Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 17 Read online

  "What is the meaning of this—this outrageous display?” said the Duchess in a deep voice that promised terrible consequences and made all there, including her son, flinch.

  "It means that it is time you listened to me,” said Gracinet.

  The Duchess looked up to see her daughter-in-law standing at the far end of the room. The young woman held one of the Duchess's own private journals, and Gracinet opened it and read out loud in a voice that was steady and clear:

  "The dosage seems to be key, for when I first administered greenblanket chanterelles to my husband, his stomach rejected them immediately, and he suffered no long term ill effects. But, convincing him that it was the wine that was bad that night, on another occasion I persuaded him to try the dish again; however, I gave him too few; and he merely suffered a fit of apoplexy. I must remember to take into account variations in the weight of the subject when working up the correct dosage. He was of the strongest constitution, and it took careful management to keep him from making a complete recovery. (That, in itself, yielded interesting results, see below.) I finally got the dosage right on the third attempt, some years later."

  The Duchess looked about during this recitation, ignoring the shocked and hardening expressions of her guests. She felt distant from them all, as if they were located at the wrong end of a telescope. She noted that the missing shipment of mushrooms must have contributed to the display before her. Well, she mused, she should have demanded a written explanation from this steward, too. She had grown lax. Her glance fell upon a small, covered tureen on the table before her. The Duke, seeing where her attention was fixed, reached forward and removed the lid, to reveal a steaming stew of greenblanket chanterelles. “This is how my father liked them prepared, no?"

  The Duchess said nothing.

  Her son smashed the lid on the floor so hard it scarred the floorboards before shattering into a thousand porcelain shards. The ladies were protected by their long skirts, but several gentlemen's legs were nicked right through their stockings. “Answer me!"

  "Yes,” said the Duchess.

  * * * *

  The Dowager Duchess of Turing had hoped to contribute her notes and specimens to science, but it was not be. It fell to Gracinet to oversee the destruction of a lifetime's work: the private museum of mycology, the journals and drawings and fungal powders.

  Gracinet glanced through the journals before she consigned them to the flames. There she learned that bitter buttons caused hair to grow in unseemly places, and that oil of ghostgall, if rubbed on the blade of a murder weapon, prevented future hauntings. After a number of such entries, she shuddered and closed the book. It would not do to peer so closely into her mother-in-law's mind. It was time to concentrate on the future. Though the mistress was not yet out of the house, Gracinet had begun to reconcile with her husband. They were reading Soltari's Ice Comedies together.

  The Dowager Duchess was confined to an upstairs bedroom, and watched day and night. But no one volunteered to share her meals, and no one offered her tea.

  Gracinet came to regret her willed ignorance. When they burned the papers and scores of carefully labeled packets of dried mushrooms out by the kitchen garden, two of the gardeners overseeing the bonfire died, and a third became deathly ill from the smoke. He never made a full recovery: ever after he supposed that the bees were plotting against him, and had to give up gardening work altogether. It seemed the Duchess had managed one last experiment after all.

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  Daylighting the Donwell River by Alette J. Willis

  Simon trudged along the strip of construction debris that cut a swath through the dense Toronto neighborhood of Dandale. Heaps of asphalt marked where the river daylighting project bisected residential roads, and steel struts and rotted timbers jutted out of the torn ground where buildings had once stood. The wasteland was supposed to become a clear running stream, overhung by weeping willows and lined with wildflowers—at least it had looked that way in the ad which had sold him on the condo that backed onto this mess.

  * * * *

  He'd seen the ad while he still lived with his now ex-wife Sheila in the house she had picked and decorated, in the suburb she believed to be the most up-and-coming. The Toronto Sun had run a piece about the plans the City had to resurrect the long-buried Donwell River. Sheila had brandished the article at him, launching into a tirade about governments wasting her hard-earned money on frivolous projects.

