I met up with Ogma in Jerusalem some days later and handed over the lacquered box of scrolls. He opened it, briefly unrolled and inspected the scrolls within, and then beamed at me.
“You owe me big for that,” I reminded him, wagging a finger at the scroll. “I got stabbed. Lost my voice. Had to listen to the worst cat sex ever. Someday I will send you on an impossible quest.”
“Understood,” he said, and held out a hand, palm up. “The torc, if you please?”
“That’s not a keeper, eh?”
“No.”
“Ah, well.” I delivered it to him, and he radiated smug contentment as he put it away out of my sight and followed it with the lacquered box. We stood soon afterward, hugged, and made our farewells, he to return to Tír na nÓg, I to some new quiet village out of the Roman Empire.
Unfortunately, all Druids heard shortly thereafter through local elementals that they were no longer welcome in Egypt. But I can tell you that the treasures I saw in those rooms in Alexandria have never been found by modern archaeologists, and I suspect they’re still hidden away somewhere, guarded now entirely by Seshat’s wards.
—
“Wait,” Granuaile said. “No, that can’t be the end! What was in the box Ogma wanted?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, beyond the fact that it was full of scrolls, and I never will. I gave it to him without question. You can think of it as the briefcase Jules and Vincent were after in Pulp Fiction: very shiny but forever a mystery.”
“You seriously never looked?”
“Wasn’t my business. I wanted a future favor more than I wanted whatever was in that box. And besides, I had plenty of other material to keep me company.”
“No, Oberon, I’m not talking about Bast’s mysteries. I mean all the other things I stole. I learned so much from what I stole. I still use that information today; Third Eye Books & Herbs was partially protected using Egyptian techniques. And I carefully neglected to tell Ogma about the potential usefulness of iron elementals.”
“Oh? Does that mean the Tuatha Dé Danann never summon them?” Granuaile asked.
“That’s right. I mean, I’ve told the Morrigan about them now, but I doubt she’ll be making friends with one quickly.”
My apprentice’s eyes grew wide and she shook her head a couple of times but said nothing.
“It was running that errand for Ogma, and then another one a few centuries later, that put me on the path to becoming the Iron Druid and creating my charms as a method of nonverbal binding. Seshat’s curse certainly taught me the need for that.”
Granuaile snorted. “Yeah.”
“Ogma still owes me—twice!—but I’m not sure I’ll ever call those favors in. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for those errands. Becoming the Iron Druid has kept me alive as much as Immortali-Tea has.”
“Are we going to hear about that other errand?” Granuaile asked, stifling a yawn.
“Sure. But let’s save it for another night around the fire.”*
I’ll see what I can do, Oberon.
No, you can blame me. I’m the one who angered Bast.
It is true, my friend, that life is not fair. But sometimes there is gravy.
* * *
* That other night around the fire refers to “The Chapel Perilous,” in which Atticus must recover the Holy Grail for Ogma in Wales in the year 537. And Oberon’s recollection of being chased by all the cats ever occurs in the novella Grimoire of the Lamb.
This story, narrated by Atticus, takes place during Granuaile’s training period, after Tricked but before the novella Two Ravens and One Crow.
There is no industrial hum under the skies of the Navajo Nation, and the stars float bright and naked in them, the urban gauze of pollution far away and veiling someone else’s view. And in that clarity all you hear is the song the earth decides to sing—well, that, and whatever noise you make yourself. The crackle and whoosh of wood as it burns under a bubbling stewpot is some of my favorite music, and visually it can be mesmerizing—and evocative.
“Fire burn and cauldron bubble,” Granuaile intoned, staring into the orange heart of the blaze of our campfire as she quoted the witches from Shakespeare. The words triggered a memory and I shivered involuntarily. My apprentice caught it as she looked up from the fire. “What? Are you spooked by those fictional hags?”
“Not the fictional ones, no,” I said, and Granuaile grew still, staring at me. Oberon, my Irish wolfhound, was curled up outside the stones surrounding the fire pit and sensed that some tension had crept too close to his warm repose. He raised his head and spoke to me through our mental bond.
Granuaile wasn’t bound to the earth yet and she couldn’t hear Oberon, but she had learned to pick up some of his cues. “If Oberon’s asking you what’s up, I’d like to know too. What made you shudder like that?”
I briefly wondered if I should tell her or dodge the question but then remembered she had already seen plenty of things through her association with me that she’d never unsee. The visage of Hel, for example, Norse goddess of the dead, was nightmare fuel enough for any lifetime, and she hadn’t cracked yet.
“It’s a bit of a story, but I suppose we have the time for it.”
“We absolutely do,” Granuaile agreed. “We have a fire, honest-to-goodness stew that’s been cooking all day, and some beers in the cooler. And no chance of being interrupted.” She waggled a finger at me. “That’s key.”
