The Devil’s Architect: Book Two of the Dark Horizon Trilogy

by Duncan Simpson

  ‘I need a list of the books that Hart borrowed from the library,’ said Blake, causing the two other men to turn around. ‘Some of these pages bear the stamp of the prison library.’ Blake stepped back from the wall and pointed up to several sheets.

  ‘Hart read so much, it almost became his personal library,’ said Boltzmann.

  ‘You think there might be something?’ asked Milton.

  ‘Possibly,’ replied Blake. ‘Look here.’ He crouched down and pointed to a loose collection of pages stuck at waist height on the wall.

  ‘Numbers, rows of numbers,’ said Milton.

  ‘Not just numbers,’ replied Blake, ‘these are extracts from the Astronomical Almanac.’ He looked up at the blank expressions of the other two men. ‘The Astronomical Almanac is considered the worldwide reference book for astronomical data. Several of its sections are concerned with the positional coordinates of the sun and moon: where they will be precisely located in sky at particular times of the year.’ Blake turned his body so that Milton and Boltzmann could see two further pages. ‘And these are to do with lunar eclipses.’

  Milton’s eyes widened.

  ‘The murder at St George’s took place on the night of a blood red lunar eclipse,’ said Milton.

  ‘Right,’ said Blake, who then stood up and straightened his back.

  ‘You see anything else?’

  ‘There is one thing,’ said Blake. ‘There must be a hundred pages from the bible on these walls.’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Milton, his eyes darting over the wall behind Blake.

  ‘As far as I can make out, they only come from three different books of the bible: Acts, Joel and Revelation. Some of the pages are repeated time and time again.’

  ‘And what is the significance?’ said Milton.

  ‘Don’t know,’ shrugged Blake. ‘Get me copies of the photographs when they’re done and I’ll take a closer look. I also need a full inventory of the books on these shelves.’

  Blake moved over to the small bookcase jam-packed with volumes of all different sizes. He slowly traced the spines of the books.

  ‘He certainly had eclectic tastes,’ said Blake. He began to lever out a small volume from the shelf, but his focus was drawn upwards to something lying on the top of the bookshelf. After a moment, a faint glint of recognition flitted across his face.

  ‘The cell hasn’t been touched, correct?’ said Blake, looking over to Boltzmann.

  Boltzmann affirmed the question as he tried to read Blake’s face, which was now level with a small plant pot sitting on the top of the bookcase. A distinctive purple flower adorned the top of a velvety green stem several inches in length. Blake studied it for a moment. ‘Monkshood. It’s known as that because of the shape of the flower. In some parts of Europe, it’s also known as Soldier’s Helmet or Storm Hat.’ He paused dragging another fact from his memory. ‘Old Wife’s Hood is the other name, I think.’

  ‘I see,’ said Milton, who took a step closer to scrutinise the single helmet-shaped flower.

  Blake went on. ‘I saw some growing outside. It’s actually reasonably common around here.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t understand?’ said Boltzmann in a slightly bemused tone.

  ‘Monkshood is very toxic, ingestion even in small amounts can result in severe reactions; violent tremors and rapid changes in heart rate,’ answered Blake.

  ‘Hold on, you think Hart poisoned himself?’ said Boltzmann.

  ‘I know so,’ said Blake as he searched for a pen from the inside of his jacket pocket.

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’

  Blake picked up the stained coffee mug sitting a couple of inches to the right of the plant pot and tilted it so that the two other men could see its interior. With the end of his pen, he trowelled out the dark purple sludge from inside the mug onto the veneer top of the bookcase. Blake’s pen prodded at the slimy gunk and prised out a wilted petal from the shiny amorphous mass. Even though the petal’s original bright purple colour had blackened, its wilted shape could still be matched to that of the flower standing over it.

  ‘You mean, he made a concoction out of these flowers and drank it down?’ asked Milton.

