Savage Magic (43 page)

Harriott had said no more. But Horton thinks of him as he walks up to Brooke House, through the driving rain.

A tall wagon is pulled up in front of the gate. Its shape is familiar, and the coincidence is almost too acute for a moment. But there it is. The wagon he’d seen from the woods in Thorpe Lee House, on the day he’d encountered poor Ellen Tempest Graham, now standing empty outside the building which contains his wife.

All thoughts of calm dispelled, he runs up to the gate and rings upon the bell.

John feels the force of the woman’s will like the blast of a gale on his face. It pushes him, he can feel its fingers in his cheeks and in his hair, holding his head while she gazes at him.

They are standing just inside the front door of Brooke House, the rain a wall of water beside them. The thunder sounds to John like it comes from a distant land; all he can see is the woman’s eyes, all he can hear is her voice.

Tell me, John Burroway. Tell me where I will find Dr Bryson
.

In the Cottage. At the end of the corridor
.

Take me there
.

He turns and walks into the house, and she follows him. He is no longer looking into her eyes, but he can still feel her voice in his head.

John has a sudden fear that his sister might appear in the corridor, from somewhere deep within the house, and seek to challenge this woman. He knows how that might turn out, and the thought of it terrifies him. They reach the door to Dr Bryson’s apartment, and then he feels the woman’s hand on his shoulder, and it exerts a gentle pressure to turn him around. He is so much taller than her that her hand is held straight above her head to reach him, but as he turns she seems to grow taller, and he smaller, such that when he looks back into her eyes they are staring down at him, and he up.

John, go back to the front door. Let nobody in. And forget I was here
.

She turns away from him, and goes in. John walks back to the door, his little room, and the rain.

Horton rings the bell at the gate, but as he does so he sees something odd: the front door closing. It must have been open when he arrived, but now someone inside is shutting it up. The movement has something deliberate about it, as if whoever is behind it wants to prevent prying eyes, as if something were going on inside which is dark and terrible. Rain pours down his body, and panic begins to flood down his brain, a strange feeling to one such as he.

He rings the bell, again and again and again. Lightning and thunder rattle and gleam incessantly, every half-a-minute, an impossible cacophony. His old pea-coat is drenched and the wet air muffles whatever noises may be coming from inside the asylum.

A dark shape appears from the front door and approaches the gate.

‘No one can come in after hours,’ the voice says, a deep man’s voice.

‘I am a constable of the River Police.’

‘There’s no river here, constable.’

The giant shape doesn’t chuckle or sneer. It’s a simple matter of fact that there is no river here.

‘I am investigating a matter which relates to the deaths of several gentlemen in Covent Garden.’

The silhouette moves forward and its face takes shape in the dim moonlight. It is a large face, with the puzzled expression of a child who has been told something mystifying, its mouth open.

‘Why were they killed in the garden?’

The giant’s confused face waits for an answer. Horton sees the kind of conversation he must have.

‘That is what I am trying to find out. Now, you’re a powerful fellow, are you not? I need your help, you see. I think there might be someone in here who can help me understand why they were killed in the garden.’

‘Do you mean Dr Bryson?’

‘Yes. That’s who I mean. Dr Bryson. He’s an expert in these matters. I need to speak to him quickly.’

‘He’s not been himself. Dr Bryson. He’s been worried about the woman upstairs. The one in the strait waistcoat. The one who gets into your head.’

The rain seems to drop several degrees in temperature. The giant turns his head up to the top of the building, up and away to the left.

‘She’s up there now?’ asks Horton, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

‘Yes.’

The giant turns back to him.

‘She can make people do things she wants them to do. She did it to me. I remember. She makes people forget things. But I remember. Why do I remember?’

‘I don’t know. But perhaps I could ask Dr Bryson.’

‘Yes. Dr Bryson.’

‘What’s your name, fellow?’

‘It’s Burroway. John Burroway.’

‘Well, John Burroway. I think Dr Bryson will want to speak to me. I think I can help him with this woman you speak of.’

