Jeeves and the Meddlesome Medium, Part Eleven

[toodlepipsigner.livejournal.com]

Title: Jeeves and the Meddlesome Medium
Chapter: 11/12
Pairing: Jeeves/Wooster
Summary: See Chapter One
Warnings: A wee bit of angst!Bertie sailing your way.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: OMG guys I definitely didn't mean for it to be a month between updates, really. RL has been kicking my ass so good I started having masochistic fantasies about how nice it'll be to return to Uni for September term. That's what stress-free looks like at this point. I kid you not. Anyway, hopefully the next (and last) chapter will be up BEFORE Sept term starts. Meanwhile here's a nice longish chapter with plot twists and explanations and all the good stuff. Enjoy!

As ever feedback is like morphine to me; it calms me down, makes me feel happy. Better, it's free. 

I’m not a man for swearing. Some men swear in the company of men, the presence of women, with the influence of a cold drink or a hot collar. All who know the name of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster may know that whatever his speaking habits, he is not prone to swearing.

But in these pages I will be honest enough to admit that the trip back to London, alone, in the true twilight dark, was almighty hell. The drive, along dark, dusty roads was hell (and guesswork) to negotiate. My aching neck, my fatigued joints, and my tired eyes were hell to drive with.

But in the back of my head I kept the sweet, dreamy image of Jeeves that I had left with. I kept the hope that when dawn came, the path would be cleared and I’d have Honoria out of my hair and worshipping Worthing before lunch. I daydreamed that the next time I had to make this trip into London it would be only to head back to the old homestead, with Jeeves in tow. The idea that I may possibly be at a great change in my life flitted once around the old bean, but once it did its lap, my mind was filled and pleasantly clouded with dreams of what could come if only Jeeves would agree to my advances. I thought of our lives, and how they may intertwine more than ever; the years branched out before me, all the time I had to be spent being loved by Jeeves, if Jeeves would love me. If he did love me.


With all this daydreaming one might wonder how I managed myself down that long, dark, and, without Jeeves, lonesome road. Well, rest assured I managed and after many turns and turn-backs and turn-back-again’s I found myself out of hell, and back in the old metrop, on familiar soil.

I wanted to head back to the old flat, to rest my weary head on my own soft pillows and put up my aching feet and relax my stiff, fatigued hands and ring for Jeeves to join me in the chambers. But there would be no Jeeves; he was waiting for me back at Ditteridge Hall, and I had promised him (though he knew it not yet) to be back by sunrise.

And sunrise was fast approaching as the onyx sky, lighted only by the occasional seeping starlight and the glowing yellow London street lamps, turned a faded indigo, then a shade of grey-blue that reminded me of my man’s eyes. All the time I scoured the streets, rather hopeless. I’d parked the car near the old homestead and tottered around on foot, figuring it would be easier to trace and retrace my steps, and stop if I needed to. I thought the first place I’d try to go would be the club Boko, Claude, Eustace and I had visited on that fateful night. And I would have done.

If I could have remembered what club it had been, I would have.

But as it happens I succeeded only in thoroughly bereaving myself (in a voice that sounded suspiciously like old Aunt Agatha) for having been too bally sauced and then too bally stunned at the bally woman to bally well remember where we’d bally well gone!
So I tried random clubs; I tried the Oyster, and the good old Drones, and the Honky-Tonk, and any number of other clubs of various reputes. And I tried weaving my way in various patterns away from that club. I would begin at the club doors, and try to imagine my three accomplices on that dark night of the soul, wandering arm-in-arm (or more, arm-around-neck) and singing boisterously down each street leading away from said c. d.’s, hoping I’d come across a familiar image. But nothing doing.

I would thence try each street for myself, following as far down it as I thought reasonable, and looking in each dimly-lit side-alley I came across, looking for a sign, a door, a silhouette of a scarf-clad woman. But nothing doing.

I tried this on each street, about five streets in total when I’d gone around the back ways and street-entranced and side-entrances and all. I tried this on each club, five streets per club, and a bally ton of side-alleys down those streets. But nothing doing.
It was on the fifth street of the fifth club that I got lost. I’d gone down an alley that had only looked familiar for a glance, and then found myself traipsing down it, running my hands along the rough bricks, half-expecting the wall to give way into some parallel dimension, some other world that contained the woman I sought.

But of course the wall did not give way, and I did not recognise anything else past that one glance down the alley, but I was unable to turn around. Something pulled me down that alley that made the possibility of a parallel dimension seem completely reasonable, even probable. And of course, blind faith in the inexplicable has never led me wrong. Look at my Scripture Knowledge prize. Look at Jeeves. I think my point has been proven.

I continued winding down streets at random, my desperation growing as the deep blue turned to a dark, exotic violet above me. I was lost. And of course, that’s when something was doing. I found her.