  Simon hadn't said anything; he rather liked the idea but he knew better than to contradict Sheila. He stared at the page and nodded noncommittally, which is when the ad had caught his eye. It showed children sailing a paper boat down a tranquil stream—the view the lucky condo-dweller would have from his balcony.

  As Sheila ranted on, Simon wondered whether you were allowed to be nostalgic at thirty. He supposed you were if you'd woken one day and found yourself boxed into someone else's fantasy of an adult life. Somewhere in the contrast between the ad and Sheila's litany of complaints, he came to a decision.

  "I want a divorce,” he said, cutting into her monologue.

  The startled silence was so welcome it seemed golden to his ears.

  "Yes,” she said, finally. “I think that's best. But I get to keep the house. You've never suited it anyway. An executive townhome is no place for an under-achiever like you."

  * * * *

  Simon kicked a Coke can into the trench. It landed with a splash in an oily puddle. His choice of a new life wasn't looking inspired at the moment. Bad as it was, though, he didn't miss his old one.

  He headed upstream—if there had been a stream—past the nineteenth century warehouses that were his immediate neighbors, and behind several blocks of Victorian workers’ cottages. A chill March wind blew towards him and he was beginning to tire by the time he caught site of a brand-new bridge up ahead, its iron spans curlicued incongruously over the cracked mud and garbage of the riverbed. A graffiti artist had spray-painted a huge, Chinese-style sea monster in blue and silver along the retaining wall. Its long tail coiled around a flight of stairs leading up to the busy commercial street above.

  The tantalizing smell of coffee drifted towards him. Simon followed it up the stairs, across the bridge, and into the warm, moist micro-climate of a small café that abutted the river-to-be.

  The place was ancient. The gold paint on the elaborate tin ceiling had flaked off in places and thousands of patrons had worn a trail in the linoleum from the door to the glass display cases mounded with pastries. Even the cash register was old and ornate. The only thing that looked new was a small watercolor in a pine frame, propped on a shelf above the cash register. It showed the interior of the café but the far wall—currently windowless—had been replaced by a bank of glass which opened onto a patio overlooking the river.

  A large, balding, aproned man, standing in front of an impressive array of steam-spewing brass machines, asked if he could be of service. No menu was in evidence, so Simon assumed he was supposed to know what to ask for. He ordered a frappucino.

  "Where do you think you are? The mall?” the man asked. “We serve proper coffee here, not overpriced milk shakes.” He muttered something and walked away.

  "Never mind my Tony,” a dark-haired woman with caramel skin called from the back where she was wiping down an empty table. “How about a bowl of café au lait?"

  Simon nodded, embarrassed, and looked around, but none of the other patrons had noticed the fuss.

  "Find yourself a seat. I'll bring it over,” the woman said, slipping behind the counter.

  A couple of lanky teenaged girls, completely engrossed in an intense discussion had the prime seats by the front window. Next to them, a little old man was being remonstrated in Greek by his matronly wife. The only other customer sat apart, fiddling with a clothespin and a spool of thread. Feathers, candy-bar wrappers, and tufts of grey hair were scattered across her table. Curious, Simon took a seat nearby.

  As good as her word, the proprietor
brought him a steaming bowl of café au lait, dusted with cinnamon and accompanied by a pair of biscotti on a plate. Up close, he realized she was younger than he had first thought, not more than forty. He thanked her and was rewarded with an easy smile that swept right up into her warm brown eyes—lighting up a face that might otherwise have been considered plain. It made Simon feel special, welcomed. Sheila had always been miserly with her smiles, pasting them on only when absolutely necessary.

  "I'm Simon,” he said, on impulse, extending his hand and half-rising out of his seat.

  She laughed and shook it.

  "Maria,” she said. “Just give me a shout if you need anything else."

  He watched her thread her way towards the counter, perfectly at ease with her surroundings. She stepped behind the pastry case and he found himself staring straight at Tony. The older man glowered at him.

