Happy Holidays, toasty_fresh!
Title: Teatime with Brother Francis
By: winterthunder
Rating: G
Word Count: 2552
Summary: Nanny Ashtoreth knew that something was wrong far before anyone else, even Brother Francis.
True to form, little Warlock had taken forever to fall asleep. Nanny Ashtoreth sank slowly into the rocking chair next to the window in the nursery, resting her head in her hands. She couldn’t remember the last child she had cared for being quite so fussy. Granted, that had been several centuries ago1, he hadn’t had colic and he wasn’t the Antichrist, but still. Nanny Ashtoreth sighed. It was an honor, it really was, and she was pleased to be serving her Lord in such an important task as nurturing the one who would win them the final battle. She just wished he would sleep more than a few hours at a time.
~*~
The next day, after spending an hour convincing young Warlock that a nap would be to his benefit, Nanny Ashtoreth decided to take a walk through the garden. It would refresh her, she felt, and give her some needed silence to think through how best to indoctrinate a child so young in the ways of evil and the art of taking over the world. The first aspect ought not to be difficult, she thought, but perhaps the second ought to wait until he could at least support his own head. Crowley hadn’t given her much guidance on how she ought to proceed, and the Demon’s Handbook hadn’t given any consideration to the demon selected to guide the Antichrist’s formative years.
There was the crunch of gravel on the garden path, and Nanny Ashtoreth bit back a curse as a tall man in a boiler suit fell into step beside her.
“You’re the new nanny, I presume? How’s the little tyke doing?”
“Sleeping, for the moment. You are?”
“Brother Francis. And you?”
“Ashtoreth.”
“The Semitic mother-goddess? That’s not a name you hear all that often.”
“No, it’s not.” Nanny Ashtoreth felt no need to go into detail. She wanted the man gone. But instead of moving on, he remained stubbornly beside her, exuding just a bit more contentment than any rational human being ought.
“You look tired,” Brother Francis observed. “Is the little one not sleeping through the night?”
“Not even close.”
“You should take him out into the garden. Sometimes the sunlight on their little faces will send them straight off.”
“I don’t recall asking for advice.”
“No, but I’m always happy to give it. Besides, these gardens aren’t enjoyed enough, what with the Dowlings always off at this or that. I’d like someone to benefit from my keeping it all up.”
“I’m sure.” Nanny Ashtoreth turned and looked pointedly at Brother Francis. “Don’t you have some weeding to be doing somewhere?”
“I suppose I do.” Brother Francis smiled as he turned away. “Feel free to come by for tea sometime, Nanny. Until then, I’ll leave you to your thoughts.”
Brother. She had been warned the forces of Heaven would be likely to send one of their own to try to stop her. Was a gardener really the best they could do? She’d expected a tutor, a servant, someone who would at least have reliable contact with the child. It would be easy enough to keep young Warlock away from Brother Francis. There was no reason she could think of to take the child down to the garden.
~*~
No reason except, it seemed, the child’s parents.
“He needs to get out, to get some fresh air,” Mrs. Dowling droned. Nanny Ashtoreth had stopped listening some time back. Having taken care of children for far more years than Mrs. Dowling had been alive, Nanny Ashtoreth found it quite rich that the woman saw fit to lecture her weekly on proper parenting techniques that had come out of some random magazine. “Especially on the days when the sun is out; those happen so rarely and I want him to be able to take advantage of them. He’s supposed to make vitamin D or something from sunlight. You don’t think he’s deficient, do you, Nanny?”
“No, he’s not deficient. They put all the vitamins in baby formula nowadays.” Nanny Ashtoreth considered the ways in which she might punish Mrs. Dowling for this week’s lecture. She’d been strictly limited from anything particularly malevolent, but surely a salty cup of coffee the next morning couldn’t hurt.2
“Oh. Well, I still want him spending more time outside.”
“I understand. I’ll take him out now.”
~*~
Brother Francis, of course, appeared as soon as she pushed the pram onto the first gravel path.
“Ah, hello! I was wondering when you’d bring the little one out. Hello, little Warlock.” Brother Francis offered Warlock his finger, and the child promptly grabbed hold of it and popped it in his mouth. Brother Francis laughed while Nanny Ashtoreth wished with all her might that Warlock might grow a set of teeth and bite the offending finger. Warlock, impervious to her wishes, fell asleep.
