‘I have no notion.’
‘Conjure up the spirits of the dead, by the sound of it.’
He half twisted round in his seat, but it was now too dark to make out individual faces. ‘I wonder what Captain Hancock thinks. It must have been he who followed us.’
‘Is it of any consequence what he thinks?’
‘Not at all.’ Still, he was uncomfortable. It did not feel entirely proper to be out unescorted with another man’s intended wife, nor as a clergyman to be seen at such an event – which for all Shadwell’s protestations of piety trembled on the edge of heresy.
The one-time president of the Society of Antiquaries had now been joined on the platform by Quycke. The glow of the lanterns provided the only illumination, casting their shadows as wavering silhouettes on the wall behind them. The daylight and the noises of the street had gone. Together they lifted away the cloth from the table. A curious collection of objects was revealed – a glass bell jar, a pump-like contraption with a small spinning wheel, two cylinders with a crank handle between them, a thin glass tube, various tins and boxes, and a white paper marionette of a skeleton that Quycke lifted up and suspended from a brass stand. Shadwell unbuttoned his jacket and handed it to his secretary.
‘A natural force exists in the world,’ he began, ‘which the ancients taught themselves to harness, and which may be conjured into existence using this simple apparatus. The devices you see here have been manufactured according to the specifications laid out in a book in my possession that is more than a thousand years old.’ He opened a box. ‘First, I am going to place this piece of amber inside the jar.’ He held it aloft and showed it right and left.
It was difficult in the gloom to see exactly what he was doing, which heightened the sense that something mysterious was about to occur. People stood to try to get a better view, but were implored by those behind them to sit again. From what Fairfax could make out, Shadwell seemed to have attached the pump to the top of the bell jar. There was a repeated whoosh and creak of leather bellows. The spinning wheel turned and hummed. Shadwell stood behind the glass jar, undid his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves and with a flourish placed his hands upon it. At once a strange blue glow appeared, cold and ethereal, unlike anything Fairfax had ever seen, lunar soft and yet bright enough in the darkness to light up Shadwell’s face. Lady Durston clutched his arm. A great collective exclamation of surprise broke from the audience.
‘This is what the ancients called “electricity” – from the Greek word elektron meaning “amber”. This is the force that powered their world. Electricity was as real for them as the power of God is for us. Imagine, if you will, a house lit by this astonishing phenomenon – a street, a neighbourhood, an entire town!’ In the eerie gleam his cadaverous skull appeared supernatural, as if he were an emissary from the spirit world. ‘But that is only the beginning of its uses. In addition to light, this natural power can also be harnessed to provide motive force.’
He nodded to Quycke, who started to crank the handle, slowly at first but with increasing rapidity, until the cylinders were revolving at high speed. The machine began to emit a strange crackle, and then blue sparks appeared, arcing across the narrow space and filling the hall with the unmistakable aroma of sulphur. A woman screamed. A man shouted, ‘Satan’s here!’ and there was indeed something satanic in Shadwell’s smile as he once again placed his hands upon the glass. The jar glowed like a blue moon, and then – Fairfax afterwards conceded that he experienced a prickle of terror himself, all across his skin and down his spine – the paper skeleton began to twitch into life and jerk its limbs in a macabre dance. Somewhere behind him there was a crash, and a voice cried out, ‘She’s fainted!’ The door at the back slammed two or three times as people left. But most stayed in their places, gripped by the spectacle of the buzzing flying sparks, the luminous glass, Shadwell’s disembodied grinning skull and that ghostly swaying puppet of a corpse.
Shadwell said, ‘Is there a lady in the audience who would like to volunteer to experience the invigorating power of electricity?’ Nobody moved. ‘Come now! It is perfectly safe, I assure you. I have tried it myself and found the effects most therapeutic. Remember the remarkable lifespan of the ancients!’ Still the spectators remained in their places until, to Fairfax’s alarm, Sarah Durston rose to her feet.
