Realms of Fire

by Sharon K Gilbert

  The formal interview took place on the eleventh of September inside the cheerful snug of Grantchester’s Green Man Public House, a stone’s throw from the idyllic banks of the River Cam. Albus Flint drank an odd-smelling herbal tea, whilst Lionel sipped warm ale before the pleasant fire, confident of his prospects. Flint opened by cautioning the eager applicant that one place, and one place only, remained on the roster of six interns and that two other applicants were due to arrive within the hour.

  “You are how old, Mr. Wentworth?”

  “Twenty-one, come the third of December.”

  “I see. Well, despite your youth, you have excellent qualifications, Mr. Wentworth. Classes in maths and chemistry, as well as two in geology. But are you sure this endeavour is a good fit for you? It will require physical exertion, long hours, and a sober mind,” the solicitor explained from his oak chair. “There must be no doubt regarding your desire to join us. Our Society demands sacrifices of all its members; even our interns.”

  “Absolutely no doubt, sir,” Wentworth insisted, completely ignoring the caution.

  “You willingly choose to participate? It is a decision made from free will?”

  Lionel bristled at the man’s annoying persistence. “Yes, of course I want to join! I’d never have come if I didn’t want to be a part of this project, Mr. Flint. Do you think me flippant?”

  The solicitor gazed at his prey thoughtfully. “I mean no disrespect, Mr. Wentworth, but legal requirements must be met, you know. Now, the following is a standard question, so please take no offence. Is money your only reason for applying to the Society?”

  Despite the innocent context, Lionel sensed a trap, and he decided to avoid it by offering the lawyer full truth.

  “I shan’t lie to you, Mr. Flint. It’s certainly part of my reason. As you can tell from my resumé, my father’s quite well off—a retired QC, you know—but my allowance at college sometimes makes the odd pleasure somewhat difficult to obtain. Three hundred pounds would go a long way towards remedying that deficit.”

  “When you say ‘odd pleasure’, I take it you mean drink, Mr. Wentworth?”

  “A glass now and then never hurt anyone,” the lanky student argued.

  “True, but what of women? Are they, also, amongst your ‘odd pleasures’, Mr. Wentworth? Might you enjoy the soft seductions of ladies, sir? Or are there other, more unusual temptations in your repertoire?”

  Lionel paused before answering. The obvious trap regarding money was a ruse to lead him into another. He felt an unsettling sensation; as though invisible hands ran along his face and shoulders, examining him. Suddenly, the brash young man felt quite naked before the solicitor’s piercing gaze.

  With a false laugh, he answered in a strained voice. “I find ladies pleasantly distracting, Mr. Flint. What red-blooded man doesn’t?”

  “Ah, yes red blood,” Flint repeated, licking his thin lips. “Blood makes men do very peculiar things, does it not, Mr. Wentworth? However, I’m not here to judge. I seek only to confirm your loyalty to the Society and our mission. You are, after all, a healthy young man, are you not, Mr. Wentworth? We wouldn’t want your energies siphoned off, if you understand my meaning. Blood and its associated tissues must remain pure. Besides, conducting these surveys requires long hours of taxing work. Not all of it physical. Most is mental, a strain of concentration and introspection, if you will. I shouldn’t want you to be distracted by trivialities of the flesh.”

  “I assure you, sir: trivialities will play no part in my activities,” he replied, intentionally omitting ‘of the flesh’.

  The inquisitor actually smiled, the crooked Jack-o-Lantern curve sending an icy shiver down Wentworth’s spine. “I’m very glad to hear it,” said Flint. “There is, of course, one other concern. Gambling is rife in your generation, I fear, Mr. Wentworth. Might that vice also be numbered amongst your off-campus pleasures?”

  In truth, Lionel loved to gamble, and he owed Kip Wilson fifty pounds, but he had no intention of revealing what might be perceived as a character flaw to such a disquietingly nosy little man.

  “No, sir,” Lionel answered proudly. “No gambling problems at all. Such dark pursuits would break my poor mother’s heart, Mr. Flint.”

  “An obedient son who loves his mother. How very English of you,” Flint replied with another twisted smirk, as though he saw past the student’s false reply and into the innermost parts of his crooked soul. “I’m sure your mother is exceedingly proud of you, Mr. Wentworth.”