  ‘It wouldn’t have taken much,’ said Blake. ‘The alkaloids in the petals are quite potent. I’ve heard stories of—’ he swallowed, looking puzzled. Suddenly, he zoned out of the conversation, his vision lost in the middle distance.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ he said as he dropped to his knees. His eye line was now parallel to the base of the plant pot. ‘The level of the compacted soil is quite a bit higher than the lip of the pot. Raised up. I wonder?’ he mused to himself. Quickly, Blake rustled around in his pocket and produced a handkerchief. He shook it open and then, using it as a barrier between his fingers and the stem, pulled the plant out of the pot. It came out easily along with a perfect cylinder of soil held together by a network of tiny white roots. Blake peered into the pot and took a moment to make sense of what he saw inside.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding?’ Blake’s face was brimming with amazement. ‘You said that when Hart was rushed to hospital his face was burning, red?’ he said, looking up to Boltzmann.

  ‘Yes, red and raw, like he had reacted to something,’ answered the psychiatrist, his face stiffening.

  ‘I think I know what his body was reacting to.’

  With that, Blake turned out the remaining contents of the plant pot onto the veneer top. The three men peered at the remnants of dozens of black and yellow wasps.

  Part II

  Matthew 24:29

  Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

  Chapter 14

  Diary Entry of Nicholas Hawksmoor

  3rd May 1681

  I set down in writing the events of quite an extraordinary day. For two years now, I have been the apprentice to the gentleman philosopher, Professor Christopher Wren. The Professor is undoubtedly a gentleman of the rarest genius. A man eminent in astronomy, mathematics, geometry and architecture, he has enriched many a subject with exceptional insights and has gained great favour with the King.

  I have learned much from my master, but apprentices owe only a temporary postponement of their judgement till they be fully instructed, as opposed to perpetual servitude. Wren wants to parcel out wisdom into squares like a chessboard, everything ordered just so.

  There is another branch of study that holds the key to a hidden world, that cannot be merely prodded and weighed out by experiment. I speak of the spirit world and its unseen agencies. For nothing is so real, as that which is spiritual.

  I must be allowed to enquire and accept of both, without a breach of clarity. My mission is to bring into sight all that is most hidden and secret in the world. But Wren will not entertain a discourse on the subject. He admonishes me for my enquiries into the occult, but I have opened up the great map of knowledge and I am sailing the seas to discover new territories of hidden truth. In contrary, Wren’s boat of enquiry is but bobbing in safe harbour, tied to the jetty by a tether of his own ignorance. He is a man who believes nothing, unless it is as clear as the three sides of a triangle, rejecting every esoteric notion, saying if it cannot be measured it cannot be real.

  Two days ago we made coach for the great stone circle of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain to take sight of the solar eclipse predicted by the Professor and his friend John Flamsteed of the Royal Observatory. The journey was slow and hard, and as our vehicle proceeded towards the pagan site, it rumbled greatly over the stones. The upward jerks of the axles threw our instrumentation heavily around our persons. During the journey we saw many vulgar, ignorant country people; not to mention dirty women with their infants giving suck without proper conduct or decorum. Often we understood not what they said. It is very odd to think that the Professor, supposedly one of the most learned men in all of London, could not understand what those c
hew-bacons in the country meant by their speech.

  We arrived at our lodgings late, greatly fatigued and in need of sustenance. The innkeeper, though friendly and smart enough, was as lean as a skeleton and as pale as a corpse. Despite his hair being tidy and well combed through, his flesh was lank and had something of the colour of lead about it. After a hearty meal of ox tongue soup spiced with nutmeg and sliced lamb and kidneys topped with redcurrants, the Professor told the innkeeper the reason for our expedition.

