The Ghost Club

by William Meikle

  It was my own father who spoke first, and in speaking brought a sudden end to proceedings.

  “You know, I asked around about the history of this place before I bought it. The two bungalows were built in ’35 and ’36. Built for a Colonel Mackenzie—a Scotsman—and, rumor has it, a Master Mason. He died in ’49 in that same bedroom where you slept last night, and the pipes played across this very hill at his funeral. What do you think of that, Captain Mackie?”

  Captain Mackie did not answer. The only sound was the thud as his body hit the floor, for he had fallen into a dead faint.

  Our most recent guest is one of the greatest figures in modern literature, and it was an honor and a privilege merely to sit at the same table as the great man. To find that he was a most agreeable chap, with a hearty laugh and a firm hand was merely the icing on a most delicious cake.

  Furthermore, his command of English certainly exceeds my non-existent grasp of Russian, and I was most pleased when he handed me a neatly written manuscript in my own language after his tale was done. I had not known that Scotland’s bard was so highly thought of in the great Motherland. But it comes as no surprise, for the poet was a man of the people, who spoke both to and for the people, and for the great Leo Tolstoy himself to acknowledge it would surely have tickled the Ayrshire man mightily.

  After the tale was done, the great Russian regaled us all with more poems and song from his homeland, and it was such a splendid evening that I regret it will probably never be repeated.

  But at least we shall always have his tale—and here it is.

  THE IMMORTAL MEMORY

  Leo Tolstoy

  The Empress Yekaterina Alexeyevna called Captain John Marsh to an audience at court, in the thirty-fourth summer of her reign. Our good Scottish Captain knew not why he had been so summoned. Indeed, the mariner was in a state of some confusion, for, being a simple trader in furs and timber between Saint Petersburg and Aberdeen, he had thought himself far beneath the notice of those responsible for the great affairs of state. His confusion only grew as he approached his appointment, for as he was led through the corridors and chambers of the Winter Palace it was obvious that preparation was underway for a grand ball. Servants scurried to and fro, stewards barked orders, and kitchens and pantries were being filled to brimming with all manner of alcoholic beverages, meats, breads, cheeses, and sumptuous sweetmeats.

  Captain Marsh was shown, with no little pomp and fawning, into a grand antechamber, where he waited along with thirty or so others who seemed as bemused and bewildered as he was himself. Having been so summarily called for, Marsh expected to be shown before the Empress forthwith, but it was proved a vain hope, for the crowd thinned but slowly. It seemed to the Captain that those of nobler birth—and finer clothing—than he were being escorted into the Empress’s presence first. He calmed himself, assuming a watchful stance that had always served him well in long doldrums at sea, and watched the gathering of rich and impoverished alike, who were being held in similar straits as himself.

  There was the banker, Ilyanovich, red and sweaty and as coarse as a dock worker both in features and language, berating a doorman at the top of his voice, ensuring all would hear how inconvenienced he was by having to be made to wait among the common folk. Across the room was Catriana Petrova, a singer that Marsh recognized from the opera, a frail, almost alabaster girl of no more than fifteen with a voice of an angel hidden inside her. Beside Marsh was an old man, withered and bent by age and circumstance, his clothing, having never been fine from the very beginning, now little more than rags—he mumbled to himself, and cradled a wooden puppet in his arms as if it were a child. There were others—many others—some who seemed to belong in this fine palace but mostly, like Marsh, they made a gathering who felt ill at ease and out of place in such grand and opulent surroundings. Marsh was greatly relieved when a doorman approached and tapped him on the shoulder—it seemed he was finally to be granted his audience.

  But first he had to endure a long walk through the length of the Great Hall. It was lined on either side by courtiers and counts, priests and princes, all of whom seemed to eye him with a certain degree of disdain, as if doubting his very worth to be in their presence. He kept a firm eye straight ahead and strode, steady and steadfast, along the red carpet to where the Empress herself waited, seated, on the great bejeweled throne of state.

