The Blood Dimmed Tide (15 page)

Yeats’ pale face bore the touch of an old ghost. He ignored his glass of wine, and observed me with his hands clasped across his chest as though in solemn prayer. From time to time, his eyes shifted to the ceiling as though he were composing a poem from my jumbled narrative, picking out words here and there to weave into a flowing verse. Each time I stopped, he chewed his lips in concentration and then beckoned with his long-fingered hand for me to resume.

‘A few things in your account have caught my attention,’ he said at the end. Producing his pack of tarot cards, he laid a few suits before me. ‘I discern the hand of the Two of Swords, the blindfolded maiden. The blindfold represents your story’s complication and confusion, while the rippling waters suggest the need for intuition and perception.’

I interrupted him. ‘A young woman has been murdered. This is not an exercise in reading the tarot cards. We should be looking for a motive and a murderer, not a suit of symbols.’ My voice was sharp and accusative, and he looked hurt.

I went on to tell him about my strange encounter with Captain Oates, who’d seemed to be sitting down to dinner with a hallucination. Yeats nodded as I described the captain’s bizarre behaviour.

‘The captain is eating and drinking in the spirit world. This is promising evidence.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He is being driven to satisfy their hunger. Did the spirits leave any physical trace? Did you notice any manifestations of light, or strange smells?’

‘I noticed nothing like that. I believe the strange ritual was just a function of his delirium.’

‘Delirium? How can you say that?’ Yeats’ back straightened and his face grew paler. ‘If Captain Oates communes in such an elaborate fashion with a ghost might that not be evidence of its existence?’

‘It is not evidence if only Captain Oates hears and sees it.’

‘Who are you to determine what is evidence and what is not?’ His voice grew shrill. ‘You assume that Oates is suffering from madness and therefore you discount his evidence. Just because you are unable to witness such phenomena does not mean they do not exist.’

‘I accept that. But how can we verify Oates’ vision in an objective and scientific manner? Words can argue anything, but they do not make an unreal thing real, or an untruth truth.’

‘The universe extends far beyond the realm of human perception and scientific explanation. All we can do is grapple with symbols to dramatise the reality outside space and time.’

‘What kind of symbols?’

He paused momentarily. ‘Let us say that for the sake of an analogy, Captain Oates observes a rainbow and comments on its splendour to his companions. Where does that rainbow come from?’

I blinked with uncertainty. ‘We know that rainbows are formed when sunlight hits water spray in the atmosphere.’

‘Yes. But where does it come from? It doesn’t just appear out of nothing.’

‘From the rain and sunlight.’

‘No.’

‘Are we talking about a higher deity?’

‘Not at all.’

‘I’m at a loss, then.’

‘What we can say is that Captain Oates’ rainbow, like his ghost, is the coming together of certain conditions at a certain place and time. Water vapour, light, his eyes and his consciousness. The same is true for his ghost.’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘You understand perfectly. Rainbows and ghosts do not really exist in the physical world, in the sense that they can be touched or contained in any way. They have no existence independent of the set of conditions that make them visible to the beholder. Do you understand that? If there are five people observing a rainbow, then there are five rainbows. And if they all turn their backs, all five rainbows will cease to exist. The same is true, I hold, of ghostly manifestations.’ The heat left his cheeks. ‘Now, are there any further points of mystery in your narrative that you would like me to penetrate?’

I handed him Rosemary’s notebook, but kept the photograph of Gonne in my pocket, not wishing to distract him. I explained how I had found it hidden in her room. He took time to flatten out the crumpled, slightly damp pages.

‘What do you make of it?’ I said after a while.

‘Obviously she is trying to hide some secret information.’

‘What sort of information?’

‘Unfortunately at this point we do not possess the cipher to translate the code.’

‘How shall we obtain it?’

Yeats shrugged. ‘I have come across many ciphers designed to protect the secrets of the ancients and their Apocrypha. What I have learnt is that codes are usually assimilated from the environment of the code-maker. Until I learn more of Rosemary’s environment I am powerless.’

‘The list of names sounds like code words for people or places.’

‘I’m not a horticulturist but the first two are names of roses. Perhaps they were the secret names of her lovers.’ His brow clouded as he stared at the page. ‘Indefinite possibilities emerge.’ He tapped his fingers on the open page and stared into his glass of wine for a long time.

Finally, he said, ‘There may be little else to this list but Rosemary’s guilty conscience and some inconsequential but hidden facet of her life. She was afraid she might bring trouble upon herself if someone discovered the contents of the journal.’

I furrowed my brow. It was frustrating to think that the secret life of the murdered girl lay on that piece of paper, and that it was beyond the power of our intelligence to penetrate it.

Yeats leaned back and took on a meditative air.

‘Do you have any further trials for our powers of reasoning?’

‘What about initiation ceremonies.’

‘What about them?’

‘Do you know of any carried out by the Daughters of Erin under the instructions of Maud Gonne?’

‘No.’ He sniffed his glass and sipped it slowly. He seemed reluctant to talk about the subject.

