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De Richleau had seen many tells in his day, from a fleeting twitch to a bouncing knee, but none so obvious as Simon Aron’s startled stoat impression when he spied De Richleau and Rex entering his very crowded parlour. Well, well. He would have to invite Simon to play a hand or two of poker very soon.
A meeting of an Astronomical Society indeed. How absolutely preposterous. Did Simon truly expect De Richleau to believe that? Why, anyone with a hint of Occultist experience could smell Satan’s sulphur-dipped hoofprints in the room! Or perhaps it could be the dreadful crimson candles, but De Richleau never second-guessed himself if he could help it.
He thought the game was surely up when further introductions were made and a young woman, Tanith—Tanith, of all the names, the Serpent Lady!—confirmed he and Rex had unwittingly stumbled into a Coven.
“Surely we’re not meant to be more than thirteen?” she said, confused, counting heads in the room and no doubt recalling what she had been told of the ceremony to come. But no matter how obvious the clue, Rex—dear, oblivious fellow who was clearly muddleheaded by Tanith’s pretty face—had immediately exposed them both.
“Oh, we’re not members,” Rex said, before De Richleau had a chance to avert disaster, “we’ve only stopped by to see Simon.” Heaven knows how much more he might have given away if Tanith, looking every bit the deer in the headlights, hadn’t made her escape, no doubt to report the intruders to her High Priest.
Undeterred by Rex’s clumsy slip, De Richleau tried to give him the simplest of instructions to gather as much information as possible before they were turned out of Simon’s house; surely no matter how smitten, dear old Rex could follow that!
Alas, the old adage was certainly proving to be true once again: if one wanted a thing done properly, one had to do the thing oneself.
Before too long, De Richleau had waylaid Simon’s hamfisted efforts to escort him and Rex out of the house and talked his way up the staircase and into the observatory tower where—no, he had no intention of inspecting the telescope when more interesting things were bound to be discovered, thank you, Rex—lo and behold, the Coven’s purpose became clear, and Simon was revealed to be more of an impressionable fool than even De Richleau had imagined, and by then, he was imagining quite a lot.
“They’re just decoration! Relics! Middle Ages nonsense,” Simon stammered about the ritualistic charts on his walls and the enormous Baphomet within a rune-lined circle on the floor—as though a child would not know the significance of such objects, let alone his family friend of more than a decade, the renowned Occultist, Nicholas, Duc De Richleau! And then the final ingredient in this pungent devil stew: the hen and the cockerel, awaiting their dark fate in the basket. Had Simon completely lost his mind?
“Will someone kindly tell me what’s going on?” cried Rex, as though he hadn’t just borne witness to the very same discoveries, crystal-clear signs that Simon had begun a most perilous journey along the Left Hand Path.
There was only one thing to do, De Richleau thought as he punched Simon out cold and directed Rex to steal him away before the Coven could intervene, and clearly there was only one man to do it.
Once they got Simon safely back home to the manor house, the answer was clear. Dust off some arcane skills of his own and put Simon under hypnosis—nothing could be simpler! All that remained was to tuck poor old Simon into bed with a protective amulet, set the butler to watch over him through the night and…good God, but De Richleau needed a stiff drink.
And then, of course, all hell broke loose.
“I’m sorry, sir, if I’ve done something wrong,” the butler said after confessing that he’d removed the amulet, allowing Simon to abscond right from the bedroom window.
“It’s not your fault,” De Richleau conceded; after all, he hadn’t told the man the significance of the necklace. But surely even a man naive to the situation should have understood; what else could an amulet of the Holy Cross be for except to protect Simon from evil influences! Did De Richleau have to explain his every waking thought to be correctly understood?
At Simon’s house all was quiet, the crowd long since dispersed. Simon was not back there, but something was, and after a harrowing face to face with a summoning of evil intent they narrowly managed to escape after Rex had gotten himself ensorcelled by not following De Richleau’s instructions! Again!
Finally De Richleau had the missing thread—loath though he was to admit there may have been a thread missing at all for a man of the world such as himself—Tanith, whom he now suspected must be the Devil’s chosen Bride and therefore of highest importance, had to be secured before the Sabbath ceremony, and kept hidden away with dear family and trusted allies: the Eatons.
There was no simpler instruction for Rex than to take one of De Richleau’s generously offered extensive collection of cars, pick up Tanith—De Richleau had even discovered her location to make this possible!—and get her safely away from London to keep her from the clutches of the Coven. Easy!
But, after all of De Richleau’s warnings never to let her out of his sight, it seemed that unless his very own eyes were present, every manner of things would go wrong.
