The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  ‘Dominica, fragile though she was herself from her fall, immediately went to her and gently guided her into a table in an alcove, people making way in a silence partly of abashment, but partly also of awe …

  ‘I signalled for some spirits: I could see the aged dancer shivering within her worn black garments, despite the humid atmosphere of the bar. She sipped gratefully, and then, in a firm, imperious manner which belied her form, she spoke something as follows:

  ‘ “I am Nuria, and I was the dancer for the Saragossa Orchestra. People stopped and stared when I danced. They did not eat, they did not chatter, they did not even sip their drinks. They stopped; they watched. But I did not dance for them: I danced for him. For him, and his violin … Mandracorte, they called him. It was one of many names.”

  ‘She went into silence again. Then she brushed Dominica’s scarred cheek tenderly with her crooked fingers. “He will not harm you again. I have taken him back.” And she drew her hands once more into her haggard frame, her moist eyes taking up a dull lustre.

  ‘Dominica turned her pale, marred face away, an indrawn look in her eyes beneath that neat black fringe. “I think,” she said quietly, her voice full of doubt, “that I was practising the crescendo very hard indeed and I knew somehow it was still not quite right, try as I might. And then it was as though the bow just flicked back off the strings and struck me.”

  ‘I do not think even she was convinced, but Griffin drew her to him. “We certainly shall not play his music again, you may be sure of that.”—and there was no demur from her.

  ‘ “When I heard from my countrymen here,” said Nuria, “Of the performance you would give, I thought it could do no harm to hear again the music of my past. I could not expect you would play the ‘Clandestino’. And then, I told myself, ah but you will not play it as he played it… . But when I heard it rising and rising I had to cry out and put an end to it: for I knew that he would not stop.”

  ‘Julian Griffin, stirred with a fascination despite himself, asked, “What did they say of him, of Mandracorte—that he had sold his soul? Like Sarasate?”

  ‘ “You ask me seriously such things? Well, he would speak sometimes of the street sorcerers he said he had known in the dark quarters of Saragossa, it was part of his act, you know? But no, I do not believe he had sold his soul to the devil. He had another master, I think. He had made a pact with the dark side of love. No cruelty of the heart was too hard for him, no treason of the tryst too sinister. He would hunt down his lovers like prey, linger with them, taunt them, commit scarlet sacrilege on their white altars, then betray.”

  ‘She held back the black mantilla to show her harried visage. “No, gentlemen, not the devil. It was the Black Eros he worshipped.” ’

  Mad Lutanist

  ‘While I was away recently,’ The Connoisseur began, ‘I found on my return that Thomasina Vaux had left me a brief note, in her habitually curt way, telling me to call if I’d like to poke my snout—I think those were her kindly words—into another little oddity.

  ‘So I made my way to the old Sandemanian chapel, in its genteel nineteenth-century backwater, noting that the bower of laurel, cypress and yew that some vanished divine had no doubt caused to be planted here, had vindicated his faith both in its endurance and its deep, dark-leaved gloom. I glanced at the glinting brass plaque with its brusque legend, “Thos. Vaux. Clockwork”, and went through the arched entrance and the vestibule, with its piteous panels of pale purple and watery yellow stained-glass, into her workshop, which occupied much of the fore-end of the building.

  ‘She was filing away precisely but vigorously at some brass ratchet or other—I am never very clear as to what these things are called—and murmuring imprecations to herself. I subsided silently onto one of the narrow wall-side pews, upon a vile cushion of blue plush, and watched her work until she uttered a more than usually vehement curse, set down the tool she had been employing, pushed back the taut filaments of her hair so that it more than ever resembled a stand of withered, blackened asphodel, wiped her hands on her dusty overalls, and strode over to greet me.

  ‘After an exchange of what passes for cordialities with Tom, she gestured to her work-bench.

  ‘ “Just because it’s got a dial,” she rumbled, “They suppose it must be clockwork. But what kind? Look… .”