‘No, Lady Durston,’ he implored her, and caught hold of her skirt. ‘This is not prudent.’
But she turned her back on him, grasped her skirt and tugged herself free. Her neighbours on the bench stood to let her by. She edged past them to the aisle and walked up to the platform. Shadwell clapped his hands in admiration and the applause was taken up by most of the spectators. He held out his hand to assist her up on to the stage.
‘May I ask you, madam, to stand upon that square of carpet precisely and not to move, and be so kind as to remove your hat and give it to my secretary, and unpin your hair?’ She did as he asked and shook out her tresses in the same gesture that had so struck Fairfax the previous day. ‘And now, if you please, raise your arms so they are level with your shoulders, and turn to face our friends here assembled.’ Again she did as she was instructed, smiling, entirely calm.
Quycke started winding the handle once more. After a short while, Shadwell picked up the long glass tube, which was glowing blue like a wand, and gently touched it to the side of Lady Durston’s skirt. At once her long red hair stiffened and began to rise and stand out around her head. Clad in her black riding habit, with her arms outstretched, her face pale and surrounded by what appeared to be a fiery halo, the effect was ghostly and dramatic. Fairfax was mesmerised. Gasps and applause broke out across the hall.
‘And now,’ said Shadwell, ‘which gallant gentleman will step forward to share the stage with this spirited lady?’
For long moments nobody spoke. Fairfax stared at Sarah Durston – shimmering, or so it seemed to him, like some ethereal vision, her breast rising and falling as if the electric force was drawing its life from her. And then to his amazement, his right hand seemed to ascend of its own volition and he heard himself saying, ‘I shall.’
‘Well done, sir!’
He regretted it at once, but by then he was already halfway to his feet, drawing murmurs of surprise from those around him, which gradually turned into a general round of clapping for his good sportsmanship – and he a priest! As he made his way to the aisle and approached the platform, someone called out, ‘Well done, Father!’
Quycke put out a firm hand to help him up. Shadwell, who was leading the applause, smiled at him and bowed before turning to the audience and holding up his hands for silence. ‘I have performed this demonstration many times, but never before with a man of the cloth! What could be more respectable, ladies and gentlemen, than if I invite this most upstanding of citizens to claim from the Electrifying Venus a chaste kiss? If I might ask you, sir, to face the lady and carefully to bring your lips into contact with hers?’
He placed his hand in the centre of Fairfax’s back and gently pushed him forward, despite the priest’s mild protests: ‘Oh no, sir, no, really …’
Out of the corner of his eye Fairfax could see a large shadow that might well have been Hancock standing and watching him intently. Sarah Durston, without altering her pose, shuffled carefully round to face him, like a clockwork toy doll. Her expression was still amused. She tilted her head coquettishly and offered him her lips. He ceased to resist. Time seemed to slow as he stretched towards her. A yard became feet, feet became inches, and then the gap between them vanished altogether.
The instant their lips made contact, there was a crackle and a flash of blue. He felt a sharp pain, cried out and took a pace back. The audience gasped. He put his hand to his mouth and stared at her. The spectacle they presented must have been at once alarming and comic. People began to laugh. He turned and looked at them in bewilderment, which only made them laugh harder.
In the midst of all this amusement, it was not at first apparent that a separate co
mmotion had arisen. At the rear of the hall, doors were banging, dogs barking, men shouting. Quycke cupped his hand to his forehead, peered into the shadows and called out a warning to Shadwell. Fairfax glanced over the turning heads to see a pair of sheriffs thrusting through the audience, another official in uniform behind them – bearded, pale-faced, a splash of gold on his sleeve indicating his rank.
‘This assembly is illegal!’ He stood in the centre of the hall. ‘Open the shutters! I have a warrant for the arrest of Dr Nicholas Shadwell!’
