The Serpent's Eye

by Brand, Thomas H.

  For the relief of my curiosity these reports do tell me more on this front, albeit in a more clinical and succinct wording than Cartwright's telling. They record that Earl Edgar died alone in his apartments after a period of self-enforced isolation. The last time he had been seen by any witness had been a fortnight earlier, after which he locked himself in his chambers, refusing to speak with anyone. When bailiffs, called by those seeking redress for various debts, forced entry into the rooms they discovered the Earl's body. By the doctor's estimations he had been dead some days. His rooms were in disarray. In finding no sign of ingress save their own, the authorities concluded the damage was the Earl's own doing. Most likely caused in some fit of madness.

  The official cause of death was recorded as a brain fever; likely brought about through some long contracted illness. Indeed, I know of several conditions prevalent amongst those men and women of moral disrepute and unsavoury character that are said to affect the mind after a number of years. Knowing of Earl Edgar's reputation, I cannot think it an unlikely or arguable cause of his demise.

  I have now to write up my summary of the reports, and file copies for my return. It seems that perhaps my business may be concluded sooner than anticipated, should my intended interviews go well. Once I have spoken to those who were known associates of the Earl, and also sought out his widow's family, I shall have the chance to explore the city for my own education.

  But this personal goal must be put off until my business is done. Therefore, I shall be about my work.

  Monday, 15th April 1816

  This morning, having spent the weekend compiling my reports, I resolved to seek out the widow Maria Juanita Gonzalez. It is not a task I relish, for I fear that as a representative of her late husband's family it shall fall to me to crush any hopes she may have regarding her future. However, that is my charge and a Sandings shall not balk at a task once undertaken. I can only hope her current situation is not so desperate that my refusal of aid causes too great a distress to her and her child.

  I took with me Arthur Cartwright, for, as a companion who knows both the language and customs of the town far better than I, I foresaw he would be most useful in this delicate situation. I feared that alone I might make some inadvertent faux pas, and his cultural knowledge could prove invaluable.

  Together, we braved the walk to the address I had been given. The directions took us to the poorer district of the city, a good distance from my lodgings, and it took us most of the morning to reach it. Here the houses became smaller and more cramped, though not yet what I would deem the slums of the city. There are areas such as these back home in London, although even there I would be wary of entering while too finely dressed. They are the homes of the working folk, taking pride in their mean fortunes. But even in areas such as this may be found men and women happy to take advantage of those wealthy enough to take too little care of their wallet. While not offering much to any footpad, I felt still that I stood out as one unfamiliar to the area.

  Men and women roamed the streets. Many glared as we passed and I will admit to suffering some nerves at this attention, but Arthur seemed unconcerned. He told me that while the British occupation of ten years ago is ill recalled by the people of the city, we should attract little outright aggression by our presence. Many in fact, he told me, have turned the anger felt at the attempted occupation away from the British and onto the Spanish masters the British looked to hurt, in order to build support for the struggle for independence. He has promised me that I am in no more danger than he himself.

  Sometime before noon we came to the address we sought. The house was a nondescript, if well kept, building nestled in the middle of a cramped street. Nearby stood a church. Aside from a large and ornate crucifix adorning the entranceway to the otherwise plain building, there were no other notable landmarks to make this neighbourhood in anyway unique or distinctive.

  We knocked upon the door of the house and found ourselves facing a small, dark, elderly woman in an outfit of sombre black. She peered up at the two of us as I haltingly introduced myself and my companion. She appeared suspicious of my accent but seemed to understand me well enough. However, upon my utterance of the name of my employer she unleashed a torrent of angry Spanish towards me, spoken at such a volume and speed that I was quickly lost, unable to pick up more than the occasional word. At various points in her tirade she would cross herself, in the way of Catholics, but never did that action hinder the speed or ferocity of her outburst.

  Without Cartwright I would have truly floundered here. He seemed completely unfazed by such an outburst. I thought it some kind of hysteria, but he later explained that such a thing is common with women of this land. He told me that should I take an Argentinian wife, as he had, I would soon consider such things commonplace.

  Eventually the old woman ran out of words and stood glaring up at me, standing defiant in the middle of the doorway. Cartwright then proceeded to summarise that which had been said. This indeed was the house of the widow's family, and the formidable lady before us was her mother, Señora Gonzalez. I shall not attempt to transcribe the exact words, though Cartwright took great pleasure in repeating the more colourful phrases verbatim. Suffice it to say, the mother's opinion of her daughter's late husband was not a high one. She blamed Earl Edgar for corrupting her daughter Maria, and leading her into a life of sin and evil. His death and her subsequent abandonment by his family was, in her mother's opinion, her only chance for salvation. She then swore in the names of a number of saints that she would not allow us to draw her daughter back into a life of fresh sin.

  Upon hearing the translation, I restated the fact that I was simply an agent employed by the Leers, not a Leer myself, and that I sought nothing from the lady's family. I assured her I simply wished to speak to her daughter on the legal matters of her husband's death. Sensing it would be the best tack to choose, I stressed that once I had undertaken this task the Leer family would be done with Maria and likewise desired that there never be any future contact with her, her son or her family.