  ‘She showed me a white dial face, much indeed like a clock’s, but with many more black characters delineated upon it, and none of them a recognisable letter or numeral. They went all around the circumference, marking off many intricate divisions, but what these could be was by no means clear. The signs themselves struck me as being a little like primitive petroglyphs—they were a mingling of arrow-headed cuneiform, say, or the stalks of ancient ogham, but starker still.

  ‘ “What is it?” I enquired.

  ‘Thomasina gave me a long stare, smiled wanly, and intimated that she would hardly have treated herself to the pleasure of my company had she been able to answer this question herself.

  ‘ “Well, where did you get it?” I persisted, “Not from some shadowy learned society, I hope?”

  ‘Indeed not, it transpired, but from an entirely reputable Civic Trust in one of the little black-and-white towns of Cheshire, and they had got it as part of a bequest of a building a little away out from the town, somewhat in the nature of a folly, called Horton’s Tower, a rather hideous early-Victorian red-brick rendition of a campanile, though somewhat squatter. It was also known locally, rather wryly, by the nickname of “House Laborious”.

  ‘ “Sounds like something out of Bunyan,” I suggested, but Thomasina demurred. “I asked the secretary why they called it that,” she explained, “and all he could suggest was that it was because it took so long to put up, as it is on what they call a hill in the Vale Royal, though not so very steep, and everything had to be hauled up there: or else because it was built to provide work to relieve the agricultural depression in the 1830s, hence ‘labourers’ house’, which had been inverted to render it more picturesque.”

  ‘ “So what exactly have they sent over?” I asked.

  ‘Thomasina pointed to a thick oak trunk shoved unceremoniously into one corner of her studio, with its lid agape; within I could make out a medley of other metallic artefacts.

  ‘ “They found this in the upper chamber of the place,” she told me, “but couldn’t make it out. However, as the last of the Hortons, who hardly ever went near the place, stipulated that the building must be thoroughly restored as a condition of them getting it, and left them the wherewithal, they are keen to do what they can to have this mechanism repaired. But to have what, precisely, repaired? There’s the rub. Well, they saw that there was a dial, and a hand—” she gesticulated with a black arrow that had lain on the bench—“and some cogs, and said to themselves, ‘some sort of clockwork’, and had it brought round to me. But it ain’t, at least not in the normal way. See… .”

  ‘She then proceeded to show me just what there was. As well as the curiously inscribed dial and its pronged hand, there was a long brass rod which she had deduced must attach through a central hole in the dial and onto the hand. She had already repaired this attachment so it worked quite well. Then there was a wheel indented with numerous rather blunted teeth, which I had supposed to be a ratchet: she had been trying to sharpen its edges to make it mesh neatly with a weighty star shaped device, hollowed in the middle, since that was what it seemed designed to do; yet despite some other odd fitments, it was by no means clear how the whole composition would work.

  ‘ “Surely we shall have to go and do a reconnaissance of the tower,” I ventured, “And see if we can work out what all this was used for?”

  ‘Thomasina sighed, and began carefully packing away the contents of the chest. “Exactly,” she responded, “I knew you would come in useful. Give me a hand with this… .”

  ‘I must admit I rather quailed at the prospect of hefting that ugly lump of lumber, but by dint of sloping it more towards her as we took hold
of the handles at either end, I was able to shift much of the weight in her direction, and, accompanied by a few terse expressions from Tom, we heaved it into her ancient jalopy. “I’ve got the keys off them,” she admitted, since she had obviously pre-planned this, “and I gather it’s still fairly habitable. If you won’t regard it as an insult to your virtue, we can pick up some of your things, then motor over now and get on with the work at first light tomorrow.” And that is what we did.

