by Sarah Rayne
It would not do for any of these people to see some of the books I possess. The Compendium Maleficarum, or the Petit Albert, which is subtitled ‘An eighteenth-century grimoire of natural and cabalistic magic’. Or the Sworn Book of Honorius. That’s an abridged version, of course, and printed about a hundred years ago, but much of the material is genuinely from its thirteenth-century source, and it’s as forceful and awesome as when Honorius of Thebes gathered together a conference of magicians who agreed to combine their knowledge into one volume. I also have a late eighteenth-century copy of the words of the legendary sorcerer St Cyprian, (before his conversion to Christianity, naturally), but the provenance of the original work is so dubious that I do not give this one especial value in my collection. Still, it would not do for people to see it.
The ground floor of my house is a showroom, displaying finished clocks available for sale. A public area. The workshop across the courtyard is also open to people who care to look round at clocks on which I am currently working.
But beneath the workshop is a surprisingly large stone cellar. It’s considerably older than the house itself – my father believed there had been a lodge on the land before our own house was built. He said it would have been the gatehouse to a long-vanished estate owned by some forgotten feudal baron, and that we trod in exalted paths.
Later
I have inspected the underground room, and I believe it can be made into a very good secret library. The trapdoor leading down to it is inconveniently tucked away by the side of the stove, but I do not mind that. It means the entrance is hidden from view.
July 1886
I have done the deed. I have built shelves to line the walls, and my books are arranged on them. After a struggle, I managed to bring a desk down the steps and a small wing chair to stand in one corner. There are oil lamps, of course. Rugs on the stone floor to soften and warm it. And this diary. I shall keep it in a drawer, wrapped in oilskin to preserve it.
And, as I thought, I find it easy enough to lift the trapdoor and go down the stone steps. I even fashioned a handle for the underside of the trapdoor so it can be easily lowered while I am down here. I am toying with the notion of fixing a bolt as well, in case I should ever have reason to hide. I cannot imagine why I would want to hide from anyone, but life is strange and unexpected.
I like it down here. The stone room is as snug and dry as any man could wish, and as I read or write, the oil lamps cast pools of light over the rows of books. I’m writing this entry here now. And every time I descend the stone steps, pulling the trapdoor closed over my head, I have the feeling I am entering a different time – a time when the world is still shrouded in myth and magic, and when it is still raw from the agonies of its own birth.
Fanciful words for a common clockmaker! But I’ve reread them and I will not scratch them out! They make a good note on which to end these chronicles!
August 1888
I had not intended to take up these diaries again, but today something has happened that I must record.
I see it’s two years since I wrote anything, so, for tidiness’s sake (and my own self-esteem), I shall set down that the two years have been filled, not unpleasantly, with work, with study, and with being part of the small community which makes up Marston Lacy and the surrounding villages. Recently, I was even asked to join a new Chamber of Commerce body, which is to come under the aegis of Shrewsbury and one or two of the other big nearby towns. I agreed, of course.
But this morning I received a letter that scrapes at the old inner agony afresh and sets it bleeding again. It is from that stoop-shouldered, droop-necked bookworm at Mallow House! Here it is, copied down in its entirety. As I write it, I feel as if venom drips from the nib of my pen on to the page.
Mallow House,
Marston Lacy.
Dear Mr Crutchley,
You are recommended to me as a clockmaker of some repute . . .
‘Some repute’, he calls it! I am quite simply the finest clockmaker he will ever find!
. . . and I should therefore like to commission a long-case clock from your workshop. It is to be a gift for my wife at Christmas.
Please call upon me on Friday of this week at midday to discuss your terms.
Yours very sincerely,
W.S. Lee Esq.
It’s gall and wormwood to me to be summoned to Mallow House with no regard for my own convenience. People come to me – they seek me out in my workshop.
Shall I go? Dare I? Will she be there? The thought of perhaps meeting her – speaking to her, taking her hand – is causing me to tremble violently. I cannot do it.
Later
But I will do it, of course. But oh God, if she is there, let me not stare at her like a moonstruck idiot.
Friday
She was not there. I veer between sick disappointment and relief. Only William Lee was there, and I am glad to report I did not like him. He is dry and dull, and I hope he withers and desiccates like the old parchment of his own books. (Yes, but he is in bed every night with her . . . He fathered a child on to her . . .)
Our discussion took place in the library. It overlooks gardens – gardens where she must often walk, and where she must gather flowers for their rooms or their table. He said he likes to spend most of his time in that room – he sits in it every evening after dinner. Does she sit with him? Perhaps embroidering or reading?
We discussed the commission, and it was agreed that I should prepare sketches and designs for his consideration. The clock is to be a surprise gift, so I am asked not to talk of it to anyone.
I am very glad that I insisted on a price of 150gns for the clock!
August 1888, cont’d
Today Lee came to my workshop and approved my design, which is for a moon-phase clock, with the face of the moon in its own secondary arch-dial above the main dial. It’s an intricate task to fashion that part of the workings and ensure the moon’s silhouette really does move round to echo the moon’s phases, but I have done it before and I shall do it now. I will use blue enamel for the moon and brass for the figuring.
