The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl

by Theodora Goss

  From Penzance, they had taken a hired carriage to Kyllion Keep. The carriage had driven along a winding country road for a long time—too long for Alice, who had felt nauseous from the motion. The road had climbed steeply through a little town that Helen told her was Marazion. Then, they had drawn up to the ruins of a medieval fortress. Nothing of it now stood except a few stone walls, and one square tower that had formed its central fortification. That was the keep, about the size of a London house, built all of stone and looking almost impregnable. Around it was a moat with a little water at the bottom and a tangle of weeds growing out of it, chiefly stinging nettles, as Alice learned when she had accidentally brushed up against one.

  Inside, the keep was equally forbidding. It lacked modern conveniences—there was no running water, only a well from which one could pump water in a small room off the kitchen, and the water closet was of the most primitive sort. The rooms that had been inhabited by Professor Trelawny himself were well furnished. His study, in particular, was fascinating, with Egyptian artifacts scattered on every surface. There were jars, both intact and in shards, as well as small statues, weapons of various sorts, a collection of papyrus scrolls… So many items that it would have taken Alice hours to look through them. But the other chambers were large, bare, and gloomy.

  “Every penny my father could spare, he spent on his Egyptian excavations,” Margaret had explained on that first afternoon. Her voice as she said it was expressionless, but Alice wondered if that had made her angry. After all, those expeditions must have cost a great deal of money. Perhaps Margaret would have preferred some furniture for the other rooms, or paintings for the walls, or clothing for herself? Now, of course, she could do whatever she liked with his money and the keep itself. Evidently, she had chosen to spend it on resurrecting Queen Tera and conquering the world, starting with England.

  This was the morning of the second day since they had arrived, and someone—or something—was scratching at the door. “I’m coming, Bast,” said Alice. It must be Bast. Who else would be scratching so persistently, and so close to the floor? She went to the door and opened it. Yes, there was Queen Tera’s cat, who slipped right in and wove herself around Alice’s ankle.

  The first thing Queen Tera had done once they were settled into the keep was go through the artifacts Professor Trelawny had brought back from Egypt. Among them were a number of items from her tomb, including the mummy cat Alice had seen in the vision Helen had conjured up over breakfast in the headquarters of the Order of the Golden Dawn, now defunct because its leaders were piles of ash.

  “Bast!” she had exclaimed when she saw it. “My Bastet. If only… But perhaps your spirit hovers around you, as my spirit hovered around me in my long sleep. Margaret, is any of the oil left from the ceremony?”

  “A little.” Margaret had looked at Queen Tera dubiously. “But I thought you might want to keep it for emergencies. You told me it’s difficult to make.”

  “Indeed.” Queen Tera had placed the mummy cat on the stone floor of the study. “It is pressed from the seeds of seven different plants, only one of which grows in your country. Eventually, we shall have more made, but what remains in that jar, we shall use now. I have lost everything—Egypt, my temple, my priestesses. But I can at least have my cat! To bring Bastet back to life, we need a sacrifice. What do you have that is expendable?”

  “I’ll find something,” said Helen, turning and leaving the room. Alice had wondered where she was going.

  Queen Tera had poured the last of the oil from a ceramic jar shaped like a cow’s head into a brass bowl that Margaret had taken from one of the many glass-fronted cabinets. Then, kneeling by it, she had raised the energic waves—they sparkled and flashed, as they had at the British Museum the day before, around the corpse of the mummy cat.

  By that time, Helen had returned, holding a young rabbit by the ears. It hung limp from her hand, as though stunned. Had she somehow mesmerized it? Alice could not help the prickle of tears that came to her eyes. Of course she had helped Mrs. Poole skin and butcher a hare before, for stews and pies. But this one was so young and vulnerable!

  The white, heatless energic fire had consumed the mummy wrappings. Out of that flame had walked a beautiful black cat—the same cat she was currently scratching under the chin. Bastet meowed—clearly, she wanted something to eat. Cats were cats, even if they were two thousand years old! Bast was certainly older than Alpha and Omega, even if you did not count her millennia of sleep, but she reminded Alice of the Athena Club cats and Mrs. Poole’s kitchen.

