Savage Magic

by Lloyd Shepherd

  I took several sketches of the dried plant when I came across it in New South Wales, and have consulted these. Your leaves certainly appear to be remarkably similar. I admit I am as much struck by the situation in which you found it as by the morphology of the leaves themselves. Dropped in quantity in a well, or so you said – which appears to be similar behaviour to an Aboriginal adding it to a waterhole. If the quantities were such as you described in your letter, and if this well was the primary water source for the house, I can say only that the effects on the house’s residents might be odd indeed. As I say, the aboriginal usage of the plant in religious practice suggests that it must have some kind of hallucinatory property.

  The question presents itself, does it not? If someone did add this strange plant to the well at this house you are investigating, why did they do so? And whom were they hunting?

  It is a question as strange as any we confronted together during the Solander matter, and I admit to still being disturbed by the events of that time. I trust your current situation is less serious, and I hope I have been of some help.

  I leave for Paris tonight. I would hear more of this matter on my return, if you are willing and able.

  Regards

  BROWN, R.

  He reads the letter three times, each time as slowly and carefully as the last. Then he stands and pours the water in his glass away, and heads upstairs.

  Horton has only seen tenderness in the frame of Sir Henry Tempest twice: once at the mention of his daughter Ellen during their first interrogation; and now. The man sits at the girl’s bedside, his arm in a sling fashioned by the physician who came the previous night, and who was told only a fraction of what had occurred. Sir Henry had fallen upon a decorative suit of armour, it was said, the sword piercing his upper left chest just below the shoulder. Ellen had swooned at the sight of the blood and fallen into a faint which had endured the whole night.

  The house is quiet – quieter than it has been throughout Horton’s strange visit. After the terrible commotions of last night, it is as if a convulsive maniac has been subjected to a suite of cures – bleeding, electrical shock, emetics, restraint – and has finally surrendered to exhaustion in the face of the onslaught.

  Sir Henry looks up at him as he enters the bedchamber.

  ‘My God, man,’ he says. ‘Your face looks as if you had swallowed a cannonball.’

  It is meant, Horton notes, sympathetically. Sir Henry is a calmed man, indeed.

  ‘How does the girl?’ he asks.

  ‘It is impossible to know,’ says Sir Henry, looking down at her. ‘She sleeps peacefully, and that is a blessing, for God knows she has not done so for weeks.’

  ‘It is certainly for the best.’

  ‘No doubt. But neither of us is a physician, constable. Nor a mad-doctor.’

  This last is whispered, fearfully, lest it awaken demons in the sleeping girl’s head. So different, that face, from the snarling fury upon it last night when Horton had come upon them in the drawing room, Sir Henry pale and nearly gone on that elegant chaise longue, bleeding from his wound; his daughter restrained by Crowley and Gowing, the sword with which she had speared her father on the floor between them.

  ‘Sir Henry, I have received a letter that casts some light on what has been taking place here. I also have intelligence on your cook, Stephen Moore, and his relationship with your former cook, Elizabeth Hook. May I share these things with you? And then, I believe I should repair to London again, for these facts may have a wider bearing on Mr Graham’s investigation into the deaths of your …’

  He stops. Your what? Fellow debauchees? Fellow Medmenhamites? Fellow fornicators? Sir Henry does not notice the pause, or if he does he takes no note of it.

  ‘Can you answer me why my daughter attempted to kill me?’

  ‘I believe I can, yes.’

  ‘Then continue.’

  Horton constructs his tale as well as he can, although parts of it are dark and obscure, and the whole is inflected with such lunacy that it can scarcely be credited. How the house has been, since the burning down of the shed almost a month before, under the influence of a drug in the form of Brown’s New Holland leaf, left to soak in the water supply and replenished, as far as Horton can see, at least once. How this must account for the visions of the people within the house, and the suspicions of witchcraft. How Elizabeth Hook brought Stephen Moore, a self-professed cunning-man, into the household in the belief that Ellen was herself the source of the bewitchment, and that he has been steadily poisoning her in an attempt to treat this bewitchment. How Ellen herself has come to believe herself bewitched – to be a witch, almost.