“Indeed. Well, it’s a story from England shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth, when Shakespeare had a new patron in Scottish Jimmy—”
“Scottish Jimmy?”
“That was what the irreverent called King James back then. That was the politest term, actually.”
“We’re talking about the namesake of the King James Bible?”
“Precisely.”
“Hold on. I know you have all of Shakespeare’s works memorized, but did you actually meet him?”
“Not only did I meet him, I saved his life.”
Granuaile gaped. She knew that my long life had acquainted me with a few celebrated historical figures, but I could still surprise her. “How have you not told me this before?”
Shrugging, I said, “There was always a chance we’d be interrupted before, and as you said, that’s key. And I didn’t want to be a name-dropper.”
“So is saving Shakespeare a different story from the memory that made you shiver?”
“Nope. It’s the same one.”
Granuaile clapped her hands together and made a tiny squeaking noise, which made Oberon thump his tail on the ground.
What are you getting excited about? I asked him.
They might have, but I didn’t see any.
I know, buddy, I know; we need to go into town soon so you can have a social life.
Looking across the fire at Granuaile, I said, “Oberon’s happy for you. He’d be even happier if we ate before I get into the story.”
“Sounds good to me. It should be ready, don’t you think?”
I nodded, fetched three bowls, and ladled out the lamb stew for each of us, cautioning Oberon to let i
t cool a little first so he wouldn’t burn his tongue.
“So were you in England the whole time Shakespeare was writing?”
“No, I missed the reign of Queen Elizabeth entirely and arrived from Japan shortly after her death.”
“What were you doing in Japan?”
“That’s a story for another night, but it was an exciting time. I saw the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate and witnessed early stages of the construction of Nijo Castle in Kyoto. But Aenghus Óg eventually found me there and I had to move, and I chose to move much closer to home because an English sailor had told me of this Shakespeare character. My interest was piqued.”
“Yes, Oberon. It was mostly fleas and excrement in the streets, and people dying of consumption, and Catholics and Protestants hating each other. Quite different from Japan. But Shakespeare made it all bearable somehow.”
“Kind of makes his work even more amazing when you think about it,” Granuaile commented. “You don’t read Hamlet and think, This man could not avoid stepping in shit every day of his life.”
“It was also difficult at that time to move around London without passing within hexing distance of a witch.”
“They were truly that common back then?”
“Aye. And their existence wasn’t even a question; people in those days knew witchcraft to be a fact as surely as they knew their teeth ached. And King James fancied himself quite the witch-hunter, you know. Wrote a book about it.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“Of course, the kind of witches you might run into—and warlocks too; we shouldn’t pretend that only women engaged in such practices—varied widely. For many it was a taste of power that the medieval patriarchy wouldn’t otherwise allow them.”
“Can’t say that I blame them. If you don’t give people a conventional path to power, they will seek out their own unconventional path.”
“Said the Druid’s apprentice,” I teased.
“That’s right. I’m sticking it to the Man!” Granauile said, extending a middle finger to the sky.
Oberon said, and barked once for Granuaile’s benefit, adding in a tail wag.
“Well, the witches that almost ended Shakespeare certainly wanted to stick it to him.”
“Is this why there’s a curse on Macbeth? You’re not supposed to say its name or bad luck will befall you, right, so actors always call it ‘the Scottish play’ or something?”
“Almost, yes. The way the legend goes, the witches were upset that Shakespeare wrote down their real spells, and they wanted the play suppressed because of it—hence the curse.”
“Those weren’t real spells?” Granuaile asked, lifting a spoonful of stew to her mouth.
“No, but Shakespeare thought they were. What angered the witches was his portrayal of Hecate.”
My apprentice stopped mid-slurp and actually choked a little, losing a bit of stew. “You and Shakespeare met Hecate?”
“That’s a polite way of putting it, but yes. I met her and the three witches, and so did Shakespeare, and that inspired portions of what many now call the Scottish play.”
My apprentice grinned and let loose with another squee of excitement. “Okay, okay, I can’t wait, but I want to finish this stew first. Because I slurp and Oberon turbo-slurps.”
Oberon’s laps at the bowl really were loud enough to blot out all other nearby sound.
Oberon said.
When we’d all finished, Oberon curled up at my feet, where I could pet him easily, Granuaile and I thumbed open some cold ones, and the crackle of the logs under the stewpot provided occasional exclamation points to my tale.
