Savage Magic

by Lloyd Shepherd

  She looks down at herself, and her face changes. Anger rushes out and embarrassment courses in. She sits down on a log, tucking her cotton shift beneath her backside, covering her chest with her arms as she leans forward, closing herself in tightly against his male gaze. It is the action of an older girl, almost a woman, who is beginning to understand the attentions of men.

  He hears a sound – that of a carriage pulling away, somewhere at the outer edge of the copse, where a wooden fence cuts through the trees, separating one piece of land – Sir Henry’s estate – from another. He can spy the edge of a field through the trees, its wheat recently harvested, and along a track between the two estates an old wagon is making its way. A woman sits atop it, higher up than normal, dressed in gypsy rags.

  ‘What are you doing in the woods, constable?’

  She asks the question quickly and almost too loudly, as if to distract his attention. And for a moment he is distracted, turning his gaze back to hers, and feeling an odd sensation in his head – a squeeze, a tension – before pulling his eyes back towards the gypsy on top of her wagon, as it rolls away beyond his line of sight, too fast to follow.

  When he looks back at Ellen, there is such a look of anger and hatred in her face that he feels momentarily afraid, as if she might lunge into the trees towards him, tearing at his face with her long fingernails, her white shift flowing behind her like wings.

  ‘I was out walking, and thinking,’ he says.

  ‘Ah, walking and thinking. Yes. Men do a lot of walking and thinking.’

  He is terribly confused. It is like talking to a different girl. The sad, gnomic skeleton of the kitchen two nights before has become an irritated, sarcastic shrew.

  ‘You seem quite the Forest Sprite, constable. A Manly Apparition!’

  He feels a sudden quickening pressure in his temples, the beginnings of a headache. He is tired, bothered by the terrible visions of the previous night, by his complete inability to rest in that strange chattering household. He feels compelled to end this conversation, and yet Ellen’s appearance in the woods is at the same time extraordinary and in keeping with what has passed before.

  ‘This is not the first time you have run through the woods, I think, Miss Ellen.’

  His head feels suddenly released, the pain scudding away. What on earth is wrong with him?

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘The gardener saw you. O’ Reilly. He saw you running in the woods.’

  ‘He is a liar!’ She spits like a cat with its feet in hot water. ‘I have seen the way he looks at me. He is a disgusting liar and my father will have him dismissed.’

  ‘Which father, Miss Ellen?’

  Pleasure, anger, embarrassment, rage and now confusion. Miss Ellen’s emotions dance around her face like a hart she must herself chase down. The intermixture is too much for her. She begins to cry.

  He does not know what to do or what to say. He feels he should comfort her, but to approach her when she is dressed – or, rather, undressed – like this would be a step too far. Yet she is distraught.

  ‘I was so angry! I was so scared!’

  ‘Miss Ellen, please. You must not …’

  ‘I didn’t know! How could I have known?’

  ‘Known what, Ellen?’

  ‘I dreamed he killed the dogs. I dreamed I made him. Like this … ’

  She is glaring at him, and suddenly his head hurts tremendously, and that sense of his temples being pinched between the thumb and forefinger of a giant returns, but multiplied a dozen times. He winces with the feel of it, and closes his eyes against the pain, and then it is gone as quickly as it came, like a candle being snuffed out.

  Leave me alone. The words appear in his head, unbidden and clear, and he feels a great urge to do so, but at that moment, and as if they had emerged from a tunnel beneath the ground, Sir Henry’s dogs surge out of the forest, frantically barking and banging into each other in their frenzy. Behind them comes Sir Henry, riding a chocolate-coloured horse in a similar frenzy to that of his dogs. Horton leaps out of the way of the surge, but this only puts him in the line of Sir Henry and his horse.

  ‘Out of the bloody way, you idiot!’ the baronet shouts, and Horton scrambles to get behind a tree. As it is, the horse passes less than two feet from him, its eyes white with terror and excitement, long red lines down its flanks from the slashing of Sir Henry’s stick.