  He does not say it all, for he does not quite believe it all. He does not mention that strange pinch in his head when Ellen had encountered him in the woods, nor does he describe that odd temporary loss of memory, nor does he speak of his own visions of the previous evening – the burning, the mob, the witch flying along the hedge. And he does not mention his darkest thought: that the sour events which have blighted Thorpe Lee House have been perpetrated by the residents themselves, under the influence of the drug in the well and, perhaps, something else even more wicked.

  Did the one who killed the dogs know what they were about? Was it Ellen herself, or someone under her influence? And what is the nature of that influence?

  These are lunatic questions for which he can yet supply no sane answer.

  Sir Henry says nothing during this recital. Nor does he look at Horton. His eyes remain fixed on the still, pale face of his strange daughter, as if he could reach into her mind through the force of his own will and untie whatever knots bind her serenity. When Horton finishes, he says two words only.

  ‘Why? How?’

  They are indeed the only two words that matter. Why this lunatic plot? And how can the plot explain the manic occurrences? The dead rat, the poisoned milk, the destroyed shirts, the profane message, the fairy ring, the dead dogs. Horton cannot explain this mechanism. The why, though, may be clearer, and it is from motivation that explanations will spring.

  ‘The Sybarites, Sir Henry.’

  At this, whatever his newfound calm, the old Sir Henry reasserts himself. His head snaps up, and his eyes when they look at Horton are as cold and as angry as a judge sentencing the murderer of his own children.

  ‘Ridiculous. You are being ridiculous.’

  ‘Sir Henry, there is no other explanation. Thorpe Lee House has been visited by what appears to be a campaign of sustained malevolence and mischief, which has ended in an attempt on your life. Two other Sybarites have been killed, sir. The coincidence is beyond possibility.’

  ‘My daughter tried to kill me because I am a member of a dining society? It is preposterous.’

  ‘I cannot yet explain the mechanism, Sir Henry. But I believe the motive is clear. This is why I must return to London. I believe what is happening there can only be connected to what is happening here. Your household will be safe – I will request that men be sent here to watch over you. But I must return.’

  ‘Graham has sent for you?’

  ‘No, Sir Henry, he has not. But still, I must go.’

  ‘You are mad. And you are arrogant, to think one such as Graham deserves or needs your assistance.’

  Horton says nothing to that. It may, indeed, be very true. ‘

  Then go. Leave us. And take your insane ideas along with you.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Henry. But I must ask you – is there no event in the history of the Sybarites which might draw the anger of someone in this way?’

  ‘Impertinence! Leave now, sir, before I raise the sword that almost killed me last night and inflict its edge upon you.’

  Horton leaves. He packs his bag in his bedroom, and makes his way downstairs. Crowley, the old butler, stands in the vestibule like an exhausted stork. He is holding a small notebook, which he hands to Horton.

  ‘Sir Henry has asked me to give you this.’

  Horton, astonished, puts down his bag and be
gins to open the book.

  ‘Not here!’ And Crowley’s hand snatches the book back. His other hand grabs Horton’s arm, and he leans in, his breath smelling of dry cabbage. There is nothing to drink in the house yet, following Horton’s instruction that no one drink the water from the well.

  ‘Read the book in private, and then destroy it,’ says Crowley, barely in a whisper. ‘Promise me this, Mr Constable. Or I won’t give it to you, whatever Sir Henry’s command.’

  Horton nods, and the book is pushed back into his hands.

  ‘Then on your way, Mr Constable. We shan’t be seeing each other again, I expect.’

  He turns to walk away, but Horton speaks to him, and he turns.

  ‘Make sure the well is drained, Crowley,’ he says, lifting up his bag again. ‘And keep a close eye out for a gypsy woman on a tall wagon.’

  And with that, Constable Horton exits the madhouse.

  The quickest way to get back to London is via Staines, on the far side of the river to Thorpe. He walks the half-mile from Thorpe Lee House to the river. A stone bridge crosses the water here, and he walks over the calm, broad stream into the pleasant market town to enquire after a coach.