  The Empress was a grand lady, somewhat older than Marsh had thought her to be, swaddled in fine robes with a high crown that made her seem all the greater, and she greeted Marsh with an imperious glance that would brook no argument. His audience was a short one—far shorter than his wait in the antechamber beyond, for Catherine only had a few short sentences for him.

  “I am greatly enamored of your poet, Robert Burns. You will bring me a Scotsman who is able to recite his works in Russian, and he shall entertain us at the ball tonight.”

  And with that, Marsh was dismissed, as summarily as he had been summoned. He turned on his heel and began the long walk back. The courtiers continued to eye him with disdain, but Marsh had no thought for them now. Although he had heard of the poet, Burns, he knew for a fact that there were precious few Scots in the city, and even fewer who could so much as read, never mind recite poetry in a foreign tongue. He had, however, heard tales of what happened to those who slighted Her Majesty, and as he left the palace, our Scottish Captain was a mightily worried man indeed.

  ***

  Once he had made his way back to the Havenward, our Captain wasted no time in inquiring among his crew after a man who would be capable of the—monumental to the Captain’s eyes—task ahead. No such man could be found, and although the purser, John Templeton, was conversant with the works of Robert Burns, he had little skill in the Russian language beyond the ability to bid a man good day and to make an order for drinks in a tavern.

  With Templeton at his side, Marsh took to the aforesaid taverns, knowing that was the most likely place to find a Scotsman, although it was not the most likely avenue of investigation for procuring the services of one who was both a reader and a Russian speaker.

  Their first port of call was to the infamous dockside tavern of the Two Horses, it being the closest to their moorings on the quayside. Even in early afternoon it was a riotous hostelry of drunken seafarers, women of dubious moral standards, local musicians eager to try to part the less sober sailors from some coin, and hard-put-upon barkeeps struggling mightily to maintain pace with the prodigious thirst of the clientele.

  Marsh and Templeton managed to procure a table in a corner near the door where a breeze off the sea did much to dispel the odor of tobacco and stale ale. They let it be known that there was coin to be had for any Scot with the required skill—and tact—to stand before the Empress that evening. Then they supped at some ale while eager sailors, drawn by the lure of easy money, arrived at their table to try their luck.

  The first pretender was not long in arriving, taking a seat by Marsh’s side within minutes of their request being made known. He was a sturdy, burly chap with a beard that lay all across his chest and a bald pate glistening, not from oil, but from sweat, that also gave him a high, sour odor that made Marsh thankful for the breeze from the doorway.

  “I know my poetry,” the man said, his accent as thick as any that Marsh had ever encountered. The man proceeded to regale them with bawdy ballads, of ladies from Brest with enormous chests, and army officers with members of steel—none of which were very likely to have come from Burn’s pen, and none of which were suitable entertainment for the Royal Court. Marsh gave the man a penny anyway, as he had provided a well-needed burst of merriment that had almost made Marsh forget his worries.

  The burly seaman left the table happier than he’d arrived, but his performance proved to be the high water mark of the afternoon, as a succession of increasingly drunken Scotsmen proved themselves incapable of either reciting Burns or conversing in the language required to please the Empress. Marsh had visions of returning to the Havenward and se
tting out for Scotland and home rather than face the ordeal of turning up at court to announce his abject failure. Indeed, he was about to suggest that very course of action to Templeton when his fortunes took a dramatic turn for the better.

  He was not to know this at the time, of course, and at first glance the figure that arrived next at their table was more likely to be taken for a beggar or traveling vagrant than poet and wit. Templeton made a move to dismiss the man—boy—completely, but Marsh, being so close to abject despair, prevailed on him to hear the newcomer out. The straggle-haired, thinly bearded figure, his face caked with grime but his youth all too clear in his eyes, rummaged in the pockets of a voluminous but shabby overcoat. He came out with a well-thumbed, leather bound booklet, from which he proceeded to read, declaiming in the manner of someone used to public oratory.