  The woman at the next table was still preoccupied. Simon watched her over the rim of his bowl. She wore slim black trousers with a tailored pale-blue trenchcoat. Her fine hair, which hung around her face, obscuring it from view, was such a pale shade of blonde it was almost silver. She pushed it behind her ears and he choked on his coffee. She was gorgeous, the kind of beauty you just didn't see in real life. Her skin was luminous, her cheekbones high, her eyes the color of a still pond reflecting a summer sky. In short, she possessed the kind of beauty that inspired even lowly computer programmers, like Simon, to poetry.

  She took a sip of mineral water and gazed past him, giving Simon a dose of reality. She was also the kind of woman who would never even give him the time of day.

  An earring-sized wire hook was clamped between the jaws of the clothespin in her hand. She cut some quills off a pavement-colored feather, bound them onto the wire with a couple of wraps of thread, and bit off the end with her small white teeth. To this she added a tiny snow-white feather and a bit of silver paper. When finished, the earring resembled some sort of high-tech flying insect.

  She stood abruptly, swept the remaining objects into her coat pocket, strode over to the counter and dropped the earring into the wastepaper basket.

  "This one isn't going to work either?” Maria asked, ringing up the bill.

  The woman shook her head, paid, and left. But she didn't go far. Simon watched through the window as she whipped out her scissors, crouched down and snipped at something that lay next to the curb.

  Overwhelmed by curiosity, Simon downed the rest of his coffee and headed for the counter. Maria wouldn't let him pay for the biscotti, calling it a welcoming gift. He wondered how she knew he'd just moved in, but didn't want to prolong the conversation. As soon as she turned away, he plucked the little insect from the garbage, pricking his finger on its barbed hook. It wasn't an earring after all but a fishing lure.

  He dropped it into his wallet and pushed out into the cold spring day. The woman had disappeared, but lying on the road in front of the café was the flattened carcass of a black squirrel, its tail stripped of fur.

  * * * *

  During the week, work on the Donwell resumed. Trucks descended upon the neighborhood and carted away debris, then crews in hard hats moved in, digging out a rough pathway and planting trees. Simon set out for the café again the following Saturday in a mood of happy anticipation despite the drizzling rain.

  There was only one other customer in the café: the mystery woman. She was dripping wet, literally. Rivulets streamed from the coil of her hair and the fabric of her clothing, forming a puddle beneath her chair. Simon shivered and wrapped his hands around the bowl of café au lait Maria had brought him, grateful for its heat. The woman paid him no attention, intent as she was on tying red and blue feathers onto a tiny hook.

  Where the previous fly had been dark and foreboding, the colorful feathers made this one festive. Still, the woman peered at it, frowned, and left it with some money on the table.

  Simon wondered whether it would be too obvious if he followed her out. Lightning flashed as the door closed behind her, thunder quick on its tail, and then the rain came down in earnest, dancing on the pavement and sending up small fountains of spray. Instead of running for cover, the woman threw back her head, extended her arms and spun around and around, her coat flapping open. Lightning burst again, burning an image of wet T-shirt and erect nipples into Simon's retinas. He swallowed hard.

  "I do believe you've taken a fancy to our would-be Donwell River Madonna,” Maria said behind him.

  Simon turned towards her.

  "Do you want this one, too?” She asked, holding the fly between thumb and forefinger. “It's less gloomy than the others. Must be the rain."

  She dropped it on the table in front of him. Simon glanced out the window, but the woman had gone.

  "Why'd you call her that?” he asked.

  "When you've lived in a place long enough you get to know who the Madonnas are. This one's new. She's been in here every weekend since work started on the river, but I never saw her before then."

  She laid her hand on his arm. “Madonnas are best contemplated from afar. If they take notice of people at all, it's only to make use of them. I would hate to see you get hurt."

  She collected the money the Madonna had left and headed for the cash register.

  Simon ran a finger across the blue feathers of the lure. Maria meant well, but he resented her advice just the same. He was curious about the Madonna, that was all.

