Somnium

by Steve Moore

  ‘No sign of robbers, vagabonds, or any ill,’ remarked Sir Lee as Greene drew rein, a dozen paces off, his blue eyes paling grey with utmost trepidation. ‘But such is hereabouts’ repute…’

  A long and narrow sword then slithered free, with rasping sound, from out its leathered scabbard. And glinted by that self-same Moon which silvered all the carriage.

  ‘Get you gone to Greenwich, Bartho’ Greene,’ commanded Lee, a-gesture with his rapier, ‘and give your master’s compliments to Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Say I offer deep apologies to him, the first, and then, if he’ll be kind to pass them on, to our beloved Sovereign Lady, the high and royal Queen. When I’ve probed this mystery here, I’ll follow on; but as the both will understand, I fear some lady may be deep in need of any aid that I might offer. And now begone, and as you ride, remember this: the faster you apply the spur, the slower the devil to catch you up!’

  No second bidding needed, Greene wheeled his mount about and kicked it to the gallop. And for all a mile along that old straight road, he never once looked back; and so saw naught of that which fell out next.

  Endimion Lee walked once about the richly-holstered carriage, seeing nothing of suspicion. No mud-pressed foot or hoof prints, no sign of swift attack nor trace of unwilled kidnap. At last, shaking his head as he sheathed his sword, he opened up the coach’s door and climbed within, sat slowly down on soft seat-cushion and, looking round, once again saw naught amiss.

  Now quite perplexed, he let his eyelids close, and on the instant felt the carriage lurch. Hammered iron horseshoes clacked upon the road-pave, banded wheels began to turn. As if a-drowsed with sleep, he struggled hard to open up his eyes again, only now to find that all around seemed bathed in golden light. And yet, although by then his thoughts were dancing brawls and seventeens, he found he could not move.

  The silvered carriage, moonbeam-lit, turned itself around unguided, and started up the hill. And, willy-nilly, Sir Endimion Lee perforce went with it.

  The utmost peak of wooded Shooters Hill he knew quite well, crowded all about with oak and ash and hornbeam. At least, he knew it well in other days, but on a night like this all former knowledge failed him. At the hill’s tall crest the coach turned left and north, along a drive that plainly was not there.

  It was not there and never had been and, indeed, he somehow knew, it never would be either.

  Nor was the gateway that he passed through next, which opened in a marbled wall; nor the garden spread beyond, with lapping ponds and burbling streams, and marvellous statues all marmoreal, paled and whitened by the rising Moon.

  The palace that he reached at last, where the silver carriage halted, was, quite simply, never even seen before in delirium or dream.

  Nor Greenwich, no, nor Eltham; nor Hampton Court, nor Richmond; not even glorious Nonsuch, that could not be believed… comparison here made all of these mere hovels. For before him rose up miracle and splendour, and wonder past all telling, enamelled, silvered and bejewelled. All arabesqued it was, in gleaming argent lit by moonbeams, and cupolas interspersed with turrets first, but more with spires next, both rising to the sky. It seemed mosaiced quite in tesserae of crystal, its galleries all filigreed with gleaming gem-flecked bronze; and from within, through oriels so large, came light, and light, and light. And more, about its gateway, there was sweet Diana, imaged up in tiny stones, of opals and of turquoise, and set about with silver, with electrum, and with gold.

  And Endimion Lee, who though he’d seen so many things, and thought of more besides, could only sit, and look, and weep. Weep for shame that never human hand had built the like, and weep for joy that he had seen what only dear immortal gods had otherwise beheld.

  He sat there, tear-stained still, when the carriage door was opened by a lovely nymph, whose sparkling eyes could only make him think of sweethearts, daughters, sisters, and all those fairest of their sex who are the most beloved. She took his hand in hers, so small, and helped him from the coach.

  All dressed in moonbeam white she was, and yet in gossamer light enough to hardly be at all. She gently laughed, now holding both his hands in hers, and tripping backwards nimbly led him on toward a much-begilded door. And Lee, with eyes for nothing but her smile (as surely was intended), thought not to linger with his gaze beguiled by silver towers a-shimmer, by star-aspiring turquoised turrets, or crystal spires that probed the deepest heavens.

