Running forward, he pushed aside the man, thrust his head into the coach and cried, ‘Susan, what is the meaning of this?’
She started back, then replied quickly, ‘Captain Hawksbury is taking me on to another party for an hour or two.’
‘He’ll do no such thing!’ retorted Charles hotly. ‘You know well enough that you are not allowed out unaccompanied by a chaperone.’
‘I am of an age to please myself,’ Susan snapped back. ‘And I will go escorted by whom I choose.’
Captain Hawksbury was a notorious roué, and Charles had disliked Susan’s welcoming his attentions in London the previous summer; but at that time it had not even entered his head that she might possibly allow him to seduce her. Now, since their conversation of that morning, he was seized with sudden apprehension that she might. Fear for her, mingled with furious jealousy, welled up in him, and his voice became sharp with anger.
‘’Tis unthinkable that you should go off alone with a man in the middle of the night. I’ll not allow it!’
The Captain was a well-built man, and half a head taller than Charles, who had not yet grown to his full height. Laying a hand on Charles’s shoulder, he said in a quiet, amused voice, ‘Pray calm yourself, my young lord. Miss Brook has done me the honour to agree to accompany me to a pleasant party, where I will take good care of her. ’Tis no business of yours where she goes.’
‘By God, it is!’ thundered Charles. ‘And I’ll not let her. She shall return with me to the house this instant.’
As he spoke, he put one foot on the step of the coach and stretched out a hand to grab Susan’s arm. Hawksbury’s voice suddenly changed to an angry rasp.
‘Damn you, boy! I’ll not brook your interference.’ His hand tightened on Charles’s shoulder, and he gave a shove that had all a strong man’s strength behind it. Charles, having one foot on the coach step, overbalanced and fell full length into the gutter, which was full of muddy water from the recent downpour.
Livid with rage he shouted at Hawksbury, ‘By God, you shall pay for this! I’ll call you out and see the colour of your blood!’
Hawksbury gave a bellow of laughter, ‘What? Fight a duel with a stripling like you? Is it likely? You’d be lucky if you got away with a swordthrust through the arm. Aye, and within the first minute of the encounter.’ Turning contemptuously away, he got into the coach and slammed the door behind him.
As Charles picked himself up, he cried, ‘Don’t be so certain! Age and height count for little in a duel, and I was taught to use a rapier by no less a champion than Miss Brook’s father. I vow I’ll prove your equal, if not your better.’
Thrusting his head through the open window of the coach, Hawksbury flung at Charles the taunt, ‘Then, being so fine a swordsman, my little cockscomb, why do you skulk here in England? Have you not heard that we are at war with that brigand, Bonaparte? Get you to the Peninsula and slay a few frog-eaters. Do that, and I’ll meet you in a duel, but not before.’
Leaving Charles seething with impotent fury, the coach drove off.
Having fallen in the gutter, Charles’s white satin breeches and silk stockings were soaking wet and smeared with mud. It was impossible for him to present himself at the club in that condition. For a few minutes his mind was so filled with anxiety about Susan that he no longer felt any inclination to go there. But to return to the ball, where he would have to pretend to be gay and carefree, was out of the question. The only other alternative was to go up to his room and sit there, brooding miserably. It then crossed his mind that if he did not go to the club, he would forfeit his membership. Moreover, there he would at least find distraction that for the next few hours would divert his mind from tormenting apprehensions about what Susan might be letting Hawksbury do to her.
Turning, he hurried into the house, ran up the back stairs to his room and quickly changed his clothes. Ten minutes later he left again, got into his coach, put on a mask that hid the upper part of his face and told his coachman to drive him to an address in Islington.
At that date Islington was a fashionable suburb and many of the quality had fine houses there. A little before one o’clock Charles’s coach set him down in front of one in a handsome terrace. Further along it several other coaches that had brought members to the club were standing. Telling his man to join them and wait for him, Charles ran up the steps of the house and gave a tug at the iron bell pull.
