After ten minutes the mumbling stopped.
‘Do you want to come in?’ the medium asked with sudden animation. The rose of rubies in her necklace glimmered to a deeper crimson.
The candles flickered and the room was gutted with shadows.
‘Do come in,’ she urged. ‘Enter and tell us how you conquered Death.’ She tilted her head, listening carefully. Something sighed at the door. It could not have been the wind for there was no wind that night. Something other than the wind sighed at the keyhole and blew into the room as though the walls were releasing their breath. All the candles blew out and the room was plunged in total darkness. My stomach shrank at the thought of my friend Issac’s weary smile and silent stare.
‘I have a message from a spirit,’ said the medium. ‘But I cannot hear him properly. He speaks an ancient language.’
Yeats relit the candles and after a whispered consultation with Dulac, leaned forward and cleared his throat.
‘Can you ask the spirit its name?’
The woman mumbled that the name was Bates. Then she confessed she was not sure what it was.
‘Yeats, possibly,’ she said.
‘But I am Yeats,’ countered the poet.
‘No you’re not,’ said the medium in a hoarse voice, as though the spirit was speaking through her. ‘Yeats has left the room.’
Yeats’ face grew dark with suspicion. ‘You mock me.’
‘Why won’t you help me?’ asked the medium in her altered voice.
‘First you must tell us what they call you.’
‘I can’t tell you that right now.’
‘Then when can you?’
‘You’ll know when the time is right. Just wait and see.’
‘See what?’
‘That should be clear to a poet.’
Yeats sighed and reached for his coat.
‘Wait,’ said the medium in her normal voice. ‘Someone else has entered the room. A young woman. Her name is Rosemary. She wishes to speak to Mr Yeats.’
‘Can you describe her?’ Yeats lowered himself back into his seat.
‘Her face is covered in a hood decorated with a hem of red and black roses. She says two men have trapped her in a tiny room with no way out.’
The candles flickered again, hiding the expression on the medium’s face, so that none of us could tell what she was thinking. Darkness swung across the room like the shadow of a heavy pendulum. Light and shade, light and shade, as though the entire room was swinging between this world and the next. Someone said something, and I instinctively looked round, expecting to see Issac’s ghost, but there was no one there. Yeats shuffled his feet and hummed a little tune under his breath, but his forehead was sweating and his face transfixed with tension.
‘Ask the spirit how she knew I would be here tonight. And why has she chosen me?’
‘She says only a poet can see what is invisible, the trail of clues that others can’t see. Only you hold the magic key, but you must hurry. The waves of water are flooding the room. Already she can no longer feel her feet or legs because of the coldness. She says the waves are about to close about her face.’
‘This is a dream of yours,’ said Yeats, rising from his seat.
‘It is no dream. Her spirit was with you when you entered this room. She was with you all evening. Your life goes on around her.’
‘Then tell me why she has attached herself to me.’
The medium stared at Yeats with a mysterious expression. Was it wisdom, sadness or curiosity that shone from her shadowy eyes?
‘Mr Yeats, the spirits of the dead pass through this world like bodies falling without a place to land. They search for faces they like, or expressions they can tolerate, people with whom they can identify in some way. They look everywhere, in railway waiting rooms, libraries, concert halls, parks, the crowds milling in the streets. In truth, they are searching for a reflection of themselves, a sign that they are still here, that connects them to the land of the living. But any trace or echo of their former existence is fleeting, because the crowds of humanity are transforming all the time like the clouds in the sky. Every moment they undergo a bewildering set of transformations.’
Yeats nodded in agreement. ‘It is the vital connection we seek all our lives. That someone somewhere will remember and love us. But this visitation is a case of lightning hitting the wrong man. I never knew this woman, nor was I responsible for her death.’
‘You can’t ignore her plight.’
‘No.’ Yeats voice grew strained. ‘I’ve lost the key. It’s out of my reach forever.’ He yanked at my sleeve and pointed to the door. We hurried out. In a darkened window, I caught a reflection of our faces, the pale light of panic shining forth.
We ran into the street, none of us speaking until the terrace of houses had blended with the fog-bound darkness.
‘Aren’t you going to tell us why you are so affected by what she said?’ said Dulac, panting to keep up with us.
‘No,’ replied Yeats.
Dulac sounded disappointed. ‘I’m curious.’
‘And I am weary, my old friend. It is late, and I want to get home, write up my notes, go to bed and sleep. Mr Adams will see that I get there safely.’
‘You look more frightened than weary.’
Yeats said nothing.
‘Perhaps it is just weariness,’ said Dulac. ‘One gets tired attending these sorts of séances, listening to the pitiful wailing of so many frauds. Eventually one feels overwhelmed by their lamentable acting.’
‘Promise me one thing,’ said Yeats, ‘that the events of tonight remain between us, and no one else.’
‘I won’t say a thing.’
Before parting company and climbing into a hackney cab, the painter apologised. ‘I should know better than to press you on personal spiritual matters. If there’s anything you need, let me know.’
‘You could find me a good exorcist.’
‘If I thought one would help you, I would. In the meantime, try and get some rest.’