  The beauty of his charming guide quite silenced all the questions in his mind before they reached his lips. An eyeful of heaven, he thought her, and let her lead him (so it seemed) down deep and mazy corridors lit by Moonish gems (he’d think them all carbuncles, yet they were too lunar), until they came at last to gold-leaved doors, that opened with a mere soft sigh.

  Once through those doors, that sweet sprite left him then, although he hardly knew. For now he had his senses back, and she he saw ahead commanded, wordless and by look alone: O man of Earth, bow down.

  Saturday, 22nd September 1803

  I know it quite immodest to say as much, and yet I have to confess that I am rather pleased; the pages of Somnium that I wrote last night, I simply do not know quite where they came from. Perhaps they came down from the Moon; and if they did, I love the Moon for sending them. I cannot know what others might quite think of them, and yet I know I never wrote the finer. Endimion Lee, it seems to me, already walks these pages like a real man and comrade; I cannot think at all that I have ‘made him up’. Of course, it wrote itself so well I am not sure of each historic detail; but these I can correct when I am home once more, surrounded by my books; besides, of course, it is a work of fiction. And though I did not notice at the time, I find I’ve used no ‘thou’ or ‘thee’, and this seems all the better; a flavour of the time is what I want, and not perfected archaism. I wrote and wrote until the nearly-dawn, and slept the most part of the morning through. I dreamed, and loved in dream, and made my love in some peculiar dream-place; but who I loved in dream I really cannot say.

  I woke up all fog-brained and did not call for breakfast. My senses once recaptured, I wrote a letter to my darling Liz, to tell her how I missed her; told her she was sweet, a spring-flower blooming still among the golden autumn leaves; told her she was Queen of Hearts and fairer than her royal namesake; told her nothing, I confess, of bright-eyed Mistress Brown, but sent her all my love and kisses. Told her that it hurts me not to see her smiling in the morning; and when I do not hear her laugh, there is no music in the world. I told her, too, how carefully she must guard her health, though all the horrors of my thoughts I could not bring myself to tell her. I could not bear to see her sweet young face all pitted with the smallpox, or to watch her slowly wasting with consumption. O Gods and Goddesses dear, above, if such there be amongst our fates, then let it fall on me. And so I wrote to her, I thought of her, and writing, thinking, thought that I would cry. The further away she is, the dearer she becomes.

  I confess I become bemused with Mistress Brown. After dinner (I did not know quite it was; some dish of chopped-up meat in gravy, served with hot potato pie) I enquired of that wretch, her husband, as to where I could put a letter in the post. He looked at me all surly; before he could reply, and all I think to spite him, she took my arm and led me off outside, proclaiming loudly that it would be a pleasure to walk out with a gentleman and show him. The emphasis she placed on ‘gentleman’ it rather made me wince, for all its implication. And once out on the road, she could not help her laughing. Her motives then, I did not even ask. Her husband and herself are so mismatched, it leaves me quite bewildered.

  She walked me halfway down the hill toward old London town, pointing out two large establishments as we did progress. To the south side of the road, quite near the crest, stands Hazelwood House, built a quarter century gone where once there stood the former hilltop inn, The Catherine Wheel (or sometimes, so it seems, The Catherine Wheel and Star; I think I like that better, for so it minds me of the sky, and not the swarming Earth). To the north, a little further down
, Broomhall, the mansion of the Lidgbirds, to whom belong the ground rents of The Bull and all its large establishments. Some strange and occult sympathy seemed to draw me to Broomhall. I thought that I would like to see inside; but Mistress Brown informed me that its inhabitants played the eremite, and so were hardly seen at all, except to drive off trespassers.

  Some halfway down the hill, we came to that rather inferior hostelry (or so it did appear to me, a lady of the other inn a-clinging on my arm), the Red Lion, where, it seems, the post’s collected and delivered daily. She introduced me to the landlord, one Eustatius Wellbeloved, smirked and told him that he’d see me often; for like him, I was quite well-beloved besides. I looked at her askance. And when we started up the hill again, she smiling whispered then: ‘Elizabeth.’

  I should have been offended. I should have told her this was no one’s business but my own. And yet I could not. She is too lovely. Her eyes are too much like my Lizzie’s. And more, she seems the younger every time I see her.