‘Did she kill the men in the garden? But no! That’s stupid! She’s in here. How could she kill them if she’s in here? Unless,’ and the giant leans in towards the gate, and whispers, ‘unless she got
someone else
to do it for her.’

‘Let me in, John. You must let me in now.’

And with that, the giant pulls out a key and unlocks the chain around the gate, and lets Horton inside. As they walk to the house, Horton asks him.

‘Do you stand at the gate a lot, John?’

‘Yes, constable, I do. Most days and most nights, when I’m not doing things inside for Dr Bryson.’

‘Have you ever seen a woman with long black hair outside? On a cart? On her own?’

‘Oh yes. I see her all the time. She scares me.’

‘Does she?’

‘Yes. She’s got an angry face.’

‘Have you seen her tonight?’

A long pause as the giant considers.

‘She’s inside. But she doesn’t want me to remember that.’

Horton has visualised the interior of the madhouse which contains his wife many times over the past month. It has become a Gothic extremity in his lonely imagination, as massive as Bethlem, as dirty as Newgate, filled with the chatter of lunatics and the rattling of chains.

The reality is quieter and yet more suffocating, as if he were walking into the interior of a doll’s house owned by a stupid yet pedantic child. The layout is confused, as if different houses were contained within the exterior. There is a sense of imprisonment here, but it is a distant one, out of sight. The vestibule and drawing room are tidy but nondescript.

The place reminds him strongly of the River Police Office. It has the same air of municipal domesticity, the same sense of a dwelling adapted for other purposes. And both have the unavoidable discomfort that comes from random shouts and screams from within.

He hears them straightaway: the distant clamour of upset minds. They are almost all male, these random howls, and they are emphasised by the worsening storm.

‘Who is in charge?’ he asks Burroway, who has followed him inside. In the light, Horton can see the man’s enormous face, which while clearly that of an idiot also betrays its own calm.

‘They shout again,’ Burroway says in reply.

‘Who shouts, John?’

‘The men. They’re shouting like before. Dr Bryson.’

‘Dr Bryson is in charge?’

‘Yes.’ Burroway frowns.

‘Would you take me to him, John?’

‘Yes. Follow me.’

They walk along a corridor that seems to run the full width of the place, which ends in a door that stands ajar. From inside Horton can hear a man muttering and the sound of tearing paper.

He goes inside.

Dr Bryson does not look round when Horton enters. He is standing at the fireplace, throwing papers onto the flames, muttering to himself as he does so as if performing some kind of inventory.

‘That’s almost all of them, oh the matron’s report, mustn’t forget the matron’s report, and the letter the fellow who brought her in gave me, where is that, oh here it is, is that it all then? Is that it all?’

‘Dr Bryson?’

He speaks sharply to draw the man’s attention away from the fire. He is so impatient by now that he imagines being able to
smell
Abigail, to detect her somewhere in this building by a sense other than sight or sound.

Bryson is unshaven, his hair is wildly disordered, and his eyes have a look of such frenzy that Horton thinks the mad-doctor may stand up and rush at him. But then he is distracted, almost as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder, and he looks down at a disarrayed pile of papers on the corner of his desk, which stands next to the fireplace. An ink pot has fallen over and is staining papers and wood indiscriminately. A half-empty bottle of what looks like whisky stands beside the overturned ink pot.

‘Yes, yes, nearly there, nearly there.’

And he takes the pile and, pausing a moment, throws the whole thing onto the flames. The fire is almost extinguished by the weight of the paper, but then it reasserts itself and billows out from the hearth in its hunger to consume whatever Bryson is throwing upon it.

Horton can hear the sound of men screaming. John Burroway has disappeared from beside him, to who knows where? His only guide to the interior of Brooke House is this deranged man.

‘Bryson, I must speak to my wife, immediately.’

Bryson looks around him, desperately, and grabs something off the desk. It is a small, old letter-knife, and he points it at Horton, and opens his mouth in a grin that displays his yellow teeth.

‘You’re in it together. All of you. You’re in it together.’

‘Bryson, calm yourself.’

‘I am CALM. You will LEAVE. All is WELL here.’

