CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: GRISELDA REVEALED

Griselda confronts the evel professor Stroggleoff and grows in power and majesty as she does so.

Constable Lockemup had never been the bravest of men, though he invariably did his job well and was well up to arresting Friday night drunks as they rolled through Swanspottle on their way home, but as he stood there watching whilst a man he had never met but who he instantly suspected might become his nemesis threatened the love of his life, and waving what looked like a stick at her whilst simultaneously dribbling, he was filled with a sudden fire and anger, and he just knew he must intervene.

“'Ello, 'ello, 'ello!” he allowed his voice to say so that it sounded more Dixon of Dock Greenish than Dixon ever had whilst having a hard edge to it, “what's going on 'ere, then?”

“Oh, Constable,” wittered Griselda, “fancy seeing you here, and so far from your beat at that!”

“Is that man threatening you with that stick of his, miss?” demanded Lockemup. “We can't have old ladies being threatened by men with sticks now, can we? It's plain wrong and something has to be done about it, and I'm the Officer to do it!”

“Who are you?” demanded the professor, his beard threatening to sweep the rocky floor and its little pool of dribble as his head nodded furiously in time with the three syllables.

“I'm an officer of the law, that's who I am, and I'm here to see that law and order prevails,” said the policeman in a tone which was a weird mixture of the threatening and the ridiculous. But silly as it may have sounded its effectiveness probably lay in its very unexpectedness.

“This is a private establishment and you have no right to be here,” grated Stroggleoff. “I'm in charge here and what I say goes, so there! That's the way it's always been and that's the way it is now!”

“Then put that stick down, there's a good chap, and let's see if we can sort things out in a civilised way,” suggested Lockemup, still sounding ridiculous in that dingy underground place with a toad, an old lady and a weird professor standing looking at both him and the unhappy spotty tree-hugger standing next to him. “There's a law in this land, and it needs to be observed or miscreants get locked up,” he added in order to make his point crystal clear.

“Nothing needs sorting!” snapped the Professor, bounding up and down as if rubber balls had been glued to his feet, and he raised his knobbly stick. “I'm in charge here because that's what I am: the Master of this establishment and the awarder of degrees to the miserable! So let my word prevail and may the Lords of Time silence you, you reprehensible little nerd!” he added, waving the bent old wand so that sparks seemed to dribble out of the end of it.

“That's not fair!” intervened Griselda. “Using magic against a fine young man like my Constable here! Fight fire with fire, that's what I say, not fire with magic!” Her craggy old face with its prominent features wrinkled up as she concentrated like mad, and it seemed to her, right there and then and suddenly, that she knew what to do. It was as if the whole history of the place was opened up to her, the long ages of repression, the darkness of too many years. There were shapes in her mind that cancelled out the shapes in the corridors, the stone walls, the rocky floors. And suddenly she saw a new kind of reality, one that existed solely in her own head and her wonderful imagination.

She pointed one gnarled old finger at the bouncing Professor and spoke in the most severe of severe tones: “So may your wand snap in two and may you lie on the floor prostrate in front of me, begging me for mercy while I consider your future!” she grated, arranging her mental shapes as if she had been born to it..

It wasn't meant to be any kind of spell because she still wasn't sure what she was capable of, what with the way devilish powers seemed to have deserted her, so she was as surprised as anyone when the old stick the professor had been waving in the direction of Lockemup spontaneously snapped into several pieces whilst the weird little professor sunk to his knees on the rocky floor and looked at her with pure hatred shining from his ancient eyes. He may have been down, though, but he didn't think he was beaten. Not yet, anyway.

“So you're a witch, old hag!” he hissed, his chin touching the hard floor and his body wriggling against it so that it looked as if he might have been trying to copulate with the rocks themselves. “I might have known it! Well, I can deal with you all right! I've dealt with witches before! I've had them burned at the stake, I have! I've watched as the pain of all those tongues of fire has tortured their bones! I've savoured the sweet aroma as their flesh has sizzled to perdition and the air has been filled with the last echoing agonies of their cries! Oh, I've dealt with witches all right, and I'm going to deal with you!”

“Then you're not a nice man,.” decided Griselda. “No nice man would have said that! Not even a half-decent man would. If anything I'd say you were a particularly nasty man!”

“Where's Griselda?” asked a confused Spotty suddenly. The talk of burnings at the stake and sizzling flesh had made him feel nauseous and he wanted to change the subject before the vomit rising into his throat was spontaneously expelled. “I'm s-s-sure she's here somewhere! She's so pretty,” he almost simpered.

“You've a lot to learn about that young woman,” said the Constable to him, failing to hide a smile that may well have been one related to glee. “This is Griselda, believe it or not, and she's as old or as young as she wants to be!”

“I'm sorry,” muttered Griselda to Spotty. “You're such a sweet boy and I'm sure my niece is fond of you. But first things first. We must try and disentangle ourselves from what could still be a disastrous mess without anyone losing face.”

“You and whose army?” squirmed the prostrate professor. “You can have no idea how much power quivers in my ancient bones!”

“You seem to forget what position you're in,” suggested Griselda. “You're the one on the floor, you know. But it's not nice for an old man like you to be in such an uncomfortable position, so rise up and stand before me. But don't try any tricks or I'll turn you into a slug, and Mr Toad over there is very fond of slugs for breakfast, aren't you, Toad?”

The Janitor-toad looked at the professor malevolently, then nodded its knobbly head.

Slowly the professor stood up, clearly not of his own volition. Indeed, he seemed to be struggling against an invisible force as he rose to face her. “I'll deal with you!” he snarled. “Just you wait and see if I don't! I can't have an evil old witch getting one over on me, no I can't! It's never happened before and it's not going to happen now!”

“Less of the evil!” snapped Constable Lockemup. “This is one of the finest ladies on planet Earth, so be warned!”

“A fancy old witch with her own tame copper!” snarled the Professor. “She's no match for the likes of me, no sirree! You'd be best to make sure you're on the right side when the fires fall, or you might get burnt, and that wouldn't be nice, no sir it wouldn't!!”

“So you really want to be a slug, do you?” asked Griselda with a dangerous smile lurking round the corners of her lips. “I hear the digestive system of a toad is one of the least pleasant places on planet earth and not even a professor could survive long in its toxic interior!”

“Bah!” shouted the bouncing Professor Stroggleoff.

“What you don't seem to remember is the old lesson about reaping what you sow,” said Griselda, thoughtfully. “I can feel ancient spirits down here, the damned and the dead all swirling around, and they have given me strength because it is you who have tormented them over many long ages! Those you have punished by incarcerating them in the darkness for some trivial offence, those you have tortured to painful, wretched death as only you can … they are all here, Professor, and I feel the warmth of their love for me and hatred for you even as we speak...”

“Codswallop!” snapped the Professor. “There are no spirits down here, or I'd be able to see them!”

“Maybe you've become selectively blind,” whispered Griselda, “or maybe they detest you so much that they have spent long ages hiding from you. But now, right now, they are gathering round us, bright lights in the darkness to my old eyes, and you had best look out!”

“I c-c-can't see anything,” muttered Spotty.

But Griselda could. She stood there and seemed to grow taller as layers of time slipped from her. And then the metamorphosis was complete and she was a goddess, ageless yet young, powerful, with green eyes lighting the cellar, and Spotty almost fainted.

“That lovely, lovely skirt...” he breathed as his eyes devoured the creature she had transformed herself into, and its tartan mini-kilt.

“It is sexy, isn't it?” she smiled, and then she turned to the Professor. He had started shaking, and the floor almost shook along with his trembling old bones..