Supping With Panthers

by Tom Holland

  Lilah turned, as though bored by the conversation, and began to sweep back her hair. ‘As it happens,’ she murmured, ‘I may follow your advice. It has certain possibilities.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ answered George.

  ‘But for now’ – Lilah turned round again – ‘I shall have to rely upon myself.’ She held out her hand. ‘Come, Suzette. You are annoying Sir George. It is time for bed.’

  Suzette walked forward with a pert flounce, her hand still tightly pressing mine. ‘I want you to come with me,’ she said. I glanced at George, then accompanied her.

  ‘She has never met a detective,’ whispered Lilah in my ear, as I passed her by the door. ‘You have an admirer.’

  We walked into the hallway beyond, which was dark. I heard the click of Lilah’s heels as she followed us out and then, as the door was shut behind us, everything fell black. Ahead of me, I could not see a thing. I looked round and caught a faint glimmer, like that of moonlight. It took me a second to realise it was Lilah’s skin.

  She dapped her hands. At once, flickering pale veins of light ran up through the darkness and I saw, looming ahead of me, what seemed a mighty pillar, and beyond it arches and yet more halls, all trellised by the same delicate lines of fire reaching like ivy out across the stone. The illumination was not strong and it took me time, keen-eyed though I am, to adjust to the light; but as I did so, I realised that I was standing before a massive stairway, and that the pillar I had glimpsed was the support for its spiral – about fifteen feet thick, I would estimate, with each step in turn more than twenty feet wide. I had assumed it was an illusion, either deliberately crafted or induced by the opium, for it seemed impossible in a warehouse that it could truly be there; but as I began to climb the stairs, following Lilah with Suzette still by my side, the stone beneath us echoed to our steps and I realised with a shock that it had to be real. I glanced about me again. The whole structure had been crafted from a dark purple rock, igneous and crystalline, and polished so that our figures were reflected in its gloom. My own form, shivered and distorted by the half-light, followed me like some spectre trapped beneath glass. The effect was unsettling, and no doubt deliberate.

  I looked up at Lilah. She was still ahead of me but had paused, and was bending down stretching out her hand to something in the dark. ‘Isn’t he handsome?’ she asked. I frowned. Two unblinking green eyes were staring up at me and I recognised the panther I had seen before. It yawned, and stretched, and rose to its feet. It watched me with a lazy disinterest; then began to pad down the stairs.

  ‘Is it tame?’ I asked.

  ‘Not altogether,’ whispered Lilah. For some reason, she laughed. ‘But very beautiful.’

  ‘And that will be a comfort, will it, when you are savaged to death?’

  Lilah smiled slowly. ‘Don’t be so responsible.’ She stared after the panther. ‘I love my animals,’ she murmured. ‘More than humans, by and large. They demand less, and their dependence is so much more complete. Isn’t that right, Suzette?’

  The little girl stared up at her. ‘Yes, Lilah,’ she replied.

  ‘Look.’ Lilah gestured with her arm. I turned, and stared. By now I should have been inured to surprise, but nothing – not even the events of the past weeks – had prepared me for the sight before me now. Ahead there stretched a giant passageway, and it was filled with animals and flocks of birds. I could make out a lion, some pigs, a dozing snake; beyond them were yet other beasts and indeed, as far as I could see, the passageway went on until it vanished into darkness – an impossible sight. I turned to Lilah, to ask her what this hallucination was, but she raised her hand and pressed a finger to my lips. She lowered it again slowly; I thought that she intended to kiss me, for her own lips were parted and very close to mine; I could even smell the perfume that hung on her breath. But she smiled, and turned away from me to kneel down by Suzette. She stroked the little girl’s cheeks. ‘Leave us alone now,’ she whispered. ‘I have to talk with the Doctor.’ Suzette didn’t answer, but hugged her and then turned and began to run down the passageway. The birds rose, startled, and wheeled above her head. The animals shrank back against the walls. Suzette ran on. Her footsteps echoed on the naked stone; they seemed to fill the air, even when she could barely be seen any more. Then she was gone. A darkness began to rise like a fog from the distance. Soon the animals were only faint silhouettes, and the passageway seemed nothing but a deep gash of black. I turned to Lilah. ‘I think I need to clear my brain,’ I said.