  In truth, Lionel’s ever-forgiving mother had suffered a nervous breakdown that spring; due, in large part, to worry over her son’s life choices. Only recently, after spending time in a Fulham asylum, had she returned to her former self.

  Flint’s black eyes blinked mechanically as he sipped the dreadful-smelling tea. It seemed to Lionel that the lugubrious solicitor bore an uncanny resemblance to a carrion crow, and he recalled the peculiar border on the Blackstone solicitation poster.

  “Tell me, Mr. Wentworth,” the corvine examiner continued languidly, “have you completed and signed all the forms you were given by Mr. Vermis?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I say, has it grown hot of a sudden?” asked the student, wiping beads of sweat from his upper lip.

  “It’s quite comfortable,” Flint replied icily. “The forms?”

  Lionel found his thoughts growing clouded, but managed to hand the lawyer three pages of information. These included a lengthy family history, an exhaustive if not intrusive health questionnaire, a list of all courses taken at Trinity College, and the name of his ‘next of kin’; an odd question, Wentworth thought, but then who was he to judge?

  The eccentric Albus Flint perused the pages quickly and then added them to a large leather valise, snapping it shut with a satisfied grin. “All appears to be in order,” the man declared.

  “Am I accepted, then?” asked Wentworth anxiously, thinking only of the money.

  “Not yet. First, you must answer three more questions.”

  “Only three?” Lionel sang back with feigned confidence. “Fire away, sir.”

  Albus Lucius Flint squared his thin shoulders, and the knobby fingers of his left hand twitched and stretched into a series of impossible shapes. He cleared his scrawny throat, making an odd croaking sound, as though swallowing a live toad.

  “Very well, then. To begin, Mr. Wentworth, are you a particularly religious man?”

  This took the smug student by surprise. Why would a scientific society care a smidge whether or not he worshipped God, or gods, or even himself for that matter?

  “I’m not sure what you mean by religious, Mr. Flint. I’m not much of church-goer. Never saw the need for all that hocus pocus.”

  “No, no, that isn’t quite what I asked. I do not enquire regarding any formal practices, but as regards your personal beliefs, Mr. Wentworth. For instance, do you ascribe to the notion of salvation through faith? Have you been, as they say, washed in the blood?”

  Lionel laughed a bit too loudly, and he slapped the oak table. “Washed in the blood! Salvation? Do tell me I haven’t misjudged you, Mr. Flint. I hope you’re not with one of those Bible-thumping tract societies or a doomsayer from the foolish Pentecostals or Adventists! If so, we may conclude our business now, and I’ll return to Cambridge a poorer but wiser man.”

  “Oh, I am hardly that,” the interlocutor replied quietly as he stirred a sachet of something black and odorous into a freshly poured cup of tea. “My associations are far older than Adventists or tract societies, Mr. Wentworth. Far older than you can imagine. One might even call them primordial.”

  “Then, perhaps I should tell you the truth, Mr. Flint, and if it loses me the job, so be it,” Wentworth bluffed. “To say I disdain the Church of England is understatement, but I attend their paltry services whenever I’m in London, just to please my parents. It isn’t that I prefer other bran
ches of the faith. Roman rituals hold no magical enticements, nor do the Lutherans. In truth, I consider all formal religious institutions a vanity of chains, forged from man-derived, superstitious claptrap. These comforting chains serve no other purpose than to weigh man down and prevent him from achieving his rightful, evolutionary goals. As with our ancestors the apes, we seek to rise higher, but the golden millstones of popes and priests would grind us into dust beneath their well-shod feet.”

  “Exceedingly well put,” Flint replied, clearly pleased. “I’d thought you might be a man of clear thinking, Mr. Wentworth. You’ll go far with such a progressive attitude.” Flint then made a bold checkmark in the ‘plus’ category on Wentworth’s score card.

  Next, the stone-faced solicitor posed a somewhat mundane, if not entirely unexpected query. “Why do you wish to join our team, Mr. Wentworth? If not entirely for the money, as you’ve implied, then what else motivates you?”