  My assurances did little to appease this guardian of the threshold. Whether I was a devil, she informed me, or merely the emissary of devils, I was to stay away from her daughter lest I tempt her with sin and immorality as her husband had. Maria had made her confessions, she declared loudly, and was seeking forgiveness for her past sins.

  Arthur was little help through this whole encounter. In fact he took a great deal of amusement from the diminutive harridan before us, and was grinning widely when she finally slammed the door in my face. As for myself, I was stunned at the vehemence of the reaction. To what depths had the Earl cavorted to cause such a hatred in the mother of his bride? Or was this simply the overprotectiveness of the Latin matriarch? I expressed my amazement, but Cartwright merely laughed, claiming I did not understand the ways of Buenos Aires women if I thought this anything out of the ordinary.

  At this point I found myself feeling most conspicuous; standing out as we did in this suburb of the city. I looked around, and could clearly see a number of eyes regarding us from doorways and windows. Señora Gonzalez's words had not been circumspect, and it was only to be expected that they would have drawn attention. While Arthur had been an inhabitant of this land for years enough that I had no doubt, should he wish to, he could easily blend in with these surroundings, I was under no illusions I appeared anything other than the trespassing European.

  Given her words regarding confession and repentance it occurred to me that my target might well have been in the nearby church, but by then my urge to leave this place was greater than my desire to be thorough. I felt at any moment the locals might well accost us, taking me for an invader of their home soil. I now wince at the cowardice I felt at the time, but could distinctly feel their eyes on the back of my neck and had no compunctions about leaving the district and returning to the city proper.

  Chastising Cartwright for his growing mirth at my situation, I led him back the way we had come and resolved to
return on some later occasion. I am not yet pressed for time, and shall resume my attempt at interviewing the widow on another day. One where I might better prepare myself for what I face.

  As if sensing my despondence at having been so summarily cast from my quest, and once his amusement had calmed, Cartwright has promised to investigate further on my behalf. Being able to blend in with the locals more readily than I, he has promised to enquire as to the widow Maria's habits and customs that I might intercept her at some innocuous place well away from the vile custodian whom had blocked my way.

  Thursday, 18th April 1816

  Having failed in my design on Monday, and having dispatched Arthur Cartwright to begin his own investigations on my behalf, on Tuesday morning I resolved to continue my work within the closer areas of the city. I hoped I might have greater luck in the more metropolitan surroundings than had I found in the outskirts.

  By all accounts, Earl Edgar had been a well known personage in the city from the first. The arrival and settlement of a British Earl in the city so soon after the occupation had been cause enough for some note, and his actions and lifestyle in the following years did little to assuage his infamy.

  These past few days I have spent following up my list of possible contacts in the hope they might be more prepared to speak with me. I must now record that most doors in the city have been shut in my face. It seems most do not wish to discuss their one time associations with the Leer name. Thankfully a few sources have been more forthcoming, and through this testimony I have been able to glean what is at least a fragmentary history of the Earl's life here. I will attempt to recount it in a more linear form, at least for the purpose of understanding it better myself.

  Earl Edgar arrived here in Buenos Aires sometime in the October of 1810. This, at least, I had already known. He immediately procured apartments for himself and his retainers, hired what staff he required, and began making himself known.

  It would seem he quite rapidly became a figure of some repute. At first, with the political climate as it was at that time, his nationality engendered no small amount of suspicion. This, it seems, the Earl overcame through the liberal application of wealth. He made no attempts at frugality, spending lavishly both at his home and around the town. Soon the promises of fortune and good times eroded any harsh feelings that there may have been towards him from any but the most puritan of the city's fellows. It was clear he had little care for international politics, or in any possible interests the British Empire might have had in the city, and his name soon became a feature of city gossip.

  Ever an unpredictable fellow, the Earl was known as one who might appear at any establishment about town, be it high class or low. While one night he might have held a grand banquet in his apartments and invited all the great and good to attend, the next he could as easily have been found carousing and brawling in the taverns with the lowest ranks of society.

  I sought first to introduce myself to those families of a more noble sort; those it might expect an Earl to have had better acquaintance with. By the end of my first day of searching I had discovered this line of enquiry was a fruitless one. All my entreaties were firmly rebuffed as soon as it was learned whose agent I was. While my ejections from their homes were more polite than Señora Gonzales' had been, they were just as final.

  It appears that being known as an associate of Earl Edgar's is not a badge of great repute amongst those who value such things. Those with the better sort of reputation soon came to avoid him, and despite his death such attitudes still remain. I have assurances the addresses I presented myself to on that first day are those of folk who were known to socialise with the Earl in the earlier days of his residency. It seems now they wish this fact forgotten.

  As such, I was forced to focus my investigations upon the lower rungs of the social ladder. On the second day, bracing myself for the rougher environs of the city, I widened my search to the lower reaches; the taverns and public houses that had been noted as Earl Edgar's more frequent haunts.

  It was here, at last, that I found those willing to recount tales of their associations with the Earl, for the cost of a drink or two. Many of these tales I find so fanciful that I am sure they have undergone at least a little embellishment for the retelling, but even those of a more believable nature are still wild. They do not tell of the actions one would associate with a peer of the realm.

