The Cunning House

by Richard Marggraf Turley

  As she pictured it, one of her Chinese girls, Liu, poured another pitcher of piping water at her feet.

  Sarah lay back, doing her best to ignore the stabbing pain in her belly. Perhaps she should just vanish from the city, leave James as a bad memory. Another one . . . But why should she give up her alehouse, just as it was beginning to show a profit? She rested her head on the tub’s wooden rim. Mr Shadworth told her how Egyptian women bathed together in hammams, and rubbed each other all over with hands coarsened with pomegranate skins. The mothers used these occasions to choose brides for their sons. Afterwards the bathers cracked each other’s joints in a ceremony called . . . Sarah tried to remember . . . tuck-tuck-ah . . . and painted their toes crimson.

  The heat spread beneath her skin.

  “Fragrant bath,” Liu whispered in her ear, “attract lovers, good spirits.”

  Sarah’s eyes traced the tiny woman’s plump lips and dark nipples. Even a woman would be better than James. Or an old man; perhaps Mr Shadworth himself. She smiled at the thought.

  Shimmering in the perfumed steam, Liu sprinkled aromatic flakes into the pent-up water, then slipped her hands beneath the suds, stirring. Sarah pissed lazily through her fingers. Men paid good coin for such sights in The Horse.

  She winced at another stabbing pain deep inside.

  Hog’s grease, James called it. Sarah made it by melting a pint of animal fat on the squat dog-iron in the kitchen, adding civet and olive oil with crushed, sweet-smelling petals. She left the concoction to congeal overnight in a wooden bowl, scraping it out into little round tins for the mollies.

  When she’d arrived in The Swan that morning, her husband had been waiting. He called her to him, waving one of the tins, still drunk from the night before. Then he’d scooped out a big dollop with two fingers. Sarah had shrunk from his graceless touch.

  “Everyone should contribute their mite,” he’d said, seizing her, bundling her like livestock in a back room. James flung her face-down over some rough sacks, gripping both wrists in one large hand, raising the lever of her arms as though drawing water, forcing her head down. Then, with an oath, he pushed into her.

  The room filled with burning seraphs.

  Afterwards, he cursed her for the filthy confusion of seed and dung. “There,” he said, smearing her lips with it. “You give a child a spoonful of honey when she’s good.”

  She’d hardly heard him over the sound of her mother’s voice scolding her for plunging a bright hot pan into cold water. Didn’t she know the sudden change in temperature made metal brittle? Stupid girl.

  Her head grew heavy. Sarah breathed out, let her eyelids close.

  If she wasn’t dreaming, she wasn’t wholly awake either.

  St Margaret of Antioch’s was much as she remembered it. From the lectern, the priest was praying for flattened wheat to rise. He denounced government inspectors. Playing to the gallery, as usual.

  Sarah hung back at the church door, scanning the pews.

  Shake the poppies from your brows. Heed these visions of futurity. Come to your heart’s delight. The times we have fallen on are evil.

  The priest was right in one respect. The village congregation was formed of clay, compounded of dust. The clod of the valley.

  Shit of the valley.

  There, in a side aisle, hunched in prayer! The old weaver. Elderly now. With an icy spasm, she dipped her fingers in the stone stoup, stole down the aisle, and slipped into the pew behind him. Seeming to sense a presence that disturbed, he turned. So old, his rosy skin appeared young again, only thin as sewing paper. His face tightened.

  What? Hadn’t he expected ever to see his little dyer girl again?

  Clutching his cap, the old weaver lifted the pew-door latch and hurried down the nave. Sarah followed . . . past the cross-legged effigies in chain mail, past the pudding-breasted woman held down by a stone shroud that had so terrified her as a girl. All the way to his little cottage at the foot of the hill.

  She pushed at the warped board door.

  The wheel sat where it always had, cylinders of carded wool strewn around its feet.

  One thread in every dent.

  She resisted the urge to tidy away the dark.