For the rest, there’s a bell strike on the hour and an eight-day mechanism. The case for the pendulum will be mahogany, inlaid with rosewood, with a gimp of ebony.
September 1888
This evening, while I was planing and smoothing the mahogany for William Lee’s clock, (it’s like silk, and it’s the colour of her hair, glossy and dark), I thought something leaned over my shoulder as if to look more closely at what I was doing: there was a whiff of foetid breath and the impression of a bony finger digging into my neck. I spun round at once, but there was nothing there.
I dare say the cheese I had for supper is to blame. It’s well known that roasted cheese can upset the digestion. I shall leave a note for Mrs Figgis, telling her not to serve cheese with my supper in future.
But I can’t get rid of the notion that the burning jealousy and the hatred I harbour for William Lee is somehow taking on substance – that it’s striding through my workshop, watching its chance to take possession of my mind . . .
I’ve reread that last sentence, and I know it sounds like the ravings of a disordered mind. But there is something in my workshop that wasn’t there before, and whatever it is I don’t like it.
October 1888
The more I read, the more I find references to music in the ancient beliefs. Music that possesses power over men’s minds and souls . . . Orpheus with his lyre, charming the denizens of hell into giving him back his lady . . . The medieval dances of death, with the victims forced by demons to dance until they dropped . . . The beckoning cadences of the Plague Piper wearing his glaring red mask of agony, leading his victims to the twin Towers of Fever and Madness . . . The el diablo chord, which the medievals believed could summon the devil.
And a strange and eerie chant from the world’s earliest time that is believed to have power over the dead and the ability to cast men into deep, dreamless sleep.
October 1888, con
t’d
William Lee’s clock is almost finished and will remain in my workshop until just before Christmas, when it will be taken to Mallow House. It’s a beautiful piece of work. I never made a better clock.
And yet, and yet.
When I look at it I see that something has got into the making that I never intended. Is it the outline of the moon in the arch-dial? Has it a sly, leering look as if something has given the serene features a vicious tweak? And the pendulum case itself – if I look at it in a certain light, the grain seems to form itself into a writhing human creature. Does it resemble Hogarth’s images of Bedlam, with the poor lunatics trying to escape their bleak prison? Looking out at the world with despair and hatred?
Hatred. That word again.
Only last month I witnessed a case of hatred that had tragic results. A fight between two men in the Black Boar – one accusing the other of violating his sister. I was there, drinking a glass of ale with one or two acquaintances – it’s a convivial place of an evening, the Black Boar, and I like to share the company of my fellow men sometimes. It reminds me that there’s an ordinary and sane world beyond the shadowy, secret library.
But on that night an ugly fight broke out between the brother and the seducer. It began as a verbal battle, but it ended with the seducer being felled to the ground and smashing his head against the stone chimney breast. They summoned the local medic at once, and I helped in staunching the blood, but the man was already dead, and the jealous brother was taken to Shrewsbury Gaol. He stood trial and was found guilty. He will hang this coming Monday. A dreadful waste of two lives – three, if you count the girl, for this will taint her life for years to come. It determines me to fight and vanquish this scalding hatred that courses through me and fills me with bile.
October 1888 cont’d
But all the resolve and determination in the world does not quench this overwhelming desire for Elizabeth. Perhaps if I had not been inside her house – if I had not sat on chairs where she must have sat, touched doors and walls she must brush past every day . . .
Just once. If I could have her just once. But how? How? I would not use force on her, but if only there was some way . . .
Some months ago Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends led me to the dark root of his parody of the Hand of Glory legend. He clearly knew the original source of the belief, of course, and after some searching I knew it as well. It has its core in music – music again! – in an eerie sequence of music that is credited with the power to open locks and cast every person in a house into a deep and dreamless slumber.
Every person in the house . . . William Lee, the child, their servants . . .
How far can I believe this? How much of it is old wives’ tales, the beliefs of the credulous, the wish-fulfilment of the bereft or the lonely?
Even if it were true, I cannot do it. I dare not. In any case, my reading has informed me of what’s needed to set the enchantment working and the ingredients are impossible to obtain.
Or are they? For on Monday morning, by nine o’clock, the one ingredient that would normally be beyond my power to acquire will be there for the taking.
Next Monday afternoon I am to attend a meeting of the John Howard Group at Shrewsbury Gaol.
And at 8 a.m. on that day they will have hanged the murderer who killed his sister’s seducer in the Black Boar.
October cont’d
I am moved to copy down parts of the recipe for creating the Hand of Glory – partly so I have the information in a safe place other than on my shelves. There are several versions, but this one, from Petit Albert, dating back to 1722, is the most detailed.
‘Take the right or left hand of a felon who is hanging from a gibbet beside a highway. Wrap it in part of a funeral pall and, so wrapped, squeeze it well to drain all blood. Then put it into an earthenware vessel with zimat, nitre, salt and long peppers, the whole well powdered. Leave it in this vessel for a fortnight, then take out and expose it to full sunlight during the dog days until it becomes quite dry. Next, make of it a candle with the fat of a gibbeted felon, virgin wax, sesame and ponie, and use the Hand of Glory as a candlestick to hold this candle when lighted.’