  Yesterday I found myself in a tavern close by the docks where I spoke to a one eyed man who swore to me, on his mother's life no less, that it was the Earl whom had pricked it out in a brawl over a third man's wife. The tale went that the Earl, seeming a demon in drink, had loudly professed his desire to bed a particular lady within that very tavern. The gentlemen told me he informed the Earl that the lady in question was married to a friend of his; a man of good reputation, away fighting in the north of the country. The Earl allegedly flew into a rage at this and took out the man's eye with his knife. For one so wronged, the man seemed to have remarkably little anger towards the Earl for this action, and indeed told me Edgar returned the next morning to ensure he received the best medical care that could be bought. Of the fate of the lady's respectability, he could not recall.

  Other such tales I have been told, all in some way adding to the general debasement of the nobility of the Leer name and title. In one hotel I was directed to speak with a serving man who recalled a day when the Earl arrived in the lounge and loudly held forth to the clientele about his sexual conquests in the lands of the far east. Each time one of the horrified patrons fled his candid tirade he would throw a handful of cash from his pocket at the owner to cover the loss.

  Many of these tales do not bear repetition, but the collection as a whole depicts Earl Edgar as a man struck by a duality of the soul. He could harangue those he passed in the street with crass obscenities, but could also act the true English gentleman and the very soul of polite expression.

  One habit he soon became renowned for was at times to settle at some establishment, call forth for the finest drinks they might serve, be that the richest brandy or the most questionable beer, and then consume all that was brought to him until it seemed his very soul would drown. Inevitably he would be escorted home or thrown out into the street. Neither outcome seemed to bother or dissuade him.

  One thing I have made note of in all of this is the lack of reference to the Earl's first wife, Lady Margaret. There are many mentions of the young Maria Juanita, but of Lady Margaret there has been nothing. I can only surmise she must have perished whilst at sea before their arrival at the city. This remains the most frustratingly elusive fact in all my investigations.

  Yesterday I struck upon a great piece of luck. I have been introduced to one Carlos Valta, a man who actually served within the Earl's household for a number of years. He had not been in close confidence with the Earl or his new wife, being but a lowly footman, but was nevertheless in an excellent position to view the goings on of the house before the growing disrepute forced him to tender his resignation.

  Having been introduced, I arranged to meet with him the next day in one of the nicer salons of the city, which it turned out he in fact owned. A neat, rotund man in his late twenties, Valta spoke a passable English, which was a relief to me as it allowed us to bolster my, thankfully improving, Spanish. I ordered drinks; coffee for myself, while he drank a strange, bitter concoction made from dried leaves called maté, which he drank from a cup and straw, both carved extravagantly from silver. He had a habit of looking around himself as he spoke, never seeming to settle for more than a few moments. Nevertheless his testimony was a welcome enlightenment to the lifestyle of the late Earl.

  His story went that he came to Earl Edgar's employ four years ago. By that point the Earl was well established in the town, and those of good standing had already begun their ostracism of him. Valta informed me that he knew well the reputation of his employer, however a position within the household of an Earl still seemed a good prospect for a young man of growing means. Being yo
ung and red blooded, he had also felt there might be certain opportunities to be taken advantage of in such a position that would be unavailable in households of a more moral attitude.

  Valta told me how he soon discovered the Earl's household was less of an opportunity and more of an endurance. By the time of his employment the better set had already begun to shun the Earl and his young wife, and within their home even the pretence of elegance or morality was long forgotten. He recalled an unsavoury air that made him uncomfortable from the beginning, but he stuck it out for what benefits could be had.

  He never knew of the Lady Margaret, nor was the name ever mentioned within his hearing that he could recall. Of the Earl's family, all he knew of was the Lady Maria. It seems the Earl's young wife cared little for the running of her household, and left most of the business that should have been her charge to the servants while she followed her husband's lifestyle. Often, Señor Valta told me, she would wonder around the halls in a state of undress, casually flirting with all she came across. She was unashamed, and openly discussed acts of sexual congress with her visitors while entreating them to the same.

  At the start of his employment Valta found such a sight exciting in its shocking brazenness. To his shame, he admits that in those first weeks he gave in to weakness and temptation, allowing the lady to seduce him into actions and behaviours of which he would not speak directly. But being by nature a sober and God fearing man, Señor Valta assures me that despite his healthy, youthful lusts, the behaviours into which he was enticed to indulge did not sit well with him. The Lady Maria's temperament was, he tells me, volatile, and the Earl's even more so. Quickly, Valta began to ensure he was never left alone with his employer's wife and the temptations she presented.

  The maids of the household seemed to have been collected from the streets of the city for their talents in areas other than that of housekeeping. Their lack of morality was never a secret, and while they were not as brazen as the lady of the house, visitors were always aware of their nature and the liberties they allowed. Indeed, Señor Valta informed me quite openly the main reason he remained in the Earl's employment for so long were those same liberties. Apparently while he had morals enough to steer away from the Earl's wife, enjoying the company of these common women of low social standing did not hold the same discomfort.