Savage Magic

by Lloyd Shepherd

  Horton breathes out, once, through his nose, like a horse coming to a decision. He turns and sits down in the chair, leaning back this time, looking directly at Graham, as if seeing him for the first time. Graham, for his part, sees the lights come back on in Horton’s eyes, and feels himself watched in that peculiarly intensive way which Charles Horton can bring to the matter. Normally it unnerves him. Today, it brings relief.

  Graham twirls his cane again. What he has come to say is unpleasant to him, and bitterly odd.

  ‘My wife, Horton, does not live with me any longer.’

  Horton frowns. He looks confused.

  ‘It is one of those things which is little spoken of. Some of my oldest acquaintances, such as John Harriott, know nothing of it. It is a matter of great personal pain to me that Sarah has decided her future lies with another man. But now she has asked for my help in the oddest matter imaginable.’

  There. It is out. He takes in a very uncharacteristic breath, and blunders on, natural wit departed, elegance of expression forgotten.

  ‘Sarah now lives with a baronet named Sir Henry Tempest. He is her cousin. Our daughter Ellen lives with them. Am I to assume you know nothing of this man?’

  Horton, astonished into silence, shakes his head.

  ‘Then all I will say, Horton, is that Tempest is one of the worst men in England. A rogue. A scoundrel. His fortune comes from an heiress he has abandoned to an unknown fate. His title is inherited, though he has no issue of his own. Now he acts as father to my daughter and as husband to my wife. Ellen has taken his name as well as mine. Ellen Tempest Graham. An infamous name, but nonetheless …’

  He drops the cane then, the mention of this purloined daughter with his own name almost more than can be borne. He forces himself to regain some self-control.

  ‘They live – Sir Henry, my wife, Ellen – in a place called Thorpe in Surrey. Tempest has some money left from his abandoned spouse, and I continue to supply Sarah – Mrs Graham – with an allowance of her own. She remains my beneficiary. She remains my wife.

  ‘So, now. You know of my domestic arrangements. You are as informed as any West End gossip. But know this, Horton. I still have bottomless wells of affection and feeling for my wife. Her behaviour … well, her behaviour has been poor. But I still want her to be happy, and healthy. And Ellen – well, Ellen is my child. I cannot help my feelings for her. That is why I am here today.

  ‘Sarah came to see me yesterday, at Bow Street. We had not spoken face-to-face for some months. She was, and I do not exaggerate, beside herself. She said Thorpe Lee House, the estate of Sir Henry, is bewitched.’

  ‘Bewitched?’ Graham sees that even through the beard and the mental exhaustion Horton is capable of sudden bemusement.

  ‘Yes, bewitched. Under the spell of a witch.’

  Graham waits to see what Horton will say. He watches him as carefully as he has watched anyone, and he is a noted watcher. He knows that what he has said is extraordinary. In most places in London, it would be received with derision. Bewitched? But witches don’t exist! We even passed an Act of Parliament in the last century to say so!

  But Horton, Graham knows, has seen things. Bizarre things which are beyond contemporary explanation. Things which Aaron Graham, in his role as Bow Street magistrate but also as Horton’s secret supporter, knows break through the polite veneer of respectable natural philosophy. For himself, he knows a good deal more about these dark matters than even Horton. And he rather suspects that Horton knows that.

  He thinks of Abigail Horton and her visions, and wonders if they too are of a piece with the dark histories that have been revealed to him in recent years.

  These thoughts go through his head as he watches their analogue go through Horton’s. He knows that Horton cannot believe this to be a practical joke or an ill-considered piece of gullibility on Graham’s part. He has told Horton of his domestic arrangements – matters he has discussed only with those closest to him – and this is evidence of his good faith. And Horton’s next question is perceptive enough to convince him that the story has already burrowed its way beneath the constable’s skin.

  ‘Is Mrs Graham prone to such beliefs?’

  Even in his disturbed state, Graham must smile at that.