The bell was still clanging when a grille in the front door was opened and a pair of eyes peered out at him. From a pocket in his long waistcoat Charles produced the symbol of his membership. It was a brooch having a stone known as a ‘cat’s eye’. He held it up so that the person behind the grille could see it. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges. The liveried footman who had let him in closed the door behind him and bowed him towards a room on the right of the pillared hall. On entering it he took off his blue satin tail coat, his waistcoat and breeches and hung them on pegs among a row holding a number of similar garments. Then, from another row of pegs he took one of several grey robes with hoods, such as are worn by monks, and put it on. Having tied the cord round his waist, he pinned the cat’s eye brooch over his heart.
He was now garbed in the traditional costume worn by the members of the original Hell Fire Club, which had been founded some fifty years earlier by Sir Francis Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer and, later, Lord le Despenser.
Dashwood had founded the Order of St. Francis of Wycombe, the inner circle of which included the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, Thomas Potter, Paymaster General, and other distinguished men who, together with Dashwood himself, formed a coven of thirteen. There were also associate members to this society of rakes, among them Lord Holland, the Earls of Oxford and Westmoreland, the Marquis of Granby, the Duke of Kingston and the notorious John Wilkes.
The meetings of these gentry were held in the Abbey on Medmenham Island in the Thames, and consisted of blasphemous rituals followed by orgies. In order the better to parody their mockery of Christian rites, the men all wore the robes of monks and the women they brought with them from London—the majority of whom were among the most beautiful demi-mondaines of the day, but also some society women who concealed their identities with masks—wore the costume of nuns.
Leaving the cloakroom, Charles went up a staircase in the middle of the hall, leading to a large salon on the first floor. Some thirty to forty ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, enjoying a buffet supper, some standing at a long table carrying an excellent cold collation, others sitting at small tables to which they had carried plates and glasses.
All the men except one were clad similarly to Charles, in grey monks’ robes with hoods that hid the colour of their hair, and were masked. The exception was a tall, gaunt, hook-nosed, elderly man known as the Abbot. He wore a mitre on his head, in the centre of which there was a large cat’s eye, a robe of mauve silk and, dangling from his neck on a gold chain, there was, instead of a crucifix, a diamond-studded crux ansata, the Egyptian symbol of immortality.
Beside him at the top of the stairs, receiving the guests, stood the Abbess, whose name was Katie O’Brien; a woman who, both in face and figure, had a loveliness that would have drawn the eyes of many men in a large gathering immediately towards her.
In striking contrast to the angelic beauty of the Abbess, the features of the tall Abbot were of a special ugliness that might have been designed in hell. His great hooked nose above a receding chin gave the impression of a bird of prey, the high cheekbones of his thin face were pitted with the scars of smallpox and his hooded eyes seemed to gleam with evil. His mouth was loose, his teeth uneven and yellow. His hypnotic glance radiated strength and power; and Charles, having on the night of his initiation seen this Priest of Satan avidly possess several women one after another, knew that his lust was insatiable.
It could be only this last characteristic, Charles decided, that made these lecherous women give themselves to the hideous Abbot so eagerly. It then occurred
to him how fortunate he was to be a man, so had been initiated by the beautiful witch; whereas the women members had all had to submit to being initiated by the Abbot and, however licentious by nature, must have felt an almost overwhelming horror at having, for the first time, to give themselves to this repulsive representative of the dark powers.
The women were also masked but wore the black gowns of nuns, and white, banded coifs across their foreheads, from which black weeds concealed their hair and the sides of their faces.
In their case there were three exceptions. Two were clad in the white costumes of novices and, in addition to masks, wore veils that entirely obscured their features. The third was the Abbess, who was wearing a mauve silk robe and, on her bosom, a huge cat’s eye, surrounded by emeralds. She was Irish and had achieved a considerable reputation in occult circles in Dublin for her prophetic gifts. A few years earlier she had come to London armed with introductions from several of the Irish nobility to friends in England also interested in the occult. Some while after Lord le Despenser’s death, the original Hell Fire Club had disintegrated, but memories of it had lingered on, and she had had the clever idea of resurrecting it as a means of attracting wealthy patrons.
