Birch Manor - Bits

New Year
It was New Year's morning. Susan got up and walked with soft, silent steps to the window. She enjoyed the sight of the still almost new curtains. They were made of unbleached linen and sewn with sewing thread that shimmered in all the colours of the rainbow like a peacock's plumage. Susan called it her magic sewing thread, but unlike Susan herself, there was nothing magical about the sewing thread. She pulled back the curtains and looked out. The weather was in its very worst winter mood, grey, with heavy, low-hanging clouds and not a hint of sunshine. She faintly heard the bells tolling from the church in the nearby village and gave a small start. Knud!" she called softly. "It's time to get up. They're all coming today!"
    Knud opened his eyes and looked at her, blinking his eyes, "What time is it? Is it morning already, it's pitch dark."
    "It's seven o'clock, the bells are still tolling if you care to listen." She paused so Knud could listen. "And today is the first of January. They're all coming! Oh, it's so exciting. Who do you think will be the first to arrive?"
    Knud sat on the edge of the bed and put on his glasses. "Probably Fiona. Or maybe Frank and Freya. I wonder how little Thora is doing. It was great of them to name the little one after our old teacher.  I'm looking forward to seeing them all again, too."
    After they had eaten a hearty breakfast, Susan started the car to pick up Martine, who had moved into the village in a nice little house right next to the church actually.
    "Happy New Year, Martine, are you ready?" Susan said as Martine opened the door.
    "Happy New Year to you as well, Susan," Martine said, "Yes, I'm ready, more than ready!" she said, her normally sleek hair frizzy from exitement and her cheeks reddish.

 Back at Birch Manor, Knud had brewed several pints of coffee and set the cakes on the tables. Susan helped him bring the last chairs in from  the outhouse, while Martine filled many jugs with fresh, cold water.
     It was a good thing that they had decided to leave the old dining hall unchanged. Today was just what they needed.  Although it was still half dark outside, the room was bright and friendly. Light floorboards, white walls and bright linen curtains at the windows. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting an indirect but bright light over the tables. There were no tablecloths on the two long tables, but they were set with white, faintly patterned plates, steel knives and forks with a twisting pattern that was actually birch leaves, and polished, solid glasses. Clear glass water jugs and coffee pots of some whitish material with blue, yellow, red, green and black flowers on their thick stomachs completed the decor. The long tables had room for 50 each, and Susan just hoped that was enough.   
  Let me see," said Knud, whose thoughts had been wandering the same paths. "Eighteen apprentices minus Sarah makes seventeen. Six of us are married to each other, two are unmarried or widowed, that makes nine spouses, and then Martine and Ella. Seventeen plus nine plus two; 28 in all."
  Susan nodded, "Yes, and then a bit more than 40 children and their spouses and even more grandchildren. There's no way these two tables will suffice ..."
  "No, I don't think they will, and what's more I don't see what we can do about it. Apart from getting another long table, that is."
  "Well, let's see about that," Susan replied.
  "I'll get it - and use some magic," Knud said. "A table for 28 people. I think we can just put it on the second row down by the kitchen and we'll make a V.I.P. section," Knud said teasingly.
  "Oh, Knud, you know I hate that sort of thing," Susan said with a smile that showed she loved and knew her husband. "But just today it actually makes a lot of sense. I'll get the two tables to move over a bit."
Susan turned toward the tables, and slowly the two long tables moved farther toward the end. They walked quite carefully, not a drop of vant spilling from the pitchers and not a single glass or cup tipping over.
  "Oh, that's why you don't have tablecloths on the tables," said Martine, coming in with the very last of the pitchers.
  "Yes, the peripatetic magic is easier when there are no tablecloths to keep track of too. And Knud and I thought there wouldn't be enough room. Stay in the kitchen with those pitchers, the last table will be along shortly."