“I knew a bit of sun would do the trick,” Brother Francis said in a low voice. “Tell me, Ashtoreth, how have you been settling in?”
“Fine.” It didn’t matter that Brother Francis was attached finger to mouth with the child Nanny Ashtoreth was responsible for. That didn’t mean she actually wanted to talk with him.
“Is this your first time working as a nanny?”
“Do you really think I’d have been hired without any experience?” Nanny Ashtoreth took care to let her scorn drip from her voice.
“Well now, no, I didn’t, but we’re both standing here so we may as well talk. What sorts of children have you taken care of?”
“I’ve taken care of the children of upper class families and royalty for years.”
“Royalty? Impressive!” Brother Francis tried gently to extract his finger from Warlock’s mouth, but stopped when the baby stirred. “Would you like to come back to the cottage for some tea?”
Nanny Ashtoreth opened her mouth to say “No, absolutely not” and then closed it again. If this strange man was truly heaven’s agent, she would do well to know her enemy. As long as she stayed clear of any beams of light and was circumspect in her speech, such a visit could only be to her benefit. Besides, Warlock was asleep and the last thing she wanted was for him to wake up. If tea with Brother Francis would keep that finger in the child’s mouth, she’d talk and drink until the end of time.3
“All right.” She pushed the pram along the path, forcing Brother Francis to hurry along beside her, stooped over, with his finger still in Warlock’s mouth. When they arrived next to a small cottage tucked into the back of the garden, out of sight of the house, Brother Francis settled himself on a bench placed against the outer wall, his finger still in the child’s mouth.
“I don’t want to disturb him, but the door’s unlocked and there’s still water in the kettle from this morning. The tea and sugar are in the cupboard above the stove.” Nanny Ashtoreth hesitated, unsure if it was a good idea to leave the Antichrist with Brother Francis and enter the house of an agent of heaven on her own.
“Go ahead,” Brother Francis said. “There’s nothing in there that bites, I promise.” Nanny Ashtoreth entered the cottage and moved slowly towards the stove in the corner, looking around her for circles or blue lights or crosses, but she saw nothing of the sort. She’d never been in the lair of an angel before.4 It was rather disappointingly unremarkable. The only sign of his affiliations was the simple cross over his bed. (Nanny Ashtoreth peeked into the other room while waiting for the water to boil and quickly closed the door.)
“Thank you.” Brother Francis took his cup from Nanny Ashtoreth. She settled opposite him on the bench while Warlock slumbered on. “So, tell me about some of the children you’ve taken care of.”
“Oh, I’ve made the circuit, you know?” Nanny Ashtoreth scrambled to come up with a modern name. “I took care of Princess Diana when she was younger. What about you, have you always been a gardener?”
“I’ve done this and that, but I’ve always been good at making things grow.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I can’t believe he’s finally asleep.” She hadn’t intended to say the words, but it was such a relief. It had been such a long while since she had done this job, she had forgotten about how the children rarely slept through the night.
“I suppose that means he’s still not sleeping through the night?”
“No, he’ll stay down about 3-4 hours, but no longer. And this lady is one of the most annoying I’ve worked for in a long time.”
“His mother?” Nanny Ashtoreth laughed.
“If you could call her that. She carried him for nine months, popped him out and now she stops in to see him once a day and lectures me on how I care for him on a weekly basis.” She hadn’t intended to rant, but it felt really good.
“It must be an isolated job, being the primary caregiver for a child this young.” Nanny Ashtoreth shrugged.
“It’s part of the job. It pays well, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.”
“Still, just because you’re working doesn’t mean you stop needing time for yourself.”
“What, do you have any alternatives? It’s not like the house servants are falling over themselves to help out the poor sod who’s unfortunate enough to be the nanny.”
“Bring him down here. I may not know much about raising children, but I can at least offer conversation with an adult.”
Nanny Ashtoreth looked at Brother Francis, unsure of how to respond. This was not at all what she’d expected from an angel. Weren’t there supposed to be flaming swords and smiting of demons and that sort of thing? Instead she was being offered- it felt almost like, what was it the humans called it, friendship? This was very odd. It was definitely human though, and angels weren’t supposed to use human ideas. She was sure that was somewhere in the handbook. If it were human, it couldn’t hurt, right? And it would be so nice to have someone to talk to on this job. “Well, I did just get a lecture on how he needed more time outside.”
