Arriving at a heavily beamed door, Agnes rapped seven times with a jackal-headed knocker and the door swung open almost instantaneously.
‘Och, look at the two of you! Let’s get you inside and oot of this cold!’
The first ‘witch’, if that was what she was, was a personable old biddy in a knitted cardigan, tartan skirt and pussy-bow blouse – everyone’s vision of a perfect Scottish grandmother.
‘I’m Maggie Balfour,’ the woman chirped. ‘It’s so good to see you noo!’
‘I’m Cat Thomas.’
‘Of course you are, dear – Catriona Thomas, our wee visitor from America. Come right through noo, come right through.’
After scraping her shoes on a doormat, Cat stepped into a stuffy, dimly lit chamber with oaken panels and ceiling beams. Above was a mediaeval-style chandelier fixed with electric candles. On the walls were sconce-lights, swords, hunting trophies and smoky paintings of Highland scenes. Stretched across the floorboards was a threadbare Persian carpet that looked as old as the 1001 Nights. The whole effect was baronial but insistently cosy.
‘You want to take off yer jacket?’ asked Maggie.
‘I’m OK,’ said Cat.
‘It can get a wee bit warm in here, I warn ye noo.’
‘I’m fine for now, thanks.’
Cat’s nostrils had already curled at an unpleasant odour. She noticed a black cat in the corner, licking its privates.
‘This way, dears, they’re waiting for you.’
They were ushered into a sizable salon – ancient tapestries on the walls now – where a group of eminent-looking personages, like something out of a wax museum, were partaking of drinks and canapés. Not one of them looked younger than fifty. Much tweed, velour, brooches, tiepins and plaid. Upon Cat’s entry all of them turned simultaneously, like clockwork automatons, as though her arrival had been announced with a trumpet.
‘Hi there,’ said Cat, hoping an all-purpose greeting would suffice.
But Maggie, guiding her by the arm, insisted on introducing everyone individually. ‘This is Akinari Ito, our good friend from Japan . . . and Tamsin Blight from Cornwall . . . and Petra Varga from Bratislava . . . and George Pickingill from Dorset . . . and Éliphas Lévi from Provence . . . and Johannes Junius from Innsbruck . . . and Priya Benedicto from Madras . . .’
And and and and . . .
Cat was fielding all the names in a blur, confident that, with her wearied and malfunctioning memory, she would later remember not one of them. She was distracted by the increasingly unpleasant odour. And, as knotty hand after knotty hand slid into her own, disconcerted by the suspicion, bordering on conviction, that none of this was as innocent as Agnes had led her to believe.
‘ . . . Alice Kyteler from County Westmeath in Ireland . . . and Absalón Salazar from Cuernavaca in Mexico . . . and Zara Mashasha from Harare . . . and Elspeth Ross from Derbyshire . . . and Melvin Rose, the famous magician from America . . .’
‘The Great Sheldrake’, corrected the magician, who had an Easter Island head, eyebrows like aggravated porcupines, and a multitude of rings cluttering his gnarled fingers. ‘You may not recognise me,’ he suggested grandly, ‘out of black hat and tails.’
‘No,’ said Cat, not recognising him anyway.
‘I hear you’re one of ours,’ he went on, ‘from America. From the Sunshine State, no less.’
‘From Miami, that’s right.’
‘I played in Miami just last year. At Stage 305. Were you there?’
‘Um, no.’
‘In August I performed at the Edinburgh Festival. Perhaps you caught my show?’
‘Nope.’
‘But you must have seen the posters around town?’
‘I’ve been a bit . . . preoccupied lately.’
‘I understand, Catriona.’ Rising to his full height, the Great Sheldrake enclosed her hands between his own spidery pair. ‘I understand.’ His eyes vibrated as though trying to mesmerise her. ‘And you’ve made a very brave decision indeed. Let no one tell you otherwise. And let no one—’
‘Some tea, dear?’ It was Maggie, insinuating herself between them.
‘Tea?’ Cat felt herself being tugged away from Sheldrake. ‘No, I’m good.’
‘You must be thirsty though?’
‘Now that I think of it, do you have anything cold?’
‘Irn-Bru?’
‘That’s some sort of orangeade drink, right?’
Agnes answered from the side. ‘More like cream soda.’
‘Cream soda? Yeah, sure – that’d be great.’
‘And treat yerself to a wee biscuit or two, dear, while you wait,’ Maggie added. ‘You’re thin as a reed.’
‘I think I’ve lost weight,’ Cat admitted.