  His loom squatted to the side, a cobweb of braids rising above it. Two pieces of shirting a week, each piece twenty-four yards in length. Sarah’s eyes ran along the rough shelves. Bottles of alum, cream of tartar, sulphate of iron, potash, tin crystals: everything you needed to persuade wool to accept the dye. The weaver swore no one else could tease such yellows as hers from onion skins. She used to collect the ingredients herself. Ladies’ bedstraw, dandelion, tomato, cow parsley. Elderberries made a dull violet colour, walnut hulls thick fawn. Nettle and dock produced deep suns, and dandelion gave out magenta. She used cutch for the reddish-brown of fishing-boat sails at sunset. It wasn’t always the shades you expected.

  One thread in alternate dents, one thread in every dent.

  “Count yourseln lucky,” he piped up from his chair next to the fire.

  The burr was a shock of memory. She’d cast off her own bumpkin accent the day she arrived in London.

  “Tha’s roight. Could’ve ’ad the lads waiting.”

  Her eyes moved to a tool for beating down weft leaned up against the hearth. He’d been using it as a poker.

  “What, to tie my hands with hitch-knots?”

  “Nobbut sport,” he wheedled. “You used t’ laugh.”

  Two threads in each dent, three threads in each dent.

  She drew out the blade she’d brought with her and showed it him.

  “Don’t be witless,” he blustered. “They all saw you in church.”

  She stepped up to him, holding it low, easily batting away his skinny arms.

  “Still th’ little whore,” he snarled as she held the edge of the fish-knife to the scrag of his throat.

  She stepped behind him, cradling his head. The weaver clutched uselessly, a spider held by a wasp. One good pull would see it done.

  He began to wail, begging her to stop, the noise seeming to come from everywhere at once. He was telling her something, if only she’d listen. The room began to burl; dark stains appeared on her slip. Then a clatter as the knife fell to the uneven flagstones, its blade a jig of yellow flames.

  “I’ll send fer the magistrate,” the weaver said, struggling to his feet, some of his old boldness returning. He moved to block her way to the door.

  Sarah seized the weft-iron from the hearth and hurled it with all her strength. The tool struck the side of his head with a thud. He sank to his knees, groaning, his eyes filling with cochineal. Lifted his fingers to the gash.

  She crossed the room, and retrieved the weft-iron. Raised it high.

  Four threads in every dent.

  St Clement’s bell struck six. Liu had gone, but left a length of coarse linen within reach. Sarah pushed herself up, stepping stiffly from the tub.

  The first mollies of the evening would be arriving.

  16. V.S.C.

  The sign proclaimed Vere Street. His erstwhile patient – the patient – spoke of little else. Aspinall’s hand slipped into his pocket, cradling the black notebook. That soft leather binding, at such odds with the contents.

  A book of skin; a book of pain.

  He had to remind himself what he was pushing himself to such limits for – that, once his reports began to appear in London’s medical journals, they would usher in nothing short of a new era in the curation of mental distress.

  And appear they would. They couldn’t stop him. He didn’t think they could.

  The jutting shop signboards stretched away like recursive images to a man caught in the chasm between two mirrors. Tallow-chandlers, grocers, cheesemongers, booksellers . . . all the filthy names of commerce. Torches flared at the theatre entrances. A brougham whistled past, sending up choking dust. It was seven o’clock in the evening, and respectable couples were making their way to the playhouses.

  Like a hanging wa
ve about to crash onto shore, he stepped onto Vere Street’s cracked flagstones.

  The unthinkable house itself was a hodgepodge of crumbling bricks stacked haphazardly between twisting timbers, which at some point appeared to have survived a fire. Above an antiquated door hung a makeshift sign displaying the silhouette of a white swan. Aspinall recalled one especially trying consultation, during which Mr Parlez-Vous had sketched this symbol over and over, filling pages of foolscap.

  The tavern door opened inward, making him start. A woman’s face appeared, her hair tricked up in wagtail ringlets. Beneath a thin calico dress her nipples protruded like damson stones.

  “Saw yer through the window,” she said (though the windows, he noticed, were heavily draped). “I’m Mrs Cooke, the proprietress.” She waved him in.

  The mad-doctor hesitated, as he knew he would. But if this was the price of understanding Parlez-Vous’ sickness, of wresting the once-in-a-lifetime case back from his superiors at Wood’s Close, he’d step into the storm itself.

  Making sure his jacket pocket was buttoned, he stepped in.