  I think, the night before last, that when I was too drunk, I talked to her too freely: she knew too much of Liz, and more she seemed to understand how much I love my sister. And so I worry all the more of what I may have said regarding our inheritance. If she were quite alone, I would not care; I’d trust her with my very soul; and yet her husband seems to me a knavish wretch.

  Returning to The Bull, I do confess to being loth to lose the pleasure of her company; and so I asked her if she’d show me something of the inn. It is a building quite to match the tales she told me of the place when we were both bedrunk. And so we wandered through the supper rooms, their plastered ceilings painted up rococo-style (not well, but well enough) with naked nymphs and satyrs, the billiard room, the card-rooms and the bar; and so into the assembly room, so huge and high-ceilinged and, empty as it was, acousticked like a church. I stood there for a moment then, just imagining Handel’s Firework Music played therein, and the majesty it would have had, its woodwinds and its brass high-echoed to the rafters.

  Stables for more than 30 horses, she showed me next, with coach-houses, a smithy, granaries, a dairy and an ice-house; a yard, the pleasure grounds all full of walks quite charmingly serpentine; the kitchen gardens, the orchard and the land, all cultivate or grazed by sheep. It is a palace self-contained; no, more than this, it is a self-contained estate, a palace at its centre, and so within itself a state entire: the state of Shooters Hilltop, raised up high above mere London Town, or Kent the orchard county. It speaks to me of palaces silvered up with Moonlight; and so, in turn, I am reminded much of Somnium here on Earth.

  The last, she took me to the tap-house, a little public tavern on the Kentish side, where all the passing trade it drinks, and dines, and goes its way. I thought it rather quaint, though verging on plebeian. She told me down below there was a cellar, walled up quite, that legend said contained a table; and on that table lay a horse-pistol, chased with silver. But what the story was that lay behind it, none thereabouts had ever yet discovered.

  So arm in arm and full of little laughs, we made our way back to the inn; and how her husband glared to see us.

  Frankly now, I am confused. Jude Brown, I’m sure, returns my hatred, and so I fled back to my room as soon as we returned. And even with my cane in hand, I would not care to face him. The tavern’s other staff mean little more to me; I know that they are many, though few enough I’ve met. The serving maids (the two I know, there may be more) look trullish: I think their names are Daphne Squires and Jacqueline Smythe (I wonder if her name is really Smith), and it pains me to say I suspect them both of whoring on the sly. Old Marguerite the cook is all of warts and shares a room with ancient Bates the cellar-man, although they are not married. Young Tom Watkins serves as groom and general runaround; I like his ready smile, but would not leave my trunk unlocked at all when he’s about. And there are surly unwashed men who watch Brown’s sheep out in the fields behind the inn, sun-browned gardeners and farmhands; those I neither know nor wish to. The staff, I think, are new arrived with gross Jude Brown, and serve the hotel ill; not long ago the clientele were earls and dukes, and all their pretty ladies, the cook a match for any else in Europe… and now? Yet after all, I came to Shooters Hill to write, and hardly for the company. Some part of me it thinks the tavern could be so much better; another part it thinks of Mistress Brown, and suddenly it is. And so I came back to my room confused.

  And yet, I know, the world that really is means little now to me; the world that I shall dream, and writing, draw that dream from night to daylight plain… that is the world for me.

  I’ll to it once again tonight, but since we did return, I’ve nothing done except to write this journal.

  Sunday, 23rd September 1803

  Last evening, before supper, I went outside to smoke a pipe or two and look again toward London, and ugly Paul’s, knowing that not too far beyond that massive pile of misdirected worship my sweet Liz would, perhaps, be playing the old family harpsichord and thinking sad-sweet thoughts of me. And, simply, to see just where she was, and to feel myself beside her; and how I wished I was.

  I thought, then, of how the stinking city it had spread, far out beyond its ancient Roman walls, and somehow (call it vision, or a dream, or clear sight of the future) I had the impression that one day the city of ‘London’ would have grown (and groaned) and sprawled, and engulfed each single thing, both large and small, between the here and there, washing flotsam as a neap tide does upon the shores of ancient Shooters Hill; which, although my stay here has but lasted days, I’ve come to think of rather fondly. More than that, I seemed to see the whole hillside quite engulfed in strangely-shapen houses; and I knew the hubbub, and the dirt, the flabby-bellied men who vomited in the street and all their empty-headed squalor, had extended even here. How sad I was to see it.