  Lionel finished the ale and smiled, his lean face alight with smug confidence. He’d practised this speech, having felt certain the question would arise, and therefore spun a buoyant, even prosaic thread of lengthy (though not entirely honest) claims, regarding his desire to explore ancient civilisations and expand the knowledge-base of England’s ever-widening circle of callus-handed, antiquarian diggers. He waxed eloquent on the virtues of rigorous, scientific endeavour and ended with a strong hint about a keen interest in the fertile, and very stimulating, villages surrounding Paris; wondering aloud if the Society might have an opening in such educational venues. He even claimed to speak French with the flowery fluency of a Voltaire or Diderot—a broad stretch of the truth at best.

  The saturnine interviewer’s pale lips twisted into that crooked smile once more. “Ah, such a talent would be most convenient, Mr. Wentworth! There is a site near a sleepy little village called Goussainville that might suit your skills and aspirations. It sits half an hour’s drive northeast of Paris, and is but a ten-minute ride from Château Rothesay, where our hostess, the Duchess of Branham, currently resides. Should you join our company, I shall add your name to a very short waiting list, compiled in the event that a French volunteer becomes ill or incapacitated for some, uh, unforeseen reason.”

  Flint’s throat made a birdlike cackling sound as he pronounced the word ‘unforeseen’, and his black eyes blinked thrice in the same mechanical fashion as before. Despite the very odd display, Lionel nodded politely, muttering something to the effect of ‘Ah, yes, I see,’ and ‘Quite sensible’; not wishing to appear too eager for the bawdy pleasures of Parisian nightlife.

  His measured restraint earned him a second, bold checkmark.

  Finally, the cadaverous gentleman in the funereal suit, leaned forward; waxwork hands steepled in a pyramid of white flesh, black eyes fixed upon his prey as he whispered in a voice so deathly cold that it chilled the student to the very marrow of his greedy bones.

  “Mr. Wentworth, are you easily frightened?”

  This final word actually echoed, as though provided with some theatrical effect; and it seemed to Wentworth that the solicitor’s slack face performed a series of jerking tremors, trying to maintain corporeality. As if he were not quite a part of this world. The strange man’s pupils dilated into monstrous pools of eddying black as he spoke, and he pronounced ‘frightened’ with a rolled ‘r’, rhythmically drawn out as though the word itself had magical power to instill abject terror.

  Which it did.

  Never before, had Wentworth felt so cold a sensation course through his body. It took every ounce of courage to maintain an impassive affect to his facial muscles, but maintain it he did, as he declared in a voice a bit too loud for the modest enclosure of the pub’s snug.

  “Sir, I am frightened by nothing and no one! As I’ve already told you, superstition has no place in the mind of a modern thinker. If I meet something unknown to me, then I rejoice in it, Mr. Flint. I do not shrink!”

  Flint’s thin lips spread apart into a square, and he laughed in that peculiar, avian manner at the student’s bravura. A third checkmark was entered on the interview form.

  He then presented Lionel with a three-page, handwritten document, that looked as though it were made from very old, very fine vellum; presumably from lamb or calfskin, though the texture seemed unusual.

  “I’m very pleased to offer you the last position on our Branham team, Mr. Wentworth. Here is the contract. It contains standard language with a few, minor amendments. I’ll allow you a few moments to read it before you sign. I shouldn’t want you to be surprised by anything we might ask of you, come November.”

  The solicitor handed the student a black pen with an even blacker nib. As he took the instrument, Lionel felt a sharp prick upon his index finger, and he noticed a thin stream of bright crimson emerging from the nib’s razor point.

  “That’s strange,” Lionel muttered dreamily as he glanced at the injured finger. “I seem to have cut myself somehow.”

  “Strange indeed, but it will heal, I should think—eventually.”

  The lawyer blotted the red signature with a roller and returned the signed contract, roller, and writing instrument to the cavernous black valise.

  Wentworth wrapped the wound with a white handkerchief and managed a perplexed smile. “Then, I’m a member?”

  “You are a member,” Flint answered with that disconcerting blinking in full force.