  She reached out to touch me, as she had done before. She smiled. ‘Affected by Polidori’s opium?’ she asked.

  Her eyes, like Lord Ruthven’s, were remarkably deep. I forced myself to break away from her stare. ‘Perhaps,’ I replied.

  Lilah nodded. ‘Come with me.’ She took my arm. We continued to climb up the steps, and I observed how the light began to fade from the walls; yet I could still make my way, and indeed see more clearly now than I had done before. I looked up. Above me there stretched a great dome of glass and beyond it, quite unclouded, was a blaze of stars. ‘The London air is so foul,’ said Lilah, ‘and so polluted with light. But as you see – with optics and angles – the effect can be nullified.’

  ‘Remarkable,’ I exclaimed. ‘I would never have thought it possible.’

  ‘No.’ Lilah smiled faintly. ‘I am sure you wouldn’t.’

  I continued to stare upwards through the dome at the sky. I could feel Lilah’s eyes on me and I knew they would be cold, as cold as the stars. Still I didn’t look round. ‘It reminds me …’ I said at last. I paused. ‘It reminds me – the clearness of the sky – of the view from the mountains in Kalikshutra.’

  ‘Does it?’ The question hung in the air. Now I did glance at Lilah. She was no longer watching me, but had raised her head and was gazing in turn at the stars. She closed her eyes, as though in rapture, and then slowly she turned her face back to mine. Again I felt a powerful surge of attraction towards her – fear and desire in equal measure rose and struggled the one against the other, and when she reached for my hand I took it away, much too violently, from her. ‘You don’t trust me,’ she said, as though almost surprised.

  I very nearly laughed. She sensed my amusement and half-smiled herself. ‘But why should you?’ she murmured. ‘You blame me for deceiving your friend.’

  ‘And I am right to, am I not?’ I replied coldly. ‘You are deceiving him.’

  ‘Well, yes, of course.’ Lilah shrugged. ‘That’s obvious.’

  I stared at her in surprise, for I had not expected to gain an admission so easily.

  ‘Don’t look so thunderstruck,’ she murmured. ‘I wouldn’t have dared try deny it to you.’

  ‘How flattering.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Of course. You have clearly never told George.’

  ‘True. But George is an idiot.’

  ‘And a friend of mine.’ I paused. ‘Why shouldn’t I tell him what you have just told me?’

  Her eyes glittered; then she shook her head, turned away and began to walk up the stairs towards the glass of the dome. She paused for a long time, staring out at something that I couldn’t see. ‘I gather,’ she said at last, turning back to me, ‘that you work in Whitechapel, amongst the very worst slums.’

  I shrugged faintly. ‘I work in Whitechapel, yes.’

  Lilah nodded. ‘You must have sympathy for the poor, then, Doctor Eliot, for the disadvantaged, for the oppressed. You don’t have to answer me, I know you do. George has told me so. “My friend Jack, the East End Saint!” That’s what he calls you, you know. “The East End Saint.” He thinks it’s a joke.’

  ‘I’m sure he does. What is your point?’

  ‘That George finds most things a wonderful joke. His work at the India Office, for instance. His responsibility towards the people whose lives he is going to affect so casually, so very casually, with the stroke of a pen, the drawing of a line. The very idea that he can sway the lives of millions, a man like hi
m … A joke – he finds it all a joke. And sometimes, Doctor Eliot’ – she paused, and stared out through the glass again – ‘sometimes, so do I.’

  I watched her. She was, I realised again with a clarity that made me feel distant from myself, quite frighteningly beautiful. I wondered what was wrong with me, to be so distracted at such a critical time by a physical attraction, by an irrelevance. Keep to your methods, I told myself, stay true to them or you are nothing, you are dead. I walked slowly up the stairs to join her by the glass where she was gazing out at the mighty sprawl of London. We seemed impossibly high. I could see the city below me in blots of red and black, with the river like a snipping of gut through its heart.

  ‘It angers me,’ she said slowly, ‘that I have to whore after a man such as George.’

  She hadn’t looked round at me; I studied her face. I remembered a profile I had seen before – the statues of a goddess, set high amongst the jungles and the mountain peaks. ‘Are you …’ I whispered slowly. My voice traded away. Slowly, Lilah looked round at me.