‘Does that mean you don’t know of any, or that the society never conducted any?’

‘Maud Gonne forbids such practices. She has given up on magic completely. As a convert to Catholicism she considers them satanic practices.’ His forehead creased. ‘Why are you so interested in Maud?’

‘Her behaviour has aroused my suspicions. First, I meet her on the boat journey to Sligo, in the disguise of a Red Cross nurse. Showing off her theatrical talents, she engages me and an agent of the War Office in a conversation about the dead girl, without arousing any of our suspicions. To round off the melodrama she pretends to be caring for a dying soldier, who is returning to Ireland on his dying breath, but who is, in reality, her teenaged son. While in Sligo, she organises contact with me in a covert fashion and reveals that she knows a lot more about Rosemary than she hitherto demonstrated. In short she is a woman capable of significant subterfuge and deception.’

‘If Maud lied to you, it was only a necessary omission to ensure her survival.’

‘But this is about more than a simple lie. She reminds me of a
femme fatale
from a gothic opera. One in which all the stage sets are designed by you.’

‘Congratulations, Mr Adams.’ An ironical smile played on his lips and a flush of colour rose to his cheeks. The mention of her name seemed to tighten his entire body, leaving him quick to anger. ‘You have unmasked Maud Gonne’s true essence. How very shrewd of you. Your uncanny insight will help you progress through the Orders of the Golden Dawn. A number six at least, or even a seven.’

‘Can you tell me where she’s staying?’

‘Of course I can’t.’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. It was obvious the mention of her name had pressed on an old point of pain – the trauma of unrequited love. ‘My task in Sligo is to avoid Maud. The police consider me the most likely lead to her hiding place.’

‘Who else might know where she is?’

Yeats bared his teeth. ‘Try the War Office. They spend all their time spying on her.’ He made a noise, expressing his contempt for their machinations.

‘What is the significance of the coffin? I’m convinced it’s the vital clue that will lead us to the killer.’

Yeats looked thoughtful. ‘In Celtic mythology death is regarded as a solo voyage to a new world. And a coffin is really a boat built for one, solid and snug, ready for the long and stormy voyage to the hereafter.’

‘Are you suggesting her burial at sea was some sort of ancient Irish ritual?’

‘As a symbol, that is what it suggests. But then this is a murder we’re studying…’ His voice trailed off. I wondered if he was trying to divert my attention away from Gonne and her exploits. I guessed what was going through his mind. The fear that he might be tainted by Maud’s treachery to the British Crown.

I sipped the rest of my wine. Yeats picked up a volume of poetry and stuck his nose between its pages, as if he were sniffing an expensive vintage, as if all books possessed their own aroma. I found myself concentrating on his lapel. Pinned to it was a brooch in the shape of a cross with a rose in the centre. I tried to clear my head, but a dizziness overcame me. I gripped the armrests of the chair. I struggled to make sense of the evidence before me. A procession of thoughts and questions flitted through my mind as images of the distinctive design flashed before me. Clarissa Carty and the medium in Edgware Street both wore similar looking necklaces. What linked them to Yeats? I could not find any point of reference between them. All that I could discern was a series of personalities cloaked in deception. What was illusion and what was reality?

‘How am I going to successfully conclude my mission in Sligo if no one tells me the truth?’ I complained.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What are you and Gonne hiding from me?’ I demanded. ‘What is the significance of the rose and the cross? Tell me something that is not another chimera. Tell me something I can make sense of.’

Yeats was silent for a few moments. He looked at me and shook his head.

‘I don’t know if I can answer your question.’

‘Then tell me what binds you to silence?’

Yeats regarded me sympathetically. He was the model of avuncular authority. ‘My dear Charles, if anything, you have created these illusions and layers of deception for yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve had a difficult time in Sligo and you’re weary.’ He leaned forward and smiled understandingly. ‘But there is one thing you must understand. The rose and the cross do not belong to your line of enquiry. They are part of the inner knowledge of not only the Golden Dawn but a host of cults that believe in the rebirth of the soul. I might trust you with the knowledge, but the Order would never forgive me if I divulged its secrets. They are for you to discover as you progress through the different stages of the Golden Dawn.’ He eyed me closely. ‘I can disclose that the elders of the society are following your progress with great interest.’

‘Are you telling me this assignment is some sort of spiritual test? To determine my progress in the Golden Dawn?’

Yeats ignored my questions. He eased back his chair and stood up.

‘Come, Georgie is still asleep. It is not too late to tour the beaches at Lissadell and clear our minds of these cobwebs.’

He pulled on a snug-fitting woollen jacket in midnight blue, and hovered over a vase of flowers before deciding on a red carnation to decorate his buttonhole.

‘Besides, I was hoping to meet one of these notorious Daughters of Erin. I hear they are that brazen they wear men’s clothes while on manoeuvres.’

In spite of my annoyance, I smiled inwardly at the thought of Yeats encountering a straightforward horsewoman like Clarissa Carty on Lissadell beach, and the flamboyant note his outfit would strike next to her boyish form and the wild waves of the Atlantic.