  In the hallway, the tavern madam pressed an oblong card into his hand. He glanced down to find a crude profile of a swan, facing dexter, above three amateurishly curlicued letters. Mentally, he filled the gaps. Vere Street Club. A heavy oak side-door opened into the taproom. Aspinall’s yellow waistcoat suddenly felt as tight as the strait jackets they sometimes used at Wood’s Close.

  He took in what the dim light cast by low table-lamps revealed: rough labourers and finely dressed gentlemen mingling freely, flies evidently deemed as good as peacocks in this garden. Tiny vases of bluebells jarred like oranges in winter.

  The proprietress touched his sleeve. “I’ll introduce you to some nice gem’men. Don’t worry, they won’t bite,” she said, laughing. “Not these, anyway. Can’t say the same for all my patrons.” Gently, she pulled him towards a small circle of drinkers seated at a table beside a jasper-lined fireplace. A mounted lithograph of Caravaggio’s lizard boy hung from the chimney breast.

  Snatches of lewd talk arrived from all directions.

  ––––– To me, my precious little rogue!

  Impossible to block them out.

  In his attic tabernacle, Parson Church rubbed the rib of flesh on the back of his hand where they’d branded him with a hot wire for being an orphan. Abandoned as a three-week-old baby on the steps of St Andrew’s Church. That’s where he’d got his name, where he’d got his calling. Truly, a child of providence.

  The orphanage governors chastised him for his bad writing, and for leading the other illiterates into the devil’s sad snare. He’d spent his life running from accusations. Mr C. said this; Mr C. said that.

  He cast his eyes around the cramped loft. Hardly genuine bon-ton, as he’d been led to expect. The odd handsome footman or farmer, otherwise a ministry of waifs and strays. (And some had strayed further than others.) But hadn’t Jesus preached to similar congregations?

  Club members were still squeezing in, eager to witness the evening’s first wedding consummated on the truckle bed. Parson’s eyes returned to the youth in the third row. The boy’s cobalt brows were matched to a set of paste jewels. Was that a new ring glinting on his finger? A present from the Country Gentleman . . . Who else?

  He pronounced the insoluble ties of matrimony, praised the sweet fruits of genuine, disinterested friendship.

  “Friendship that rules every power of your minds, bodies and souls. Forgive each other your faults.”

  Friendship that would save them all.

  O what unhappy men we are! Addicted to abominable propensities. Led into error. O, Christ! O, God!

  Yes, dry, thirsty creatures, harassed by devils whom it pleased to perplex those they couldn’t destroy. His eyes drifted back to his marvellous boy. His White. Why had the lad found his way here, of all places? Renting out his favours in plain view.

  Shut up meditation with prayer.

  Dear God! O Lord!

  Familiar phantoms of the brain rose before him, playing out his arrest a year ago. Dragged like a felon to the watch-house, accused publicly of crimes too horrible to relate.

  Lord, how they are increased, that trouble me.

  Lovely White. Cash-corrupted White!

  It took every ounce of will to control his breath. “Know the plague of the heart and the value of Jesus. Dear friends, you have been forewarned.”

  Each night, a dream of scorpions.

  His trial had been a farce, concluding with the bodily ejection from the Courthouse of one of the prosecution’s own lawyers. The case against him dismissed, Parson returned to his Obelisk Chapel, where he preached defiance to a teeming audience.

  Truth told, he’d been resigned to dangle; was almost relieved at the prospect.

  Why shouldn’t I administer the sacrament to those intoxicated with gin?

  “My Temple is open. Do not be led astray by unprincipled men. Avoid gossip and tattling about ministers. These are dark days.”

  Why not throw in my lot with the Queen of Bohemia and Kitty Cambric? Why not bless the coming union?

  From the third row, White finally met his gaze, before slinking off. Back to the Country Gentleman and his stinking guineas. Parson pictured his true love in that devil’s clutching arms.

  Remembering the bride and bridegroom, he composed himself, and led the happy couple from the dressing-up chest that served as an altar to the truckle bed.

  As he joined their hands, the pair swapped shy glances.

  “Show us yer ring!” someone roared.

  “Sincere friendship . . .” Church trailed off. Tried again. “Dear friends, do not be surprised that a trial by fire is occurring among you.”