Shadwell moved with remarkable agility for a man of his age and evident poor health. He vaulted from the platform and lunged for the nearby side door. But in the few moments it took him to reach the exit, yet another sheriff with a rearing, snapping dog had appeared in the door frame to block his escape. Hands were laid upon him, from front and back, and his wrists were manacled behind him. Throughout all this he maintained a stream of complaints in his querulous, educated voice – ‘This is quite unlawful … There is no need to be so rough … I shall hold you personally responsible for the security of my apparatus …’ – and then he was marched down the aisle with Quycke behind him. As he was escorted out, he cast over his shoulder a look of bitter reproach at Fairfax, as if he held not just the institution of the Church but the young priest himself personally responsible for his treatment.
By the time he had been removed from the hall, the last of the shutters had been opened and the illusion of the ancients’ magic had vanished like a dream at daybreak. Only the few inert pieces of equipment were left behind on stage, along with the astonished figure of Christopher Fairfax, and Sarah Durston, her mane of red hair no longer stiffened by the mysterious force of electricity, but returned to its natural shape.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Captain Hancock learns the secret
FAIRFAX’S MOUTH THROBBED as if it had been stung or bitten. He wiped his forefinger along his lips then brought it up close to his eyes to inspect it. He half expected it to be coated in some luminous blue residue. The ache wasn’t painful; rather it seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heart, which – now that he placed his hand upon it – felt somewhat engorged even though he wasn’t breathless. It was thumping in the way it did after he had been startled or had narrowly missed a fall. What in the name of Heaven had been done to him?
Oblivious to the hubbub in the hall, he went over to the table and began carefully examining Shadwell’s apparatus, picking up the various pieces of metal and glass, turning the glass tubes and metal cylinders around and upside down, as if by a process of deduction he could somehow penetrate the mystery of what had just occurred. From these incongruous objects had been conjured the fiery blue substance that, according to Shadwell, had powered the ancients’ world. Now that the demonstration was over, it seemed impossible, and yet he had not merely witnessed the phenomenon, he had experienced it; tasted it, even – the hard metallic flavour of electricity conveyed upon the soft lips of Sarah Durston.
He wondered where she was. He looked around for her and saw her standing alone in the centre of the crowded room, cradling the saddlebag to her breast, watching him. He jumped down from the stage.
‘Lady Durston, I’m sorry – I fear my wits must have been fried to such an extent I have quite forgotten my manners. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, quite well. I felt nothing more than a curious tingling in my limbs and hair, not at all unpleasant.’
‘The feeling has now passed?’
‘Entirely. You seemed to suffer more than I.’
‘I can feel the throb of my heart.’ He brushed his hand through his hair, a gesture he often used to deflect attention from his embarrassment. ‘Forgive me for any unwanted intimacy. I had no conception of what would be demanded of me when I agreed to go on stage. If I had, I should have refused to participate.’
‘My dear Mr Fairfax, don’t say that!’ She smiled at him. ‘I would not have missed it for the world! Although I doubt Captain Hancock will ever forgive us.’
Fairfax looked to the spot where he thought he had last seen Hancock. People were milling around. ‘Where is he?’
‘I believe he left straight after poor Dr Shadwell. Now no one is being allowed to depart till they have provided the sheriffs with their name and address and an account of what they saw.’
At the prospect of Bishop Pole being informed of his attendance – and not merely his attendance; his active participation – he felt a lurch of panic. ‘We should find the captain quickly.’
‘Why?’
He did not answer, but took her arm and steered her through the crowd. He noticed how some people drew away as they approached, as if they feared coming into contact with the couple contaminated by the electricity. Others tried to detain him to seek his reassurance. They were the town’s more respectable citizens by the look of them – traders, freeholders: ambitious, crafty people with enquiring minds who now had cause to regret their curiosity. They had only come out of casual interest to hear Shadwell speak. Did he think they would be prosecuted? Fined? Would they – and clearly this alarmed them most of all – be investigated for heresy by the bishop’s men from Exeter?