  Time cannot aid me, my griefs are immortal,

  Nor Hope dare a comfort bestow:

  Come then, enamour’d and fond of my anguish,

  Enjoyment I’ll seek in my woe.

  “Is that by Burns?” Marsh asked.

  “That it is, sir,” the newcomer said. He introduced himself as one Alex Drydon from Stirling before inquiring as to the payment for the proposed performance at the ball.

  “Let us not get ahead of the game, lad,” Marsh replied. “You are a fine speaker, I will give you that, but you are far from comely and are somewhat unfit for the sight of the high and mighty of the great court. And we require someone who can perform as adeptly in Russian as in Scots.”

  The lad, Drydon, surprised everyone in the tavern by leaping atop the table and declaiming a long poem in Russian, at some length and with no small degree of theatricality and enthusiasm. Marsh barely understood the quarter of it—enough to know it was about the exploits of a drunken man and his meeting with the devil—but the staff in the tavern applauded loud and long. As the ode finished, Marsh was not the only one to pass Drydon a coin on its completion. The lad sank back into his seat, accepted the money, and immediately burst into frenzied weeping that was only stopped by the simple act of giving the lad enough ale in which to attempt to drown himself.

  “The boy is ill, a drunken sot, and clearly insane, Captain,” Templeton said. “We cannot put this wretch in front of the Empress of Russia—we would be shot on the morrow.”

  “Nevertheless, he knows Burns—and he knows Russian—and he knows well how to put on an act. To find two would have been a blessing, to find all three is an act of providence I cannot ignore. He will suffice—he will have to.”

  ***

  It was in the middle of the afternoon before Marsh got the lad, Drydon, back to the Havenward, having had to almost carry him along the quay from the tavern. Whether it was the lack of sensibility due to drinking, or a weak constitution brought about by the manner in which he had led the most recent chapter of his life, the boy weighed little. He spoke only fragments of sense, preferring to live in an addled state somewhere between rapture and sobriety.

  After a long soak in a tub, and a shave from the sailing master, he looked more like a languid poet might be expected to appear. Now that he was fresh faced, his youth was even more apparent—he could scarcely have more than twenty-and-two summers to his name, and was so emaciated that he might not gain another. As Marsh plied him with a mixture of whisky, tea and honey, he got fragments and snatches of the boy’s history, interspersed with doggerel, lines of poetry and verses of songs, all of which poured forth from the lad like the spout of a river in spring after the snow.

  It is a familiar tale of a youth lost to beauty, enraptured and dazzled by words and the desire to add his own voice to that of the muses who had gone before. He had schooling, but not the sense to apply it toward his own wellbeing, preferring to dally among sonnet and lay, stanza and ballad. He had brought his writings to Russia having heard of Catherine’s patronage of the arts—but had found none, having instead fallen on increasingly hard times, wandering the quays and hoping for a coin for his words. He received pennies where he desired acclaim, drunken laughter where he hoped for the cheers and plaudits of his peers.

  Drydon wept again as he spoke of it, until Marsh’s whisky calmed him into silence.

  The purser, Templeton, spoke again of his misgivings.

  “What the lad needs is a long period of proper food and sleep, Captain. His nervous disposition is such that we cannot be assured of the appropriate outcome should we present him to the Empress and the court.”

  Marsh had himself taken to some whisky for his own nerves, and was in no mood for argument from his officers.

  “And yet, what other course of action would you have us take? We cannot leave, for we are not yet laden and the furs we are promised will not come for weeks yet. Without them, we would return home as destitute as this boy here, and with as little by way of hope for our future wherewithal. No, it is the court, or nothing. Get him dressed and powdered—we can at least ensure that he looks like he has a measure of composure.”

  Drydon looked up from where he sat at that moment, and declaimed loudly.

  Oppress’d with grief, oppress’d with care,

  A burden more than I can bear,

  I set me down and sigh;

  O life! thou art a galling load,

  Templeton smiled grimly.

  “We can only hope that his choice of material for his performance sounds rather more cheerful in the Russian, for it is a tad gloomy to my mind.”