The practice of hanging a felon from a gibbet hasn’t existed in this country for a century or more so I cannot follow this part to the absolute letter. But I believe – and trust – that the hand of any hanged murderer will suffice. The dog days are a difficulty – October in England can scarcely be called sufficiently hot to warrant that term; however, there is another version of the enchantment which says this:
‘If the sun be not powerful enough, dry the Hand in an oven heated with vervain and fern.’
That I can do with no difficulty.
The poet Robert Southey places the Hand in the possession of the enchanter Mohareb, when he would ‘lull to sleep Yohak, the giant guardian of the caves of Babylon’. Southey writes:
‘A murderer on the stake had died;
I drove the vulture from his limbs, and lopt
The hand that did the murder, and drew up
The tendon strings to close its grasp;
And in the sun and wind
Parch’d it, nine weeks exposed.’
Nine weeks is a long time, but everyone knows poets are given to exaggerating, so I shall accept the Petit Albert direction of two weeks and use the oven instead of the hot sun.
29th October 1888
In two days’ time I will be in the grounds of Shrewsbury Gaol, and it will rest on my ingenuity as to whether I can do what has to be done to the body of the hanged murderer. It seems fitting, although macabre, that I shall carry out my grisly task on the Eve of All Hallows. Will the powers said to walk abroad on that night stand at my side as I go about my work?
If ever I believed myself to have crossed the line from sanity, I think I have done so tonight. Tonight I believe I am mad.
TWENTY-FIVE
1st November 1888: 10.00 a.m.
I have resolved to set down a clear and concise account of what has happened.
I rose early on Monday 31st and sat quietly in the room above the showrooms, looking out on to the High Street, waiting for the town clock to chime eight. I was not seeing the familiar shops and people though; in my mind’s eye was a vivid picture of the condemned man being led from his cell in Shrewsbury Gaol across the courtyard to the execution shed. It’s quite a short walk – I know, for I’ve visited the place twice with the Howard Committee. So I was able to walk with the doomed man in my imagination, my steps matching his – although when the clock finally struck the hour it coincided with Mrs Figgis, who, according to custom, had arrived to cook my breakfast. My mental images of the condemned man being lead to the execution shed became inextricably mingled with Mrs Figgis’s voluble catalogue of local gossip and the scent of bacon and eggs frying in the pan.
I made a good breakfast, though. It would not have done the man any good if I had gone hungry for the morning.
The Howard Committee set off sharp at half-past one. Measured in miles, Shrewsbury is not a very long way from Marston Lacy, but it’s not an easy journey, and so we had hired a conveyance. There were six of us in all, so it was somewhat crowded. I am not overfond of travelling – the jolting of the carriages always makes me feel sick. My father used to say it jumbled a man’s insides to travel at such unnatural speeds, and on that journey I had the feeling he might have been right, because by the time we reached Shrewsbury town I was sweating and dabbing a handkerchief to my lips. This, however, was usual for me on any journey, although I will say the knowledge of what I intended to do after the meeting would not have helped.
We toured the prison as arranged and afterwards made our representations to the governor – a very gentlemanly person he is, humane and far better than some governors we hear about. He was agreeable to our suggestions as to how prisoners might have their lives made a little easier and promised to bring our points up with his superiors.
Tea was served to us – a good blend of tea it w
as, none of your floor-sweepings for the Howard Committee! It was all very civilized, and I should have found it interesting and worthy if I had not been churning like a seething cauldron inside at the prospect of what lay ahead. I had a plan, of course, but of necessity it was a very sketchy one – there were so many imponderable factors. But I had already marked out one warder as having a shifty and venal eye, whom I thought might make an ally.
The morning’s execution was mentioned during our interview with the governor, of course. He said it was a sad affair – a young man’s moment of hot-temper and jealousy causing him to take a life and lose his own as a result.
I said, ‘At least there is now the long drop, which I think is believed more merciful.’
‘Indeed it is. A matter of seconds only. Yes, there have been some dreadful cases of bungling in the past – I have witnessed more than one myself.’
‘Tell me,’ I said quickly, before the conversation could drift, ‘do you still have the tradition of leaving the body to hang for an hour after the execution?’
‘Yes, certainly. A small mark of respect. The poor wretch has precious little more.’ He paused, and I willed him to go on. After a moment he did. ‘We bury them quickly enough afterwards,’ he said. ‘That man this morning, for instance. He is even now lying in the grave in the yard.’
‘And already covered with quicklime, no doubt,’ I said. My tone was so light that it could have floated away, and I do not think I betrayed how much depended on his answer.
He said, ‘The quicklime will be sprinkled over him tomorrow morning. We allow them twenty-four hours in the grave before we do that. Another mark of respect, and a purely personal one on my part. Quicklime is a vicious agent, you know.’
