River Into Darkness

by Sean Russell

  “It makes little sense to come to me, Samual, and then not trust me,” Erasmus said softly.

  Hayes shook his head and shifted his gaze to the fire. “I have been racking my brain all evening trying to think of any reason, any reason at all, that the Admiralty would be interested in me. Interested enough to sack my rooms.”

  “And . . . ?”

  Hayes looked up at him. “I can think of only one thing, and even it makes almost no sense.”

  “Out with it, Samual.”

  “I had been doing some research for a gentleman. Someone who wanted utter discretion. It was paid work, you see,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “No shame in that. Not to my mind, anyway.” Erasmus waited, his patience wearing thin, though he fought to hide it.

  “Well, the gentleman has some involvement with the Admiralty. That is the only explanation I can think of. But, for the life of me, I can’t imagine how the work I did could lead to naval officers searching my rooms.” Hayes rose from his chair and paced two steps across the hearth, clearly troubled. He stood looking down at his hands oddly, turning them over and over before the flames.

  “It is such a strange thing. . . .” He hunched down before the fire.

  “Perhaps you should tell me about this work you’ve done, Hayes. I might notice something someone with less distance would miss.”

  Hayes nodded, still looking into the fire. “It is a story I want to tell you, Erasmus. You, in particular.” He glanced up. “But I would have to ask for complete secrecy in this matter.”

  Agents of the navy were involved, Erasmus reminded himself. “If your story bears upon the security of the nation in some way, Hayes, I cannot guarantee that I’ll be able to keep your confidence.”

  Hayes stood up quickly. “But it doesn’t, Erasmus. I swear it.”

  Erasmus considered. It was not that he didn’t want to offer Hayes some help, it was just that he didn’t want to become more involved than was necessary. “You said that you particularly wanted to tell me this tale. . . .”

  Hayes nodded hopefully. “Yes, for you see, the story involves a mage, or at least I think it does. That is what I hope you can tell me.”

  Erasmus shifted in his chair, wary now. “I will tell you honestly, Hayes, that I have little special knowledge of mages, despite what people will persist in believing.”

  A tight smile of polite disbelief flickered across Hayes’ face. “Of course . . . I simply thought. . . .” He stopped and looked away again.

  “If, as you say, the matter is innocent, I will honor your confidence. That is all I can promise.”

  Hayes nodded. “It all began about two years ago with a professor at Merton. You see, he called me and a classmate to his study one day and asked if we’d be interested in undertaking some research for a prominent gentleman—he would not tell us who it was, for the gentleman desired absolute discretion. We had to agree before we were told his name. Our professor did assure us that the gentleman in question was above reproach and it was all on the up and up. I agreed readily, for I would be paid, and my classmate, Kehler, agreed as well.

  “We were sent off to meet our prospective employer, completely in the dark as to what we would be doing, and I dare say we would have thought it something of a lark if we hadn’t known the man by reputation.” He glanced up at Erasmus, clearly still impressed by this mysterious gentleman. “I can’t say more than that he is a person of some standing.

  “We speculated a great deal about what our task might be, but I can tell you, Erasmus, we were not even near the mark. Do you know anything about a little village called Compton Heath?”

  Erasmus shrugged. “Just the name.”

  “And I should have said that’s really all there was to know—except for this one peculiar incident that the gentleman was interested in.” Hayes reached down and took a sip of his brandy. “I don’t know how he ever learned the story, but his fascination with it was obvious. As he told it, he could not sit still but paced across the room speaking as though he were explaining a great discovery.

  “According to our employer, a stranger appeared one day in Compton Heath: a man dressed oddly, who spoke no tongue that any recognized. He seemed more than a little disoriented and distraught, as well as a bit fearful of the people, though from all accounts they treated him kindly. A doctor was called who determined that the man suffered nervous dyspepsia and required rest and quiet.

  “A priest, skilled in languages, was located and came to hear the man’s strange speech. The priest confessed that he could neither name the man’s language nor even from what region it might originate. Some theorized that the stranger had been shipwrecked and was the only survivor, and that he had come from a land in some unexplored part of the world where there was a rich civilization. The imagination being what it is, these people also believed the stranger was a man of importance in his own land—a prince or a wealthy adventurer. The problem with this theory, of course, was that the town of Compton Heath lay some twenty miles inland, and it seemed unlikely that this man would have traveled so far without first encountering other towns or homes and their people.

  “But then the stranger was not quite right in his mind, so it was not entirely out of the question that he had wandered so far. The local officials took the man under their wing, not quite sure what should be done. He became something of a local curiosity, and men of learning traveled from neighboring towns to see him for themselves and to hear his strange tongue.

  “But this situation did not last long. One evening a grand coach arrived, from where no one knew, and when it left the stranger was no longer domiciled in Compton Heath. The officials claimed the man had disappeared of his own free will, though few believed them. In fact, the town worthies were clearly frightened and did not like to speak of the matter at all. Afterward the rumor went about that a mage had sent for the stranger, though this can be neither proven nor disproven.”

