Bearers of the Black Staff

Phryne decided to dress for the occasion, choosing feminine, loose-fitting clothes of which she knew her grandmother would approve. She picked flowers from the garden, arranged them in a basket, added fresh apples, and with only minutes to spare set out.

It was a short walk down a main road diverging off into smaller byways, then into worn paths, and finally into trails that wound through the forest trees until they disappeared and you couldn’t find your way unless you knew exactly where you were going. Her grandmother did not encourage visitors of any sort, limiting such to those with whom she was familiar. In most cases, even those weren’t welcome without having either received a prior invitation or provided acceptable notice of an intended visit.

Her grandmother lived in a large cottage east and south of the main city in woods dedicated to her personal usage and jealously guarded against encroachment. Phryne wasn’t sure who did the guarding, since all she had ever seen back there were the oldsters, but she had a feeling that it wouldn’t be wise to try to find out. It was rumored that Mistral Belloruus had use of magic. Since Phryne hadn’t visited for months, she couldn’t really know if anyone was doing the guarding these days. It had been enough to know that her feisty grandmother was alive and well and still dispensing unsolicited advice to her granddaughter.

Still, she felt a certain pleasure in making this visit, knowing that by the time she left she not only would have made some sort of amends for her failure to visit earlier but also would be able to reassure herself that all was well with her grandmother.

She had not told her father where she was going. She had not told anyone, adhering to the admonition contained in her grandmother’s message. But afterward, she would tell her father, because even if he wouldn’t admit it, speaking only now and again of Mistral Belloruus, he cared about her and worried that they had become so alienated.

Phryne walked up to the porch of the cottage, finding one of the oldsters sitting in a rocker by the door, aged eyes fixed on her as she approached. She couldn’t remember his name, although she had known it once. He was small and hunched over and wizened to the point of being dried out completely. His head inclined as she climbed the steps, and he whispered the word “Princess” by way of greeting. She inclined her head in response and walked past him through the open cottage door.

Inside, the rooms were gray and shadowy, curtains closed over windows, shutters canted against the sun, the whole of the interior as still and airless as a crypt. If felt to Phryne as if her grandmother might be trying to acclimate herself to being dead, but that was an unkind thought and she quickly dismissed it.

“Grandmother?” she called out.

“Bedroom!” her grandmother’s voice came back, much too strong and abrupt for anyone thinking about dying.

Phryne walked down the hallway and past several rooms to the very back of the house and the chamber in which her grandmother slept. She remembered everything about the house, even though she had not visited for so long, the details familiar enough that she might have left only a day or so earlier. Ancient tapestries and paintings hung from the walls, much of it her grandmother’s work. Furniture gleamed with fresh polish, and colorful throws were draped over chair backs and arms. Crystal glittered from a cabinet here; china plates and saucers with intricate patterns rested upright in small grooves notched in the shelves of a hutch there.

A cat wandered by. Crazy Orange, her grandmother called it, a tiger with white feet and a white blaze on its forehead. It never looked at her, on its way to finding better things to do, Phryne supposed.

She found her grandmother propped up in bed, dressed in her good clothes, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her gray hair was pinned up, the wrinkles in her skin powdered over, and her lips painted. She looked younger than her years. Except for lacking a smile, she would have been almost pretty.

“You look very nice, girl,” she declared. “I think the colors suit you. Sit over there.” She motioned to a chair next to the bed.

Phryne sat. “Are you well, Grandmother?”

“As opposed to what? I am ninety-five years old, well into middle age and looking at the downside of my life. But yes. I am well enough. And you? How are you? Other than lacking a certain respect for your elderly grandmother, a failing that apparently requires no visible remorse for your failure to visit me, how are you?”

Phryne flushed. “I deserve that. I apologize. I should have come before, but I always seem to become distracted when thinking to do so. It is not an attractive habit.”

“No, it certainly isn’t. But then you make up for it in other ways, so why don’t we let all that go. The past is the past, over and done with. Most of it, anyway. How is your father?”