  The second thing Queen Tera had done was look at Helen critically. “You have the power in you—you and your daughter. I felt it when you raised me from my sleep. How much of it can you use?”

  “Only a little,” said Helen, with more humility than Alice had seen her display thus far. “Illusions, mostly. And I can do this.” She had put her hands close together, about an inch apart. Sparks had shot between her fingers, startling Alice. “But that is all. And even that, I have worked years to attain.”

  Tera had shaken her head. “I will teach you how to use your abilities so that you can draw upon the true energic powers of the Earth. Now you are using only the power of your own body, your own mind. That is why you can do so little. You must draw upon the great body, the great mind, of the Earth itself—of Geb who lies below us, and Nut who stretches above. There is power in the stones and soil, in the grass and trees, in the clouds above, even in the stars. Here, we can draw power from the ocean, with its restless waves. I have not seen such an ocean before—it fills me with longing for I know not what. First we will conquer this England of yours. That will not be difficult. And then we shall establish an empire such as the world has not known since Octavian. Margaret, what else did your father loot from my tomb? Show me the rest of the artifacts.”

  “How can she speak English so well?” Alice had whispered to her mother. “I thought you said she could speak Egyptian and Greek—but English didn’t even exist, did it, when she was mummified?”

  “Quiet, Lydia,” Helen had replied in a low voice. “Tera might hear you and be insulted. Usually after death, individual consciousness returns to the energic power of the universe, which is like a great ocean. But not Tera’s—somehow, and I have to confess that I don’t understand all the details, her consciousness was bound to her tomb. The priestesses of Isis, at least those who were on her side, planned that if she died in the battle against Augustus, they would resurrect her later to fight the Roman occupation—that was why they left all the necessary implements and instructions for the ritual in her burial chamber. But they were never able to. She was betrayed by one of her own priestesses, who refused to fight when the Roman soldiers came. At least this is what Margaret told me. The Roman victory was too complete: The temple was requisitioned for barracks, the order was disbanded, and the priestesses were scattered to the corners of the known world. Tera’s consciousness waited in her tomb for almost two thousand years. It sensed Margaret’s presence even before she stumbled over the door in the sand. It summoned her—Margaret told me that it was like being called indoors by her nursemaid when she was a child after a day of playing on the rocks of Kyllion Cove. And when she put on the scarab necklace—well, it functions as a sort of conduit, like a telegraph wire. But a conduit of energic waves. Tera spoke to her through the necklace. She told her how to interpret the hieroglyphs correctly, how to enact the ritual—and what to leave out so that her father would not be able to enact it correctly. The conduit worked both ways. She has been inside Margaret’s mind for months. It must be strange for Margaret now, not having that connection.”

  “But then…” Alice did not want to be quiet. She wanted to know what was going on. Anyway, Tera was not paying attention to them. She was sorting through the artifacts that had come from her tomb, looking for clothing, jewelry, small pots and jars of various sorts that seemed to contain cosmetics. “Was this your plan all along? Yours and Miss Trelawny’s?” All that time he
r mother had obeyed Moriarty, was she planning his fiery death? And what about Margaret Trelawny’s father and fiancé? “When Professor Trelawny died—”

  “You don’t think Margaret was going to allow her father to raise Tera from the dead, do you? That would not have done at all. She knew Moriarty through her father—once or twice, Moriarty had helped him smuggle valuable artifacts out of Egypt. Moriarty went to Professor Trelawny’s funeral, and I accompanied him. That was where I met Margaret. Tera’s consciousness in her sensed my mesmeric abilities. After the funeral, at a somber tea in the church refectory, she came up to me and whispered, “How would you like to rule the world?” That was the beginning of our collaboration. Moriarty had already formed his Order of the Golden Dawn and begun infiltrating the government. And he was already familiar with mesmeric power from his friendship with my father. It was easy enough to lead him to the idea of the ritual. He was a fool—a useful fool for a while. We used him and his ridiculous order until he was no longer needed. That’s all.”

  “But are we still kidnapping Queen Victoria?” Alice asked doubtfully.