She was a tall woman and, alone among the ladies, wore no mask. Her face was very pale and, although she was in her early forties, not a wrinkle marred the perfection of her magnolia skin. Two features made her strikingly beautiful: a very full-lipped mouth, which she painted scarlet, and a pair of magnificent dark-blue eyes, such as are rarely seen outside Ireland. Above them black eyebrows curved down to meet across the bridge of a Roman nose, giving her an imperious expression.
Some of the members of the club were old acquaintances, and did not seek to hide their identities from one another, while others preferred to remain incognito; but the Abbess could have put a name to any of them, and at once recognised Charles.
From the beginning she had been particular about whom she admitted to her Order and she had accepted Charles, in spite of his youth, only because he had special qualifications. Not only was he an Earl with a fine town mansion and White Knights Park, a great property in Northamptonshire, but she had special designs concerning his future. Since she had personally initiated him the previous November, she had not seen him and, for the past quarter of an hour, had feared he did not mean to come that night.
Moving forward to meet him, she gave him a charming smile, extended her left hand for him to kiss and said in a husky voice with a slight Irish lilt:
‘It is late you come, little Brother, but are nonetheless welcome.’
As he took her hand, his own trembled slightly from the memory of the pleasure she had afforded him at his initiation. Bowing, he murmured, ‘I pray your pardon, Reverend Mother. I was detained by an unfortunate accident.’
‘It is no matter.’ She waved her hand, on which there was another big cat’s eye in a ring, toward the buffet. ‘You still have time to fortify yourself with a glass or two of wine before our ceremony, and you are called on to make libation to Lilith-Venus in the person of one of my lovely daughters.’
Walking over to the buffet, Charles was handed a goblet of champagne by one of the footmen. A minute or so later he found the Abbess beside him. Holding out a small, black velvet bag, she said:
‘As you are late in arriving, there is only one number left, but your chance of drawing a partner who will demand as much as you are capable of giving is not lessened by that.’
Charles put his hand in the bag and drew out an ivory plaque on which was the number 6 and was attached to a piece of magenta ribbon. Having bowed her away, he tied the plaque on to his cat’s eye brooch and, now filled with excited anticipation, began to look quickly about the room.
The friend who had introduced Charles to the club had told him that the majority of the female members were married women who had elderly or unsatisfactory husbands, and found this way of satisfying their pent-up desires greatly preferable to taking a regular lover; as, by concealing their identities, they were spared the anxiety of clandestine meetings and any possibility of becoming involved in a scandal. This applied also to the unmarried girls who had been introduced by cynical roués, after finding that they delighted in lechery and had a taste for variety. All of them came from the higher strata of society, as the Abbess had no mind to dispense to professional courtesans any part of the twenty guineas she charged her male members for each attendance.
Owing to their masks, coifs and nun’s robes, all the women present, apart from height, appeared almost identical, and Charles had to spend several minutes mingling with the crowd before he found the nun with a plaque numbered 6 suspended from her cat’s eye brooch.
That she wore this number was, in fact, no matter of blind chance. She was an Irish widow named Lady Luggala, and an old crony of the Abbess’s, who had slipped her the plaque while Charles was standing at the buffet with his back to them. It was part of a plan they had made that Charles should partner the widow that night, and she had been impatiently awaiting his arrival.
She was seated at a small table, with a monk wearing plaque number 18. He at once stood up, kissed her hand and said, ‘Sister, at our next meeting I pray that it may be my good fortune to draw the same number as you as, from your voice, I know ’twas my luck on a previous occasion.’ Then he bowed to Charles and moved away.