  Drydon spoke again, singing this time, a sprightly tune.

  But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,

  And show’rs began to fall;

  John Barleycorn got up again,

  And sore surpris’d them all.

  Marsh began to believe that the appearance at court might not after all be the calamity he had been so worried of.

  ***

  Drydon managed to walk unsupported as they left the Havenward in a cool, early evening to make their way to the Palace. Templeton accompanied Marsh and the younger man, both for provision of moral support and to give aid should the boy begin to weaken, either in resolve or in health, on the approach to his performance.

  As they neared the palace they began to take note of the gentry making their arrival for the Great Ball. While the sailors walked, the dukes and duchesses, princes, Hussars and Cossacks all rode, either on fine horses with their tails and manes braided with gold, or in tall polished carriages, ebony inlaid with ivory and gold in crests of their lineage so that all would know of their passing. The people of Saint Petersburg cheered and clapped from rooftop, window, and doorway, and there was an air of merriment and goodwill abroad that opposed Marsh’s own mood, which was growing blacker the closer to the palace their steps took them.

  Drydon had once again lapsed into a fugue, mumbling and gesticulating as if in the throes of a fit. Marsh and Templeton took turns in holding the younger man upright, and marched him up the hill to the palace gates. The guard took a single look at their charge and shook his head, denying them entry, even to the point of raising his musket to tell them to come no closer. Marsh’s spirits lifted somewhat, for now he had sufficient reason to abandon this foolish enterprise and retire to the Havenward with the honor of all concerned remaining intact.

  Drydon, however, had ideas of his own, and, pushing Marsh aside, stood in front of the musket and proclaimed in what sounded in meter and rhythm to be a piece of poetry in Russian. The guard smiled widely, lowered the musket, and waved them inside the gates alongside the arriving gentry.

  “What in blazes did you say to the man?” Templeton asked as they entered the main courtyard of the palace, joining the throng that waited for entry to the palace itself.

  Drydon laughed, loudly enough to draw alarmed attention from some of the more gentile of the people gathered around them.

  “I gave him some more Burns—I told him I would be addressing the Empress with the verse.”

  Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair,

  To hope may be forgiven;

>   For sure ‘twere impious to despair

  So much in sight of heaven.

  All three of the men laughed at that, despite the admonishments of the high and mighty around them, and Marsh was still smiling as they were led into the palace and thence to a long antechamber to await their turn to be called to perform.

  ***

  Drydon’s recovery was to prove short lived, for their wait in the antechamber became an extended one, as the Empress proved tardy in her arrival and the ball itself had not reached a start even before full darkness had descended on the city. Bread, cold meats, and wine were provided to ensure the performers were not forgotten during their enforced idleness. Marsh noticed, too late, that the lad had taken too little of the former and too much of the latter, and had become quite inebriated in a short period of time, the effects of the wine being exaggerated owing to the slight nature of his frame and his weakened constitution.

  Drydon began to declaim again, at the top of his voice, shouting such that Marsh noted he had drawn the attention of the guards to them.

  ‘Twill make a man forget his woe;

  ‘Twill heighten all his joy;

  ‘Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,

  Tho’ the tear were in her eye.

  “Wheesht, boy. You are going to get us all shot if you are not more circumspect,” Marsh whispered.

  Drydon did not appear to have heard him, and continued to declaim, in Russian now, in a voice that carried and echoed around the antechamber and brought silence wherever it was heard. Marsh had not understood a word of it, but he knew the effect of a well-timed insult when he saw it on the faces of the other performers. Two of the guards left their position at the doorway and moved, menacingly or so Marsh thought, in their direction.

  He grabbed Drydon by the left arm—Templeton, seeing his intent, took position on the right side, and together they marched the boy out of the antechamber and into a small adjoining room to one side. Drydon, all energy seemingly spent, slumped in a chair and was almost immediately asleep. Marsh returned to the door and looked out—the guards had returned to their posts.