  “Well, then,” Wentworth muttered, “I’ll see you in November, Mr. Flint. Forgive the impudence, but you’re an odd sort of fellow. However, the Master at Trinity vouches for you—or rather his secretary, Mr. Corvis, does—and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Corvis is a very old friend of the Society, Mr. Wentworth. You might say we’ve gone through the wars together. And now, as they say, you’ve signed away your life, my young friend.” He grinned, the black button eyes glittering as though polished. “From this moment forward, your life will change dramatically.”

  To Wentworth’s utter surprise and delight, the solicitor’s prophetic words proved true. Over the course of the following weeks, the student’s life took a sharp turn for the better. His dons began to brag on his academic progress; his horses always won at the turf clubs; his father increased his weekly allowance; and his wealthy friend, Kip Wilson, suddenly remembered that it was he who owed Lionel fifty pounds, not the other way round. Wilson even invited Wentworth to join the Silver Spoons Club, a secret society, usually open only to legacy students.

  “Admitting a man with no family ties to the Club is simply unheard of,” Wilson told his friend on initiation night. “I think some beneficent god must be smiling on you, Worthy.”

  Perhaps, one did, thought Wentworth.

  By December, however, Lionel would regret every dreadful moment of that encounter with Albus Flint, for he would come face to face with the cruel god who’d answered his hasty prayer.

  By then, it would be much too late.

  Chapter Three

  18th December, 1888 - Charles Sinclair’s Journal

  I commence this personal record with trepidation. Yesterday, my beautiful wife Elizabeth gave me this splendid journal—“In honour of our one-month wedding anniversary,” she told me, “and to mark the moment when you became a duke.”

  A duke! Who could have thought a monosyllabic word could hold so many implications within its four letters? Truly, my brain cannot fathom so strange a title when applied to myself. The staff—and even our good Mr. Baxter—now call me ‘Your Grace’, and each time I hear it, I look round for Elizabeth, thinking she must stand nearby, for surely it is my wife whom they address and not myself.

  Ah, my wife. Now, that is a topic upon which I could write lengthy prose and fill many, many books. How I love that woman! She would be the centremost jewel of any man’s crown; the greatest gift to any man’s life, yet I am blessed to call her wife. Tis a wonder indeed! One month ago, we wed, and in that very
brief time, we’ve already faced numerous challenges, a few fleeting heartaches, and enough sweet victories to fill a hundred books. My Beth—my precious ‘little one’—would have no trouble penning such a history, for it is she who possesses all the creativity in our family. I am but a dull mathematician who investigates crime.

  Still, Beth insists that I make a habit of jotting down my thoughts; that the discipline of writing will prove useful during the coming months. She, therefore, expects me to fill each page of this thick volume, promising to give me a new one the very moment this one is complete. Needless to say, it may take me years to accomplish my assignment.

  I must say, though, it is certainly a finely crafted journal; bound in rich red leather and embossed in gold with my name, Charles Robert Arthur Sinclair III, 1st Duke of Haimsbury, on the cover. It is a constant reminder of that strange sounding title.

  It’s early morning, not yet six, and Elizabeth sleeps ten feet from me. Therefore, I sit quietly beside our bedchamber’s cosy fire, dressed in a finely tailored dressing gown. (It’s a wedding gift from Martin Kepelheim—oh, what a friend that delightful man has become!) Beyond the room’s shuttered windows, a nightingale’s sweet song floats upon the still night air, the perfect accompaniment to the soft snoring of Bella and Briar. Samson, Victoria’s terrier, is awake and staring at me as though I should be scratching his ears rather than scratching words onto a page. These three, brave animals serve as companions and faithful watchdogs, allowing Beth and myself to rest peacefully each night. God designed dogs for such important tasks, I think. Noble creatures they are, and I’m considering adding another to our family. Perhaps, a puppy for Adele? I’ve already purchased a Welsh pony for her to ride at Branham, but a spaniel or retriever might be useful.

  Now, to this book. I wonder just what I should say about my life? To be frank, it feels like an exercise in futility, but Elizabeth explained to me that, through diligence and careful habit; by writing my innermost thoughts, feelings, and even dreams, I may soon discern hidden patterns to seemingly random events. And that these patterns might unveil the lost years of my childhood.