  For God’s sake, do not.

  “What God has brought together, let no man – ”

  Etc.

  “Sarah, haul your fat arse over here!” The heavyset barman glared at Mrs Cooke. “Ain’t bin the same,” he explained to the drinkers at the ale counter, “since she cum back from visiting her ol’ man up north.”

  Aspinall observed Sarah Cooke through the guttering candlelight. Pretty, with bright eyes. His Society would certainly consider her worth saving. His eyes returned to the men at the fireside table. Very well . . . If he was to fathom this place, he must engage the patrons in conversation. He’d think of it as an interview no different from those he conducted with the residents at Wood’s Close. With that consoling thought, he left the bar, drifting over into earshot.

  “Stricken with remorse?” (the lean one was saying in a bat-thin voice, arm draped over the shoulders of his neighbour). “Devil on a stick, our Thomas is one of the monstrous Donnestre of th’ Red Sea. They possess the heads of birds wi’ human bodies, an’ lure unwary boys with poetry, only t’ devour them – ” he touched the tip of his finger to his nose “ – apart from the head, which they weep over noisily.”

  “Then set about ensnaring the next gullible young colt,” a plump man added. His flabby eyelids opened and closed spasmodically as if he suffered from some ocular disorder, though it was several years since Aspinall had studied maladies of the eye.

  “Where’d yer learn such abrac?” the one named Thomas said, his accent thick and glottic.

  “In Africa, where the sea is full of moons,” the other replied, holding up a ruby-coloured handkerchief. His flaggy cheeks recalled a butcher’s shambles.

  “Take care when you leave tonight,” the lean one said. “There’s a new guild against us. They’ve christened themselves the Society for th’ Suppression of Sodomites. Their leader’s a jack o’lantern – calls himself The Bee.”

  “Eh? Does he intend t’ sting me to death?”

  “They say he sports regimental colours. Yellow and black.”

  “Not a queen bee, then?” Thomas looked up, his eyes meeting Aspinall’s.

  It was too much. The asylum physician changed course, squeezing between tables, the air thick with bitters and spices. He came to rest at the t
aproom counter. Sarah Cooke came over and presented him with a mug of hot beer.

  “Mind you enjoy yourself,” she said, beaming.

  A fiddler launched into ‘At Her Wheel, the Village Maiden’, a tune Aspinall knew from boyhood. He sipped at his hot ale – pleasantly sweet – and listened to the flurry of grace notes, slurs and furious détaché passages.

  As the fiddler called the switch, Aspinall felt the slightest of tugging sensations at the hem of his jacket. His hand shot to his coat pocket . . . the precious medical volume nestled safely beneath the tight weave of his jacket . . . his heart found its next beat. Frowning, the physician glanced round.

  An athletic-looking man with cropped hair stepped from the bar, and was soon lost in the crush.

  ––––– Sing wack, dilly-dooly! Wack, dilly-dooly!

  Aspinall took another sip of beer, and moved off himself. Talking was out of the question, he decided. Instead, he’d satisfy himself with investigating the tavern’s interior – furnish his imagination with the details he needed to make a proper description of the house that haunted Mr Parlez-Vous.

  ––––– a wonderful association between the bigness of the buttocks and stones

  ––––– keep poking till he blows!

  Behind the bar was an alcove reached by a low wooden arch. Aspinall ducked under it.

  –––– tastes like jugged hare

  A couple were embracing there on a high-backed bench, one middle-aged, the other a youth. The older figure was dressed in satin breeches, his silver-buttoned long coat cut nattily away at the skirts, the upper part of his face entirely hidden beneath a dark-blue visor. (Aspinall thought of a Venetian masque.) He cradled the younger man in his lap. Aspinall blinked, at first unable to make sense of what his eyes reported . . . Something thick and heavily veined was moving languidly in and out of the youth’s deepest depths.

  ––––– Sing wack! dilly-dooly!

  The whole tavern seemed to tilt towards the couple. Aspinall felt himself tumbling, caught by the obscene gravity . . . He cried out as someone seized his wrist, pulled him backwards through the arch, then spun him like a wax doll. The taproom became a whirling panorama.