  ‘Prone? No, Horton, she is not prone to superstition or credulity. She is a sensible, ambitious, clever woman. She is not some hysterical young girl who has flown off with a charming ne’er-do-well in imitation of an empty-headed romantic novel. If she believes Thorpe Lee House is bewitched, something very odd indeed must be happening in that place.’

  ‘She has described such episodes?’

  ‘Some of them. Anyone who knows of the old tales of witchcraft would recognise them. Milk curdling. Strange inscriptions. The sudden appearance of a fairy circle, of all things. An horrific episode – two of Tempest’s dogs were found dead on the lawn of the house. Most of these things happened, and were worrisome, but they did not initiate Sarah’s approach to me. That has been occasioned by a much worse thing. Ellen has become ill, suddenly and precipitously. If one were to write a story of bewitchment, I cannot imagine a more complete set of symptoms than the ones Sarah has described to me. It is like the script for a play about maleficium.’

  ‘I meant perhaps something pettier than that. A village grudge, a resentment from Sir Henry’s past …’

  ‘Resentments must have piled up in Sir Henry’s closets like snow on the Lakeland fells, Horton. He is a terrible fellow. And yes, this was the first thing I thought of. And if this is the case, and if Ellen is really ill …’

  ‘Then perhaps she was poisoned.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And others may be in danger. Including—’

  ‘Sarah. Yes.’

  ‘Have these events been investigated locally?’

  ‘Sarah says she has spoken to the local justice. But these matters are notoriously hard to investigate. As soon as witchcraft is invoked, the village constable is likely to veer away in fear. Even today. These superstitions adhere stubbornly in country villages, however sophisticated we seem to be. And besides, Horton, no one in Thorpe – perhaps no one in England – possesses the same skills of detection as you. I have watched you work these past three years, and like your own magistrate have been astonished by your approach. Harriott tells me you have not done any work for him in Wapping since Abigail’s commitment. You cannot write to her or visit her. You can do nothing for her while she is in that place. But you can help me, and perhaps yourself. Get out of Wapping, Horton. Go to Thorpe. Investigate what is happening to that damned household. Help my wife, just as I have helped yours.’

  A Treatise on Moral Projection

  The stage for the dramatic events I will describe herein was the old private madhouse of Brooke House, which still operates in Hackney, just to the north of London. At the time of which I write – the late summer of 1814 – Hackney was still a village, though one through which all sorts of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells made their way to and from the metropolis to the south. Gypsies were common visitors, camping out on the road into London, and causing all manner of problems.

  Like many older buildings in this great country, Brooke House is a confusing mixture of styles and periods. Imagine a structure built around two internal courtyards, its longer sides running north to south on either side of these internal spaces, the whole building facing east across the main road into London. The long side facing the road has an elegant frontage built during the reigns of the early Georges, and a wall enclosing the northernmost courtyard. Behind this front are the older original buildings.

  Inside, the original rooms have, almost without exception, been subdivided into cells, dormitories, servant quarters and suchlike. Female patients occupied the rooms on the first floor, with the men on the ground.

  Being something of a student of the history of these isles, Brooke House was a repository of some fascination to me. The oldest parts harked back to the fifteenth century, but the house’
s most fascinating years were during the reign of Henry VIII, who (it is said) gave a hundred oaks to his wily courtier Thomas Cromwell to fashion part of Brooke House. In my idle moments in the madhouse I would sometimes look at a piece of protruding timber and imagine Cromwell’s wicked hands running down its grain, as he planned the destruction of some courtier, bishop or even Queen. I had even arranged for some investigatory work to be carried out in one particular part of the house, the south-eastern corner where, local stories had it, a chapel had originally been situated. Peeling back some of the plasterwork I was pleased to discover a painting on the wall of an ecclesiastical fellow in splendid raiment standing above a kneeling monkish man. I wished to discover more of this strange space but the events I shall come to interrupted my investigations.