The wait was pure agony, but then they heard a car approaching. It wasn't Freja and Frank or Fiona who were the first to arrive, it was actually My who came driving up in front of the house with her three children and their spouses and a total of 5 grandchildren. One of the children had hired a minibus, and Knud laughed out loud at the sight of it: "Look, Susan, it's just like us, in the good old days. Good thing we fenced a large section of meadow off into a parking lot!" Still grinning, he went out to greet them and show the way.
  Fiona arrived a few seconds later, teleporting into the empty area behind the house that Susan and Knud had fenced off for that purpose. "My kids are coming along in their cars a bit later," she said when she had landed. "But I just had to try this. I'm a permissive witch, no need to tell me."
  "I've been wanting to try a teleport since I got my wand, but I  haven't dared trying yet!" Susan said, "you're not permissive, you're brave."

  The phone rang. It was Lis calling from Tage's house. Their car had broken down.
  "Do you think we can ask My's daughter to go and get them all in that minibus? It's not far," Knud said.
  "Pray do," Susan said. "The worst they can do is to say 'no'."


In Italy
Susan and Knud left the dining room and walked down the stairs from their hotel. "I can't live from just a brioche and a cup of hot cocoa for breakfast," Susan grumbled. "I'm not an Italian or a Frenchman. I hope for something more substantial to restore my joie de vivre before I can honour the beauty of this old city." "Take it easy, Susan," Knud said. "As soon as the church next door opens, we can do our morning devotions there, and after that we'll find a nice place to eat some bread or maybe even a pie." "I love you, Knud!" Susan said. "You're always full of forgiveness and solutions, when this grumpy old hag need rescue from her own self." After a rosary in the old, Roman church and an excellent meat pie accompanied by a very good cappuccino in the café at the next Susan's normally cheerful self was restored, and she and Knud took the tram to the old library, where they hoped to find some old books on magic for their school.

***

Knud saw the reflection in the mirror only seconds before Susan.
"Susan," he said only a bit louder that a whisper, "that deception spell of yours, do you still know how to cast it?"
Susan gave a curt nod, and slowly pulled her wand from her stocking, where she had put it upon learning that backpacks, even small ones, were not welcome in the library.
The air felt a bit thicker, or maybe she was just nervous.
A man entered the library through the double doors, his long coat dripping small droplets of water on the floor. Susan wondered how as his long hair was not wet. It was unkempt, hanging down over his shoulders, giving him a regal or scholarly look. He looked at Knud with an intense stare. His dark eyes bored into Knud's blue ones. Then the man looked down on the book, Knud was reading. It was one of the real old tomes, chained to a lectern by a long chain of steel. You could lift it, read it, hold it to the light from the narrow, high set windows, but you could not just walk off with it.
The man extended one, grimy hand and traced the letters on the spine: "L'arciduca Cosimo terzo di Medici ed i suoi eredi," he said, translating the Latin title into Italian. "Siete storici - are you historians?" he asked. Susan cast the Mál sameinast, and Knud responded that indeed they were.
"I am Lorenzo" he said. "The seeds that the old archdukes were planting in the past, are alive and blooming in me."
"An heir to the old Cosimo himself," Knud said, "we hope to enjoy the harvest of these seeds in the days to come."
"Only if you do not forget," Lorenzo said, his not very clean face coming closer and closer to Knud's, the drops from his coat dripping right in front of Knud's shoes. But Knud stood his ground. "Do not forget," he repeated, shaking his finger at Knud, "do not forget that honour is my due. I am the duke's only heir, the only living Medici ..."
Susan carefully cast the Deception spell at the self-proclaimed duke, and he continued spouting incoherent sentences at Knud right until the police and the doctors caught him. The head of the library hurried over to Knud and Susan and began apologizing profusely: "We owe you an apology," he said. "Poor Lorenzo here is quite mad, but generally harmless. He loves to scare the visitors by standing totally still in the fountain and suddenly speaking to them. When there was no tourists, he came up here today. Terribly sorry I am, I should have watched him better."
"Is he an heir of the old archduke?" Knud asked. The poor Lorenzo sat on a stool, the epitome of dejection.
"As far as we know, no, he is not, even if he sure looks the part," The head of the library said, pointing to a portrait of the old duke over one of the lecterns. Knud looked from the portrait, back at Lorenzo, noticing the nose, the sleek hair, cut just so, and the intense black eyes in both men. "Yes, he sure looks like a grand-grand-gran-son of him up there."
The head of the library nodded and shook his head. The doctor took Lorenzo by the hand, and followed by the other men they left. When their steps had dwindled to almost nothing the head of the library looked at Knud.
"I'll tell you a secret," he said." According to the annals, church registers and so on, the old duke has no living heir. But we'll know soon enough. We had a DNA test made of all the Medicis buried here, and just because I could, I let Lorenzo join the batch. would you be interested in the results?"
"I sure would," Knud answered. "Here's my card. You have been very kind."
The head of the library left, closing the double doors behind him. Knud eyed Susan with suspicion. "Did you hex him too or are they all as mad as hatters here?"