  Erasmus was silent for a moment, and Hayes turned his attention to him, trying to read his reaction to the news of a mage’s involvement. This was clearly the question he hoped Erasmus would answer, for everyone knew that Erasmus Flattery had once lived in the house of the mage.

  “What year did this happen?” Erasmus asked.

  “1453.”

  “Over sixty years ago.”

  Hayes nodded. “As we traveled to the village, we speculated endlessly about the gentleman’s interest. It seemed extremely odd to us. The gentleman in question is of a serious bent of mind, I will tell you, yet this story seemed the kind of thing that would be taken up by people who believed in fairies and spirits. We could not quite understand, for certainly we could give no credence to such a tale ourselves.”

  “So that is what you discovered?” Erasmus said. “There was no truth in it?”

  Hayes looked a little troubled. “We set out only to disprove it, of course, but that was to be more difficult than we expected.

  “We arrived in Compton Heath more than half a century after the fact, but we could imagine no other way to begin. The incident had not happened so long ago that there would not still be a few who had been alive at the time: people who had seen the stranger and heard the man’s odd tongue.” Hayes’ brow knit together, and his look grew more serious. “But nothing was to be as we imagined. We were not in the town long before becoming convinced that, indeed, something strange had occurred there on or about the dates that we had been given. Certainly the townsfolk earnestly believed it, at any rate. And though many were willing to speak to us about it, those who had been directly involved in the incident—those few still alive—would not even see us, despite all our best efforts and charm. It was utterly frustrating. Everything we learned came second- or third-hand, and though it all corroborated our employer’s story, none of it came from anyone directly involved. We had been instructed to be absolutely thorough in our inquiry, but it was i
mpossible. The people who had been directly involved, some of whom were said to have met the stranger, would not speak with us. They would not even open their doors so that we might plead our case.”

  Hayes sat down in his chair and leaned forward, hands on his knees. “I will tell you, Erasmus, after a week in the village we were more intrigued than ever, for the silence of the people involved seemed terribly peculiar. A bit macabre, even. We finally agreed that our last hope remained with the doctor who’d taken an interest in the stranger—the one who had diagnosed nervous dyspepsia—for he was the only man who we had not approached who might still be alive.

  “We were especially interested in him because several people in Compton Heath told us that the doctor had kept notes of his observations of the stranger, and not just his medical observations. A few months after the stranger’s disappearance the doctor had moved on, and there were only rumors of his whereabouts, but even so I thought we must pursue it. We feared we would find him as silent as the people of Compton Heath—if he were alive at all—but felt there was little other hope of fulfilling our obligation to our employer.”

  “While in Compton Heath we did find some intriguing bits of information,” Hayes said, sitting back, “though, of course, much that we were told was contradictory, so it was difficult to discern what might be true. Apparently the stranger could write, not as we do, of course, but he wrote nonetheless. An old woman showed me what was alleged to be a sample of this script, and for a small fee she allowed me to copy it. I’m not sure she isn’t laughing with her friends about this yet, but all the same, I paid her the money and took my copy away, as not a few others had before me, I suspect.”

  “Do you have that writing?”

  Hayes shook his head. “I’m afraid it is being held hostage in Merton with many of my other possessions, pending the payment of some back rent.”

  “Ah. And that is the story?”

  “Not quite,” Hayes said, glancing at Erasmus, a bit of triumph in his look. “You see we eventually found the physician who had first examined the stranger.

  “It was not an easy task,” Hayes said, “for the man was prone to moving and not leaving a forwarding address, though this did not seem to be for the usual reasons. The good doctor appears to have been as dedicated to the payment of his debts as he was to shifting his domicile. He moved almost yearly for most of his life, before finally settling in the village of Nearbrook, on the Tollingham Canal.

  “It is my guess, now, that the good doctor felt he had finally managed to outrun whatever he believed to be pursuing him—or perhaps he had just grown too old to keep running. We found Ripke, for that was his name, living in the house of his daughter and son-in-law, who was a physician as well. I regret to say that the beginnings of dementia were evident in the doctor’s speech and manner, although he had not yet succumbed completely. There were times when he spoke with clarity, and his memories were not so intermingled with his delusions.

  “It was the oddest meeting, Erasmus. His daughter began by assuring us that the old man would not speak to us of this matter. Indeed, that he would not speak of it even with her. We asked if we might talk with Doctor Ripke all the same in hopes that we might change his mind, and this was eventually allowed.

  “And talk we did. We sat in a small garden above the canal, the old man tucked beneath an ancient, threadbare blanket, for he would use no other. He seemed something like a child who believes that once under the blankets he is safe from all the monsters hiding in the dark. The conversation ranged freely, as you might imagine, though it was not all unpleasant. At times his old self, or so I imagined, would come forth and he displayed real charm, and even some concern for others. Then, very unexpectedly he would lapse into tirades, for he believed himself a victim of terrible persecution.

  “The man took a liking to me, I think, and at a sign from my partner, Kehler, I took over our inquiry, Kehler being content to sit and listen. It was some time before I could steer him round to the topic of interest to us, but finally after some cajoling, he fell into a long silence, and then said, ‘Damn him, I shall not take it to the grave!’ I think he had been keeping the secret so long, and living in fear, that he could no longer bear it. ‘Let him take me now and be done with it,’ he kept repeating, as though some terrible fiend would learn of our conversation and come for him. Occasionally he would even fall to accusing us of being agents of this thing he feared but never named.