“See, perfect! You have a built in excuse!”
~*~
One afternoon tea turned to two, then three, and before Nanny Ashtoreth knew quite what had happened she was having tea with Brother Francis several times a week. It was all fact gathering, she told herself- knowing the enemy and all that. Thus far she had discovered that Brother Francis lived in a small, two room cottage that had covered itself in ivy since he had arrived. Plants seemed to lean towards him as he passed, and his cottage was a safe haven for every type of insect and animal within a 10-kilometre radius. For several days she had convinced herself that this couldn’t be Heaven’s representative, he was just a somewhat eccentric human. Then she remembered how he murmured to the aphids which plants he’d rather they eat and to the slugs which areas were safe to move around in. Still, though, it was difficult for Nanny Ashtoreth to think of him as a threat. He was so kind to little Warlock, and while Nanny Ashtoreth was a demon, she still had emotions and she had grown quite fond of the little Antichrist. Especially after he started sleeping through the night.
The weeks turned to months and the months to years. Warlock took his first steps in Brother Francis’ cottage. His first word was ‘garden’.5 It was only after Warlock began stringing words together in a coherent manner that Nanny Ashtoreth began to get concerned.
She went back to the notes she had taken during her briefing from Crowley.
By the age of one, the Antichrist should be adept at getting his way. By two, the world around him should be changing to suit his whims.
Nanny Ashtoreth sighed, tapping her finger on the page before waving her hand half-heartedly in the direction of the hidden cabinet it had come from. The pages rolled themselves up obediently and disappeared.
It meant nothing, she was sure, that little Warlock had nonchalantly rescued a worm from the gravel in the garden rather than lording his power over the slimy thing. And nothing, she was sure, that he refused to color on the walls of his bedroom, instead keeping neatly to the paper. And, of course, it was a mere technicality that the child, on receiving a tricycle for his third birthday, only rode it on the gravel paths in the garden.
Nanny Ashtoreth stood up and moved over to the window. In the garden below her, Brother Francis moved languidly among the flowers. In the room next to her, Warlock slept soundly, just as he did every day, from two to four. There was nothing else to do. Something was obviously wrong with the Antichrist, and if she didn’t do something about it, she would be in for a most unpleasant eternity. She would have to try to limit Warlock’s contact with Brother Francis.
~*~
After listening to four weeks of Warlock’s incessant whinging and two more lectures from Mrs. Dowling, Nanny Ashtoreth gave up. Either the child would develop into the Antichrist or he wouldn’t, but it didn’t seem to her that afternoons in the garden were going to make that much difference.6 Besides, she found she’d rather missed her tea with Brother Francis.
~*~
Years later, when it had become obvious to everyone7 that Warlock was not and never had been the Antichrist, Ashtoreth took perverse pleasure in having been the first to realize that something was wrong. Even Francis, with all his divine powers, had mistaken normality for the influence of heaven. Ashtoreth reminded him of it on a regular basis, during their weekly theological debates.8 It was a surefire way to end just about any argument.
1- That job had been a wonderful success, and had freed her from childcare duties for the Lords of Hell for just over a millennia. She’d gotten quite the commendation when Bishop Dunstan discovered, upon calling on the new king to rouse him for his coronation, that he was sharing his bed not only with his bride to be, but her mother as well.
2- Mrs. Dowling fired both the cook and the maid who had come in contact with the salty coffee, and agents from above filled both positions. They didn’t come into regular contact with Warlock, so in Nanny Ashtoreth’s mind it still made no difference, but Hell had never taken well to these kinds of mistakes, and the bad nanny was censured severely.
3- Which would be in approximately 10 years, 48 weeks, 3 days and 12 hours, if Crowley was to be believed.
4- Actually, she’d never met an angel before. They didn’t tend to hang around with the demons, and her basic demon training manual definitely described wings. Heaven must have evolved a bit in the intervening millennia.
5- According to Brother Francis. Nanny Ashtoreth still believed that “ga-en” could have been just about anything.
6- Except, of course, to her sanity.
7- Everyone who mattered, anyway.
8- Also known as tea.