Or maybe, just maybe, she found me.

“You seek me again, Mr Wooster?” Her sultry voice emitted from the shadows. A small lantern hung behind her, setting a dull glow that cast her into silhouette.

“You…” I croaked. I’d been looking for this woman. I wanted to speak with her. So why could I only croak? Why had my throat closed?

“Do not be intimidated. Come in; it is clear you are not familiar with this street.”

“How did you know my name?” I blurted with sudden-found force.

She seemed to smile. “We have met before.”

“You knew my name then as well!” I realised as I said this that I was not saying it, nor was she saying anything. We were merely passing thoughts, forming them and throwing them at one another. My voice didn’t work, but my noggin was ticking and buzzing with questions and thoughts.

“You know how I knew it.”

“I bally well do not.”

“Come inside. Quickly.” I did as she bade, as she was turning away from me, and I didn’t want to lose sight of her, sure that if I did I would lose her all together and be bally well stuck a telepa-whatsit freak of nature.

“Mr Wooster,” she began once she’d ushered me indoors. Her room was small, and lit more with colour than with actual light. Violent coloured scarves and tapestry akin to what she wore hung about the place. I had half a mind to ask her if she was hanging her laundry up, but it wasn’t something I wanted to think too loudly. There were various familiar objects; a crystal ball, a neat stack of playing cards, and the like. Various talisman and unidentifiable things—some looking uncomfortably like shrunken human body parts.

“Mr Wooster.” She repeated. I looked up to find her gazing at me, mirth dancing in her… yellow eyes?

“I… you…Who are you?” I stuttered, and her eyes lit with further amusement. My mother, before she died, had yellow eyes caused by disease and failure of bodily functions. But this was not the same as the abnormally- large neon-pupiled cat eyes that gazed back at me now.

“Do you really want to look into my eyes?” She thought, and it registered to me that this was not a question of whether I wanted to look into her eyes, but a statement that she didn’t want me to look into them. I respected her wish, and focused out on the rest of her face, mumbling an apology. Her skin was like coffee and milk, with no really notable features other than the bizarre eyes. Her lips were shapely, her nose straight, and her jaw broad. She was definitely not a native of Old Blighty.

She bared her teeth in a smile. “It is a good place to begin,” her spoken voice sounded to my ears the same as her inner voice sounded to my mind, as if that makes any sense. “ ‘Who am I’… a good place, indeed.” But the voice betrayed an accent that barely translated to the one I heard in my head.

“I will tell you, for I have trusted you.” She gave a long pause, and gestured gracefully to a chair to my right. I sat as though it had been a bidding to make myself comfortable, and she smiled. “It begins in Port au Prince. Do you know where that is, Mr Wooster?”

“Erm, if I had to guess… and I was never much cop at geography, mind you…I’d say, France?”

She gave a weak smile indicating that she had not really expected much better of me. “Haiti, Mr Wooster. In the Caribbean islands. We called it Hôpital, but the Europeans called it Port au Prince. I was born there. I was raised there. I begin my tale there.” She gestured gracefully around the thick atmosphere of the room, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a light flicker from somewhere on a shelf behind her. The incense stick was lit, and I resigned not to ask.

“I was an orphan, like you, Mr Wooster, only much younger. I did not know my father, and cannot remember my mother, although I have talked to her many a time.” Again, I decided silence was the best defence against the unknown. “We in Haiti—at least, those who practice what I practice—we believe in the power of our ancestors. I know my mother is dead, and I have not spoken to but her soul, her memory. She is dead in this moment, Mr Wooster, but she is still alive elsewhere. In other moments…” she peered at me through thick eyelashes, and sat herself across from me at the small scarf-covered table.

“That is neither here nor there. You want to know what it is I practice, Mr Wooster. You want to understand—it is admirable, and thoroughly human, of you. I am Voudon, you may know the religion as ‘voodoo’, if ever you have been to America. And you have, have you not?”

I nodded, still mesmerised. “Yes. New York.” I said, vaguely.

She smiled. “I have not been there; at least, not in this life. Not in this random assortment of moments.”

“Now, wait,” I interrupted, realising a rather pertinent question. “Miss, ah…”

“Cassandre,” she supplied with an exotic tongue roll. “Cassandre is my given name. You will address me as such, please.”

“Ah, Cassandre,” I returned, trying my hand at the tongue roll and succeeding only in biting the inside of my cheek, somehow. “Does your… ah, it’s a religion is it?”

She continued to smile mysteriously. “You English would call it such, if you needed a name for it. It is, as I say, a practice.”

“Well, whatever it is, does it give you the power to read minds?” Her smile changed; did not falter, merely changed. Her lips pursed, and I read it as a switch from acquiescing polite grace, to pure amusement.

