Cat Dubois' Odyssey to Enchantment Page 19

  “I’m fine. I’m getting tired, though.” A tear formed in her eyes.

  “Hush,” he said gently. He paused, then asked, “But, Eleanor, are you going into the battle without faith?”

  “Well, I’m unsure of myself. I’m doubting me,” Eleanor confessed.

  Tadhg then, with opened eyes, began to pray. “Faith come. You are invited and are very much appreciated. Thank you, kind source, for your service and dedication to our cause. Your loyalty to our needs is beyond gratitude. We thank you that you have chosen to be with us, especially Eleanor. She needs our message and your new direction. Fill her with yourself. Thank you, dear friend.”

  Eleanor gave him her angelic look. Pulling into the long circular drive of the manor, Tadhg stopped about thirty feet away. The snowplow was too wide for the whole driveway and he knew that Eleanor would be fine from here on. He opened his driver door and walked around to the passenger door of the cab and began to help Eleanor down.

  “That’s a nasty cut to your brow, and, tomorrow, likely a shiner,” Tadhg said, better assessing the severity of the cut as he helped in lowering her out of the cab. She stood a little below him as he further inspected, knowing just what to do. He reached into a bag on the floor of the cab and pulled out her twill burlap tote. “When you get inside, give these things to Catherine, she’ll know what to do. There are healing herbs inside this bag.” Tadhg then reached in Eleanor’s tote and brought out a medium-size royal blue, leather bag. It was filled with healing herbs. Each one was powdered and separated into separate smaller leather bags, each coded by a different color. One was purple. “Frankincense,” he said, holding it up for her to see. “The one in gold is gold, of course, and the myrrh, in red.”

  “Why red?”, Eleanor asked him.

  “I don’t know. This is how you arranged them,” he said.

  “Oh, alright then.” Eleanor said perkily. Eleanor took the sack and said her thanks. She took him by the arm. He walked her up the icy, winding driveway. He knocked on Catherine’s huge wooden door using the lion's head door knocker, “Here you go.”

  Taking a noticeable breath, she expressed, “Ready.”

  “Are you?”, Tadhg asked. “No turning around? Last chance.”

  “No. No turning around. Committed. I’m ready.” Eleanor was thrilled to finally be there.

  “Bang, bang, bang!” The brass lion’s head knocker pounded the wooden door by the force of Tadhg’s frozen hands. Again he knocked, “Boom, boom, boom! Come on! It’s cold out here.”

  Eleanor paused. “Perhaps she won’t open. Then what?”

  “She’ll open. Where’s faith?” Tadhg gave her one of his looks of concern. “Was Eleanor still doubting herself?”, he thought. They continued knocking, repeatedly.

  The Visitation, Hello and Who Are You?

  Meanwhile, Cat had curled up on her plush velvet couch in front of the warm fire. It popped and crackled as fires do, and she fell asleep waiting for nothing. She found comfort in sleep; and when she slept, her dreams seemed to try to tell her something. Her eyes closed and her mouth hung open as she breathed in and out, in and out just like the gentle waves of the ocean.

  Unsuspecting of having any company, especially tonight, and especially because for many previous years Catherine hadn’t any visitors, the knocking at the door seemed to be part of her dream as she slept on the couch. So, she didn’t rouse quickly.

  This dream was recurrent. Once again, barefooted and running down a long hall, she feels her surroundings as if she were there. The floor is cool and tiled. The hall is dark and candles are cradled in wall-mounted sconces. Cat is alone as she runs down the hall, calling a name. She can’t remember the name—she has often tried, but the name is as familiar as the hall. She stops at a large wooden door. Holding the keys in her fingers, she puts them into the lock in the big wooden door. Suddenly, the keys break and a piece is left in the door. Cat yells that familiar name, and she hears her own name being called from the other side of the door. “Hurry! Hurry, Catherine! You must open the door before it’s too late!” It’s the voice of a young boy.

  While in her dreams the voice is familiar, too, but by day, the voice she remembers in the night hours is unknown and so distant. She just couldn’t recall, as many times as she’d had that dream.

  Then, she heard a loud echoing knock sounding through the manor.