  “Of course. She’s very old, much too old and frail to be queen. We want someone strong, someone who can build up the British Empire. Tera will rule for a while as Victoria, but once we have consolidated our power, Victoria will die in a convincing and innocuous way, and Tera will take her place as Queen and Empress. How she does that will depend on the specific circumstances. Will we need to assassinate the Crown Prince, or will he simply abdicate? That is still to be decided. As Moriarty discovered, Prince Edward has very little support in the government—I have no doubt the ministers and members of parliament would welcome a strong monarch. Moriarty had already started bringing them to his side, whether by persuasion, bribery, or blackmail—his efforts will be useful to us. What he began, we can continue by the judicious application of fear and mesmerism. Once Tera holds the reins of power, the world will see a ruler the likes of which it has never known. She will revitalize our empire in a way Moriarty would never have understood.”

  “And what will you do with Her Majesty?” Alice asked. She was afraid to hear the answer.

  “Keep her here, in the dungeon,” said Helen. “For a while, at least, until she is no longer needed. Of course we shall treat her well—no harm will come to her until absolutely necessary. We will, eventually, need a convincing corpse.”

  Alice had not known what to say. She has simply shuddered at the cold, precise way in which Helen had described this horrifying plan. She must try to stop it—but how?

  “And you, Lydia.” Tera had turned to look at Alice, who trembled just a little in her boots. The Egyptian queen was neither large nor imposing. In Soho, she had put on one of Margaret’s dresses, which covered her from neck to toes in black crepe. Alice could not help thinking of her as a sort of ghost. The scarab necklace was still around her neck, over the bodice. Although there were wrinkles under her eyes and over her forehead, she certainly did not look two thousand years old. She moved with the ease and elasticity of a young woman. Nevertheless, Alice could not forget how she had blasted Justine with nothing but a pointed finger and the power of her mind.

  “It is a beautiful name, Lydia. I always liked the Lydians. They were an ancient, gracious people, with beautiful art and an artistic approach to life. For you, I shall reestablish the temple of Isis here in this cold, remote island”—by which Alice assumed she meant England—“and gather young women from all over the world to study the ancient sciences we knew. You shall be the first among them. I see great power in you, as in your mother. Does this please you, Helen? Would you like this for your daughter, as for yourself?”

  “Yes, Tera,” her mother had replied. “It is what I have wanted all my life—to experience true power, rather than the shadow of it. I want Lydia to have that as well.”

  Queen Tera nodded. “Good. Now let us plan the conquest of this country. When it is in my power, as Egypt once was—although foolishly I gave that power to my husband and then my daughter, who destroyed my homeland—then we shall conquer the barbaric countries, this France and Germany of yours. After that, we shall bring the ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean and in Africa under our sway. And this new continent of America, it intrigues me. Eventually it too shall bow down to us.”

  “Won’t a lot of people die, with all that conquering?” Alice had ventured to ask.

  “People always die in war, child,” Queen Tera had answered. “It is the way of the world. Now go and do whatever children do for amusement in this new era. We three must make our plans.”

  Bast meowed more urgently, bringing Alice out of her reverie. Yes, she would need to feed the cat, and not just the cat. But first, she must determine the whereabouts of Mrs. Polgarth—she did not want that woman to see what she was about to do.

  What was Mrs. Polgarth, if not exactly a housekeeper? The keepkeeper? She came in every morning from Perranuthnoe on the milk and egg wagon to do the cleaning, and walked back to town after she was done for the day, so she was really more of a charwoman than a housekeeper—she did not have the dignity or authority of Mrs. Poole. Since they had arrived, she had been required to cook as well, which she grumbled about continually. Alice, with nothing else to do, had started helping her.

  “You’re a useful body,” Mrs. Polgarth had said. “Unlike those fine ladies up there, working in the study all day. That Egyptian lady Miss Trelawny has visiting—she’s so small, like a girl of fifteen although she’s lost her hair so she can’t be young. She’s fifty if she’s a day. But somehow, she frightens me. I think it’s her eyes! They seem as old as time itself.”

  Alice walked out onto the landing while Bast wove around her ankles. She could hear Mrs. Polgarth in the hall below, singing something—probably a traditional Cornish ballad—while she swept the stairs.