***

"I will forgive this," Susan said, "but it's going to take some time. I'm not as saintly as you are." Susan stood over the tiny sink in their hotel room, trying to wash out the green ink, the young helper at the library had spilled over her bag.
"Let me help," Knud said. "Hold open the bag, then I pick up the things not stained by the ink. That should give you a better chance of getting it all off without damaging anything down there."
Susan opened her bag and Knud pulled out some of Susan's book, her diary, watercolour sets  and pencil case.
"It seems all the important stuff were not hit by the cascading ink," he said, trying not to laugh, but not quite suceeding. Susan gave him a stinky eye and then looked into the bag. "No really! Only the bananas are totally soaked"
Knud dried off the stuff in lots of paper towels, and put them down on the floor in the adjacent room.
When he returned, Susan had emptied the bag's content in a green, soggy heap in the sink and was quietly casting a spell on her bag. I tried a variation of the water-proofing spell," she said. "Tomorrow you will see. Now I need a bath, I feel green all over."
"You're not," Knud said. "But do take a bath, then I'll go shopping for some new bananas and some snacks and maybe even find a nice place for our evening cappuccinos. Will you come when I call?"
"How will I know it's you?" Susan asked.
"You will!" Knud said with a lopsided smile and sneaked out the door, leaving the security chains in place.
"Those chains will break if you keep on like this. But fine, I don't feel like closing them after you half naked and dripping green water all over." Susan said to his back.

When Susan once again was dressed, combing and braiding her hair, she heard a whistle from below. At first she did not really notice it, but then she realized that it had to be Knud. He was whistling Greensleeves! Susan laughed, ran to the window and looked past the shutters. Yes it was him. She opened up the shutters and wawed at him. "I'll be down shortly," she mimed. Knud gave a nod and sat down on one of the chairs along the street. Placed there to keep the cars off parking because of some lavoro, taking place tomorrow, but very practical for waiting.
"Tell me where we go for cappuccinos?" Susan asked when she had joined Knud at the street.
"I won't, just follow me." He looked as excited as a child before Christmas and Susan took his hand and followed around corners and down narrow lanes. "Close your eyes!" Knud ordered. Susna complied, and slowly he propelled her around a few more corners, and in through a door. Susan could smell the coffee brewing, good coffee, hear the tinkling of cups and spoons, the hissing of the cafetera and the murmur of many voices.
Knud helped her sit, and bade her open her eyes.
"It's a lie!" Susan exclaimed. On the wall hung a giant Medici family tree, and the man behind the bar was another spitting image of Lorenzo il Magnifico. This one well groomed, shouldre long jet black hair, and dressed in modern clothes, in a cut that with just a little imagination could resemble Rennaissance clothing.
Knud ordered two cappuccino, an they drank slowly, savouring the good coffe, the creamy milky foam and the crunchy sugar. Perfect.
Susan sighed. "So many mysteries. Tomorrow well have to try and get to the bottom of just some of them.
 "Again we agree, my dear." Knud said.