  “What? Who’s here?” Cat roused herself from her dreadful sleep and went to the front door. She could see through the windows to the side of door that night had come. “Bang, bang, bang!” resounded as a clamoring noise. The brass knocker hadn’t been used in a while; and, whoever it was, had a strong grip on the metal knocker. She wasn’t dreaming after all.

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming,” Cat said frantically. Standing back from the peep hole on the door, she could see the top of a head. “Maybe a woman? Huh?” There was a long pause before Catherine turned on the front light to see a trembling, elderly woman standing there.

  Through the peephole Cat summed up the odd woman on her porch. The woman was disheveled, though certainly of means. Her hat, with a funky long feather, was cocked to the side. Her green velvet skirt and vest were twisted off to the side, including the small delicate pearl buttons. Her hose under the long skirt had stretched out, gathering at her frail ankles that held a round body. Her hair was silver and wiry, going this way and that. Her expression was as if she had seen a ghost.

  Now Eleanor was a very good actress. She played the part of a ditzy, elderly woman perfectly, so Cat would let her in for the night, and so she’d be able to present everything she had to offer. However, that night, Eleanor didn’t have to act ditzy. The head injury had done that job for her.

  Eleanor had pre-planned her entrance—from the flaky part to the frailty—all visible as she waited on the porch. Cat would need to receive and accept the package—Eleanor—in short order and without a doubt—to allow her entrance into her home. Eleanor had a time limit to work with, preparing for Cat’s prayer requests; and it had taken a lot of convincing of Eleanor’s superiors to allow her to take this mission. Now Eleanor had to prove that Cat was worthy of this visit, and the revelations Eleanor could help her to disclose.

  Not all humans were given this opportunity, but Eleanor had taken Catherine’s case to a court (similar to Earth courts), and was granted one chance to help Cat find herself. Eleanor had one shot, one opportunity to help Cat live again—not just exist until her time of earth was up.

  Eleanor planned her presentation to Catherine with Tadhg’s sage advice. So, her little lie of being an older woman, and a believable one, would have to be played perfectly in order to gain Cat’s sympathies and trust. Catherine would then open up her door to the kindly old woman who needed help.

  After entry and trust was granted, Catherine could receive healing and hope for love and happiness. Eleanor was a good attorney, as well as a fairy godmother, and an angel; and she embodied all the supernatural liaisons Cat needed on her side. What had not been evident to Cat was that Eleanor had been with Cat throughout her life. Eleanor, who had watched Catherine from above, from time to time, childhood to adulthood, wanted to help her. She wanted to answer Catherine’s prayers. She’d had enough of the bullying that had changed Cat into her present state of being—no longer the sweet innocent, faith-filled child she once was. Throughout the years, she heard every cry and every prayer Catherine had begged.

  The large creaky wooden door opened like in a horror movie. And, before Eleanor, stood the infamous Elizabeth Catherine Dubois, looking so different than how Eleanor remembered her. Cat’s make-up resembled that of the memorable Morticia from “The Addams Family” television show, only Cat had cut her hair in a short bob, but dyed jet black, with red pouty lips to finish off her look.

  Cat stared in disbelief at the stranger on her porch. The old woman had a laceration on her forehead—Cat wondered if it was the result of a car accident. In the middle of the ice and snow storm, there would be little other po
ssible explanation.

  Eleanor was clinging to the arm of the man with the gorgeous body beside her; however, Tadhg wasn’t visible to Catherine. Because of her unconscious state at the scene of the accident, Eleanor had temporarily forgotten that detail—that Catherine couldn’t see Tadhg.

  “Obviously not from Glory Town, dear,” Eleanor said to her momentary hostess, with the smile of a Cheshire cat. She turned to Tadhg. “Thank you for your help. Will you accept a tip? Oh, you can’t? Oh, dear, I do thank you so much for getting me here on your snowplow. Now, what was your name? Well, thank you, dear. You’re so kind. I thank you with the deepest appreciation, Mr…? Oh, dear, he's gone already.”

  Cat thought Eleanor so polite, but when Cat looked outside to see for herself to whom the woman was talking, she found herself staring in confusion as she looked to the right, then to the left. Her eyes scanned the entire snowy yard, but she saw no one at all. She looked again as she was closing the big heavy door. Her brow went up again. She muttered to herself, “What man?”, looking again to the right and then left.