  Then the baronet and his dogs are in the field behind the wood, where he had seen the gypsy wagon. They rush across it in a seething, demented rush.

  Horton looks after them, and then looks around him. He is in the woods. He cannot remember at all how he came to be there.

  His head hurts a little, but it is a different pain to any he has felt before, that of a tired limb recovering after hard work. He walks back to the house, eyes to the ground as if he could trace the memory of the past few minutes there. The headache starts to clear as soon as he steps out of the woods. He wonders how tired he must be, to be so confused. He remembers leaving the house, and then there are only shadows. Had he spoken to someone? He vaguely recalls seeing a carriage.

  At the house, he goes looking for Crowley the butler or Mrs Chesterton the housekeeper. He finds neither, because to his very great surprise he comes across Mrs Graham dusting plates in the dining room, singing a song of wandering soldiers and lovelorn lovers. She stops when she hears him step into the room.

  ‘Constable Horton. Good day to you.’

  Her face is tired and pale, and her good cheer somewhat enforced. He wonders if she has been waiting to speak to him.

  ‘And to you, Mrs Graham. It is a fine day.’

  ‘It is, constable, it is. And how goes your investigation?’

  She says this with a small smile, as if they are sharing a huge joke at someone else’s expense; he cannot imagine whose.

  ‘Mr Horton, I fear I may have been wasting your time, summoning you here.’

  ‘Really, Mrs Graham?’

  She winces slightly at the name. Her own name.

  ‘Yes, I fear so. You see, I have not been well. I am concerned that these fancies of mine may have been the fruit of a fevered imagination.’

  ‘And yet you sacked your cook.’

  ‘Yes, I did indeed do that. I wonder if I was perhaps not a little hasty. You have met Elizabeth?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And she denies any mischief?’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Well, then. I shall reinstate her. This nonsense must come to an end.’

  ‘Do I take it that Sir Henry wishes me to leave?’

  ‘These are my wishes, not Sir Henry’s.’

  She disguises the lie beneath a particularly vigorous bout of dusting. She polishes with some skill, Horton notes, and he wonders if this is something she has to do a good deal, and whether the servants resent it and despise her for it.

  ‘Well, I cannot stay if you do not wish me here, Mrs Graham.’

  She looks at him directly, and with some puzzlement. She had been expecting an argument, of course.

  ‘You agree with me, constable? That these matters are fanciful?’

  ‘By no means, Mrs Graham. Something is happening in this house, and some people within it have secrets they do not wish me to discover. Miss Tempest Graham continues to be ill, inexplicably so. And I doubt your new cook is all he says he is.’

  She puts down her cloth, the ruse of cleaning forgotten.

  ‘You surely cannot ascribe all these events to Stephen. Why, most of them took place before he even arrived.’

  Mrs Graham, he notes, still thinks of these events as needing explanation. He is being removed for other reasons – presumably, the wishes of the master of the house. He thinks he can see why she has not appeared these past two days. They have been arguing about his presence. She has refused to dismiss Horton, while Sir Henry has insisted she does not speak to him. This new fabrication is her surrender.

  ‘I do not believe Stephen Moore to be r
esponsible for the events which preceded his arrival.’

  ‘Then what do you accuse him of, constable?’

  ‘I accuse him of nothing at all. I merely state that he is not all he seems to be, and I would recommend you take references for him, unless you plan to reinstate Elizabeth Hook. I will plan to make my leave, but may not be able to do so until the morning. Will that be quite acceptable, Mrs Graham?’

  She looks back to her crockery.

  ‘Quite acceptable, constable.’

  One more night, then.

  ‘Then I will leave you with one final question, if I may.’

  ‘Always asking questions, are you not, constable?’

  ‘It is a habit I find impossible to break.’

  ‘Well, then. Ask your question.’

  ‘Would it be yourself who holds keys to all the rooms in the house?’

  Her smile, which had been barely there and which was ill-meant in any case, vanishes at that. The question is serious and perhaps has an intent she cannot unpick.