  At the time of these events and, as far as I know, perhaps even still, Brooke House was operated by the Monro family, whose name has been somewhat discredited these past thirty years but who, in 1814, were considered the foremost mad-doctors in England. Thomas Monro, my employer and the chief physician of Brooke House, was the third Monro to be chief physician at Bethlem Hospital, and had been one of several mad-doctors who had tried, and failed, to cure King George of his final (did we but know it then) episode of insanity. Brooke House was the family’s main source of financial independence, and was run alongside Dr Monro’s duties at Bethlem. Like all private asylums in England at that time, it was a lucrative business. The patients were typically of the finer sort, not quite lords and ladies, but certainly not paupers. The cost was too great for the poor, and in any case Bethlem and the recently established St Luke’s accommodated the poor who became mad.

  I came there as a young man of two-and-twenty. I had been born and raised in the village of Chevening in Kent. I was apprenticed to Dr Monro at Bethlem in 1802, aged eighteen, via a family connection of my father’s. Four years later, I was transferred by Dr Monro to Brooke House, following a paper I wrote for him on the therapeutic regime at Bethlem and how it might be improved. Monro, seeing a good deal of sense and intelligence in what I suggested, stated that my innovations might first be tried at Brooke House before being introduced into the larger, more public realm of Bethlem.

  My own quarters in Brooke House were in the part of the building called ‘the Cottage’, on that same south-east corner of the main building where I later discovered the chapel. The house is easy to get lost within, and during my early weeks as a physician there I was forced to seek guidance from one of the matrons on several occasions. Imagine if a manor house and two or three cottages had, over time, become conjoined, their roofs combining, external walls becoming internal ones, and you will have some sense of the internal confusions of Brooke House.

  I must now turn to the two main protagonists of my strange tale, both of whom arrived at Brooke House within a day of each other in August 1814.

  The circumstances of Maria Cranfield’s arrival appeared to be exceptional, at least by the standards of Brooke House which, as I have said, had a rather genteel clientele. Miss Cranfield arrived in a very bad state indeed. She would not speak and was violent in her responses, exhibiting a frenzied mania which was not entirely unfamiliar to my then-practised eye.

  This would puzzle me, because the gentleman who accompanied her to Brooke House was, on the face of it, an honourable man of some means. He gave his name as Henry Lodge, and said he was a Kentish farmer acting on behalf of the young woman’s family. When I enquired as to the identity of Miss Cranfield’s parents, I was told, politely but firmly, that no identity would be forthcoming, and that all matters pertaining to Miss Cranfield’s treatment were to be directed to him. He would visit weekly, he said, and could be contacted either at his home, near Canterbury, or at the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping, where he was wont to stay.

  Mr Lodge assured me that there were more than enough financial resources to pay for Miss Cranfield’s treatment, and that he was able to pay a good deal of them in advance. I felt a deep reluctance to accept this patient on these terms; it was irregular indeed to take on a case where the family history was not only unknown but actively hidden. Nonetheless, I took Miss Cranfield in, for two reasons.

  The first was her case, which promised to be interesting to a young physician seeking to advance human understanding of mental infacility.

  The second reason was less high-minded. Dr Monro had made it clear to me that, in the matter of Brooke House, financial matters needed always to be kept in mind. We could not let our own personal qualms get in the way of maintaining a successful business. ‘This is not, Bryson, a charitable institution,’ Dr Monro had said, and he constantly pressed me on how many patients were being treated, what the costs of this treatment were and how extensive were the means of the patients’ families.

  The simple fact of the matter was this: Mr Lodge’s offer to pay the fees for the first three months of care for Miss Cranfield would make a substantial contribution to Brooke House’s running costs. I was under some pressure to turn a profit within each month. The equation was impossible to be ignored. Such was how things were in private madhouses at the start of the present century.

  So Maria Cranfield was admitted and locked into one of the strong-rooms on the first floor, secured with a strait waistcoat. This last was with some reluctance, for it was one of my beliefs that securing patients in this way was primitive and not productive, but such was Miss Cranfield’s manic state that I had no other option at that time. In the next-door cell to Miss Cranfield, in the southern end of Brooke House, close to my own rooms, Abigail Horton had already been placed.