  “There isn’t a man,” Cat said softly to herself as she looked at her new guest and assumed the bump on her head was worse than it looked. Cat wondered how the woman had even found the manor amid such terrible weather, and why she’d been out that way in the first place. No one came out her way. No one…but a demented old woman.

  Little did Eleanor know that Elizabeth Catherine Dubois had not seen the fine hunk of a man that Tadhg was. Instead, as Tadhg had planned, Cat saw a hurt, little, old woman standing at her door in the midst of a blizzard—an elderly women who spoke with a British accent and wore an old-fashioned, olive-green, crushed-velvet dress, similar to her favorite couch. And, she wore that lopsided hat with a feather dangling, cockeyed to the side.

  The old woman didn’t have the appearance of someone who had ill will about them, nor did she look as if she were up to no good, so Cat let her in. “Come inside. Get warm and I’ll take a look at you.” Eleanor glanced in the large mirror by the door’s foyer. She adjusted her matching green velvet hat with the pheasant feather. Then, she squinted looking at herself. “Oh, dear,” she said aloud. Eleanor further inspected the gauze bandage atop her wound. It was quite bloody. And, her head hurt. Her left eye looked swollen, but wasn’t yet bruised, but her eye was half-shut. “What I sight I am! I must scare you to death?”

  Leaving the mystery stranger stranded without help and shelter from the winter storm had been out of the question for Cat. After she had immediately offered entry into the manor, she took a better look at the old woman. She, too, had seen the blood-drenched gauze, the eye almost totally closed with the swelling. “Oh, my goodness,” Cat replied to Eleanor’s remark and question.

  “What? What’s the matter, dear?” Eleanor began to play the game—the plan to gain Catherine Dubois’ trust. Eleanor took a few more steps inside the manor, which caused Cat to take a few steps backward, but then she came forward to touch Eleanor's brow gently. “You're wounded. You have a goose egg on your forehead.” Cat patted her brow with the tenderest palpations. “Ice. Your brow needs ice. Come, follow me.”

  Cat led her near the den where the books sat await on the shelves. The 18-foot ceiling contained the outstanding library. “How magnificent!”, Eleanor exclaimed, delightfully looking at the books.

  “What is?” Cat responded to the woman more concerned with the books than her injuries. Eleanor touched Catherine’s cheek. “Oh, you are more gorgeous than they told me. No one said you were beautiful, but I’m a little behind the times. I don’t always hear well; they may have told me, but I probably didn’t hear them. You are ravishing, dear,” Eleanor said, pleasantly.

  Cat still put on her makeup everyday, despite the fact she usually saw no one; but her mother had taught her that being well-kempt, and the application of a few good cosmetics, made a woman feel good.

  “We do it to make ourselves to feel wonderful even when we don’t feel that way,” Eleanor said, hinting at her talent of mind-reading.

  “Oh…who are ‘they’ who told you about me?”, Cat asked. “The historians, dear.” Eleanor acts as if Catherine doesn’t know.

  “The historians?”, Cat repeated, the obvious questioning look settling over her face. “Do I know them?”

  “Well, that depends, but they do know you, and that’s all that matters.” Eleanor took her coat off and handed it to Cat. “Here dear, do you mind?”

  “Of course not,” Cat said. She took the coat and laid it right there on the couch instead of hanging it in the closet. She hoped this was a dream and that this woman could somehow leave soon, despite the bad weather. Cat breathed deeply, and applied her gracious manners as she directed the woman to get comfortable. “Please, have a seat.”

  The old woman got her off the topic of how she got there, and about the wound on her forehead. Then, Eleanor sat up straight and looked up at Cat with bright, glittering, blue eyes. The blue was almost crystal clear and looked similar to those of her distant maternal grandmother’s. Cat noticed another detail of her guest’s eyes. “Oh, dear. There was a trickle of blood just now,” Cat said.

  She went quickly to the first aid kit and came back prepared to tend to the wound. First, she wiped the area clean with cotton balls from the medicine cabinet in her pantry. Next, she cleaned the cut, with normal saline eye wash. Then she asked, “May I fix you some tea or something? Perhaps you need something warm to drink?”