  Settling next to the fire, he mused to our host that on the morrow at the sight of the eclipse he would give test to his theory, that Stonehenge was in some fashion a pagan clock, its stones laid out at increments like the face of a timepiece measuring the movement of the heavens. He proposed that the exactness with which the Druids set the position of each stone within the circle was not the result of some chance. He supposed that their proportions fell into exact fractions and were fashioned to mark the sun’s rising at the equinox and the position of the celestial bodies at important junctures of the calendar. The passing of a total eclipse, the most extraordinary event in the heavens, and so revered by astrologers, would afford a remarkable occasion for observation.

  The innkeeper listened closely and after much thinking, chose to relay something his father had told him and his father before that. In the light of the flickering fire, his solemn discourse began with a playful warning not to reject too hastily the fables of the ancients, but instead to search out the latent truths that lay within.

  The fire crackled loudly as he puffed on his clay pipe and spoke of what old Wiltshire folklore said on the matter. According to tradition, the Druid founders of Stonehenge built the sacred structure to a particular design to illicit great spiritual power, not as a static monument, but as a working engine of magical energy. Legend had it that the circle was so designed to counter and suppress some invisible evil force contained within the ground. The religious rites and sacrifices offered by the Druids at Stonehenge were all given in opposition to this dark subterranean presence, held in check, as it were, by the stones.

  Though Stonehenge is the greatest of such rings still surviving on our island, the Druids had built other such designs, as far south as Cornwall and as far north as Scotland. It is said that a ring even greater than Stonehenge once stood in the City of London and was destroyed by the advancing Roman legions.

  Swirling a draft of liquor around his glass, Professor Wren conceded that there was indeed a fable that the old stone, known as London Stone, interned in the walls of St Swithin’s church off Cannon Street had once been part of such an ancient circle. Setting this aside, and whispering to me that the innkeeper’s ramblings were nothing but claptrap, he bid the man goodnight and reminded me with no humour that we had to arise early.

  In the morning I worked like a common pack mule carrying the master’s instrumentation to the remarkable circle of stones. On arrival, their greatness and number astonished me. At first the Professor judged the ring’s diameter to match the cupola of St Peter’s in Rome, at 136 feet. But within the hour, we had surveyed the whole ground site and recorded that the circle had a smaller diameter of precisely 108 feet.

  In their beauty and symmetry there was no denying. The presence of a single stone would have been worthy of esteem, but the boldness of the complete design was a thing of true wonder. Observing the general wear of weather upon the surface of the stones, the Professor recorded a date of some two or three thousand years of age in his notebook. Of this conjecture I have no idea, but of their remarkable antiquity there is no debate.

  After our inspection of the stone circle, Wren set up his observation point exactly in the centre of the ring. I followed his line of sight to a specific sarsen stone with particularly impressive proportions. According to his calculations, the eclipse would appear directly above this stone. Whilst I took rest from my exertions, the professor set up his instrumentation in preparation for the remarkable occasion. Now I saw the reason for the weight of our luggage. Wren had brought so many devices for measurement, including wind up watches, metal theodolites of differing sizes, set squares and some strange inverted tube contraption, which I later understood was for safe observation of the discus of the sun on a sheet of paper, instead of viewing it directly with the naked eye.

  Just before the hour of five in the afternoon the first intimation of the incomparable celestial event began. First the shade came freely over my right shoulder, then a murky blot broadened and heightened in the sky, advancing quickly and spreading over half the firmament. The sheep in the adjoining field bleated loudly, agitated terribly by the oncoming spectacle. Though the sun still looked very sharp, like a new moon, everything grew darker, together with the horizon on both sides of the ring.

  When the eclipse came upon the sun’s body, I could not in the least find any distinction between heaven and earth. It was all at once a dreadful and wonderful sight. A conspicuous circular iris moved across the sun and as it did so, the darkness became palpable, like a dark mantle, or a great coverlet of a bed, thrown over us.

  I turned myself around several times, and the whole compass of the heavens and earth was inky black except for the light from Wren’s lantern. Of all the things I ever saw in my life, or can by imagination fancy, it was the most tremendous. But instead of taking in the wonder of the sight, Wren was at work with his clocks and theodolite and scribbling notes into his almanac. Measure, measure, measure. Doesn’t that wretched man ever take rest?