“No, Mr Wooster. The power is not in the religion, it is in myself. The practice allows me to access parts of myself, of my soul, my existence, that many people have, and few can reach, and even fewer can control.”

“Ah, I see,” I said, though I hadn’t so much ‘seen’ as had an idea, however foggy and hazy and cloudy and overall-bad-weather-y, of what she was about. “A bit like a back-scratcher, what? Helps you get the hard-to-reach places, but you’re really doing it all yourself?”

Her teeth bared in a smile; shining, white and inclusive of particularly large canine teeth. The woman had fangs! She caught me staring, and her broad smile turned into a sultry, whispered laugh. She pointed a silver-donning, long-nailed index finger at each of her eyes, then gave a wave towards her lips and said, “You live three years as a cat, see what it does to you.”

I gaped. I mean to say, what else can one do? “A… cat?”

“A cat, Mr Wooster. A cat at will. Yes, I know, you find it strange. I am more than just a mere practitioner. A shaman-woman! A priestess! That is what I am.”

“So you’re more… powerful?” I raised an eyebrow, and considered finding a discreet way to look for the door.

“Power has nothing to do with it, Mr Wooster. I am a healer, I am more in touch with the gifts of the Bondye than the usual practitioner. I have been ridden by the Lwa, and I have seen many great and terrible, many wonderful and awful things. Things the likes of which you would not be able to understand; and the likes of which it would take an aeon to describe. You only have until the sun rises, and perhaps not even that long. So I will continue my tale, if you have no more questions.”

I nodded, again overwhelmed and slightly faint at all this talk of Iwas and Oowas and Bon Diews. Shamen and healers be dashed, I needed that love potion, and I needed it tonight!

“I was in Port au Prince until I became a woman. You understand the transformation of which I speak, for it is the one all people undergo without realising what it is. I was seize ans, when I met a man who gave me a promise.”
I gestured for her to continue, but she was staring at something I could not see. I hoped to Jove that she wasn’t about to give me some prophecy or premonition, or switch to another ‘random moment’ in time. To my relief, she continued to speak levelly, though she still refused to look at me.

“He promised me that he would take away my suffering in exchange for a blessing. He would give me passage to the Old World, to his home country, if I gave him my blessing, and treated his wife. She was ill, you see, with the consumption.” I nodded, but my eyes clouded with unbidden tears. I could almost see where she was driving, and I couldn’t believe my ears. “Why didn’t you help her?” I choked, as she remained silent. Her cat’s eyes snapped back to me, and she knew I knew. “He brought you here. Why didn’t you help her?”

“She was meant to die, Bertram.” She told me, her lips moving not a modicum. “The Bondye willed it so, and the Lwa told me there was nothing I could do. In that moment, she was meant to die. And for many other moments, she was meant to be dead. But your mother, as my mother, is still alive in other moments, Bertram. And her soul will return in other moments still to come. Is probably already returned to this earth.” I could still feel her eyes, bright and soft upon me, but I could no longer meet them. She had taken the bargain and not fulfilled her half. She had let my mother die, while she still had the power to turn into a cat at will, and read minds, and give other people that power, and it wasn’t fair. None of it, was fair. I buried my face in my hands and let the tears roll as I had not done since I was a very small boy, as though it had just happened all over again. As though my mother had died of consumption and my father of a broken heart right after her. As though I would have to go live with aunt Dahlia, and carry on, and be a brave Wooster man.

“I could not help her. And I could not help your father. But I have had conference with the Lwa. And they have said that I may help you; that I am meant to help you. They helped me find you, helped me bring you to me. And I have tried to help you—”

“What the hell did you do for me?”

“Jeeves.” She said, simply, aloud. And it was true—she had made me see a side of Jeeves otherwise impossible to see. A side of Jeeves that, I realised, would have remained hidden if not for his inability to hide it from me. I sighed; I had gained that love by unnatural means. I had used an unbidden power over a defenceless man who didn’t even know what he was up against. I had played Jeeves’ game.

“Do not feel guilt over this. It is simply the way things were supposed to happen. It was my will, and not your own.”
Another notion presented itself, and I lifted my head from my sweaty palms, blinking back the shock of light and sore feeling in my eyes. I met hers steadily, and balanced my voice evenly. “But why did I have to hear everyone’s thoughts? Why did I have to invade so much privacy, dash it? Why couldn’t you bottle up a love serum for me, whisper the magic words and be done with it?”
Her lips twitched again, “What makes you think I can give love potions, Mr Wooster?”