  “It was a long difficult process taking three days, and I don’t think I would ever have been allowed to press my questions as I did, for obviously the interview was a detriment to the old man’s already precarious state, but his daughter was clearly even more interested than I. She sat just out of the man’s sight and listened carefully to every word, hardly able to believe that her father was telling the story at last.” Hayes stopped to drink, his throat dry. “I learned a number of things from Ripke that our visit to Compton Heath had not uncovered. The stranger was certainly civilized, not a wild man as some claimed. He was modest regarding his body and submitted to the doctor’s examination only after it was demonstrated to him that he would not be harmed. His hands bore no calluses or signs of labor. He was clearly curious, even amused at times by things he saw. The workings of a clock caused him great merriment, apparently, and he obviously understood the ways of mechanical things. Given writing implements he not only wrote in a script no one had ever seen but produced a number of sketches of objects, the purpose of which could not be readily grasped.”

  “Farrelle’s flames!” Erasmus blurted out. “Do these drawings and script exist?”

  Hayes shook his head sadly. “No, but I will come to that part of the story. The stranger began to learn Farr; quite rapidly I believe, and it soon became clear that he knew more about many things than his supposed teachers. He drew a fairly detailed anatomical drawing of the human body, and clearly had strongly held beliefs about how it functioned—Ripke was of the opinion that the man might well have been a physician in his own land. If what Ripke said was true, the stranger suggested things about the functions of the heart and lungs that are only just now being considered. For instance, Ripke is convinced that the stranger did not believe that air in the lungs cooled the heat of the blood but rather infused it somehow, and this enriched fluid was carried to the extremities of the body to nurture it, like fertilizer does a garden. Or so I understood him to say.”

  “This is what some medical men are proposing now,” Erasmus said, a bit surprised.

  Hayes nodded. “So it is.” Though he did not seem nearly as astonished as Erasmus. “Just as Ripke and the others began to realize what a miracle they might have on their hands, a large carriage arrived in Compton Heath late in the night.” Hayes took a long drink of his brandy, and seemed suddenly very sad. “Ripke was not present when the coach appeared, but as Compton Heath was a small village, he soon had word of it. He hurried to the house where the stranger was lodged and found a scene of terrible confusion. Horsemen held back the few onlookers from an ornate carriage that had pulled up in the lane, and when the doctor tried to enter the house to determine what went on, he was stopped by the horsemen, who would provide no explanation. He stood helplessly by as he saw the bewildered stranger bundled into the carriage, and as the door opened, in the darkened interior, he saw a man, or at least his silhouette, calmly waiting.

  “At this point in the telling, Doctor Ripke went into a spasm of cursing and cowering that finally sent us away for the rest of that day and part of the next. When we were allowed to return, only I was able to speak with the doctor. He would see no others. I found a haggard looking Ripke waiting, for he had been awake raving all night. But he was more lucid than at any other time during our visit, as though the fit of madness had run its course and left him too exhausted to continue with such mania. I took a seat with him before the fire—for though it was a warm day, he huddled next to the hearth as though it were the worst day of wi
nter—and he suddenly reached out and took hold of my hand. You cannot imagine the look he gave me then, as though he pleaded with me for his own life. ‘Pursue this no further,’ he said, his voice all but gone from his night of raving.

  “When I asked why, he would not answer but curled up in his chair, drawing his ancient blanket up over his head, and from underneath I heard him muttering, and then crying pitifully. I could learn nothing more from him, and finally his daughter took pity on the man’s state and sent me away.”

  “But what of the writing and the sketches?”

  “They disappeared at the same time as the stranger.”

  “And no one could reproduce them?”

  Hayes shook his head. “Ripke tried, but each time he put pen to paper, he would be overcome by a strange fear. A fear so great that it drove what he had seen out of his memory. And his notes, taken at the time, could not be found. His daughter thought that he hoarded them in a wooden box which he kept locked and hidden away, but when he died, a few months after our interview, her husband opened the box and found nothing but pages of gibberish. Lines that connected in no way that conveyed meaning. The artistic equivalent of a madman’s ravings.”

  Erasmus felt a sudden chill himself, for he could almost see the poor doctor huddled up by his fire, slipping back into madness. “And who was it took the man away?”

  “I was hoping you would tell me, Erasmus. This doctor was filled with a terror that he could never escape. I might dismiss this as just the dementia of one old man, but several others who were present that night suffered similarly—two much worse, in fact. They self-murdered not long after. Was this the doings of a mage? That is my question? Could one place such a terror on a man? Would they do such a terrible thing, for surely this Ripke had done nothing that could offend a mage? Unless there was some part of the story he was not telling. A stranger appeared in his village, and the doctor endeavored to learn something of the man, and did nothing to cause him harm. That is all.” Hayes stared hard at Erasmus, clearly unsettled by what had happened to this poor doctor. “Could this have been the workings of a mage?”