The Merlin Conspiracy (30 page)

“Come in! Come in! Let me set eyes on Arianrhod at last!” my grandmother shrieked from the kitchen. “Where is she? Oh,
there
you are! Aren't you
tall
! Come in, come in, let me look at you, and the boy, too.”

My grandmother's name is Hepzibah Dimber—but she shrieked at me almost at once that I was to call her Heppy—and she couldn't have been more different from her daughter Judith. She was quite small, a head shorter than me, and she would have been plump if she hadn't worn very obvious corsets which made her look like a tight little bolster. On the top half of the bolster she wore a shiny orange blouse with a flouncy bow, and on the bottom half a short, tight, black skirt. Where Judith had bare feet shoved into wide, arty sandals, Heppy wore stockings with shiny black hearts on them and shiny brown shoes with three-inch heels. She trotted toward us, beaming, waving plump hands with several rings on each finger. Her hair was dyed a sort of apricot, and her mouth was painted a shiny red.

The minute I saw her, I knew I was a snob—worse than the district nurse. I was ashamed of myself, but it was true. It came of being brought up at Court, and at Court most people consider Sybil pretty vulgar. I now saw that Sybil was refined compared with Heppy. Heppy was the most vulgar woman I'd ever seen. I was amazed that my soldierly, well-bred grandad Hyde had ever married Heppy. That was the marvel, not the divorce. And it was only my Court training in manners that made me able to smile back at her and kiss her scented, powdered cheek as if I liked doing it. It was awful. I felt like a cold little bitch. But it was the truth.

Grundo got off more lightly. He only had to shake hands. But his eyes widened as his nose approached the flouncy bow and his fingers felt the twenty rings.

My grandmother took us both by one arm and pulled us over into the best light. “Let me look at you,” she kept saying. I thought her eyes must be very bad, because the kitchen was one of the brightest rooms in that house. Sunlight streamed in through several windows, and it was all most cheerfully decorated with bright handwoven rugs and knitted cushions and a big table with a most impressive red-and-white tablecloth all woven with little figures and flowers. Judith blushed when I looked at it admiringly, and admitted that she had made it. “Then it's no wonder you sell a lot of weaving!” I said.

Meanwhile Heppy was peering up into our faces and saying, “Well, well, well! She favors you a bit, doesn't she, Judith? Same anxious look about the eyes. And what strong witchcraft! If it wasn't for all this strange stuff she's got in her head, I'd take her by right to be our third witch here. That'd solve a few problems, eh?”

This took my attention back from the tablecloth with a jolt. I realized that Heppy's eyes were not bad at all. She had just brought us into the sunlight in order to exercise her divining powers. She was a very strong witch indeed.

She gave a huge cackle of laughter when she saw I understood this. Then she looked regretful. She twisted her mouth until there were lines all round her lipstick. “Pity,” she said. “That stuff in your head's set you on quite another path, Arianrhod. Shame I didn't get to you first, my girl. Now what about you, little man?” She peered intently at Grundo. “Called Ambrose, are you?”

“I'm usually called Grundo,” he said.

Heppy gave another cackle of laughter. “Very fitting, with a growl for a voice like that! But what's wrong with you? You're all back to front!”

“Dyslexia,” Grundo said bitterly.

“Don't believe in it,” she told him. “It's just a fancy modern word for mixed up. You turn yourself right-about, and you'll be fine. What's your mother doing to let you get so scrambled in the first place? Who
is
she? Oh, I see. It's that Sybil Temple. Always was a greedy, selfish wifty-wafty, that girl. Trust her to mix a child up! You ought to be living with your father, my boy.”

I wanted to
shake
Heppy. Grundo was shamed and embarrassed and shifting from foot to foot. “Nobody knows where my father is,” he muttered.

“Ran away from her, ran away from Court,” Heppy said. “
I
know. You should go and find him. It doesn't do a child any good, being dragged round the country after the King all the time, if you ask me. That goes for you, too, Arianrhod.”