With Dulac gone, Yeats and I found ourselves on Eastwick Road, an impoverished-looking thoroughfare that smelt of damp cinders. The poet’s Bloomsbury rooms were at least a few miles away, and languishing before us lay the black hulk of a Victorian poorhouse, a miserable-looking building covered in soot and surrounded by barbed wire. Like many former poorhouses in the city, it had been recently converted to a makeshift prison to house some of the thousands of Irish insurgents arrested after the failed Easter Rising in 1916.
Outside its gates, a small battalion of women had gathered, banging the gates, singing songs and reciting political chants. Foremost among them were several widows dressed in veils decorated with roses. I took them to be the wives of the rebel leaders executed for their part in the Rising. There was a menacing edge to their grief, like that of women who had hung around too long at the edge of a battlefield. Their faces were gaunt, fanatical. Not for them the special reception given to the widows of men who had fallen gallantly in France. They were the wives of traitors, whose executions the papers had trumpeted, and whose bodies now lay in anonymous quicklime graves.
Yeats stared at the dark, barricaded building and the protesting women. He reached his hand onto my arm, steadying himself.
When the women saw us approach, they swelled towards us with their dark, smouldering faces. They appeared about to pounce upon us when a voice, which seemed to come from behind, drew their attention. A tall stooping woman, dressed in layers of black like an elderly widow, appeared at our side and led the crowd back to their prison gate protest. She shouted above their heads in a voice that sounded more youthful than her appearance: ‘Women of Ireland, freedom is never won without the sacrifice of blood. Our chance is coming. The end of the British Empire is at hand and Ireland will rise up from the ashes of the Easter Rising. She has been the land of sor
row long enough.’
The women cheered and returned to banging the gates. At that moment, my attention was caught by the speaker, who was doing something that struck me as odd. She was checking her face in a compact mirror and powdering her cheeks in the manner of an actress preparing for the stage. I tugged at Yeat’s coat, but he too had noticed her actions. She snapped the mirror shut and slipped it into a leather purse. She turned her white face towards us and raised her finger to her lips as if we were part of a conspiracy. Her coat opened slightly, revealing the red cape of a Red Cross nurse’s uniform. After holding our stare for a moment, she made her way into the throng of protesters. In spite of her stooped posture, I had the impression of a shapely body swaying confidently beneath the layers of black. The effect on Yeats was immediate and dramatic. He reached out with his hand and then sank to his knees.
Across the street, two men cloaked in shadows watched as I helped Yeats move away from the protesters. Their boots rang against the cobbles as they trotted towards us.
‘Have you been robbed, sir?’ asked one of them. They were dressed in the uniform of London policemen.
‘No. Just call us a hack,’ said Yeats in a hoarse voice.
They obliged and as soon as the cab pulled alongside, Yeats dropped into the seat. When his colour had returned, he spoke in a whisper, ‘What were we thinking walking by such a prison at this time of night? Have we forgotten how dangerous this city has become?’
‘We weren’t thinking at all, that was the problem.’
Yeats sighed. ‘I sometimes fear I’ve helped drive my country to this perilous brink.’
‘You mean England?’
‘No. Ireland.’ He groaned. ‘All my poetry and plays. How have they helped anyone? All they’ve done is stir arrogant men to violence and bloodshed.’
‘Your writing did not start the Easter Rising.’
‘But the men who read my words did. I should have tried harder to talk them out of shedding blood for Ireland. I keep going over the past in my mind and wondering if I could have done anything to turn those foolish young men in some other direction.’
Yeats fell silent as if what he had said was a confession that shook even him. He nestled into a moody silence within his high-collared coat. The fog dispersed and the weather got colder to the point of freezing. Yeats nodded off, his head slumped sideways. When the hack drew to a halt, he jerked awake.
‘Where are we?’ he asked, his eyes blank. He peered through the window and seemed reassured that the street was empty and well-lit.
He gave me a guilty look. ‘My wife doesn’t know we visited a séance tonight. She thinks I was giving a talk to the Sesame Club on Chichester Street.’
He closed his eyes again. ‘The supernatural world is like a beautiful woman, alluring and impossible to resist. Yet it carries so many obligations and hidden dangers.’
‘Dangers?’ I asked.
He took a deep breath. ‘What happened tonight has happened before. Everywhere I seem to go these days I find myself running into the same ghost. Everywhere I look, she invades me with her manifestation. The smell of her perfume constantly overpowers me.’
‘Who is she?’
‘My black Irish rose. Come to my house and I will explain what I know so far about her mysterious death.’
3
Ace of Swords
IT was just before midnight when we entered the front door of Yeats’ home. The rest of the journey had passed in silence, the two of us unwilling or unable to turn our thoughts into words. Georgie, Yeats’ wife, was still up when we got in. She had been reading a crime novel and greeted me as though I were a mildly disturbing annoyance, before concentrating her gaze on Yeats, whose pale skin had taken on a bluish translucence from our fog-bound adventures.
The poet’s self-possession was soon restored by the attentions of his young wife as she gently helped him out of his coat and poured him a glass of claret.