  And yet, somehow, I knew that I was seeing this entire scene through quite another’s eyes; of a man of that time, rather than my own, and yet I thought him some way quite like me; and thinking how I’d face such things myself, then somehow all my heart ached at the horrors of his foul existence, while at the same time I found myself upon the sudden proud of his ability to live and move and breathe and swim against the tides and terrors of his time. The best that I could think (or hope) was that he did not make things worse. I know that some may think this sounded lunatic and incomprehensible: but somehow, I felt that he, like me, was a practitioner of the writer’s craft, with all the heaven and the hell that that entails; though what ‘writing’ then might mean escapes me. But somehow, we had that part of us to share. And if he will exist, I wonder what he’ll write? For if he is like me, I know, he’ll not write of his present time, but rather of the past; or of some ideal world so far removed from all the horrors of the real. And more I know (and how it joys my heart) he’ll write all loving of the Moon. And mayhap all of this was fancy; and hap again it may have not been.

  With much to think upon I returned within, but decided (wrongly, as I swift found out) to take a little ale in the tap-house. This I merely did for the sake of experience and exploration; only to find myself then trapped in conversation with some local ancient in a tricorne hat and, still, a powdered wig, who (when not crying out aloud ‘By George!’) wished to know my thoughts upon the war; and worse he wanted me to join him in his execrations of the French, the Turks and, I know not why at all, the heathen far Chinee. I told him that I had no thoughts at all and, more, that English, French and any others oversea were all the same to me, alike in stupidity and hypocrisy, and politicians’ talk was simply excremental. And more, that income tax for fighting foreign wars was quite immoral, and William Pitt he should be hanged. The greybeard then began to splutter: demanded patriotism, talked of Nelson (pah!), king and country, empire and I know not what. I told him, most politely so it seemed to me, that while I might be forced to live in the evil 19th century, that didn’t mean I had to take part in it, that too the more there was of it the less I liked it, and that all his old fool’s words w
ere unthought prejudice and downright knavery. I would have told him more besides, of how great my hatred had grown for his madly inbred ‘royal’ family, and how I spat upon his god as well, but Mistress Brown was passing by, and so she intervened. She took my arm and led me to her parlour, closed the door behind us; and then she could not help herself but burst out laughing.

  She told me that the pious ancient I’d provoked was more than four times quite my age; a local miser who, at each New Year, would offer all the barmaids each a golden sovereign if they would but let him thrash them, for the music of their screams. I did not think to ask if he had ever spent his money. She told me he would go before nightfall, for as he often said, ‘good Christian men are not out after dark.’ And so for her sake I retreated up the back stairs, and took my supper in my room.

  Last night the inn was crowded, both with locals and with officers of the Artillery, up from Woolwich, all come to crowd the assembly hall and hear the hired musicians playing jigs and reels, to spend their pay on dance and drink and frolics and, I fear, to pass the time in lewd and riotous behaviour. I thought to stay withdrawn inside my room, although the noise of songs and shouts was all throughout the tavern; but Mistress Brown she simply would not let me. She insisted that I leave my writing, go downstairs and join her in the dance. More, I fear to say, she insisted that I dance with her alone; I simply cannot conjecture why. She plied me then with so much claret (‘on the house’, as the expression has it) and, dancing, clung so close, that I grew quite alarmed; not with the warm, sweet softness of her in my arms, but rather when glancing at her husband and his all-too thunderous brow.

  But stranger still, all through the evening, brash young lieutenants or dashing captains of the Artillery Regiment would present themselves to her with all their gentlest compliments, requesting then no fairer thing than the honour of her company in the dance; and always she would absolute refuse them. The first or two she deigned to talk to, told them tales: how I was her long lost brother, how the evening was my birthday; after that, she simply did something with her strange and lovely eyes, and would not talk at all. I gaped amazed: first that she would rather dance with me, second that these muscled heroes of the nation would simply wilt and creep away before a single word was spoken. I asked her what she did; and yet she merely smiled.