Happy Holidays, toasty_fresh, from your Secret Author!
By: winterthunder
Rating: G
Word Count: 2552
Summary: Nanny Ashtoreth knew that something was wrong far before anyone else, even Brother Francis.
True to form, little Warlock had taken forever to fall asleep. Nanny Ashtoreth sank slowly into the rocking chair next to the window in the nursery, resting her head in her hands. She couldn’t remember the last child she had cared for being quite so fussy. Granted, that had been several centuries ago1, he hadn’t had colic and he wasn’t the Antichrist, but still. Nanny Ashtoreth sighed. It was an honor, it really was, and she was pleased to be serving her Lord in such an important task as nurturing the one who would win them the final battle. She just wished he would sleep more than a few hours at a time.
~*~
The next day, after spending an hour convincing young Warlock that a nap would be to his benefit, Nanny Ashtoreth decided to take a walk through the garden. It would refresh her, she felt, and give her some needed silence to think through how best to indoctrinate a child so young in the ways of evil and the art of taking over the world. The first aspect ought not to be difficult, she thought, but perhaps the second ought to wait until he could at least support his own head. Crowley hadn’t given her much guidance on how she ought to proceed, and the Demon’s Handbook hadn’t given any consideration to the demon selected to guide the Antichrist’s formative years.
There was the crunch of gravel on the garden path, and Nanny Ashtoreth bit back a curse as a tall man in a boiler suit fell into step beside her.
“You’re the new nanny, I presume? How’s the little tyke doing?”
“Sleeping, for the moment. You are?”
“Brother Francis. And you?”
“Ashtoreth.”
“The Semitic mother-goddess? That’s not a name you hear all that often.”
“No, it’s not.” Nanny Ashtoreth felt no need to go into detail. She wanted the man gone. But instead of moving on, he remained stubbornly beside her, exuding just a bit more contentment than any rational human being ought.
“You look tired,” Brother Francis observed. “Is the little one not sleeping through the night?”
“Not even close.”
“You should take him out into the garden. Sometimes the sunlight on their little faces will send them straight off.”
“I don’t recall asking for advice.”
“No, but I’m always happy to give it. Besides, these gardens aren’t enjoyed enough, what with the Dowlings always off at this or that. I’d like someone to benefit from my keeping it all up.”
“I’m sure.” Nanny Ashtoreth turned and looked pointedly at Brother Francis. “Don’t you have some weeding to be doing somewhere?”
“I suppose I do.” Brother Francis smiled as he turned away. “Feel free to come by for tea sometime, Nanny. Until then, I’ll leave you to your thoughts.”
Brother. She had been warned the forces of Heaven would be likely to send one of their own to try to stop her. Was a gardener really the best they could do? She’d expected a tutor, a servant, someone who would at least have reliable contact with the child. It would be easy enough to keep young Warlock away from Brother Francis. There was no reason she could think of to take the child down to the garden.
~*~
No reason except, it seemed, the child’s parents.
“He needs to get out, to get some fresh air,” Mrs. Dowling droned. Nanny Ashtoreth had stopped listening some time back. Having taken care of children for far more years than Mrs. Dowling had been alive, Nanny Ashtoreth found it quite rich that the woman saw fit to lecture her weekly on proper parenting techniques that had come out of some random magazine. “Especially on the days when the sun is out; those happen so rarely and I want him to be able to take advantage of them. He’s supposed to make vitamin D or something from sunlight. You don’t think he’s deficient, do you, Nanny?”
“No, he’s not deficient. They put all the vitamins in baby formula nowadays.” Nanny Ashtoreth considered the ways in which she might punish Mrs. Dowling for this week’s lecture. She’d been strictly limited from anything particularly malevolent, but surely a salty cup of coffee the next morning couldn’t hurt.2
“Oh. Well, I still want him spending more time outside.”
“I understand. I’ll take him out now.”
~*~
Brother Francis, of course, appeared as soon as she pushed the pram onto the first gravel path.
“Ah, hello! I was wondering when you’d bring the little one out. Hello, little Warlock.” Brother Francis offered Warlock his finger, and the child promptly grabbed hold of it and popped it in his mouth. Brother Francis laughed while Nanny Ashtoreth wished with all her might that Warlock might grow a set of teeth and bite the offending finger. Warlock, impervious to her wishes, fell asleep.