  ‘I must know …’ I said. ‘In Kalikshutra, the goddess Kali is spoken of as someone who is real …’

  ‘And so she is, in the souls of her worshippers, in the great flow of the world.’

  ‘That is not what I meant.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then tell me …’

  Lilah opened her eyes wide in a mocking innocence. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘Am I Kali, do you mean?’ Lilah laughed. ‘Am I Kali?’ She seized my cheeks suddenly and pulled my face towards her own, exposing my throat to her kisses – three, four, five, kissing me as though intoxicated, then laughing again.

  ‘You are misinterpreting me,’ I said angrily, breaking away.

  ‘There is no need to be embarrassed,’ said Lilah. ‘You have lived in India. You know that the gods have often walked the earth.’

  I met her stare. ‘And Kali too?’ I asked.

  ‘In Kalikshutra – perhaps,’ Lilah smiled; then she shrugged and turned away from me. ‘Of course, I am teasing you,’ she said softly, staring out at the night. ‘But not wholly. Kalikshutra is a haunted place, unearthly …’ Her voice trailed away; she turned again to look at me. ‘You know that yourself, Doctor. The fantastic and the literal can be easy to confuse there. It is a place … apart.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said coldly. ‘I did notice that.’

  ‘I am glad,’ There was no irony in Lilah’s voice. ‘Because you see, Doctor, I am part of a myth myself. It is not just the Hindoo gods who reached the Himalayas. There are other beliefs, the customs that endure where Buddhism still survives, in Tibet and Ladakh, along the roof of the world. Divinity is believed to exist in human form, passed from successor to successor, so that when the holder dies the spirit is reborn in a tiny child. This child is found; he is proclaimed by the priests; he is brought up by them as the vehicle of God. In due time he will lead and protect his people as he has always done.’ She paused, then turned round again to stare out at the night. ‘That belief,’ she murmured, ‘exists in Kalikshutra too.’

  I studied her. ‘The form, though,’ I said, ‘is presumably not quite the same.’

  Lilah glanced at me.

  ‘The child,’ I went on, ‘the one that the priests search for, the reincarnation – in Kalikshutra, it is not a boy,’

  Lilah bowed her head. ‘Evidently,’

  ‘You are their queen?’

  ‘Their queen …’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps – and something more.’

  I stared at her. ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you though, Dr Eliot?’

  I frowned, for the question had been asked with a bitterness I hadn’t heard from her before. I wondered suddenly if I had not been maligning her in my fears, and felt a prickle of guilt and embarrassment.

  ‘How you can blame me?’ she asked suddenly. ‘You, Doctor Eliot, with your sympathy for the weak and the oppressed? Why shouldn’t I try to deceive your friend, when an entire people is depending on my attempt.’

  I didn’t answer. I saw a shadow of anger pass across her face. ‘One day,’ said Lilah softly, staring past me, ‘it would be good for Sir George to understand what it means to be weak, to be the object of someone else’s casual insolence. Perhaps then he would not dispense people’s destinies with such’ – her lip curled – ‘unthinking regard.’

  I felt abashed, for my friend and for myself. ‘He is a kind man,’ I said weakly.

  ‘And that absolves him?’

  I shook my head. ‘You are the one who must decide on that.’

  ‘No,’ said Lilah. ‘It is you who must decide. Will you tell him what I have told you tonight? Expose me? Now that you know what I am?’

  ‘“Know what I am …” ’ My voice trailed away as I echoed her words. I paused; I turned back to the window and stared out at the sky; saw, to the east, the first hints of dawn. I remembered Huree’s words: ‘They weaken with the light.’ I remembered my escape with Moorfield up the cliff; I remembered waiting on the temple for the sun. I glanced back at Lilah again. I studied her face. She seemed, if anything, even more lovely – more lovely, and proud, and radiant.

  ‘You say,’ I told her slowly, ‘that I know what you are. But I don’t. What I have seen here tonight …’ I shook my head. ‘It was something more than opium. Something I can’t explain and which … yes’ – I met her gaze – ‘I admit … unnerves me.’

  ‘Does it?’ Lilah smiled and turned away. ‘George told me how you went to Kalikshutra, and then were too afraid to stay.’