‘Stay calm,’ he advised them, although in truth he was anything but calm himself. ‘There is nothing to fear. If you’d be kind enough to let us through, I shall sort the matter.’
‘None of us has done anything wrong …’
‘We have merely attended a public lecture …’
He nodded reassuringly. ‘Once the facts are known, the matter will go no further, I am sure.’
‘Ye will explain all this to the bishop, Father?’
‘Let us pass and I shall speak to him directly.’
‘We are godly, Christian people.’
‘Yes, yes, I can see that.’
They reached the front of the queue. A pair of sheriffs manned the door. The younger of the two sat at the small table Quycke had used to collect the admission money. He was writing down the names of each person waiting to leave. The other guarded the exit with a slavering yellow-eyed dog at the end of a short chain.
‘Names and addresses?’ He dipped his pen in the ink pot.
‘I am Father Christopher Fairfax, temporarily serving as priest-in-charge at St George’s, Addicott. And this,’ he added, conscious of sounding like Hancock, ‘is Lady Sarah Durston of Durston Court.’
The young sheriff made a laborious note, his pen scratching across the rough surface of the paper. He seemed determined not to be at all impressed by their titles. ‘Did ye witness any action this afternoon that might constitute the crime of heresy?’
‘No.’
‘Madam?’
‘No.’ She transferred her bag from one hand to the other and brushed away a strand of hair.
The sheriff stared at them. He tapped the end of his pen against his teeth, enjoying his moment of power. ‘Others tell a different story.’
Fairfax said, ‘Then the lecture they attended was different to the one we heard. Is this why Dr Shadwell was arrested – for heresy?’
‘That is not my place to say.’
‘Where has he been taken?’
‘He will be up before the justices this afternoon, and will be remanded to prison to await trial at the bishop’s court in Exeter.’
‘In that case I must make a report to Bishop Pole at once.’ He moved towards the door, but the dog growled and bared its teeth and he was obliged to step back.
‘Hold on, Father, not so fast. We has to make sure no evidence is removed. What’s in her ladyship’s bag?’
‘A broken vase,’ she said. ‘I brought it in to town to see if it could be mended.’
‘Show me, please.’
Fairfax felt his heart begin to pound again. Sarah balanced the bag awkwardly on her knee and started to unfasten the straps. He put out his hand and stopped her. ‘This is an insult not just to Lady Durston but to my own position. And you claim to be investigating an offence against the Church? The bishop will hear about this
as well!’
‘It is of no consequence,’ said Sarah. ‘If the officer insists on seeing it, I can show him.’
‘Let it be, Jack,’ said the older sheriff with the dog. ‘I cannot vouch for the father, but I knew Lady Durston’s late husband, God rest his soul, and I’m sure his widow would never break the law.’ He gestured to them to leave.
‘But ye’ll be hearing from us again,’ the young one called after them, in a final flourish of official dignity. ‘Ye may depend upon it.’
They emerged into the April afternoon just before three o’clock. A couple of shopkeepers in leather aprons were out on the wooden sidewalks, already putting up their shutters in readiness for the end of the working day. Otherwise the centre of the town was quiet. Presumably people were either oblivious to what was going on inside the Corn Exchange or choosing to keep clear of it. At the end of the street, rising above the town’s wall, the bright green hump of a hill was dotted with black and white cattle. That was the toll road to Exeter, and it crossed Fairfax’s mind that his wisest course would be to leave Axford at once, ride directly to the cathedral and confess everything to the bishop before a report of what had occurred could reach him. He ran his tongue around his lips. The metallic sensation in his mouth still lingered faintly. I cannot leave, he thought: I am bewitched.
He asked, ‘Where might we find Captain Hancock?’
‘Why this urgent desire to speak with the captain?’
‘He is a man of influence in the town, is he not? If we could enlist his help, we might yet be able to speak to Dr Shadwell.’
She looked at him, surprised. ‘Is such a thing wise?’
The Second Sleep Page 15