‘Bryson, you must listen to me. Look me in the eye. Remain calm.’

‘Look you in the
eye?
Ah, you think to control me, do you, constable? You think to assert the strength of your will over mine? Well, look into
my
eyes, man. Do what
I
say!’

He is not a tall man, the mad-doctor, but he straightens his back and raises his chin now, as if he were holding an épée to his chin in readiness for a duel. His eyebrows beetle down over his eyes, his brow furrows, and he fixes Horton with a ludicrous theatrical stare.

Horton turns, and leaves the office. Rushing into the corridor, he almost runs into John Burroway, who is standing against the wall with his hands in his ears. His massive face is strung with unhappiness.

‘John!’

The big man just shakes his head and looks at the floor, his hands still covering his ears. Horton grabs one of his thick arms and tries to pull it away from the man’s face.

‘John – I need you to take me somewhere. To the women’s quarters.’

The man can hear, he thinks – he just chooses not to reply.

‘John, do you remember what I said to you? When I said I was a constable? Well, you could be in trouble if you don’t help me.’

It is the wrong approach. John’s shoulders slump even further, his hands pushing towards each other as if he were trying to lift his head from his shoulders.

‘My wife, John. My wife is inside. Her name is Abigail.’

John lifts his head, and looks at Horton. He takes his hands from his ears.

‘Mrs Horton? Your wife is Mrs Horton?’

‘Yes! Can you take me to her?’

John looks down the corridor, both ways, as if an answer, or at least someone carrying an answer, might appear. He looks at the floor again, and shivers as another massive burst of thunder seems to shake the roof.

Then he turns, and walks around a bend in the corridor, leaving Dr Bryson’s apartment behind. Inside, Horton hears the sound of furniture toppling, as if someone were pulling out drawers.

Round the corner, they reach a door. John puts out his hand, saying, ‘It’s probably locked,’ but it opens. Security has become soft at Brooke House, it would seem.

On the other side of the door is a flight of stairs, and John points up them.

‘Up there. At the top of the stairs.’

Horton rushes up. At the top of the stairs are two empty cells, their doors open. On the bed of one of these he spies a book, and goes in to pick it up. It is
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
, by Mary Wollstonecraft.

That smell again, clear and present – though not quite a smell, more like a memory floating on the air. This is Abigail’s room.

But where is she?

Horton walks out of the empty cell. The noise in Brooke House is rising behind him, a chattering sound of women which has for its bass note the irregular rattling boom of thunder.

The corridor stretches to his right down the side of the building, but to his left a little staircase runs down to another section. From down there, in the gloom, he hears the sound of women arguing.

From somewhere within the building, he hears a door slam and a man shout.

He walks down the staircase, the sound of the women’s voices growing louder and louder. A flash of lightning illuminates the corridor. He enters the little room and, in the candlelight, sees the shape of a gigantic footless priest gazing down at him from the wall. Then he sees his wife sitting on a bench, turning to him, and he shouts her name and runs to her. She stands and he embraces her, and as he does so he sees the two tall blackhaired women standing before the picture of the priest, and they both look at him.

And then he remembers no more.

Abigail can do nothing. Maria’s prayers are relentless and incomprehensible, a monotonous chant in a tense whisper like a strangled shout. She kneels in front of the old painting with her back to Abigail, her dark hair flowing down between her shoulders.

It occurs to Abigail that this is the first day she has seen Maria’s arms and hands, the first time they have been freed from the strait waistcoat.

Lightning opens up the shadows in the corners of the chapel, and she pretends she cannot see goblins and gargoyles dancing in there. She says her own silent prayer, but not to God. To Charles.

I am in need of rescue
, she thinks.

She wonders what she would do if Satan himself walked into the room, smiled at her with a nod and a wink, and took Maria’s hand, the two of them to be married with her as a witness. She hears someone step into the chapel, and for a moment she dare not look, lest what she imagined become true.

She does look, then, and sees a tall woman silhouetted in the door to the corridor outside. A woman as tall as Maria, and with the same long loose hair.