  ‘The faint bloom of a blue-black dusk was clustering over the long, low, red-earth fields as we approached the minor eminence, a gently rising grassy ridge, where the tower stood, all on its own, some three or four miles out from the town. We negotiated a stony, nettle-girded track and drew up in front of the stout, studded door. The edifice before us was of a dusty maroon brick, dankly purple in the dying day and, peering upwards, I counted four floors. It was a solid square, with a lozenge shaped window on each side except the rear, virtually all with folded blue shutters, and outside the ledge of most there was a scroll of ironwork. Each floor was delineated by a jutting lip of slightly pinker brick which ran all the way round, and there were a few stone medallions set into the higher walls, the lettering much faded and probably indecipherable even in good light. At the top there was a plainly crenellated flat parapet with some sort of flagpole, creaking in the breeze. The whole affair had the air of being an uneasy duel between fancy and utility, with the more solid quality coming out decidedly on top.

  ‘We got inside easily enough using the big iron key that Tom had been given, and found that the lower floor had suffered from the depredations of hobos or tearaways, since there was a midden of debris and detritus, and the charred remains of a camp fire, which they had at least confined to the narrow-bricked kitchen hearth rather than the flagged floor itself. A sagging window frame showed how they had made an entry. In one corner there was a stone staircase, which took us to another arched, staunchly-timbered door; this required three keys to gain entry, and we soon established that this had sufficiently deterred the casual vagrants and vandals, for within all was untouched.

  ‘We clattered up the remaining stairs to the other floors and shouted a catalogue to each other of what we found: there were coarse chairs, tables, chests and presses, stone fireplaces in most rooms, but little else. I rather relished the stark simplicity of it, as if it had been swept clean of all the clusterings that we habitually have about us in our homes; but I confess I was glad I had brought my stoutly-woven Bokhara rug to act as intermediary between my limbs and the floor.

  ‘There was not unnaturally a musty smell about the place, and we heaved up some of the sash windows, undid the brass hasps and pushed open the shutters, to let some air in. There was a sudden great inrush of wind as soon as we did this, and a susurrus of hoarse whispering seemed to surge into all the corners and crannies of the place; and I was reminded how high we were compared with the gentle champaign below: there was probably no projection of the land between us and the estuary of the Dee. Once, opening the shutters too forcibly, I almost dislodged a damp pine box, which was loosely held together with thin wire; it was resting on the delicate rolled iron ornamentation, and long since dispossessed of any floral contents, if it had ever had these. It was rather sagging and forlorn: and so I took more care with the other casements, for there seemed to be several similar boxes, though their daintiness did not comport well with the rather bastion-like bulk of the place.

  ‘After we had unpacked our coverlets, lanterns, candles and provender, I decided, despite the dim and wavering light, that I should like to re-examine the white dial and its black markings more closely: I confess the enigma was vexing me as much as it had Thomasina.

  ‘Taking a methodical approach, I counted thirty-two divisions of the dial and I began to see a sort of pattern in the characters for each marking. There seemed to be four different types of character which predominated, each were variations on the zig-zag or lightning-strike form; but they were then repeated in all possible combinations around one another so that each marking of the dial was identified by one or a group of these four. But then in addition each interval seemed also to have, by the side of these, its own unique signifier, a spiral, infinitesimally more convolute each time.

  ‘As I pondered these, an inkling of a possible explanation for the cipher began to form, but I kept my counsel for the moment until we could take a look at the edifice in the morning.

  ‘Thomasina wanted to study more keenly some aspect of the top floor, which comprised one large chamber, so she made her camp up there, while I was in the room below. Of course, it would have been hard to get much sleep in such spartan surroundings anyway, but I was sensible almost at once, as I lay wrapped around, of the shrill whistling of the wind as night drew in, and indeed I remember thinking it was almost as if the place had been designed on purpose to let the gusts race through it. But such buffeting of a prominent tower was only to be expected and I settled down to erase this from my mind.

  ‘Before long, however, I became increasingly aware of several high thrumming sounds in the background, a sequence of semi-melodious groans, with a piercing wistfulness about them, which seemed to rise up from all quarters of the tower, as if all the agitated airs were calling to each other in doleful tones. You know how uncannily like the human voice the wind can be when it catches at certain obstacles or forces its way through cracks and crevices; well, I found myself listening as hard as I could to try to force out the impression of a mortal keening admingled with the sweep and fall of the gustings.