“I knew a bit of sun would do the trick,” Brother Francis said in a low voice. “Tell me, Ashtoreth, how have you been settling in?”
“Fine.” It didn’t matter that Brother Francis was attached finger to mouth with the child Nanny Ashtoreth was responsible for. That didn’t mean she actually wanted to talk with him.
“Is this your first time working as a nanny?”
“Do you really think I’d have been hired without any experience?” Nanny Ashtoreth took care to let her scorn drip from her voice.
“Well now, no, I didn’t, but we’re both standing here so we may as well talk. What sorts of children have you taken care of?”
“I’ve taken care of the children of upper class families and royalty for years.”
“Royalty? Impressive!” Brother Francis tried gently to extract his finger from Warlock’s mouth, but stopped when the baby stirred. “Would you like to come back to the cottage for some tea?”
Nanny Ashtoreth opened her mouth to say “No, absolutely not” and then closed it again. If this strange man was truly heaven’s agent, she would do well to know her enemy. As long as she stayed clear of any beams of light and was circumspect in her speech, such a visit could only be to her benefit. Besides, Warlock was asleep and the last thing she wanted was for him to wake up. If tea with Brother Francis would keep that finger in the child’s mouth, she’d talk and drink until the end of time.3
“All right.” She pushed the pram along the path, forcing Brother Francis to hurry along beside her, stooped over, with his finger still in Warlock’s mouth. When they arrived next to a small cottage tucked into the back of the garden, out of sight of the house, Brother Francis settled himself on a bench placed against the outer wall, his finger still in the child’s mouth.
“I don’t want to disturb him, but the door’s unlocked and there’s still water in the kettle from this morning. The tea and sugar are in the cupboard above the stove.” Nanny Ashtoreth hesitated, unsure if it was a good idea to leave the Antichrist with Brother Francis and enter the house of an agent of heaven on her own.
“Go ahead,” Brother Francis said. “There’s nothing in there that bites, I promise.” Nanny Ashtoreth entered the cottage and moved slowly towards the stove in the corner, looking around her for circles or blue lights or crosses, but she saw nothing of the sort. She’d never been in the lair of an angel before.4 It was rather disappointingly unremarkable. The only sign of his affiliations was the simple cross over his bed. (Nanny Ashtoreth peeked into the other room while waiting for the water to boil and quickly closed the door.)
“Thank you.” Brother Francis took his cup from Nanny Ashtoreth. She settled opposite him on the bench while Warlock slumbered on. “So, tell me about some of the children you’ve taken care of.”
“Oh, I’ve made the circuit, you know?” Nanny Ashtoreth scrambled to come up with a modern name. “I took care of Princess Diana when she was younger. What about you, have you always been a gardener?”
“I’ve done this and that, but I’ve always been good at making things grow.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I can’t believe he’s finally asleep.” She hadn’t intended to say the words, but it was such a relief. It had been such a long while since she had done this job, she had forgotten about how the children rarely slept through the night.
“I suppose that means he’s still not sleeping through the night?”
“No, he’ll stay down about 3-4 hours, but no longer. And this lady is one of the most annoying I’ve worked for in a long time.”
“His mother?” Nanny Ashtoreth laughed.
“If you could call her that. She carried him for nine months, popped him out and now she stops in to see him once a day and lectures me on how I care for him on a weekly basis.” She hadn’t intended to rant, but it felt really good.
“It must be an isolated job, being the primary caregiver for a child this young.” Nanny Ashtoreth shrugged.
“It’s part of the job. It pays well, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.”
“Still, just because you’re working doesn’t mean you stop needing time for yourself.”
“What, do you have any alternatives? It’s not like the house servants are falling over themselves to help out the poor sod who’s unfortunate enough to be the nanny.”
“Bring him down here. I may not know much about raising children, but I can at least offer conversation with an adult.”
Nanny Ashtoreth looked at Brother Francis, unsure of how to respond. This was not at all what she’d expected from an angel. Weren’t there supposed to be flaming swords and smiting of demons and that sort of thing? Instead she was being offered- it felt almost like, what was it the humans called it, friendship? This was very odd. It was definitely human though, and angels weren’t supposed to use human ideas. She was sure that was somewhere in the handbook. If it were human, it couldn’t hurt, right? And it would be so nice to have someone to talk to on this job. “Well, I did just get a lecture on how he needed more time outside.”