“It was… I know a woman, a Celine Featherstone…”

The woman let out a loud, “HAH!” that nearly sent me through the roof with fright. “That woman is a fool who knows not what she speaks of. She did not understand my craft—she asked if I was a witch, a fortune-teller, a common gypsy!” She spat. “Some sort of fraudulent palm-reader! A witch I could have respected—I am not so different from a witch, though our practices vary—but a fortune-teller! Laughable girl! And she wanted a love potion. She wanted to control that man. To make him fall in love with her. Yes, I remember her—she was not the only idiot girl to walk through these doors and demand my help in manipulating a man, a friend, a human being. But I remember her as the single most stubborn, power-hungry girl of her age I’d ever met, particularly in England.”

“You’d be surprised, there are quite a few about. Though I’d place my bet she’s the only one of her kind I haven’t been engaged to.” I interjected, and she smiled. “So you didn’t give her the love potion?”

“Love potions are for fairy tales and foolhardy little girls. My magic does not deal in such feminine manipulation.”

“Then what did you give her?”

She gave a wider grin still, her eyes lowering conspiratorially. “Water, sugar cane, and brandy. In a colourfully decorated flask, bought off a travelling gypsy fraud in Soho.” She said, slowly. “The Lwa imparted to me that the young man was already meant to be in love with the girl, that as soon as he truly saw her he would realise himself. My instructions to her were that she must deliver the drink containing the solvent to him herself. I also mentioned that the solvent would work best if mixed in brandy. Surely enough, she followed me to the letter, the desperate fool, and once he saw her he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She convinced herself it had all been my love potion, told herself it had worn off after they married. But she wanted more than that. She crossed my palm with a coin and begged for my power. I wait still for the day when she will realise it is more of a burden than a blessing—as you have done, sensible lad—and will crawl into my chambers begging to be released.”

“She’s quite happy with the power.” I assured her, and she smiled unaffectedly. “I have no doubt. But her day will come. The Lwa have assured me so.”

About then my heart began to sink. So there was no way of getting Worthing and Honoria to fall over one another like star crossed lovers.

“I am afraid not.” She affirmed.

“I take it human will is more powerful than magic, then.” I said, crestfallen.

“My dear boy… human will, living will of all sorts, is magick. Or haven’t you understood that by now? Haven’t you noticed that people can make wonderful or awful things happen when they put their hearts to it? That the greatest achievements of man had come from little more than ambition and perseverance? We, all of us, have power of unbelievable enormity. And it is all thanks to the Bondye. Or you, I suppose, would call it God. Dieu.”

I shook my head; not in dissent or derision, if those are the words I want, but in something resembling despair. I’d come all this way and nothing doing for the Honoria-Worthing sitch. But maybe…

“Cassy?” I asked, absent-mindedly shortening her name. She gave a low laugh, and I felt colour upon my cheeks as she said, “Yes, Bertie?”

“Could you…”

“Yes, I will take away your burden, if it has lived its purpose. If you agree in your heart that I have helped you…”
I nodded. “You have.”

“Then when you sleep, and after you wake, just as before, all will have gone.” She nodded in return, and laid a hand on a glass that I confess I hadn’t noticed when I first examined the table, nor had I seen her get. But silence seemed to be the motif of the night, and I thought better than to change around mid-way.

“Well,” I said, my own fingers closing around a glass of spirits that I was sure wasn’t there upon my arrival. “Well, I suppose… that’s it for my business with you, Cassandre. Suppose there’s nothing you can do in the department of…”

“The friends for whom you search a love potion are already solved, though you do not know it yet. Not in this moment, but in moments we will soon pass into, you will see that there is nothing that needs to be done on either of our parts. You will be saved by a more… familiar kind of magic.” She said cryptically, just as a cough like that of a sheep on a distant hillside drifted into the incense-clouded atmosphere.

Comments

[mxdp.livejournal.com]

Hmghhhhh *bites fist* am on the edge for this one. Lovely story, and I hope life is less troublesome to you, and that you may update soon :)

[baskervwatson.livejournal.com]

Aww! Cassy is the friggin best! Love this character and I love their interactions. -eager eager- Can't WAIT to see what happens when Bertie returns D: D: D: please post soon! -dies from eagerness-

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

EEEEEEEE!!!!!!

And now Bertie ends up getting back to Jeeves after Jeeves is convinced Bertie has left him?

AAAAAHHHHHHGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

*wibbles* Please please set this right zomg.

[angelofmadness7.livejournal.com]

GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I'm gonna pretty much join the eagerly anticipating next chapter group. I'm looking forward to what happens when Bertie returns, myself. C:

[iamwolverineyes.livejournal.com]

eeek
very excited for the next one, however take your time don't stress yourself out, I will wait as long as needed :3

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

just as a cough like that of a sheep on a distant hillside drifted into the incense-clouded atmosphere.

I just noticed this, you evil thing, you. *grins broadly*

[emeraldreeve.livejournal.com]

I hope your life gets less stressful!

It's great to see more of this story! I love how you are working everything out.

Looking forward to more!