“Er—Heppy, could you call me Roddy?” I said. “I do prefer it.”

“Whatever for? That's a
boy's
name!” she squawked. “You ought to be taking up your true heritage, my girl, not trying to be someone else.”

I felt my face flooding hot with annoyance. I knew it would take very little for me to have a real row with my grandmother. I didn't like her. And I had a feeling she didn't like me either.

Luckily, before things got any worse for me or for Grundo, a kettle whistled over on the stove, and Heppy went trotting and clacking over there to make tea. She shortly came trotting and clacking back, carrying a vast teapot in a knitted cozy. Grundo and I watched her tottery high heels both ways in nervous fascination. We expected her to tangle with a rug and trip at any moment, but she never did. It was like a miracle.

Judith meanwhile was setting the table and laying out covered plates of small sandwiches. “These are only cucumber,” she apologized. “We'll do better for supper.”

“Tea!”
Heppy shrieked.
“Tea's up!”
The nearest I can get to describing my grandmother's voice when she screamed is a parrot imitating a steam whistle. We heard a lot of her screaming later, but I never found a better description.

Her voice must have carried out into the back garden with no trouble at all. They could probably hear it a mile away in the village. The back door burst open almost instantly, and almost before it had hit the wall with a crash, two small girls bounded in, followed by a large, curly, yellow dog. A black cat, which had been snoozing on a cushion up to then, woke up and bolted. Grundo said later that the cat's behavior was highly significant. “And sensible,” he added.

One of the small girls was wearing baggy trousers and a white vest. The other was in a trailing, shiny, pink tea gown which almost certainly belonged to Heppy. Otherwise you would never have told them apart. They both had the same light brown hair falling in twists to their shoulders, and the same pale, pert little face with huge blue eyes.

There was a brisk minute of pandemonium. The dog barked. Heppy screamed, “Shut the
door
, Ilsabil!
Isadora, you've been at my clothes again!
”

At the same time, Judith was saying, “These are my twins. This is Isadora, and this is Ilsabil. Girls, come and meet your cousin Arianrhod and her friend Ambrose.”

Also
at the same time, the twin in trousers screamed, “Oh, my
God
!” and backed dramatically against the wall. “It's a
boy
in here! Don't let it near me!” She made fending motions at Grundo. But the twin in the silk dress put on a sickly, gushing smile and glided up to Grundo with both arms out. “A
boy
!” she cried, in a deep, actressy voice. “Let me
at
him!”

Then, just as I was thinking, in a slightly stunned way, that this behavior was the way you told these twins apart, the one in the dress recoiled from Grundo with a scream.
“Mother!”
she howled. “
How
can you let a great rough
boy
in here?” Instantly the other twin put on the sickly, gushing smile and undulated up to Grundo, stretching her arms out and yelling, “A kiss, my lover, a
kiss
!”

Grundo's face was a study, and I didn't blame him.

“Shake hands with your cousin!” Heppy screamed.

They didn't, of course. Shaking hands would have been too normal for these twins. Ilsabil sank to her baggy-trousered knees. “Oh, my!” she yelled. “Have you
really
spared time from Court to come to our humble house?” while Isadora swished her pink dress and said, “Of course, when
I
come to Court, I shall outshine everyone there.”

“That could be true,” I said. “And you might not like it.”

Neither twin listened to me. They hurled themselves into chairs round the table shouting,
“What's for tea?”
and dragged the covers off the plates. “Oh!” screamed one of them, “I
hate
cucumber! I'm
allergic
to it!” while the other one yelled, “Cucumber! I
love
it!” Again, just as I was thinking this was another way to tell them apart, they swapped roles, and the one who hated cucumber shouted, “Snatch! Seize! I'm going to eat all these
delicious
sandwiches
myself
!” Meanwhile the other one whined, “Moth-
ther
! I can't eat
this
! I'm
electric
to cucumber!”