  Miss Cranfield’s arrival was unorthodox, and so was Mrs Horton’s. She had appeared at the gate of Brooke House on her own, carrying a letter from a Bow Street magistrate, Aaron Graham. The letter stated that Mrs Horton should be admitted to the madhouse forthwith, and that all financial matters relating to her care would be met by Mr Graham. I had not made the acquaintance of this gentleman at that time, though I was soon to do so, in the most trying of circumstances.

  Mrs Horton was in a state of extreme agitation on her arrival, though she was by no means as hysterical as Miss Cranfield. On first coming into the building she was frantic, saying she had been pursued to Hackney by a savage woman ‘from a Pacific island’ (these were her words), and that this same woman had been haunting her dreams for a year or more. Mrs Horton’s fancy had, it was clear, become corrupted by some means, and the exoticism of her story recommended it to me. Mr Graham’s credentials were impeccable, and Mrs Horton’s case undoubtedly interesting. I arranged for her admittance at once.

  Mrs Horton had stood at the door of her own cell as we placed Miss Cranfield in the strong-room; it was my custom to leave the doors to the cells open as often as possible, when the condition of the patient did not militate against such an approach. Miss Cranfield screamed terrible obscenities at the matron and the attendants. She scratched and she tried to bite, and drew her own nails down her own scarred arms, as if trying to tear herself into pieces. She uttered one name, over and over again: that of Joshua.

  I well remember working with the nurses and attendants to secure Miss Cranfield against the wall, dosing her with opium, and then turning to leave. Still standing in the open doorway of her own cell was Mrs Horton, her eyes wide at what she was hearing. I gently took her arm and led her back to her bed, assuring her that Miss Cranfield would soon be calm and that her treatment was to begin immediately. She asked for paper and ink to write to her husband and I was forced, gently, to remind her that any contact with loved ones was forbidden, according to the principles of the house.

  ‘You must try and put your husband out of your mind,’ I said to her. ‘It may be his presence which is causing you to suffer so.’

  It was a hard thing to say, and I would have said nothing like this had my attention not been so distracted by the histrionics of Miss Cranfield. But it had an effect. I remember Mrs Horton looking at me as she sat on her bed.

  ‘If that is so, then I am los
t,’ she said.

  The weeks which followed the arrival of these two women were by no means unusual. One might even have described the time as peaceful, if one had knowledge of what was to follow. Certainly, looking back on that period from the distance of thirty years, those late summer months take on the glow of warm memory, like a holiday taken with a good friend with fine weather and fine food.

  There were perhaps thirty inmates in Brooke House at that time, split equally between men and women. Most of them were allowed to walk freely throughout the building, in the cloistered quadrangle, and in the well-tended gardens – though it was our policy, where practicable, to separate males and females. Only a few patients – of whom Maria Cranfield was one – were confined to their cells, and only some of these were secured by strait waistcoats. Again, Maria was one of these, at my instruction.

  For Maria was not a settled patient. During her first week in the place, I had ordered a quickened programme of treatments; she was bled three times, and purged twice, and I kept her on a steady dose of opium for her mania. At the end of this week, I ordered that her strait waistcoat be removed. I would not make the same mistake again. She soon scratched into her arms and face with such severity that deep wounds were gouged into them; indeed, such were the wounds on her cheeks that I doubted they would ever fully heal. These wounds ended just before the eyes, and I wondered if that were deliberate or just happenstance. Had she indeed come close to clawing out her own eyes?

  I was not going to take the chance that such awful self-mutilation would be acted out. I ordered that she be placed back into a strait waistcoat, and in it she stayed throughout the month of August.

  My routine in the asylum was a set one. I would make my rounds in the morning and afternoon, and have individual consultations in the ground-floor room fitted out for the purpose throughout the day. I ate either in my chambers or in the refectory with the nurses and attendants. I encouraged visits from inmates – always assuming they were arranged via a nurse or matron, and that I was available and not engaged in study or correspondence.