The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(147)
‘Just so. “Eye of newt and blood of bat”.’
‘Precisely. But try. Now we come to the toads. I’ve always felt that Jersey’s particular fondness for toads might indicate that it was perhaps the last outpost of the Old Religion, for the toad was easily the most popular Familiar for witches. The warts on its skin, you see, remind one of the extra nipples which every she-witch was supposed to have and that goes back (am I boring you, dear boy? How is your glass?) that goes back to the polymastia or superfluity of breasts of the ancients. I need not remind you of Diana of the Ephesians, who must have looked like a fir-cone, as dear Jim Cabell pointed out.’
‘But I thought that the cat was the favourite familiar? I mean, Grimalkin and all that?’
‘A wide-spread and pardonable error, Mortdecai. First, you see, by the time of the great witch hunts of the seventeenth century – best-known because they were politically inspired you see, for there was a sort of suggestion of confrontation between the High Church and Papist Cavaliers, who, oddly, were supposed to more or less tolerate the Old Religion (perhaps they knew how to use it?) and the Puritans, who chose to see witchcraft as an extension of Rome; by this time, I say, the serious witches had gone very thoroughly underground and the only ones left on the surface were a few old crones practising a little Go?tic magic to help their friendly neighbours and to smarten up their petty persecutors.
‘Now, the rules of witch-finding were that a witch always had a devil’s nipple, by which she could give suck to her Familiar. They used to tie the poor old biddies up and watch them, certain that when the Familiar became hungry it would come around for its rations. Most old ladies, to this day, own a *-cat – and most old ladies tend to have a wart or a mole or two, this is common knowledge. You see? Moreover, there is an ancient confusion here, for the word “cat” used also to mean a stick, such as witches might ride on. (Perhaps you played “tip-cat” as a child? No?) In short, you may be sure that the toad, not the cat, is the most popular and effective familiar. “Was” perhaps I should say. Or rather “was deemed to be”,’ he ended lamely. The warmth of his defence of the toad led me to suspect uneasily that a close search of his quarters would pretty certainly reveal a comfortable vivarium somewhere, bursting with the little batrachians.
‘Well, John,’ I said heavily, ‘that’s all quite riveting and I’m more than grateful for the insight you have supplied into the way this awful chap’s mind works and so forth, but now I feel we should be thinking about remedies and things, don’t you? I mean, to you it’s an entrancing piece of living folk-lore, no doubt, but over there in Jersey two of my good friends’ wives have been horribly assaulted and one of them, if I’m not mistaken, is in jeopardy of grave mental illness. I mean, conversation of old customs and so on I’m all for, and I’d be the first to join a society for preserving the Piddle-Hinton Cruddy Dance etc., but you wouldn’t actually subscribe to a fund for the preservation of the practice of thuggee, would you? To my mind, this Johnny should be stopped. Or am I being old-fashioned?’
‘Oh Mortdecai, Mortdecai,’ he said – how funny it sounded, sort of hyphenated – ‘you were always impatient with things of the spirit. I remember you were rusticated in your second year, were you not, for –’
‘Yes.’
‘And again in your last year for –’
‘Yes, John, but is this to the point?’
‘Yes, of course, no, you’re quite right. Remedies are what you must have, I see that, I really do. Now, let me think. We shall assume that the violator is (and I have not a scrap of doubt that he is), properly versed in all the side-knowledge of his dread religion. Therefore, he can be daunted in several ways. First and easiest, common salt (rock-salt is better) sprinkled liberally on all entrances into the room; door-sills, window-sills, hearth-stones and even transoms and ventilation-louvres. Second, garlands of wild garlic festooned around those same apertures are reckoned sovereign, but you would be hard put to find wild garlic in Jersey, or anywhere, at this time of the year and its smell is really quite beastly.’
‘I know. I have tried to eat wild duck which have been feeding off it. The very dustbin rejects them.’
‘Just so. Third, and this has not been known to fail, the person fearful of visitations from a witch or warlock should go to bed clutching a crucifix made either of wood, or, much better, of either or both of the two noble metals – gold and silver: the very best of all is a cross made of one of the hardest woods such as ebony or lignum vitae and inlaid with silver and gold. He or she should memorize a simple cantrip to recite to the emissary of the Desired – chrm – that is to say, the Evil One, which I shall now dictate to you.’
‘Look John, forgive me, but I don’t think we are approaching this on the right lines. For one thing, I’ve no intention of distributing cantrips and costly crucifixes to every rapable woman in the Parish of St Magloire. For another, we don’t want just to keep the beggar out of our bedrooms, we want to catch him if possible – kill him if that becomes necessary – but at all costs to stop him for good.’
‘Oh dear, that is a very different matter indeed. You really mustn’t kill him if you can help it, you know; he may very well be the last living receptacle of some extremely ancient knowledge, we have no way of guessing whether he has yet initiated a successor to the Black Goatskin. No, no, you must try not to kill him. You might, in any case, find it a little difficult, heh, heh.’