  Suddenly light rays of perfect colours burst out from the edge of the circular occlusion. Moments later, after the sighting of the sun again, Wren pointed upwards to the planet Venus shining very plainly in the sky. As the light was propagated further, I heard larks chirping and singing very briskly for joy at the restored luminary. Like a morning emerging before sunrise, the natural colours of the heaven and earth were steadily re-established.

  My amazement presently turned into silent anger directed towards the professor. To my astonishment, Wren was marking out the position of the total eclipse by carving his initials into the sarsen stone he had predicted upon, breaking bits off with his hammer and chisel as he worked. The sacrilege of this insolent folly saddened me greatly. This sacred structure had survived millennia of exposure to the wind and rain and now Wren, the ass, inflicted a greater destruction in that moment than in all of history.

  What is the meaning of this eclipse of the sun that so exceedingly alarmed the whole nation? Wren measures the motions of the moon and the planets and then builds a very perfect model thereof, saying it is all but mechanics. How can this be, when its dreadful sight silences the animals and disturbs the spirit so? As I write out this letter; with the impression of the eclipse so vivid upon my mind, I have an obscure feeling that this extraordinary phenomenon was just a dim awakening of a hidden truth in my inner nature.

  Chapter 15

  By the signs of oxidation around the rim of the doorplate, Blake guessed that it had been attached to the oak door for some considerable time. Its once bright bronze finish had all but disappeared, and a greenish black tarnish had invaded the recessed lettering. Even so, the words were quite clear.

  Professor Roland Ballard

  Hunterian Museum

  Though the two of them went back a long way, it was the first time that Blake had visited the Professor at his offices at the Hunterian Museum. The institution was a rarity in today’s world of commercial museums. Part of the Royal College of Surgeons since 1813, the Hunterian was home to a unique and bizarre set of exhibits. Like the museum, Ballard was an anomaly, an individual who refused to be pigeonholed. He was a true polymath, with interests in Roman archaeology, London history, exonumia and anatomy. The Hunterian allowed Ballard the freedom to pursue multiple interests, unlike many other academic establishments.

  Blake had come alone. He rapped firmly on the door and after hearing a muffled reply from the other side, he opened it.

  ‘Ah, Vincent my dear boy. Come in, come in,’ said
Ballard getting to his feet. The academic was standing at his desk wearing an ill-fitting green and yellow tweed suit. With an enthusiastic wave of the hand, he beckoned his old friend inside.

  Ballard’s office had more resemblance to an antique shop than a place of scholarly work. Every horizontal surface, including most of the floor, was covered in a jumble of bric-a-brac and paper. Blake chuckled to himself; at last an office more untidy than his own. Blake’s expert eye scanned the treasure trove of artefacts laid out on the sill of the large window that ran down one side of the room. One end of the ledge was reserved for a collection of medical instruments: forceps, scalpels, and antique brass microscopes. The other end of the windowsill displayed a loose grouping of brightly coloured pottery on several machined blocks of metal that looked to hail from the innards of some great mechanical engine.

  The two men shook hands. Blake removed the pile of papers from the visitor’s seat next to Ballard’s desk and sat down.

  ‘How are you bearing up my dear boy?’

  A shadow fell across Blake’s face. His hand gave a seesaw gesture in the air.

  ‘I am so sorry about Nomsa. What a terrible business. She was a remarkable woman. We all miss her very much,’ said Ballard.

  ‘Thank you, it means a lot to me,’ he replied with a strained smile.

  To change the tone, Ballard bounced up in his chair.

  ‘You mentioned something about a coin?’

  Relieved by the change in conversation, Blake pulled out a plastic evidence bag from the inside pocket of his jacket. He stretched over the desk to hand it to the academic.

  ‘Can I?’ asked Ballard.

  ‘Be my guest, the police have already done their forensics on it.’