  BEATRICE: Gilbert and Sullivan. Mrs. Polgarth has a passion for light opera and regularly goes to productions in Truro.

  CATHERINE: How do you always know these trivial things about people?

  BEATRICE: They are not trivial, and because I ask.

  “Come on,” Alice said to the black cat. “You know where I’m going, don’t you?” She picked up the blanket she had folded neatly that morning from the chair where she had placed it. That, a rather uncomfortable iron bed, and a washstand were the only furniture in her room.

  Bast did indeed know, because the cat preceded her down the stone staircase to the ground floor. “Good morning, my dear,” Mrs. Polgarth called out. “I’m doing sweeping and dusting. Do you need me to find you something to eat, or will you be all right by yourself?” She had a singsong accent, more pleasant to the ear than the harsh tones of London, although Alice sometimes found it hard to understand.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Polgarth,” she said. “I know where everything is.” It would be easier if the housekeeper was not there.

  In the great stone kitchen, with its enormous fireplace and small iron stove, she found the bottle of milk and a small jug of cream that Mrs. Polgarth had brought that morning. She poured some of the cream into a bowl for Bast. Then she began to gather what she could—the end of a loaf of brown bread, some soft cheese, and an apple. When she was halfway through spreading the cheese on one slice, Mrs. Polgarth came in with the broom. Alice, startled to see her, almost dropped the knife.

  “I’m almost done with the first floor, love. And the second floor won’t take long. The hard part is the professor’s study, and now that Miss Trelawny is in there all the time with your mum and that foreign lady, I can’t do the room as it ought to be done anyway. I have time to make you a proper sandwich if you like. Was breakfast not enough for you? I can make a bigger pot of porridge tomorrow, or perhaps you’d prefer something more substantial? I can fry up some eggs and pilchards. You’re such a slip of a thing. Go on, take whatever you’d like, it will put some meat on your bones!”

  “I thought I would make a picnic for myself,” said Alice, with relief that Mrs. Pol
garth had jumped to the wrong conclusion. “My mother and Miss Trelawny are so busy they don’t have time for me. So I thought I would explore the castle. You know, the ruined part.”

  “That’s a good idea—children should be outdoors until dusk, my gran always used to say. But bread and cheese is not enough of a meal for a growing girl. Here, take one of these buns—we make them special here in Cornwall. They’re yellow from saffron, and stuffed with currants. You probably haven’t seen anything like this, coming from the big city. I made a batch for tea later today—not that the ladies upstairs eat much. And Miss Tera, the Egyptian lady, eats least of all! Hardly anything touched on her plate… I’ll put it all in a basket of some sort for you, shall I? Or here, take my marketing bag. That will be easier to carry. I do wish there was another child here for you to play with. It’s a gloomy old place, ain’t it?”

  If Mrs. Polgarth had known the plot being hatched upstairs, how shocked she would have been! Could Alice ask Mrs. Polgarth to help her in some way? But how? If she told Mrs. Polgarth what was really going on, that Miss Trelawny and her houseguests were planning to kidnap the Queen and conquer England, the housekeeper would not believe her. Even if she did, what could Mrs. Polgarth do? Alice imagined her walking into the local police station and telling the constable on duty that the resurrected mummy of an ancient Egyptian queen was planning to kidnap Queen Victoria and take over the British Empire. It would never work. No, there was no one here who could help her. She would have to rely on herself.

  She walked out the kitchen door, which led to what had probably once been a garden but was now overgrown with weeds. Turning right, she followed the stone wall of the keep. The ruins of the old castle were surrounded by the moat she had seen yesterday. Walking beside it, she could see the weeds growing in the mud at its bottom—nettles, small purple thistles, the white umbels of wild carrot. It was pretty but forbidding. At least if there had been a proper moat, Alice could have swum across it! But there was no way across that tangle of vegetation. She imagined there were probably snakes slithering around down there, and frogs hopping about on the damp bottom. She walked along the wall and turned a corner. On that side, hawthorns and blackberry bushes grew over the ruins and close to the wall of the keep. Yesterday, underneath a particularly prickly patch, she had discovered a small window. It was low down, close to the ground, and covered with bars.