“Your people,” said the Grandmother. “I can’t say a name in particular.”
“Is there a catch?” asked Susan bluntly.
The Grandmother laughed again.
“Sometimes it is better not to know such things,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Vivien?”
“It should be okay,” whispered Vivien, bending her head near Susan. “We do give blood ourselves sometimes . . . it makes Grandmother more connected to the New World, more able to speak and so on. The older ones in particular.”
“They’re incomprehensible otherwise, the really ancient ones,” whispered Merlin, leaning in close to Susan’s other ear. “Weird dialects of Latin and so on. Worst relatives you could have.”
“I heard that,” said the Grandmother. “I won’t brook at punishing disrespect, young Merlin.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Merlin hurriedly. For once, he sounded like he meant it.
“I haven’t got all day,” said the Grandmother. “Or rather, this rose has no more than the day, and I’d like to enjoy it fully. What’s it to be?”
“You may have the three drops, ma’am,” said Susan. Some innate caution and memory of fairy tales made her add, “But no more, and in return you will tell me who my people are, and that is all there will be between us.”
She held out her hand, palm uppermost, and extended her forefinger. A thin, very sharply pointed blade appeared in Merlin’s left hand, as if from nowhere. He held Susan’s wrist lightly with his right hand, and with a sudden stab, pricked her finger. A drop of blood welled up and hovered there.
“First blood to Nebrophonus,” said the Grandmother. She gestured, and the wolfhound approached and with his great sandpapery tongue lashed Susan’s finger, taking the drop of blood. As he turned away, his tail wagged slightly in satisfaction.
More blood welled to the surface. The Grandmother extended the rose, touching a petal to the next shivering droplet. The blood ran into the flower, spreading through the petals, which bloomed a glorious red, but even the stalk took on color, too, a darker shade that was a kind of green-black.
The Grandmother raised the flower and sniffed it again, her piercing dark eyes momentarily hooded, a smile passing across her thin-boned face like a glimpse of some small, colorful bird darting between dark and brooding trees.
“And one for me, to tell your bloodline,” said the Grandmother. Susan started as the old woman took her hand, because the old lady was no insubstantial ghost. Her flesh was solid, and colder even than the room.
The Grandmother raised Susan’s hand to her mouth and in a matter-of-fact way, like tasting a spoonful of soup, licked off the blood. She dabbed her mouth with the back of her hand and frowned.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s old, old . . . too old for me. . . .”
She turned around on the spot and suddenly was a different old woman, this one taller and quite majestic in a jewel-encrusted burgundy gown over a black kirtle, all typical of the fifteenth century, her hair under a bifurcated veil that fell down her shoulders to left and right. She wore a doeskin glove on her right hand, with a massive emerald ring over the glove, on her third finger.
Nebrophonus was gone, too, replaced by a much smaller, Scottish terrier type of dog, lying on a cushion, who gave the visitors an uninterested glance and yawned mightily.
“Nay, it is older than I, Nan,” she said gently, and turned as if in a courtly dance, one hand raised to an invisible partner.
Now there was a true ancient, a woman bent over a blackthorn stick, in simple homespun, with colored ribbons at neck and cuffs and a leather gauntlet on her left hand. Her dog was at her side, some long extinct or absorbed breed, yellow in color, with broad, floppy ears and curly hair and a self-satisfied, none-too-bright expression.
This grandmother spoke in Latin, inclined her head, and turned about as well.
Susan glanced at Vivien with a questioning look, rapidly turning back as she saw Vivien staring at the next Grandmother.
This one’s face was hidden beneath the hood of a white robe that was vaguely reminiscent of a Roman toga, and both her hands were in gloves, mulberry-colored gloves set with fragments of tesserae, so they sparkled in the candlelight. She sat on an oaken tree stump that hadn’t been there a moment before, and the dog at her feet was another wolfhound, very much like Nebrophonus, but a rich chestnut brown rather than white.
She spoke a few words in Latin, stopped, and pushed back her hood. She was not so old as the others, perhaps fifty, her hair pale not from age but from always; she was a strawberry blonde. She smiled, seemingly more friendly than the other grandmothers, and continued in strangely accented English, the emphasis within each sentence not where it would be expected.
“This will be easier for you, no?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Susan.
The Grandmother licked her lips.
“Old indeed,” she said. “No less than the blood of the Old Ones, the Ancient Sovereigns, the Oath-Makers, the Vassal-Takers, the line of the High Kings and the High Queens. Diluted with mortal essence. Yet still potent, most potent. Be careful, my children, for if this one comes into the power of her sire, she could bind even such as you, with salt and iron and blood enough.”
With that, Grandmother, dog, and stump were gone, and all three candles blew out with a rush of wind, leaving the trio entirely in the dark.
Chapter Nine
Once I was young, as you saw me then
A bright fire, no moment’s spark
Bright as the sun, but that was when
It was early morn, as said the lark
“SO, WHAT DID THAT ALL MEAN?” ASKED SUSAN AS SHE WAS USHERED into Audrey’s taxi, with both Vivien and Merlin joining her in the back. She noted the blackthorn stick had been returned to its position above the sun visors, and Audrey winked at her in welcome. “And I thought we were going to have lunch in your staffroom?”
“We’ll get something somewhere,” said Vivien, who had