  ‘Why, yes. It is normal for the mistress of the house to keep keys.’

  ‘So you have the only full set of keys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But surely those who need to get into certain rooms must hold their own keys. Does Jane, for instance, have keys to your bedchamber?’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘And O’Reilly, he must keep the keys to the outbuildings – the destroyed shed, for instance? The dogs’ kennels?’

  ‘Without keys, they’d not be able to do their jobs, would they?’

  ‘Of course not. And what about the rooms in the basement? Does anyone else have keys to those?’

  ‘Why, the cook, of course, in addition to me. She … or rather, he … uses those rooms to store things. Is this relevant to anything, constable?’

  He uses her own tactics. He obfuscates.

  ‘It is merely a matter of personal interest. If I may, Mrs Graham, I will return to my room and prepare my things. I would like to visit the village a final time, to speak to the rector. He is a man of some distinction, and I have enjoyed his conversation.’

  ‘Why … yes. Yes, of course.’

  Mrs Graham is now the picture of confusion, and Horton, having done what he came to do, leaves her to recover. But as he goes, he asks another question.

  ‘Your looking-glasses, Mrs Graham. Was it you that broke them?’

  She looks shocked and then angry.

  ‘How impertinent! Why on earth would I break my own property?’

  ‘Perhaps you saw something in them you did not care for.’

  She gazes at him open-mouthed, her face white apart from an angry blaze on each cheek. Then she turns away, and Horton does not speak to her again.

  The first room off the cellar contains nothing of immediate interest. It is easy to get into – he secures two knives from a drawer in the main kitchen, and after half-a-minute of manipulation the simple old lock gives way and the door opens. He has always been able to get into locked doors, normally without even damaging the mechanism. He learned the trick as a boy in Margate, where the back streets were almost heaving with locked doors behind which smuggled goods swelled in barrels and crates. Fully a quarter of all the boys in Margate could navigate their way past any lock; it was fear of the terrible smugglers that stopped them, in most cases, not the mechanical barrier. And when they did force their way in, it was vital that the door remain unscathed, lest their incursion be discovered.

  After passing his candle over the first room’s unsurprising, and uninteresting, contents – flour, vegetables, fruit, a barrel of salted meat, a dozen loaves of sugar – he decides the room will yield no information. He backs out, and locks the door behind him, and turns his attention to the second door.

  Almost immediately he senses this incursion will be more fruitful. The lock, for one thing, has been changed, and pretty recently, too. He puts his finger into the keyhole and feels fresh grease inside. Mrs Graham had mentioned no such thing, and there may well be no reason why she would have done. But he rather suspects Mrs Graham’s keys no longer work in this particular door.

  The lock yields a little more reluctantly than its companion, but eventually the door does fall open. Taking up his candle, he walks into the unlit interior.

  At first sight, all is much the same; jars and barrels and crates of foodstuffs line shelves. But along the far wall is a bench with a sink within it, suggesting this room would normally be a more common part of the kitchen than the locked door now implies. He walks over to the bench, and finds a gas lamp sitting upon it. He lights the lamp from the candle in his hand, and Stephen Moore’s little laboratory opens itself to the light.

  He does not recognise it as such immediately, but after a minute or two of gazing he comes to the inevitable conclusion. A dozen large bottles of liquid – some clear, some opaque – line a shelf alongside one end of the bench. The labels upon them are written in Latin, or sometimes in French. He recognises none of the words. A pestle and mortar sits, clean and smelling of nothing in particular, beside these bottles. Several books sit on top of one another on the other side of the bench; Horton opens the top one. It is a herbal, apparently in German, richly decorated on every page with colourful illustrations of plants.

  He flicks through the other volumes: an edition of Linnaeus, no less; he recalls a conversation with Abigail about botanical matters. A freshly printed edition of something called The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. An older book, called The Problems of Aristotle. A chapbook, a cheap and ugly thing, called Mother Bridget’s Dream-Book and Oracle of Fate. Horton recognises none of these books, but he wonders why a ‘cook’ should be consulting them.