  ‘I passed on my impressions to Thomasina when we made a hasty repast from the basket we had brought with us, rather early in the morning. She eyed me solemnly, and briskly thrust her fingers through her black stalagmites of hair:

  ‘ “Whisperings and wailings,” she said. “All very well: I was visited by a face.”

  ‘I stared at her agog.

  ‘ “Yes, just like that, only more intelligent-looking.”

  ‘She explained that, like me, she had tried to settle in for the night, but had been distracted by the noises and had resumed pondering upon the function of the apparatus found in this top chamber of the tower, staring upwards and turning over possibilities in her mind, while remaining subconsciously aware of the flights of the air around her.

  ‘Then, as she concentrated harder upon the enigma, her gaze absently transfixed upon a point high up on the chimney-breast, she began to discern, forming in the white plaster, a vague shape of a face, very round and grinning down upon her.

  ‘At first she blinked and stared again, expecting to find merely some chance arrangement of shadows: but the face did not resolve itself into any such obvious cause; quite the opposite, it grew more definite and she thought she could make out its features, which she described as “Pickwickian”; rather billowing cheeks, glinting eyes, copious side-whiskers and a high dome of forehead.

  ‘The face leered at her, mouth agape, and she frowned back at it, and then she began to feel that the gleaming eyes were trying to transmit some message to her, and the funnel-like mouth formed some words, but they were lost, if they sounded at all, in an exceptionally strong rush of the wind, hooting wildly around the cornices and echoing off the bare walls. Dust or ashes seemed to rise with it and cause her to blink and choke, and when she looked again, the face was gone, and only a dim round nimbus remained momentarily to show where it had been.

  ‘ “And now look,” she said, and led me upstairs to the upper chamber, pointing to the chimney breast where the vision had been. There was, about a man’s height and a half up, a patching of the plaster-work that had left the faintest hairline intimation of something that had been there before. It was circular. We both regarded this for a little while. Then Thomasina snapped her fingers, dragged over a desk and measured this ghost-hole. A wry smile: then she knocked the plaster with her knuckles, and snorted. “Bodged. Just a veneer. It’ll easily come off.”

  ‘With a few swift mallet strokes, she demonstrate
d her point, then shone a torch inside. I heard a few murmured sounds of gratification, and then Tom said we should go out onto the parapet. The wind streamed through our hair and freshened our faces and I gazed out over the meadowlands beyond, relishing the far vistas: but Tom was more interested in the standard attached to the mulberry-hued barley-twist chimney.

  ‘It held a glinting metallic banneret, fork-tailed like a chevron but blunt-nosed like a flag, with a curious, much-faded, dinted and chipped device upon it. There was a slight juddering noise. Thomasina inspected its source. “Ha, flagpole’s loose,” she noted; it was swivelling slightly in the lofting air. Then she turned her attention to the little standard, and tapped it: “Tin, I should say, light but fairly durable. Wonder why.” Then she took hold of it and gave it a push. It moved easily, but its staff moved with it, with a grating sound; then it righted itself as the breeze caught it, and continued to flicker slightly from side to side. Tom glared at it more narrowly and, pulling out a piece of string from one of the many pockets in her tunic, wrapped it round the staff and marked its circumference with several rough strokes of a blue pencil. I observed her preparations idly while continuing to admire the view below.

  ‘We returned to the upper chamber and stared at one another.

  ‘ “You’ve been smug all morning: you’ve got an idea,” she accused me.

  ‘ “So have you,” I riposted.

  ‘ “Go on then.”

  ‘ “This dial is an instrument with thirty-two points on it and each of those points is marked by a combination of only four different characters. I’d say it’s a compass, marking every point from North through East-North-North-East to North-North-East or whatever: orienteering is not quite my thing. But why the characters are variations on a zig-zag rather than just N, E, S, W, and why they also have their own individual signifier, I do not know.”