All De Richleau had wanted was thirty minutes’ respite from the insanity to change his shirt and pocket square! And to do a little research in the restricted occult section of the British Museum of course, but really, the shirt! And yet, somehow, despite De Richleau’s warning to be more alert than he had ever been in his life, Rex had allowed Tanith to be alone in the vehicle just long enough to steal it.
Of course Rex gave chase, and yes it was true that he’d nearly died in a car crash, and certainly he’d found the Coven’s lair, and of course he’d hidden in the boot of a Coven member’s vehicle to be driven to their secret forest ritual on Salisbury Plains where the first part of the Eve of May Day festival was being held. And indeed he fetched De Richleau so they could disrupt the ceremony, hinder the summoning of the Goat of Mendes by throwing a cross-shaped amulet at his horned head, and steal Simon and Tanith away from the Coven, but even so, did everything have to be done the hard way?
“My niece and her husband, are they up yet?” De Richleau asked tiredly once the Eatons’ butler had admitted them into the house, and so their sorry little party of four made their acquaintance of Marie and Richard—and of their little daughter, Peggy—who would surely offer them respite from this ill-adventure.
De Richleau thought the world of dear Marie and of course Peggy was the apple of all their eyes, but he barely tolerated Richard, and was proven right when Richard exclaimed upon sight of them: “You all look so ghastly!”
And true, Rex had been riding in the boot of a car all night, Simon had been on his knees at Salisbury Plain about to be made an initiate to Satan, and Tanith was covered in the blood of a sacrificial goat—but did the man not see that De Richleau had the weight of the world on his mind? The cheek!
And yet, De Richleau would have to rely on him after all. He supposed Richard had given them safe harbour, and perhaps he could grasp the importance of the task at hand, even if he was a complete sceptic and had no knowledge or understanding of the craft.
“Rex, stay with Tanith and call me immediately if anything happens! Richard, sit with Simon while he sleeps, he’s not to be left alone for an instant!” Surely nothing could be clearer than that!
But all was for nought, for when De Richleau left them once again—for only a short while to attend to the crucial business of fetching his case of Occultist tools, and a well-kept beard did not groom itself, ghastly indeed, thank you very much!—Rex and Richard, tasked with critical guard duties, had each somehow forgotten to employ Thomas Edison’s well known and widely used wakefulness techniques (surely a staple when faced with such a task), and both fell asleep!
To top this off, by some twist of circumstance, nobody had informed the Eatons’ butler not to admit devil worshippers into the house or to allow Marie to be hypnotised and reveal all, and now De Richleau’s plan was completely blown.
And yet, though the tragedy of errors continued to unfold—a giant spectral tarantula, a kidnapping, an encounter with the Angel of Death himself!—through it all the friends rallied, the musketeers assembled, and so came an ending to their adventure: demons vanquished and agencies of evil thwarted, and a group of friends who held fast and held together to the end. Even Richard.
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When all had been put back to rights in the Eatons’ house and they had all calmed and accepted it was truly over, De Richleau sat back in a lawn chair, sipped his sherry and surveyed the scene before him: the family and friends who had banded together to oppose evil.
There was Rex, walking arm in arm with Tanith along the edge of the woods, their heads close together: ah, to be young, snatched from the jaws of death, and in love!
There went Richard and Simon in De Richleau’s own red convertible—Simon in some of Richard’s borrowed clothes so that Simon’s filthy suit could be cleaned—off to find where Rex had wrapped Richard’s car around a tree while in pursuit of Tanith earlier.
De Richleau rested his eyes for just a moment, and opened them again to find the sun had gone over and the young lovers had returned to the picnic lawn and were now sitting hand in hand. The car enthusiasts had returned too, though less jubilant in their mourning for the green convertible. Supper was served, and good humour was restored.
As drinks were poured, De Richleau’s attention turned to the heroines of the whole story: Tanith who saved the day with the Sussamma Ritual, Marie the conduit through whom she was able to channel it, and little Peggy, the innocent tuning fork for the spell’s true tone.
“I was quite impressed, you know,” Marie was saying, the two women coming to sit close by on a blanket they’d spread out on the lawn.
Tanith looked up from the daisy chain she had begun to weave for Peggy. “What do you mean?”
“You simply slid into the drivers’ seat of that automobile and off you went! Quite courageous, I thought. Had you driven the car before?”
“Oh, I see,” Tanith laughed. “No, no I hadn’t,” she paused and leaned in as if to add something private. “It was exhilarating!”
Well. There it was, De Richleau thought as the women laughed, finally something he hadn’t needed to worry about at all.
As the afternoon waned and everyone finished their supper, he picked up his glass and rose to his feet.
“A toast to you all, dear friends!” And so they drank and cheered and gave thanks to the powers that be. After all, it had been one Hell of a May Day.
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