Picking the Ballad's Bones (11 page)

"You're pretty helpful all of a
sudden," Ellie said suspiciously, "and awfully sure Gussie and
Willie really are at Abbotsford."

"Oh, I rang up at the
station, after I got out of the loo. I described them to the lady
at the manor and she said they were there. So it's all come out all
right, you see. Just so there are no hard feelings about the
misunderstanding.
I
had rather thought we'd all end up meeting at The Plastic
Card because that's where I told the Gypsies to bring Juli—before
they became so rude I mean."

"Gee, how convenient this all is,"
Ellie said with an edge in her voice.

"Don't knock it," Faron said. "What I
wonder is how they got away from the cops."

"Torchy found out we were cleared,"
Brose said. "The Irish dude turned his sorry self in."

"God, that
is
convenient," Ellie
said.

"Yeah, for somebody," Anna Mae replied
sourly.

"I do try," Torchy said modestly.
"You're just sour because you've had such a rum go lately, poor
dear, but cheer up. Not long now and we'll meet the others at old
Wattie Scott's and we shall all be reunited and partying in some
pub before you know it."

Her cheery pronouncement served mostly
to shut everybody up and they rode for a time in
silence.

As they crossed into Scotland they
left the broad highway for the scenic side roads leading to Scott's
Borders. A dank rain drizzled from a curdling sky onto a road as
twisty and slippery as a fresh-caught haddock. If another car
should come, either it or the van would have to leap one of the
stone fences that veined the fields like the lines of some huge
jigsaw puzzle or drive into freshly clawed muddy land waiting to be
reforested. The plowed land was invariably flanked by neat little
evergreen trees planted in precise rows about two feet
apart.

"Sheep raising and Christmas tree
farming are big business around here, huh?" Brose asked
Torchy.

"Christmas tree farming indeed," she
said sadly. "That, my dear man, is what the government is doing to
try to replant the great Caledon Forest that once covered all the
lowlands and borders of Scotland." She bit off saying any more. She
was not at all in accord with the rest of the devils about this
particular development. The Greed and Avarice Devil and horrid old
Threedee were proud of this sort of thing but it didn't appeal to
her. Her job could be done as easily in forest as in pub and she
missed the leafy cover . . . among other things. The new chemical
developments were fun for a while, but although the drugs caused
plenty of misery, their devotees didn't take them seriously enough.
Oh, the addicts were well and truly caught but they were never
quite—awed.

In her younger days, when things were
simpler and she depended on grandiosity for effect and, often,
poteen or whiskey for a mere catalyst, her victims and disciples
alike had feared her, longed for her, and were in awe of her power
and beauty. Aw well, ducks, her Torchy Burns self told her, we're
none of us these days what we once were. Nowadays, the only
entities that received the sort of admiration she had once
attracted were those bogeys who operated under the auspices of the
Superstition Squad. It was the fault of the damned board. Back when
each devil was either an independent or, at times, an
interdependent operator, when life was primitive and the pickings
were easy, people were in awe of all sorts of things. But then
someone got the bright idea for the board.

The board was very modern. Very keen
on statistics. Statistics could be manipulated even more easily
than people, who could be manipulated by statistics. Anything to
seem rational. Rationality, the board claimed, wooed people into
thinking that the forces of the Opposition were not just
ineffective, but nonexistent. The Debauchery Devil didn't think
that was much fun. She much preferred her ranting and raving
religious television stars, who were, like musicians, among her
best people. Just one of them, she firmly contended, did more to
drive the general populace away from the Opposition than a whole
academy full of scientists or a whole computer full of
statistics.

She supposed she was rather an
old-fashioned girl in her own way. She much preferred the good old
days when she alone, not some silly movie star, could so enchant a
mortal that the poor sod would wander around forever pixilated
after experiencing, and then being denied, her intoxicating world.
After a bit of what she had had to offer, mortals were simply too
depressed to face their simple little lives again.

The problem was, her present position
didn't allow for such magical opportunities and that got her a bit
down. It simply wasn't very personal, when those you led down the
garden path had to be led through the mouth of a bottle or the end
of a needle. Not at all like seeing one's own razzle-dazzle
reflected in the eyes of one's victims. She missed their society,
their attempts to woo her with milk and bread, poetry and
yes—music. She missed having people she had never summoned dream of
her, pine for her, yearn for a glimpse of her, half fearing, but
willing to give up lives and sanity not for some silly potion
brewed in a sterile laboratory but for the unearthly glitter of her
own eyes, to be caught in the web of her hair and enthralled by the
cadence of her voice.

But she was lucky, she supposed, (and
who better to be lucky? one of her names was Lady Luck—her gamblers
called her that) to still have a job of any sort. She who had once
been queen of the underworld, spirit of the forest, guardian of the
rivers, was now the empress of street corners and casinos. But she
still had followers, and it kept a girl going.

The underworld was a total bust now,
of course, drilled by mines and such. These spriggy new forests,
while rather touching, were hardly tall enough or thick enough to
hide even one pair of lovers six miles into the woods without
passersby being able to see bare flesh through the trees. And that
ambitious upstart of a demon, sponsored by the Expediency Devil,
the one called PW (Pollution and Waste, which sounded grandiose to
her for such a grubby kid) had hold of her waters.

So here she was, with this crummy
assignment, doing in her own disciples. It wasn't even much of a
challenge. Music was an addiction all by itself and once she
separated the musicians from the music, they'd be easy enough prey.
Even Willie, who seemed as if he should have been quite easy to
overcome because of his drinking, still kept from sinking into the
pit that was Torchy's particular corner of her particular hell
because of the music. Without it, in he'd go so deep he'd never hit
bottom.