—
In 1604 I arrived in London, paid two pennies, and witnessed a performance of Othello in the Globe Theatre. It smelled foul—they had no toilets in the facility, you know, so people just dropped a deuce wherever they could find space—but the play was divine. That’s when I knew the rumored genius of Shakespeare was an absolute fact. Poetry and pathos and an astounding villain in the form of Iago—I was more than merely impressed. I knew that he was a bard worthy of the ancient Druidic bards of my youth, and I simply had to meet him.
The way to meet almost anyone you wanted in London was to wear expensive clothing and pretend to be French. Clothing equaled money, and money opened all doors, and pretending to be French kept them from checking up on me easily while allowing me to misunderstand questions I didn’t want to answer. I dyed my hair black, shaved my beard into something foppish and pointy, and inquired at the Merchant Taylors’ Hall on Threadneedle Street where I might find a tailor to dress me properly. They gave me a name and address, and I arrived there with a purse full of coin and a French accent, calling myself Jacques Lefebvre, the Marquis de Crèvecoeur in Picardy. That was all it took to establish one’s identity in those days. If you had the means to appear wealthy and noble, then everyone accepted that you were. And the bonuses to being one of the nobility were that I could openly wear Fragarach and get away with wearing gloves all the time. The triskele tattoo on the back of my right hand would raise far too many questions otherwise. To the Jacobeans, there was functionally no difference between a Druid and a witch: If it was magic, their solution was to kill it with fire.
It is now well known that Shakespeare rented rooms from a French couple in Cripplegate in 1604, but it took me some time back then to find that out. Though I heard from several sources that he was “around Cripplegate,” no one would tell me precisely where he lived. That was no matter: All I had to do was ask about him in several Cripplegate establishments, and eventually he found me. Helpful neighbors, no doubt, who could not for ready money remember where he lived, shot off to inform him straightaway after speaking with me that a Frenchman with a fat purse was asking about him. He found me nursing a cup of wine in a tavern. I was careful to order the quality stuff instead of sack or small beer. Appearances were quite important at the time, and Shakespeare was well aware. He had taken the trouble to groom himself and wash his clothing before bowing at my table and begging my pardon but might I be the Marquis de Crèvecoeur?
He wore a black tunic sewn with vertical lines of silver thread and punctuated with occasional pinpoints of embroidery. His collar was large but not one of those ridiculous poufy ruffs you saw in those later portraits of him. Those portraits—engravings, really—were done after his death, in preparation for the publishing of his plays. In the flesh he looked very similar to the Sanders portrait found in Canada, painted just the year before I met him. His beard and mustache were soft wispy things trimmed short, a sop to fashion but clearly not something he cared about. His hair, brown and fine, formed a slightly frazzled cloud around his skull, and he almost always had a smirk playing about his lips. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but the intelligence that shone behind those brown eyes was impossible to miss.
“Oui,” I said, affecting a French accent. It was more south-of-France than genuine Picardy, but I was hoping Englishmen would be unable to tell the difference, the same way that most modern Americans cannot distinguish the regional differences between English accents.
“I’m told you’ve been looking for me,” he said. “I’m Master William Shakespeare of the King’s Men.”
“Ah! Excellent, monsieur, I have indeed been asking about you! I wish to pay my respects; I just saw Othello recently and was astounded by your skill. How like you this establishment?” I said, for it was fair-to-middling shabby, and I had chosen it for its visibility more than its reputation. “May I buy you a bottle of wine here, or do you prefer a more, uh, how do you say, exquisite cellar?”
“I know of an excellent establishment if you would not mind a walk,” he replied, and so it was that I settled my bill, allowing my coin-heavy purse to be viewed, and navigated the standing shit of Jacobean London to the White Hart Inn, the courtyard of which had played host to Shakespeare’s comp
any under Queen Elizabeth, when his troupe was called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
The November skies permitted little in the way of warmth, so there was never any suggestion that I remove my gloves. I played the fawning patron of the arts and enjoyed my evening at the White Hart Inn, where Master Shakespeare was well known. He ordered a bottle of good wine and put it on my tab, and it wasn’t long before he was talking about his current projects. Since King James himself was his patron, he could hardly set aside projects meant for him and do something specifically for me, but he could certainly discuss his work and perhaps, for a generous donation to the King’s Men, work in something that would please my eyes and ears.
“I’m quite near to finishing King Lear,” he said, “and I have in mind something that might appeal at court, a Scottish skulduggery from a century or so past. A thane called Macbeth aspires to murder his way to the throne. But this exposure of a thane’s base ambition is lacking something.”
“What? A knavery? A scandalous liaison?”
“Something of the supernatural,” he said, lowering his voice as one does when discussing the vaguely spooky. “The king possesses a keen interest for such things, and it behooves me to please the royal audience. But I confess myself unacquainted with sufficient occult knowledge to inform my writing. There’s my astrologer, of course, but he knows little of darker matters, and he’s a gossip besides.”