‘It’s all that stress you’ve been under, dear. All that stress.’
At the sideboard Agnes held out a silver platter covered with soft cubes of tablet and slices of black bun. ‘This’ll fatten you up,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t be more Scottish if they were deep-fried Mars Bars.’
Cat took a cube of tablet but was surprised by the flavour. ‘I thought this stuff was supposed to be sweet?’
‘Depends on your taste.’
‘I think it’s got whisky in it.’
‘I told you it was Scottish.’
Maggie returned with a goblet filled with Irn-Bru. ‘Drink up, dear, it’ll cool you doon.’
Cat took a sip and grimaced again. ‘Whoa,’ she said to Agnes, when Maggie retreated. ‘I swear this has got whisky in it too.’
‘It’s the Laird of Howgate. He owns some distilleries up north. One in Edinburgh, too. Ever smelled that malty stench in the air?’
‘Sometimes – I think.’
‘I rather like it myself,’ said Agnes. ‘Anyway, his distillery is one of the places it comes from.’
‘Is he brewing something right now?’
‘Huh?’
‘There’s a terrible odour in the air,’ Cat said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t smell it?’
‘That’s just the cats. The Laird loves cats.’
‘I love cats. But not if they stink.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘Hmm,’ said Cat, looking around. ‘Is he here now?’
‘The Laird? Who knows? But that’s a picture of his great-grandfather on the wall.’
Above the fireplace was a majestic gilt-framed painting of a hawk-faced man in a green felt jacket and dark kilt, his right arm bracing a rifle, his left hand resting on the head of a hunting dog. Black cats were curling around his ankles; stags were fleeing in the background.
‘Looks about two hundred years old.’
‘The painting or the Laird?’
‘Both,’ said Cat, and it was true – the man’s face suggested the wisdom of the ages. ‘I think he’s looking at me.’
‘The Laird of Howgate is always looking at you.’
Discomfited, Cat turned to see the others in the room – Sheldrake and Lévi and Salazar and Mashasha and so on – also staring at her.
‘Why do I get the feeling I’m the centre of attention here?’
‘Relax,’ said Agnes. ‘You are the centre of attention. It’s not often we get a gorgeous young cheese toastie at one of our conclaves.’
‘Conclaves?’
‘That’s what we call our get-togethers.’
‘Why?’ asked Cat. ‘Are we electing a pope? Or antipope?’
‘Listen to yourself.’
‘I’m not gonna be offered up as a human sacrifice, am I?’
‘I told you that was stuff and nonsense. Just remember why you’re here.’
‘I’ve forgotten why I’m here, to be honest.’
‘You know that’s not true. Anyway, this isn’t remotely what you think it is.’
‘Is that supposed to reassure me?’
‘Just relax,’ said Agnes, looking terribly uneasy. ‘You’ll be home in bed before you know it.’
‘Very well then!’ Maggie, who seemed to be the emcee, was clapping her hands together. ‘Time noo to get proceedings under way, don’t you think? Anyone who feels like another nip just wave and I’ll fill yer cup for you. Anyone who needs a tinkle, there’s a bathroom just around the corner. I ask only that you turn off yer phones and other devices, to make as few distractions as possible. Are we all happy with that noo?’
General nodding and grumblings of approval.
‘Very well – let’s make our way doonstairs to the banquet room.’
Maggie proceeded to lead them through a panelled corridor to another oak-beamed door. Then down a spiral stairway, not unlike the one in Cat’s own building. They went round and round, deep into the castle proper, the warmth and the sulphurous stench all the time intensifying. Finally they came to a huge chamber that looked like it had survived a terrible inferno. The walls were blackened with soot. The ceiling beams were charred. The ash-grey furniture looked as though it might crumble at a touch. The back half of the room, despite a raging fire in the hearth, was eerily, supernaturally dark, as though separated from the rest of the chamber by a series of black mosquito nets. Another clutch of cats was evident.
Oh well, Cat thought, it could be worse. There was no Satanic statuary, no upside-down crucifixes, no black candles, no arcane inscriptions. There was only a large round table under a tasselled lamp. And, painted around the rim of the table, Roman numerals from one to twelve in the manner of an oversized clockface.
‘Take yer seats, all. Take yer seats,’ ordered a fussy Maggie, guiding Cat by the elbow. ‘And young Catriona, you come here to the midnight seat, and I’ll put yer wee friend Agnes next to you at one o’clock, just to make sure you don’t feel oot of place. Noo, would you like another Irn-Bru?’