Search Results for 'fennel'
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Search Results
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In reply to: The Hoards of Sanctorum AD26
Perspicacious as she undoubtedly was, Mrs Fennel decisively turned on her heel and marched (as well as she could with her arthritic hip) out of the room with the tray of tea and Karstic Rock Cakes, and limped off in the direction of the kitchen. If they want tea and cakes, they can come to the kitchen. Mars F always kept her kitchen streamlined, orderly and uncluttered for maximum efficiency.
The retreating aroma of freshy baked muffins animated Spirius sufficiently for him to hasten after the refreshment laden maid of all work, and take the tray off her.
Mrs Fennel smirked, rubbing her hands on her apron as if to remove the jumbled derangement from her capable hands.
When Yvoise was perusing the transcription of the security and posterity camera recording later, prior to filing it, she noticed Mars F, and wondered. What could it mean?
In reply to: The Hoards of Sanctorum AD26
“Karstic Rock Cakes and a nice pot of Early Grey,” Mrs Fennel announced, having recovered her equilibrium and usefulness. “I’m sure everone could do with a nice cuppa after all the excitement,” she added, looking around for a surface upon which to play the tray.
“Put plenty of butter on mine, Mrs F,” said Cerenise, “You’re always too stingy with the butter.”
Had Mrs Fennel been easily able to bend down and place the laden tray on the floor in front of Cernise’s bath chair, she would have done, and with a degree of relish. It irked her to no mean degree that she was quite unable, due to an arthritic hip and the dastardly damp downpours and drenching deluges devastating her dersirable domain, to make such an otherwise ordinary human movement. Thus, she continued to survey the room for a potential surface, or a person attentive to her plight, being herself helplessly unable to proceed.
In reply to: The Hoards of Sanctorum AD26
Helier watched Yvoise squinting at the bone through her screen, trying to decipher the “map” amidst the noxious fumes. He observed the scene with a detachment that surprised him.
The room was vibrating with tension, but for once, it wasn’t coming from Yvoise —it was directed at her. She was standing by the window, phone pressed to her ear, nodding furiously at some invisible bureaucrat on the other end.
“I am violently in agreement with you, Mr. Prufrock,” she was saying, her voice tight but diplomatic. “The olfactory output of Unit 26 is indeed non-compliant with the Olympus Park Clean Air protocols. We are… rectifying the asset.”
It was the “Kyber-Auditor” from the Business Park Administration. The new management had been cracking down lately, restricting their “unauthorized usage” of miracles and enforcing standard operating procedures.
It was all too much noise. Above the smell, which was screaming of decay rather than play, there was the frantic energy of it all. Mrs. Fennel’s panic, Yvoise’s spreadsheets, the looming threat of this “Varlet” from the Council. It was pure Negotium, the active denial of peace, waging war on the idle time of the Romans: Otium. The world was demanding relentlessly that they justify their existence with hygiene certificates, clean surfaces, and significantly fewer piled-up treasures, branding their sacred collections as mere “trip hazards.”
Helier gripped the bamboo handle of his umbrella —a sturdy, shepherd-style thing he had almost tossed into the ‘Charity Pile’ yesterday. He felt a sudden, fierce longing for Otium, a sacred pause where one simply is.
Earlier that morning, a delivery guy had held the elevator door for him with a foot, balancing a mountain of cardboard boxes. A simple, clumsy gesture of kindness amidst the clutter. It had stayed with Helier. It reminded him that you could be overloaded and still have grace. That moment of suspension, of courteous stillness in the middle of the rush, had been a tiny bubble of Otium.
They needed that bubble now. They needed to stop the clock.
Spirius, who had been hovering in the doorway, seemed to hear Helier’s thought.
“A map is useless if you pass out before you can follow it,” Spirius muttered. He stepped fully into the room, brandishing a heavy glass jar like a weapon. “We need a Containment of the Sins.”
“A what?” asked Cerenise, holding her nose.
“Of WHAT?!” asked Yvoise, raising an eyebrow while covering her mouthpiece.
“Sins…” Spirius said doubtfully, “…that should bring back some memories.”
He marched to the table. “Hold on to your halos…”
Yvoise pulled back, shielding her phone. “Wait! I haven’t finished cataloging the striations—”
“The bone will be visible through the glass, Yvoise. But the miasma must be paused.”