  I ignored her jibe. ‘So it is the same,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Same?’

  ‘What I saw in the mountains, and the …’ – I searched for a phrase – ‘the conjuring tricks here.’

  ‘Conjuring tricks?’ asked Lilah, raising an eyebrow at me. She laughed. ‘There is no magic, Doctor. It may be that there are powers you don’t understand, powers your science can’t explain, but that does not make them conjuring tricks.’ She shrugged, and laughed again. ‘You are betraying your jealousy.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I could teach you if you wished.’

  I heard the echo of Lord Ruthven in her offer.

  ‘Afraid again?’ she pressed.

  ‘Of your powers?’ I shook my head.

  ‘Of what then? Of your own ignorance?’ She took my hands, she whispered very softly into my ear. ‘Of your failure to understand what nature might be?’ She stepped back, and I saw how her eyes seemed to flicker as though sparked by some charge. They caught me in the way that a lamp traps a moth. I seemed to be falling into her eyes, a great, great depth. Beyond them, I suddenly knew, lay strange dimensions, impossible truths, waiting to be fathomed and exposed to an unsuspecting world, with myself a Galileo, a second Newton perhaps. The temptation was sucking on me, pulling me like a weight. I knew I had to fight it.

  With an effort I turned away from Lilah’s stare. I looked out at London, at the orange glow of dawn. I saw the Thames dyed red between the darkness of its banks. I saw it flow. I saw the composition of its waters. The clarity was quite exceptional. The dye, I realised, was that of haemoglobin. I could see leucocytes as well, flowing in the plasma, pumped by a giant, invisible heart. The whole of London was a skinless, living thing. I saw how the streets were flowing red, a limitless network of capillaries, and I knew that if I only waited a little more, this vision would reveal some remarkable truth, some startling breakthrough in haematology, and all I had to do was wait – just a tiny moment more. I stared directly below me where the Thames flowed past, a ceaseless jugular lapping the wharf. I thought of how unnerving a sight it must be for the rivermen, the waters all around them turned to blood. I thought of the bodies they must have seen in the past, bleeding out into the current. Then I thought of Arthur Ruthven. I shut my eyes, I willed the vision to disappear.

  When I opened them again, I saw Lilah’s face. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ she said.

  I
was quite unsurprised, I remember, by her reading of my thoughts. ‘But you lured him here,’ I said.

  ‘No. Polidori did that.’

  ‘At your behest.’

  Lilah shrugged. ‘He wasn’t amenable.’

  ‘And then? Once you had found that out?’

  ‘He left. He was only with me an hour. It was apparent at once that he was unsuitable.’

  ‘But Arthur was missing for a week before his corpse was found.’

  Lilah turned away impatiently. ‘I have told you, Doctor Eliot, that it wasn’t me. Why should I have killed him? How would that have helped me? I remember at the time, I was afraid Arthur Ruthven’s murder might serve to put off George. I repeat, Doctor Eliot – I had not the slightest interest in seeing him dead. Indeed, if anything, just the opposite.’

  I frowned. I knew that her argument was a convincing one; it had troubled me before. Even so, how could I trust her? Her, or anyone? ‘What about Polidori?’ I asked.

  ‘Polidori?’

  ‘Arthur’s body had been drained of its blood.’ I waited, I knew I didn’t need to say any more. ‘Answer me,’ I said, ‘or I swear I shall have no choice but to tell George everything I know.’

  Lilah narrowed her eyes; she inclined her head faintly. ‘It wasn’t Polidori either,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I asked him, of course, when I heard of Arthur Ruthven’s death. He denied the accusation at once – denied it vehemently. He wasn’t lying.’ She smiled at me. ‘I can tell such things.’

  ‘I am sure, but forgive me – it’s hardly admissible evidence.’

  ‘You think not?’ Lilah shrugged. ‘Then speak to him yourself

  I nodded. ‘I will.’

  ‘Good.’ Lilah smiled and reached out for my hands. ‘I’m impatient to see you lay this matter to rest. I would like to feel you are trusting me.’ She pressed her cheek against mine and whispered in my ear. ‘Do you understand, Doctor? There is no reason why we shouldn’t be friends,’ She kissed me softly on my lips. ‘No reason at all.’