Greeting her politely, Charles took the vacant chair and smilingly scrutinised her. She was tall, and her movements were graceful. Her cheeks were a little heavily rouged and faint lines showed at the corners of her mouth, telling him that she must be considerably older than himself. Her firm chin and good teeth were vaguely familiar to him, so he felt fairly certain that they had met before in society, but he could not even make a guess at her identity. In any case, the fact that the man who had just left them had evidently desired to partner her again seemed to Charles a good indication that he had drawn a lucky number. After a moment he said:
‘It seems, Sister, that you are not a newcomer to these gatherings. Have you attended many of them?’
She smiled. ‘Yes, I was an early member of the Order and come here regularly whenever I am in London. I find our meetings most stimulating, mentally as well as physically, and always eagerly await the next. What of yourself?’
‘I humbly confess that this is my first attendance, as I was not initiated until last November, and have since perforce been living in the country. I can only hope that I shall not disappoint you.’
At that she laughed. ‘You would not be here unless our Abbess had proved you to be virile. In fact, if I am not mistaken, it was you whom I saw initiated in November, and with our beautiful Reverend Mother you gave a creditable performance. You are, I feel certain, still very young, so must lack experience in the more subtle ways of pleasing women. But it will lie with me to ensure the best results, and I do not doubt that we shall enjoy our amorous encounter.’
Before Charles had time to reply a silver bell jingled. Immediately silence fell and the Reverend Abbess announced in her deep, husky voice, ‘My children! The hour has come. Let us proceed to the Temple of Delights.’ On the arm of the gaunt Abbot she then led the way downstairs, followed by the pairs of men and women, the two white-clad novices and their escorts bringing up the rear.
Behind the main staircase another, narrower one led down to the basement. It was one large room, the full length and breadth of the house, the upper floors being supported by two rows of arches on carved stone pillars. A thick black carpet covered the whole floor, but it was visible only in a three-foot-wide central aisle running from one end of the great room to the other. The whole of the rest of it was covered with scores of many-coloured silk cushions piled one upon another. Along the aisle the signs of the Zodiac had been embroidered into the black carpet with gold thread.
The temple was dimly lit, the only light coming from the far end where two seven-branched candelabra, holding black candles, stood on an altar and, in front of it, two four-foot-high pedestals
holding chafing dishes, from the centre of which rose slightly flickering oil flares.
A few feet before the altar stood a curiously-shaped piece of padded furniture resembling a stool, but the left half of it curved downward, while the right half rose in a hump, so it appeared impossible to sit on it in comfort. Two black curtains, forming an angle to the altar, were suspended on rods from its sides to the pillars of the nearest arches. On one was embroidered the yang and on the other the yin—the ancient symbols for the male and female. On the wall behind the altar hung a rich scarlet banner with a black cross upside-down. Beneath it, centrally between the two seven-branched candelabra, stood a strange idol which no newcomer to the place could easily have identified.
But Charles, on first being taken down to the temple, had realised what it was. From his childhood he had been loved and spoiled by Roger’s greatest friend, Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel—known to his intimates as ‘Droopy Ned’. One of ‘Uncle’ Ned’s hobbies was the study of ancient religions. He had often told Charles about Egypt in the distant past, and shown him pictures of the strange gods the Egyptians worshipped. Among them had been the cat god, Bast. So Charles had recognised the idol on the altar as a mummified sacred cat, which must have been brought from Egypt by some traveller.
The Abbess and the Abbot halted before the altar. Both made obeisance to the idol, then turned about to face the congregation. They, in turn, made obeisance, then the couples settled themselves comfortably among the sea of cushions. Only the two novices and their escorts remained standing. They had halted at the rear of the temple, and as Charles’s partner had seated herself on the first cushions she came to, the novices were only a few feet behind them.
In a loud voice the Abbess cried, ‘He who on joining our Order was re-christened Abadon shall now bring forward the seeker after truth whom he has brought to us.’
The Irish Witch Page 4