
By the time they turned away, there was no sign that anything had ever been there at all.
That night, Doc Willoughby slept. Not deeply (he suspected that would take a while) but without dreams of oars or voices, and also without the sense of being watched from the foot of the bed. When he woke, the house felt like a house again.
At The Squid and Teapot, the floorboards in the snuggery creaked a little less than usual. The fire drew properly. Someone remarked that the place felt calmer, though no one could say why.
Reggie said nothing at all.
And far away – or perhaps not so very far – a huge black horse stamped once, in approval, then turned its head toward other matters.
The island of Hopeless, satisfied for the time being, settled back into itself and waited.