Torchy had absolutely no idea what was
keeping Julianne together now that the music had been stripped from
her. If only the silly thing could hear herself try to sing now
that she could no longer hear, that would probably do her in! Of
course, with all of her mystic tendencies, she'd undoubtedly end up
on the streets as one more crazy baglady. You couldn't get most
people to believe that the supernatural things the girl saw were
real, even though they were.

Gussie was one of Torchy's very
special minions, a bartender, and she was older than dirt and
probably wouldn't last long enough to worry about
anyway.

Brose might survive the loss of music
as long as there were animals and nasty little juvenile delinquents
for him to help, but the other devils could no doubt take care of
parting him from those outlets as well.

Once Gunn's mind was safely wiped of
the music, she could safely be tucked into a prison for her radical
organizational tendencies—either that or taxes. You could always
count on the Accounting Devil to come up with something in that
department.

As for the Randolphs—well, Torchy
thought she might do a very special song for Faron—not the kind the
other devils were trying to erase, one of her very own, the kind
she did when she went for a little swim. It should be irresistible
to a serious collector. And his poor wife would be so upset she'd
eat herself sick or else she'd try to compete with Torchy's
unattainable allure by starving herself thinner and thinner until
she died of anorexia.

Torchy yawned. It was all very dreary,
actually. Mortals were so—well—mortal. A shame about the music
having to go—their love of the music had lifted this lot out of the
ordinary, however fleetingly, and she would miss that.

Of course, old as she was, nobody had
ever told Torchy Burns about it not being a good idea to count her
chickens before they were hatched.

The van drove up the long gravel and
dirt drive leading to the manor house.

"Maybe we're too late," Brose said.
"Looks to me like they're about to close."

CHAPTER 10

Meanwhile, inside Sir Walter's
mansion, the docent was saying, "I'm verra sorry but we'll be
needin' to close up." She glanced disapprovingly at the banjo,
which Gussie passed to Willie as if it were a hot
potato.

"What a wonderful place," Gussie said,
oozing downhome charm. "I do wish we had time to stay longer and
see the books more closely but I suppose it really is time to
go."

Willie and the banjo were already at
the door, Julianne trailing behind him. As Gussie reached the
doorway, however, she felt a pressure on her shoulder: "Please,"
Sir Walter's ghost said. "You mustn't go, just as it's getting
dark. Yon instrument has called me from my grave and you canna just
go off without explaining this whole thing to me. It's simply not
the done thing at all, dear lady."

He was standing in front of Gussie,
his hand touching her. The docent called to her to come along and
she tried to step forward.

"No, truly, I'm afraid I must insist—"
the ghost said. And that time, in the gathering gloom, as
headlights cut the fog rising from the Tweed that flowed so near
the dining-room window, Gussie heard him. She stepped back inside
the house.

The docent, oddly, did not seem to
notice and somehow forgot to click the key in the lock and the bolt
onto the padlock. Juli and Willie, far ahead of her on the path,
Willie pacing with his head in the air and Juli stopping to sniff a
rose, failed to notice that Gussie wasn't with them.

The docent strode ahead of them as if
in a trance. A car door thunked shut in the parking lot and five
pairs of footsteps coming met hers going on the walk. As the docent
tripped past the last person, a certain redhead, the docent thrust
her bosom forward and caused the plaid of her pleated skirt to
swish back and forth as her walk changed to an undulating
sway.

Torchy Burns laughed her bawdy laugh.
The docent's old man would get a kick out of that little good deed
of hers.

"Willie, luv, there you are!" Torchy
caroled. "Where did you go? I waited and waited for
you."

The banjo resumed playing "Whiskey in
the Jar."

"For the devil take the women, Lord,
you never can believe 'em," Willie recited the lyrics to
himself.

But as Willie passed Juli, the banjo
played "The Star of County Down" and Anna Mae said, "I wonder what
it wants to tell us by playing 'The Parting Glass.'"

"Isn't that 'Rollin' Down to Old
Maui'?" Brose asked. "Maybe it thinks we should all bug out of here
and go to Hawaii. I'm for that."

Faron cleared his throat. "We may have
a problem here."

"Buddy, we already got one," Willie
said. "In case you hadn't noticed. Where the hell have you folks
been?"

"We could ask you the same question,
MacKai," Anna Mae Gunn said.

"Now that's funny," Willie said,
looking slitty-eyed at Torchy, who was beaming back at him just as
innocently as she could, which was to say, not very. "I'd think our
little native guide could have told you about my close encounter
with her pussycat friends and siccin' those ethnic rape-artists on
the Widah Martin, which, I want to tell you, I almost got myself
knifed tryin' to rescue her."

He might as well take the credit for
his good intentions if not his actions. Julianne couldn't hear him
to contradict him and Gussie—now just where WAS Gussie?

Torchy rocked her high heel back and
forth and looked at the towers and stones of Abbotsford with the
mist rising around it like it bored her half to tears. "Well, now
that we're all together and you've found each other, can we go
somewhere and get warm and have a little drinkee? This place is
creepy, don't you think?"

She thought the last was a masterful
stroke. Of course, if anybody should know creepy, she
should.

"We came here looking for
the ballads," Faron said. "Did you get a look at any of Sir
Walter's books, Willie? Did you notice a copy of the Minstrelsy or
maybe Percy's
Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry ?

Willie shook his head. "Naw, that
stuff's all under lock and key. There was a copy of Field and
Stream in the men's room though. No—wait—I think Gussie might have
gotten a copy of one of those books in the gift shop. Had something
to do with minstrels anyway. She was reading out of it as we looked
at the house."

"You won't find out anything very
important about your songs here, ducks," Torchy said pettishly.
"Everybody knows the old scribbler was a terrible one for changing
things around. Why, they claim he made up ever so many of the songs
he 'collected' himself."