  He stands for a while at the bench, settling his thoughts, trying to imagine that he was Stephen Moore standing here, consulting these odd dark little books, swirling liquids into one another, gazing by the shadowy light of the gas lamp into alchemical secrets. A hobby, perhaps? Or something a good deal darker?

  He hears the urgent sound of a horse approaching up the drive of Thorpe Lee House, breaking his concentration. He puts the books back as he found them, extinguishes the gas lamp, and makes his way out of the gloomy room and back into the kitchen.

  The approaching rider is, as expected, William Jealous returning from Stoke d’Abernon. Horton hurries out to meet him before any of the other servants can do so, and Jealous stays in his saddle while Horton reads the note.

  Stoke d’Abernon, September 7

  To Whom It May Concern

  At the request of Patrolman Jealous of Bow Street, to whom this letter is given, I confirm that no one of the name

  STEPHEN MOORE has been in the employ of Stoke d’Abernon during my own employment at the House, which encompasses some twenty years.

  Watson, P., Butler

  ‘Is it what you were expecting?’ adds Jealous. Horton can see in the young man’s eyes that he has read the letter. He does not blame him for it. He would do the same.

  ‘Almost entirely,’ he replies.

  BROOKE HOUSE

  John Burroway opens the door of Abigail’s cell.

  ‘Doctor would like to see you, miss.’

  She puts down her book on the bed.

  ‘I have not eaten, John. Not since breakfast. When may I eat?’

  He does not answer because, she can see, he does not know. Before yesterday’s events he would speak to her excitedly and with an extraordinarily detailed completeness, every yarn and anecdote spun with the finest thread, with no regard for the attention or patience of his listener. Now, he is silenced. Has Maria done something terrible to him, without knowing?

  She stands up and smoothes down her dress. He steps aside for her, and she waits in the corridor beyond for him to lock the door – again, that maddening attention to detail, for there is no one in the cell to be shut inside. He takes his time over the lock, for his hands are shaking. To his left is the closed door of Maria’s cell, from where he’d retrieved Abigai
l the night before, his hands shaking even more than they are now, his eyes on the floor, avoiding Maria’s gaze like a dog terrified of punishment.

  Again, Abigail worries what Maria may have done to John’s mind, as she follows him down the stairs. She shivers as she passes the door to Bryson’s apartment, in that part of Brooke House which the attendants call the Cottage. Her skin is still alive to the disgusting memory of the dinner she’d shared with him. But they are not going to Bryson’s apartments. They walk on down the corridor, towards the front entrance to Brooke House, and John opens the door to Bryson’s consulting chamber. She turns her head to the floor, and goes inside and sits in the nearest chair she can find, not once looking up.

  She is terribly, terribly afraid.

  She will not look at him, even when he speaks.

  ‘Mrs Horton, I owe you a sincere apology.’

  The words are kind, as is the tone. And yet she still does not look at him.

  ‘I have treated you terribly, and have in addition behaved like the worst kind of St James roué. Please forgive me.’

  She glances up, then, disgusted with herself for being so afraid, disgusted with him for what has passed between them, and she sees the little smile on his face and looks down again, suppressing the urge to stand and drive the letter-knife he holds in his hands into his leering eyes.

  What is wrong with me?

  She holds her hands, left in right, right in left. To stop them shaking.

  If he stands I shall scream.

  ‘I need your help, Mrs Horton. Your help with Maria. I have given it much thought. And I believe she is the most extraordinary specimen I have ever come across.’

  At the word specimen her shakes come to a sudden stop. She places her hands on her lap, and looks up at him, head on one side.

  Well, then.

  ‘We need to talk to her, Mrs Horton.’

  He sits at his desk. The letter-knife held between his fingers spins in the light from a gas lamp. He is smiling. Of all things he is smiling. The vengeful, angry, spiteful creature she’d expected is not in the room. She thinks of an expression of her mother’s. He looks like a cat that swallowed a canary.

  ‘I have not eaten, Bryson.’