Preliminary Note:
Harold has brought to my attention that earlier I called him Roger. Harold is more suspicious of this than the circumstances warrant, bless his heart.
Links included are inexact suggestions of images in my mind's eye. For example, the stage is a spectacular automaton as is the actor who-- I think but am not positive--might be Faust, not Prospero. Start about half way through the video if you don't want to see the clockwork. With the images from the Metropolitan, simply click on the Met page that comes up for a separate image of the item. The Metropolitan rocks.
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LILMDDH Fifth Installment
After reminding Charlie that I warned him about Esmerelda, I explained, “Anyone who whispers ‘emeralds are the best way to say I love you’ is not a nice person. What happened?”
“Wedding jitters. I wanted to add the Necronomicon to the Bloomingdales registry. Then it was china patterns and whether to invite Aunt Boudicca.”
“Boudicca clanks but she needs to be included. What does this have to do with your father?”
“Esme’s father wants to make sure I’m worthy of her.”
“That is insulting. I may have to kill him. Where is Esmerelda now?”
“Schloss Ritter. She’s not speaking to me.”
Hmpf, the mercenary Esme had upgraded herself to a better class of entertainment, abandoning Charlie and leaving me to sort things out. I decided to concentrate on escape, saving Harold, and getting him a new hobby.
I inserted the signet ring in an escutcheon concealed behind a panel in the command post, eventually opening three drawers and appropriating: an oversize iron key; a code and keycard; missing eyes for both the Heidrun goat and the basilisk; and volumes one and two of the 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. Only volume one was previously known to exist.
[img]
https://themadmuseum.co.uk/history-of-automata/automata-during-the-middle-ages[/img]
Before I could place gems in statuary, the central oval of the cabinet rolled back. A curtain rose on a miniature proscenium arch. Center stage stood what I guessed to be a holographic live transmission of Harold, pointing and blowing kisses to each of us in turn.
[img]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drofW-ELc-0[/img]
Beside me, Devil cocked his head, clearly pondering how a shrunken Harold squeezed himself in there, a canine bewilderment usually reserved for watching sheepdog trials on television.
Overjoyed at the sight of the love my life in any form, my emotions shifted. Harold seemed safe, sort of, so I was free to experience understandable annoyance at being forced to leave--as I have mentioned before and no doubt will again--a guest saddled with an equine conundrum.
“When you get home, I’m giving a tea dance for family and friends to redirect your leisure time activities,” I said.
Charlie said, “Mom means an intervention.”
“Petit fours and sherry,” I threatened. “Boudicca pouring. An unpracticed string quartet.”
Harold shuddered. “I’m not burying my staff certain fathoms in the earth or drowning my book deeper than did ever plummet sound.” He hugged those items to his chest. “You’re taking advantage; I’m not myself at the moment.”
“That’s okay, dear. Try not to drop any drawer pulls I need down sewer grates.” As far as I could tell, Harold was very much himself, just resized, and his next step would be dismantling all manner of bureaus, fall front desks, and bookcase entrances to secret passages the minute he found a wrench and screwdrivers.
You may be saying under your breath, chill out. Who hasn’t had to wean a spouse from an extreme and age inappropriate hobby like getting kidnapped?
But not me. Not anymore. My plans are: acquire a winter castle (one is on the market cheap due to indictment of the owner), retire, and spitefully overindulge grandchildren because Esme is their mother, a thought that reminded me to note in my journal facilitation of a Charlie and Esme rapprochement.
Harold said, “I languish in durance archival. To reach me, you must enter and return through five doors after retrieving five parts of the Cellini parure.”
[img]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2tcZASeWAE[/img]
[img]
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/359725088972118925/?lp=true[/img]
The curtain came down. Upon the velvet was an unfamiliar blue and gold crest bannered with the motto Dum Vivimus Vivamus.
Charlie said, “Dad was quoting Shakespeare. He thinks he’s Prospero in The Tempest, and he’s in a library somewhere, probably changing the catalog from LOC to Sanskrit.”
“Rune based.” I sulkily blasted two dragons and a shapeshifting samovar. “He knows how I feel about runes and he’s going with Futhark.” This wasn’t exactly my first parure.
I placed yellow and blue gems; caprine and ophidian heads swiveled. The light rays melded to green on a portal covered by decorative brass portcullis fashioned as wavy hair flowing from the profile of a woman whose mouth formed a keyhole. She had an upturned nose and the passive-aggressive disdain of someone who was turned down for more responsible jobs, say prison guard or Keeper of the Royal Swans. She pretended not to see us when the key did not fit.
Through the bars of her hair, I glimpsed a plaque with a model trebuchet powered by a hamster wheel, sheep, a shepherd carrying a crook, a black and white dog resembling Devil, and five decrepit stone towers.
Observing the trebuchet, Charlie said, “My armor’s in the trunk of the Daimler.”
“Find some here. You’ll need it. Your father plays fair.”
“No, he doesn’t. Ask anyone.” He turned to the portcullis. “What’s on the other side?”
“I really couldn’t say, sir. I’m just a door, aren’t I?”
I teleported back through the tunnel, used the code and keycard, then headed to the chained chest. I took Charlie’s design document which had notes in the margin of Esme’s cell phone number and her friend Grace’s. Then I wrested the kīla from the wall in case my utility blade fractured and unpadlocked the chains and chest.
Chest:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/468985Lock and key for chest:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/201998 Harold had left a brass key; a letter of introduction to Baron Alexander Momus, Laird of Misrule; and a sticky note saying, “Mollify the Anti-Rapunzel. I hid your clothes behind a Coromandel screen.”
Like electronic Harold couldn’t have said that? No, not holographic Harold and not regular Harold either.
The Coromandel screen
[img]
https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/more-f...n/id-f_1694932/[/img]
in the rotunda concealed mirrors on its opposite side and a selection of costumes. Trying on combinations of clothes and settling on the correct apparel took my mind off my failure to stash Harold in inventory.
While I was occupied, Devil braced all four legs, pulling on and gnawing the carved wooden tail of a caparisoned rat the size of a carousel horse. Devil severed the appendage and splintered it into a point. I should have told him to knock it off but you can never tell when a wooden stake will come in handy.
Bewigged and dressed without a single zipper to break, I scooped up some hairpins because I could and added them to my chatelaine. I found a buckskin knapsack for Devil to carry larger things in for me.
This wasn’t my dog's first parure either. Probably remembering a travois I once assembled for an extension ladder and a pickaxe, Devil chewed off the straps and shook vigorously. I tucked them into my capacious bodice.
The brass key fit the portcullis but nothing happened. Then I gave the hair pins to the Anti-Rapunzel.
[img]
https://www.1stdibs.com/fashion/accessories/countess-cis-rare-hair-combs/id-v_100581/[/img]
She rippled up her tresses and while I solved her puzzle (an easy one because first) told us what lay on the other side. “A costume fete with cream tea, white elephant stall, riding double blind joust, rune shy, sheepdog trial, Morris dancing, tombola, and a minor siege if the weather holds.”
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