Spirius didn’t wait for a vote. He scooped the yellowed bone—and its mysterious map—into the jar. He didn’t recite a Latin prayer. He didn’t summon a lightning bolt. The Administration wouldn’t allow that kind of energy spike anyway. He just screwed the lid on tight, with one word.
“Oïton,” Spirius incanted.
To Helier’s ears, attuned to the drift of languages over centuries, it didn’t sound like a name anymore. It sounded like a desperate, corrupted invocation of the old Latin. Otium. The right to be left alone, fierce as a dragon guarding its sleep.
Psshitt.
It was the sound of a pressure valve releasing. Soft, pneumatic.
Instantly, the stench was cut off. Deleted. The air was neutral again, smelling only of old paper and the faint, metallic tang of Yvoise’s anxiety.
“It is done,” Spirius announced, holding up the jar. The bone rattled inside, harmless now, an archived file. The faint lines of the map were still visible against the glass, safe in their bubble of silence.
“Mr. Prufrock?” Yvoise said into the phone, her voice smooth as silk. “I think you’ll find the sensors are returning to normal parameters. Yes. Have a productive day.”
She hung up and slumped against the curtains, letting out a breath she seemed to have been holding since New Year’s Eve.
“Well,” Helier said, tapping his umbrella on the floorboards, feeling the tension drain from his shoulders. “That felt… cleansing.”
“If we could do that with the auditor, it would be a marvelous idea,” Cerenise agreed, eyeing the jar with renewed interest. “A spiritual purification. Now, Yvoise, hand me a magnifying glass. If we have restored our Otium, we might as well use it to see where this bone wants to take us.”
“A Novena, even,” Yvoise added, a mischievous glint returning to her eye. “Technically, we have ‘cleansed’ the house of the impurity. The Will didn’t explicitly say we had to throw away the good stuff. Just the… bad air.”
Helier smiled. It was a loophole, of course. A massive, gaping loophole. The threat of the Novena still hung over them like a storm cloud that hadn’t quite burst, and the mystery of the Varlet descendant was still unresolved. But for today, the audit was over. The hoard was safe.
“Oïton,” Helier repeated softly, testing the weight of the word. He looked at his umbrella. He wouldn’t need to open it. The storm had passed.
In reply to: The Hoards of Sanctorum AD26
Mrs. Fennel was beating the dust out of a rug with more violence than was strictly necessary. “Another bloody rug,” she moaned. “If I had a penny for every rug in this place, Boothroyd!”
She shook her head, then cursed, as a cascade of dust floated from her hair. “No idea which of them four picked this one up from god-knows-where, but they’re each as bad as the other.”
She paused to wipe her brow with a corner of her apron, wheezing slightly. “I’m telling you,” she whispered, peering at him conspiratorially, “it’s not just clutter anymore. It’s … REMAINS.”
Boothroyd looked up from a tray of seedlings, his brow furrowing. “Remains, Mrs. F?”
“Human remains!” she hissed, leaning in so close he could smell the peppermint gum on her breath. “A stinking, ancient bone in a plastic box, and Miss Cerenise acting like it’s a piece of the Crown Jewels. Then there’s Miss Yvoise, snapping photos on her fancy phone like she’s … I dunno … Sherlock Holmes or something. And the smell… dear lord, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
Boothroyd grunted, his gaze drifting toward the cellar door. “They do seem particularly out of control lately. My boots are still damp from that ridiculous boat business. I’m not sure they know which century they’re living in.”
“Anyway bone or no,” Mrs. Fennel huffed, “if that gentleman from the Council shows up, that Varlet fellow they’re on about, we’ll all be out on the street, mark my words!”
In reply to: The Hoards of Sanctorum AD26
“Not so fast, Mrs. Fennel,” said Yvoise, blocking the woman’s path as she tried to make a hasty exit. “You don’t happen to have a clean tea towel on you, do you?”
Gratefully, Yvoise took the proffered tea towel Mrs. Fennel threw at her as she all but ran through the door. She wrapped it over her nose as she watched Cerenise poke delightedly at the yellow lace.