  Coaches come on the hour heading out west and eastwards into London. He has some time to think over matters on a stone bench in the pretty market square, which looks to have been the subject of considerable improvement in recent years, and notes that he feels, for the first time in days, a considerable sense of calm. His senses are clearing, as if he had been intoxicated this past week – he rather supposes this is exactly what has happened. Those strange nights and eerie visions are the result of poisoned water.

  And nothing else? He is clear that the material in the water might explain dizziness, loss of perception, oddities of vision. But it doesn’t explain dead dogs and hag tracks. Something else is at play here. He climbs into a coach twenty minutes after arriving in Staines, and begins the seventeen-mile journey back into town. The further he travels from Thorpe Lee House, the clearer his analysis of what that something might indeed be.

  He knows there are untied knots still in Thorpe. Elizabeth Hook and Stephen Moore will need to be found and arrested. But such matters can be arranged with Aaron Graham, and they represent, for Horton, answered questions. Ellen’s illness is the result of Moore’s quackish interventions. Elizabeth Hook is not a witch. There are no such things as witches.

  But there are still hag tracks, and dead dogs, and rats on dining-room tables. There is still maleficium. But what is the wellspring of it?

  He opens the notebook given to him by Crowley, but reading the first page he closes it again, his face hot. He will not read the contents in the confines of a coach; not with two women in it who already seem terrified by the prospect of a shared journey to London with a man of pale skin, intense eyes and a cheek swollen beyond the size of a fist and as black as pitch.

  But the book now feels hot in his hands, its contents as fierce as a forge. Part of the answer lies within its pages, he sees immediately; he would be disappointed, indeed, if this were not so, so melodramatic was Crowley’s behaviour when handing it over. He can no longer think clearly about the case, not with this material on his person.

  And so the miles stretch out, and the three-hour journey feels as long and unending as a Pacific crossing. When the coach finally pulls up at Whitehall, Horton steps out and into an alehouse – his mouth is parched, and he needs a clean, unsullied drink of something. He orders an ale, takes it to a secluded corner and, to prepare himself for his arrival in Covent Garden, looks into Sir Henry’s little book.

  The book has perhaps forty pages, all written in a neat but purposeful hand, presumably that of Sir Henry himself. On the first page a kind of frontispiece has been constructed by the same hand.

  The Testimony of the Sybarites

  An Account of the adventures in pleasure of the Sybarites

  The Heirs of Dashwood and of Harris, whose famous LIST this book replaces

  A Guide to the Cargoes of Covent Garden’s Pleasure Ships

  ‘Square stern’d, Dutch built, with new sails and rigging’

  Horton does not recognise the quotation. On the next page is the first of the material that makes up the book: a sequence of descriptions of whores, written in a deliberately arch and inflated style. The first entry is thus:

  CHERRY COOPER, Covent Garden, March 1808

  We did make our acquaintance of the celebrated Cherry Cooper on the occasion of our first Meeting. Her first name is one to be reckoned with, and its origins are both mysterious and (as the Swiss doctor would have it) mesmerising. ’Tis most likely that the name is a most fitting response to her red cheeks, her red lips and her red something else. She is a most agreeable girl, one for whom we were to a man grateful for her attentions, but she was so frolicksome and so noisy during our attentions that a neighbour of our host was heard to shout, What a blasted house is here!

  All the entries have dates, and all are written in this style, suggesting a single author. So, have the Sybarites been holding their parties since March 1808? It would seem so. Horton turns to the end of the book, reading the last few entries in reverse order.

  Elizabeth Carrington (July 1813)

  Ah, fair Lizzie: a woman of the strictest honour and secrecy! Upright and reserved in public, agreeable and convivial behind the locked-up doors of pleasurable society! She was educated in the rudiments of erotic knowledge by a certain well-established Bird of Paradise, is about twenty-eight, is slim and tall; has a fair complexion; brown hair; good teeth; and is upon the whole a very pretty woman. She does not give her company widely now, but agreed to return to the stage on which her talents are most valued for our particular party. We shall long remember the pretty little show Miss Carrington performed for us with her talented friend Rose Dawkins. We hope she may be persuaded to return!