“See, perfect! You have a built in excuse!”
~*~
One afternoon tea turned to two, then three, and before Nanny Ashtoreth knew quite what had happened she was having tea with Brother Francis several times a week. It was all fact gathering, she told herself- knowing the enemy and all that. Thus far she had discovered that Brother Francis lived in a small, two room cottage that had covered itself in ivy since he had arrived. Plants seemed to lean towards him as he passed, and his cottage was a safe haven for every type of insect and animal within a 10-kilometre radius. For several days she had convinced herself that this couldn’t be Heaven’s representative, he was just a somewhat eccentric human. Then she remembered how he murmured to the aphids which plants he’d rather they eat and to the slugs which areas were safe to move around in. Still, though, it was difficult for Nanny Ashtoreth to think of him as a threat. He was so kind to little Warlock, and while Nanny Ashtoreth was a demon, she still had emotions and she had grown quite fond of the little Antichrist. Especially after he started sleeping through the night.
The weeks turned to months and the months to years. Warlock took his first steps in Brother Francis’ cottage. His first word was ‘garden’.5 It was only after Warlock began stringing words together in a coherent manner that Nanny Ashtoreth began to get concerned.
She went back to the notes she had taken during her briefing from Crowley.
By the age of one, the Antichrist should be adept at getting his way. By two, the world around him should be changing to suit his whims.
Nanny Ashtoreth sighed, tapping her finger on the page before waving her hand half-heartedly in the direction of the hidden cabinet it had come from. The pages rolled themselves up obediently and disappeared.
It meant nothing, she was sure, that little Warlock had nonchalantly rescued a worm from the gravel in the garden rather than lording his power over the slimy thing. And nothing, she was sure, that he refused to color on the walls of his bedroom, instead keeping neatly to the paper. And, of course, it was a mere technicality that the child, on receiving a tricycle for his third birthday, only rode it on the gravel paths in the garden.
Nanny Ashtoreth stood up and moved over to the window. In the garden below her, Brother Francis moved languidly among the flowers. In the room next to her, Warlock slept soundly, just as he did every day, from two to four. There was nothing else to do. Something was obviously wrong with the Antichrist, and if she didn’t do something about it, she would be in for a most unpleasant eternity. She would have to try to limit Warlock’s contact with Brother Francis.
~*~
After listening to four weeks of Warlock’s incessant whinging and two more lectures from Mrs. Dowling, Nanny Ashtoreth gave up. Either the child would develop into the Antichrist or he wouldn’t, but it didn’t seem to her that afternoons in the garden were going to make that much difference.6 Besides, she found she’d rather missed her tea with Brother Francis.
~*~
Years later, when it had become obvious to everyone7 that Warlock was not and never had been the Antichrist, Ashtoreth took perverse pleasure in having been the first to realize that something was wrong. Even Francis, with all his divine powers, had mistaken normality for the influence of heaven. Ashtoreth reminded him of it on a regular basis, during their weekly theological debates.8 It was a surefire way to end just about any argument.
1- That job had been a wonderful success, and had freed her from childcare duties for the Lords of Hell for just over a millennia. She’d gotten quite the commendation when Bishop Dunstan discovered, upon calling on the new king to rouse him for his coronation, that he was sharing his bed not only with his bride to be, but her mother as well.
2- Mrs. Dowling fired both the cook and the maid who had come in contact with the salty coffee, and agents from above filled both positions. They didn’t come into regular contact with Warlock, so in Nanny Ashtoreth’s mind it still made no difference, but Hell had never taken well to these kinds of mistakes, and the bad nanny was censured severely.
3- Which would be in approximately 10 years, 48 weeks, 3 days and 12 hours, if Crowley was to be believed.
4- Actually, she’d never met an angel before. They didn’t tend to hang around with the demons, and her basic demon training manual definitely described wings. Heaven must have evolved a bit in the intervening millennia.
5- According to Brother Francis. Nanny Ashtoreth still believed that “ga-en” could have been just about anything.
6- Except, of course, to her sanity.
7- Everyone who mattered, anyway.
8- Also known as tea.
Happy Holidays, toasty_fresh, from your Secret Author!