‘You should not be out in such fog,’ she scolded him. ‘You know how terribly sensitive you are to a heavy atmosphere.’
‘Do not burden yourself with worry,’ he replied, appearing to take pride in her solicitous manner.
Although a ruddy glow had returned to his cheeks, the shadow of the evening’s exertions still lay across his face, and a feverish light shone from his eyes.
‘Would you care to join us for a drink?’ he asked, laying a hand on her shoulder and glancing at the book she was reading.
‘I’d better not,’ she replied. ‘It’s getting late.’ She kissed him on the cheek and carefully closed the book.
She glanced reprovingly at me again. Her rising annoyance at my continued presence made me feel like a lost child lingering in her husband’s footsteps.
Yeats waved a hand in my direction. ‘Mr Adams has come to help me solve a supernatural enigma.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re still searching for that ghost,’ she sighed.
‘On the contrary, my dear Georgie, that ghost is still searching for me.’
Without further delay, Yeats led me into his library where a fire was flickering in an ornate fireplace. The room was full of books stacked in precarious storeys, and tables of charts and strange diagrams. Shelves lined the walls with an assortment of encyclopaedias, heraldic weapons, crystals, jars of herbs, and implements shaped like quern stones which I had seen him wield to influence the elemental powers.
He sat down at his ebony writing table and proceeded to record his notes for the evening in his customary secret code, his hand shaking slightly. Then he threw down his pen.
‘Before we can sum up tonight’s events, I must show you what has caused my mind such unrest.’
He began opening drawers in the table, throwing out scrolls written in eastern and ancient languages and various antique ornaments.
Lifting out a heavy old book, he regarded me solemnly. ‘I have here a letter that contains the most bizarre proposition ever made to me.’
He allowed for a dramatic pause before opening the book and removing a velvet slipcase from within its yellowing leaves. As painstakingly as if he were handling a wafer of ice, he removed a single-page letter and placed it in front of me. I caught a bleak scent of roses and rain that was redolent of a grand house in a damp country.
‘Let me advise you that once you have read what is written here you can never unlearn it,’ he warned.
Intrigued, I examined the letter. At first, it seemed to me the hysterical outpourings of a fervent female fan. Addressed to Mr William Butler Yeats, care of the Order of the Golden Dawn, it began with the outrageous claim that by the time the letter reached his door, its authoress would be dead. The letter-writer went on to describe her growing certainty that an unknown individual was determined to rob her of her life. In the event of her unexplained death, she begged Yeats to return to Sligo and investigate her murder, lest the guilty party go unpunished. ‘I shall be all the more powerful in spirit than in flesh,’ she promised Yeats. ‘In return for investigating my murder I will provide for you admirable proof of the existence of an afterlife, and of your own psychic skills. It is my plan to return and haunt my murderer in such a deliberate and powerful manner that his or her identity will become obvious to your watchful oversight.’
At the bottom of the letter was the signature of Rosemary O’Grady, followed by the word Lissadell, which at the time meant nothing to me. Even taking into consideration the formal tone of the letter, the writer’s words were chilling and dramatic, made all the more powerful by her affirmative use of the future tense.
I studied the letter carefully. There was none of the smudging or ink-blots that suggested it had been written in haste or under emotional duress. In fact, the letter’s neatness suggested she had rehearsed the lines a hundred times in her mind.
‘I have kept it secret this past month,’ said Yeats returning the letter to its slipcase, ‘w
ondering if it was the work of a mad woman until I came across this in the Sligo Chronicle.’ He handed me the cutting of a newspaper report.
Sinister death on a Sligo beach
On the morning of November 1, the drowned body of a local girl was washed ashore at Blind Sound beach, near Lissadell. A servant in the employment of the Gore-Booth family, nineteen-year-old Rosemary O’Grady was found inside a coffin by Captain Thomas Oates, who has been stationed at Magheroy Lighthouse since June under the command of the British Admiralty. According to an eyewitness report, the dead woman’s wrists were slashed and she was wearing a hood decorated with red and black roses. Inspector Derek Grimes of Sligo Royal Irish Constabulary has called for local people to be on the alert for a vagrant or unknown person in the area. On questioning, he refused to rule out suicide as a possible cause for the young woman’s untimely death.
‘We are on the lookout for any suspicious person or persons,’ he told the Chronicle. ‘The brutal and tragic nature of this young woman’s death has caused deep unease in the local population. We would advise households to refrain from panic but would suggest that husbands and fathers be aware of the whereabouts of their wives and daughters at all times. However, I should add that, at this time, we are still not sure what sort of foul play has occurred.’ The Inspector would not be drawn on the police investigation into her death or on the whereabouts of Captain Oates, who, since the gruesome discovery, has taken a leave of absence from his post.
‘The letter is hardly proof she was murdered,’ I suggested. ‘Her death may have been a bizarre suicide, as the newspaper report suggests. In fact, given the letter’s unusual proposition it might not be so odd to assume she became the tragic victim of her own irrationality. People who kill themselves have been known to publicise their intentions beforehand. The use of a coffin also suggests a measure of attention seeking.’
The Blood Dimmed Tide Page 3