  So, Cat returned to the kitchen to make Eleanor a cup of tea, while Eleanor relaxed on the velvet, plush couch looking up and down and all around the old manor living room. Her legs were stretched out straight and her body was supine with her arms also outstretched. She was pleased at the pictures and portraits and the art hanging in the living space; it was like a museum.

  Then, Eleanor arose. She picked up a small picture in a dusty old frame that was sitting on the end table next to her. She looked at the people standing posed about a 100 years ago. Eleanor winked at the two people in the picture. A twinkling star came from within her eye. On her side of the star, the two people in the picture nodded in approval and thanks to Eleanor. Eleanor smiled and nodded back. “No need for thanks,” she spoke to the ancestors.

  “Who are you talking to?”, Cat asked, thinking the head injury could be worsening its damage. Then she thought, “The old woman is talking to herself; she must be suffering with a brain bleed. Hopefully, not. There is no way to get her transported to a hospital in this weather.”

  The Dubois Manor’s décor was French and English 17th Century, punctuated with William and Mary chairs and Baroque and Gothic accent tables. Some were ornate but were only for decoration and almost unusable. The breakfront was scuffed maple. The only modern piece was the plush green velvet couch which Cat had ordered to be custom-made and designed to match the era of the time period.

  “If you had a bit of cognac, dear, that would be nice to put in my tea. A hot toddy,” Eleanor suggested.

  “Oh, okay. I can manage that,” Cat said.

  Eleanor continued to look around the room, enjoying the countless artifacts. One in particular caught her eye. “Oh, King Henry had this in his palace…” pausing, mid-sentence, realizing she was sharing too much information. Luckily, Cat didn’t seem to catch that slip of her tongue.

  Eleanor could smell the time period when the furniture was used by people, not ghosts. She was nostalgic and appreciative of the elegant room. She had once danced in ballrooms where furniture like this was part of everyday life.

  Cat noticed that Eleanor was apparently scoping the room out. This caused her to be a little paranoid. “After all, really,” she thinks to herself, “who is this woman?

  Cat served Eleanor one of the two china cups of hot tea she had placed on a silver tray. A brandy snifter was placed next to Eleanor, and Cat poured a shot of cognac into the snifter. Eleanor gulped it down. “May I, please, have another?” She hesitated, and then pointed to the picture over the fireplace. “Oh, you
r great-great-great-great, and so forth, grandmother.”

  “Please, help yourself,” Cat pointed to the crystal decanter that held the cognac; it was Louis X. “My great-great-great-great-great grandmother?”

  “Yes, dear. I knew her well. You resemble her.” Eleanor poured the cognac into her teacup. They sat together on the couch just looking at each other. Eleanor smiled rather goofily, and Cat glared in suspect of the situation, saying to herself, “This is beyond strange; it’s downright odd. She knows my ancestors? Who the hell is she? Cat scoped out the woman and the situation…cautiously.

  “He said to give you the bag I brought in. He said you would know what to do with it. Might you find it for me?”, Eleanor asked.

  Cat didn’t remember the old woman entering with a bag, but she got up and went toward the large foyer to look, thinking with each step, “What bag? What man? She’s getting on my last nerve.” There, on the Victorian chair was a burlap bag. She returned to the living room and placed it beside Eleanor on the other side table. “There it is. Do you want me to go through it?”

  “Yes, of course, dear,” Eleanor said. “Now, dig deep. Feel for the bags of herbs. Can you feel them in there? They’re inside a medium-sized leather bag.”

  “No, not really.” Cat’s whole arm was swallowed up by the bag which seemed like a never ending bottomless hole, so she pulled the tote closer to look inside. “No, I can’t see a leather bag.”

  “Here, dear; let me. One doesn’t just look; you must feel and believe.” Eleanor took the bag and put one hand inside and felt around. “Ah, here we go; here it is.”

  “What? Feel and believe? The last time I did that, well…” Cat tried to stop the memories, but, at forty-five years old, she was more suspicious than she might have been years before. She reflected back to a time where her memory brought her to see the women of Glory Town laughing and mocking her. She then looked closer at her past, like she was watching on television—there were the boys throwing stones as her best friend was cruelly dismissed from Glory Town without a single tear shed over his leaving. These were just a handful of the reasons why she absolutely couldn’t trust this elderly woman. This was more than likely another trick of the townsfolk—their cruelty—even on a night like this.