“Allergic, dear,” Judith said anxiously. “And I don't think you are.”

“Yes, I am,” whined the twin.

“Yes, she
is
,” whined the other one. “She fizzes all over.”

It was like this the whole time. At first, I tried telling myself that all the children at Court had to be so well behaved that I'd forgotten what normal little girls were like. That may have been true, but I very soon decided that Ilsabil and Isadora had never been normal in their lives. Neither of them was the same person for more than two minutes. Neither of them seemed to care what she did or said, as long as it fixed everyone's attention on her.

Judith watched them all the time with an anxious, pleading smile.

Heppy gazed at them proudly. “Aren't they a caution?” she said several times. Then she asked Grundo, “Can you tell them apart?”

“No, and I've given up trying,” he said. “I'm calling them both Izzy.”

“Pathetic!” squealed both twins. “
Per-thetic
! Izzy, izzy, is he stupid!” This was followed by “Mother! I'm very hurt and insulted!” from one twin and “Oh, gorgeous boy! He's calling me Izzy!” from the other. And then the same thing the other way round.

I had hoped to talk to Judith about Sybil and the Merlin. Judith seemed to be the calm, sensible one in this family, and I was sure she could give me proper advice. But it was hopeless even to try during tea. The Izzys kept everyone's thoughts and ears on them the whole time.

“They're very excited at seeing you, you see,” Judith explained, in her anxious, apologizing way. “They've heard so much about you and their uncle Daniel and the Progress.”

The moment everyone had finished tea, the Izzys jumped down and rushed shrieking to the back door. They were stopped there by an even louder shriek from Heppy. “
Wait!
Take Ambrose and the dog with you and play in the garden. We have to show Arianrhod the Regalia.”

“Oh,
why
? I want to see it, too,” shouted Ilsabil.

“Stupid stuff!” Isadora proclaimed, with a toss of hair and chin. “I wouldn't go and look at it if you paid me.”

Then of course they did it the other way around, except that Ilsabil added, “Regalia—such boredom!” with a deep, world-weary sigh.

As for Grundo, he positively scowled at being told to play with the Izzys. I think the only thing that reconciled him to it was the dog. Grundo has always wanted a dog, even more than I have, but the Waymaster's office forbids pets on the Progress. He went out into the garden with one hand on the dog's curly back, while Heppy and Judith took me past the looms and into their front room.

Good! I thought. Maybe we can talk now.

It was one of those hushed rooms with a lot of upright antique furniture and books in glass cases. It looked as if it were very rarely used, but now I come to think of it, they must have used it every day. Somehow, they must have managed to make the Izzys take care in there.

“Phew!” Heppy said as the quiet of it closed in around us. “I can hear myself think again! Roll on the day when we have to turn one of those girls out!”

Judith looked anguished. “There always have to be three Dimbers,” she explained to me, “one from each generation and no more. In seven years' time, there is going to be the most
agonizing
choice. We've no idea whether we'll keep Isadora or Ilsabil on as our third. How
do
you choose between identical twins?”

“Time enough to choose,” Heppy said. “Don't buy trouble, Jude. And as I always tell her, Arianrhod, it was just as agonizing in
my
day, when we had to choose between Judith and Dora.” She chuckled. “And I'd complicated things by going and having your father before either of the girls. That's just as unheard of as twins in our family, I can tell you.”

“What would have happened to my father,” I asked, “if Grandad hadn't taken him to London?”

“Oh, he'd have been packed off over the hill where we usually send the boys,” Heppy said. “There's a family of male witches with a farm there. It's where the husbands come from usually. I was unusual, falling for Maxwell. And while we're on this, I'll tell you straight, Arianrhod, this is quite a problem, you bringing the boy with you. You yourself are welcome for as long as you care to stay, but seven days is all I can house a male stranger. What would you like us to do for you?”