  Rose Dawkins (July 1813)

  Miss Dawkins is one of those rare friends of the Sybarites whose company is so cherished, and whose character is so prettily debauched, that a return visit was agreed by all members to be desirable. Miss Dawkins is a mistress of the bizarrerie, and is a patient and attentive practitioner of such; one amongst our number is a connoisseur of such matters, and notes to us that Miss Dawkins’s hand is as firm and as sordid as any he has before encountered. She is also a noted performer of the Duet, and introduced us to her friend Miss Carrington in the most delightfully vivid way imaginable.

  Maria Cranfield (July 1813)

  What are we to say of Miss Cranfield? She is an odd fish indeed, yet an enticing one. She has joined with us but once, and presented a strange conundrum indeed: a fresh-faced novice, her sanctity still intact, and not in that way which so many young girls of the Plaza claim, passing for a maidenhead two dozen times to the gullible culls who appear there. We did much enjoy her introduction to the Sybaritic arts, and her natural fresh bloom did darken exquisitely with each additional transaction she did enjoy with the members of our members. She has eyes clear and as fine-coloured as the azure blue, and her dark hair curls in a thousand artless ringlets down her snowy neck. She is tall and has a beautiful complexion; her meretricious performances were transporting and extraordinary.

  Finishing his ale, Horton leaves the place, and walks up to Bow Street.

  Covent Garden has a different air with the book in his pocket. Horton, like any Londoner, knows of the illicit trade that suppurates through the streets around the Piazza and the theatres, the dark counterpoint to the licit business of fruit and veg. But he has never taken a whore – in England, anyway. So the Covent Garden whoring has been of the nature of a story told to him over a pint of ale.

  He recalls an incident with Abigail, some years ago. They had been to a play at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. They had only been married a short while, and Horton was still navigating an understanding of this strange woman who had nursed him back to health in St Thomas’s hospital and who, she said, had come to love him. This single extraordinary fact
had made it preposterously difficult to understand her, for how could any woman – especially one as clever and enchanting as Abigail – have come to love one such as he? And yet she said she did, and he had begun on his project of unpicking her, of gazing at her from infinite angles, holding her up to the light of his intense view as he tried to make sense of this development.

  They had exited the play – it had been one of Sheridan’s, he remembers, though he cannot recall which – and the whores had been there on the pavement, dozens of them, grabbing the arms of men, and some of the women, offering all sorts of bizarre and oddly worded services, a screeching bazaar of the profane.

  Horton’s own arm had been grabbed, as it was bound to be, and Abigail – calm, clever Abigail – had lashed out a hand and slapped the whore who’d grabbed Horton. So powerful had been Abigail’s blow that the whore had stepped back three or four paces, her hand to her cheek, a look of shock on her face which took a second or two to transform into a pavement rage.

  The whore threw herself at Abigail, who snarled back at her with astonishing anger, and if Horton had not succeeded in getting between the two of them the picture may have become grim indeed. As it was, he’d shoved the whore away and pulled his wife through the angry crowd of debauched women, desperate to haul her away before their anger grew and focused itself in a way that might become truly dangerous.

  They walked back to Southwark, where Abigail still worked in the hospital and Horton did bits and pieces around the shipyards. Horton had tried to discover what lay behind his wife’s sudden violence, it being so uncharacteristic. But Abigail’s face had set into a stubborn, sullen refusal, and it was never spoken of again.

  Pondering Abigail and whores and his own personal history, Horton finally reaches Bow Street. And finds uproar.

  WESTMINSTER

  When Westminster society – its politicians, its peers, its scribblers and its gossips – turns its attention onto a single event, it is wise not to be the one fellow on whom responsibility for that event can be said to rest. It is a terrible word, responsibility, and though it is not one from which Aaron Graham has previously flinched, its dreadful weight is upon him today.