“Honestly, Cerenise, we need to make haste getting rid of it. That thing stinks.” Yvoise liked order; she had learned to arrange her own space around neat piles of files, records, and lists. To her, most of the house wasn’t just a mess — it was an abject failure of hoarding protocols. But she had also learned that in order to live in harmony with others, she had to hold her tongue. She sighed and opened the Relics and Records spreadsheet on her phone. Item 2753, she typed. One bone bobbin. She ventured as near as she could and, reaching out with her phone, snapped a photo of it. Admittedly it wasn’t much, but it did give her some feeling of control.
Helier hovered by the wall, leaning as far as possible away from the stench. “But whose bone is it?” he repeated.
“It’s not just about whose bone it is,” said Spirius, popping his head around the door. “It’s about why it’s here. Austreberthe was a great hoarder, a first-rate hoarder, but,” he paused dramatically, “she always had a reason. She wouldn’t just put it in a Tupperware container for fun.”
“True,” said Cerenise. “She really had a gift for squeezing the joy out of life.” She looked pointedly at Yvoise as she said this.
Fortunately, Yvoise was peering at her phone and didn’t notice. Enlarging the image, she looked puzzled. “There seem to be faint lines scratched into it,” she said. “Like a map.“
In reply to: The Hoards of Sanctorum AD26
“Lace, did you say?” asked Cerenise with interest. “I must have a look at it. Stench, you say? How very odd. But I want to see it. Fetch me the container while I look for my mask and rubber gloves.”
“I’m not going near it again, I’ll get Boothroyd to bring it,” Spirius replied making a hasty exit.
“I’d have thought you’d have wanted to bottle the smell, Spirius.”
In due course the gardener appeared holding a container at arms length with a pained expression on his face. “Stinks worse than keeg, this does, and I’ve smelled some manure and compost in my time, but never anything as disgusting as this. Where am I to put it?”
Cerenise cleared a space on a table piled with old books and catalogues. “Gosh, that is a pong, isn’t it! Reminds me of something,” she said twitching her nose. “There is a delicate note of ~ what is it?”
“Dead rats?” suggested Boothroyd helpfully, adding “Will that be all?” as he backed towards the door.
As Cerenise lifted the lid, the gardener turned and fled.
“Why, it’s a Nottingham lace Lambrequin window drape if I’m not mistaken!” exclaimed Cerenise, gently lifting the delicate fabric and holding it up to the light. “Probably 1912 or thereabouts, and in perfect condition.”
“Perfectly rancid,” said Yvoise, her voice muffled by the thick towel she had wrapped around her mouth and nose.
“Come and look, it’s a delightful specimen. Not terribly rare, but it wonderful condition. Oh look! There’s another piece underneath. Aha! seventeenth century bone lace!”
Yvoise crept closer. “What’s that other thing? Is that where the smell’s coming from?”
“By Georges, I think you’re right. It’s a bone bobbin. Bone lace, they used to call it, until they started making bobbins out of wood.” Cerenise was pleased. She could get Mrs Fennel to wash the lace and then she could add it to her collection. “Spirius can bottle the bone bobbin and bury it in Bobbington Woods.”
Duly summoned from the kitchen, the faithful daily woman appeared, drying her hands on her apron.
“Pooo eee!” exclaimed Mrs Fennel, “That’ll need a good boil in bleach, will that!”
“Good lord woman, no! A gentle soak in some soap should do it. It won’t smell half so bad as soon as this bone bobbin is removed.”
“Did you say BONE bobbin?” asked Helier from a relatively safe distance just outside the door. “WHOSE bone?”
“By Georges!” Cerenise said again. “Whose bone indeed! Therein lies the clue to the mystery, you know.”
“Can’t you just put it in a parcel and mail it to someone horrible?” suggested Mrs Fennel.
“A capital idea, Mrs Fennel, a politician. So many horrible ones to choose from though,” Yvoise was already making a mental list.
“We can mail the smelly empty box to the prime minister, but we must keep the bone bobbin safe,” said Helier. “And we must find out whose bones it was made from. Cerenise is right. It’s the clue.”
“An empty smelly box, even better. More fitting, if I do say so myself, for the prime minister,” said Mrs Fennel with some relief. At least she wasn’t going to be required to wash the bone and the box as well as the smelly lace.