  He wrapped the fly in a napkin and wandered over towards Maria.

  "Can I take a closer look at that picture?” he asked, nodding up at the water-color as he handed her a ten-dollar bill.

  "You'll have to come around and get it yourself,” she replied. “I can't reach it."

  Simon stepped between the pastry cabinet and the row of coffee machines and lifted down the painting. He was immediately struck by how much the delicate colors mirrored those in the condo ad.

  "Who painted this?” he asked, laying it down.

  "The Madonna,” said Maria, giving him his change.

  "So she does more than tie flies?"

  Maria shrugged. “She wants Tony to build the patio."

  "There's you,” Simon gestured to a woman in an apron leaning on one of the tables in just the same way Maria leaned against the counter now.

  She shifted closer to him and peered at the painting. Her hair smelled good, like dark roasted coffee and cinnamon, and he could feel the warmth radiating from her body.

  "It does look like me. I never noticed,” she said. “And that's you I'm talking to."

  Her arm brushed against his as she pointed to a man with mousy-brown hair wearing a golf shirt and khakis.

  "Lots of guys look like that."

  "Not around here,” Maria said.

  "It couldn't be me. She painted that before I even knew about this place."

  Tony came out of the back room. Simon straightened up, his face flushing red.

  "What's he doing behind the counter?” Tony asked.

  "He wanted to see the painting of the patio you refuse to build me. He's got a great appreciation for the arts,” Maria said, winking at Simon.

  Tony snorted and waved a floured hand at the painting. “That's not art. Its just a dream you let that girl put in your head. Can you hear a river running outside?"

  "So, when the river comes will I get my patio?” asked Maria.

  The argument seemed like an old one. Simon excused himself and walked out into the dwindling rain. He half expected to see the Madonna poking sticks down sewer grates but the only people in sight were an old couple leaning into each other under a beat-up umbrella.

  As he stepped onto the bridge he heard a noise beneath his feet. The rainwater had gathered into a small stream, barely more than a trickle, which burbled self-importantly down the middle of the riverbed.

  * * * *

  The following Saturday the spring sun coaxed most of Dandale out, and there were few tables left by the time Simon got to the café. Tony made some snide remark about synthetic coffe
es but Maria waved him away and brought Simon his café au lait and a chocolate-covered biscotti. In deference to the warmer weather she wore a knee-length fitted brown skirt with a gold paisley print and a short-sleeved blouse. He wondered what Tony had done to deserve someone like Maria.

  He munched on biscotti and watched the Madonna, who was sitting perfectly still, hands folded before her, staring at the windowless wall. There'd been bad news about the daylighting project, which probably explained her lack of interest in the pile of feathers on the table. Work on the Donwell was exceeding its budget and a group of City Councilors had managed to put through a resolution stopping any further construction.

  Simon licked the tip of his finger and ran it around his plate to pick up the last few crumbs. He looked over at the Madonna again and found himself gazing into the icy pools of her eyes. The air slowly seeped out of his lungs but he couldn't seem to look away. Just when he thought he might drown, something slipped between them, blocking her from view.

  He gasped for breath, blinked, and realised that he was staring at the backside of Maria's well-fitted skirt. She turned towards him, the Madonna's empty water bottle in her hand.

  "Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

  "No,” he managed to say, wondering what she must think of him leering at the Madonna like that.

  Maria leaned over to collect his biscotti plate, and he caught a glimpse of caramel cleavage, which only served to embarrass him more. Silver flashed at the edge of his vision, and he heard a faint snip. He dared glance over at the Madonna, but she was engrossed in knotting thread around a hook and didn't look up.

  "If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” said Maria, and walked away.

  The Madonna held up the finished lure and a shaft of sunlight caught it, making it glitter. This week's creation was a fuzzy gold and brown housefly and Simon thought it was by far the nicest she'd made to date. She slipped it into her pocket, deposited money on the table, and strode out the door.