15

The Hanged Man

A MOUNTAIN wind swept down from Ben Bulben and moaned in the valley between the thorn trees. The wind had a chill edge, and carried the intermittent whining of some animal from the forest, a fox or a badger, a forlorn call for its mate that was strangely like singing.

Captain Oates leaned on the branch he was using as a walking stick and peered through a pair of field glasses, his grizzled face filling with the astonishment of a savage. He wore a uniform so caked in mud it was impossible to tell what colour it was. His body, which had lost much of its soldierly bearing, trembled slightly as his chest heaved up and down. He peeped through the binoculars at a ridge of pine trees, which looked no friendlier now that the sullen light of day had broken upon them.

It was a strange feeling, using his field glasses to observe a spirit that belonged to the invisible world. He fought the impulse to run away, to flee back into the ruined estate, but the desire to find out what had happened to Rosemary O’Grady was stronger than the urge to save his own skin. He shifted slightly. His movement upset a blackbird, sending it clattering into the undergrowth, and his close-up view of the trees wobbled. When he refocused, the trees were unchanged, or rather the darkness between the trees was unchanged. He scrutinised the bottom of the ridge, which was cut by a sunken lane, and thought he saw a flare of black hair float momentarily above a whitethorn hedge. A young woman’s lank black hair.

Somehow, the binoculars helped him hold his nerve whenever he felt his grip on reality weaken. He returned his gaze to the ridge of pine trees. After several moments, a figure emerged from the gloom, a hooded female figure that beckoned him towards her. He put down the field glasses and rubbed the back of his neck. He raised them again and saw that the figure was still there, waving her thin hand at him.

The ghost’s appearance made no sense. No matter who had murdered Rosemary, he was sure the killer’s motive had nothing to do with him. Why then had she chosen him to haunt? What could he do to help? Perhaps he should tell her that she was on the wrong track. Reluctantly, he made his way up to the pine trees that were starved of sunlight.

Held in thrall by her swaying figure, he pushed through scratching branches. He followed her over moss-covered forest floors, through ice-cold rivers and crippled plantations of Scotch pine, entire ranks of which had been snapped in two by the assault of the Atlantic winds. Sometimes her figure appeared in front of him, and then behind, or to his left and right, circling him as though she were trying to make him lose his bearings.

The distance between them shortened. Eventually, he caught up with her on a cliff overlooking the sea. She stopped just ahead but did not turn around. Slowly she began walking towards the precipice, and he did the same. The churning sea was more than forty feet below, and a fall from the edge would be fatal. He heard a voice behind him. ‘I’d like to go back now,’ it said. He spun round but there was no one there. ‘I’d like very much to rest. I’ve been following you all afternoon.’ He realised the voice was his own, and his breath sobbed. Day and night, reality and dream, had merged to form a continuous whole from which he was no longer able to discern the particular parts. He could not remember how many nights had passed since he had discovered Rosemary’s body at Blind Sound. All he knew was that she had come back to life and would not let his mind rest. He was exhausted now, so weary he could not trust his own faculties. The thought of losing control frightened him.

‘I have to go back,’ he shouted.

‘Don’t leave my path,’ warned the ghost.

He wanted to sit down and rest, make some nest in the thick cliff-top grass and not move for a long time, but the spirit kept urging him on.

‘This is not yet the place.’

‘What place?’

‘The place where I discovered their crime. A crime so great I was not allowed to go on living.’

‘Why burden me with this? What do you expect to gain? I was not involved in any part of that terrible business. That’s all there is to it.’

The spirit turned back from the edge and led him along the coast towards Blind Sound. The sun’s edge disappeared behind clouds and they came across a sunken graveyard marked with boulders and a few headstones. She pointed to a cave in the ground as though it were a doorway out of a labyrinth. He clambered into the mouth of the cave, and slid down its wet passageway. The darkness gave way to light and soon he found himself crawling out at the base of the cliff. She was there waiting for him, standing at the top of a large slab of rock, motionless, apart from the fluttering of the wind through the hem of her long dress. He scampered after her but when he reached the rock, she had disappeared. He yelled. She reappeared further along the coast, waiting silently for him.

He puffed and panted as they crossed an undulating terrain of sand dunes. The sea boiled and the wind picked up, whining through the marram grass. Rain whipped his face. The pale beach seemed to stretch for miles under the sombre light of a storm. His strength began to wane as the day darkened to twilight. Beyond each horizon of sand dunes loomed another, so that the beach they were traversing never seemed to end. He began to feel like they were two sleepwalkers drifting towards the edge of the earth.

‘Are you travelling across the sand for eternity?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ It seemed that time meant nothing to her.

The shoreline grew wild and bleak. The sea retreated so far from them they could no longer hear the sound of the waves. He noticed how fine the sand was on this vast beach.

‘You promised to show me something.’

‘That is true.’

‘Then why keep us walking forever?’

She did not answer. Her hand rose in the air, pointing towards a set of rocks where the sea was suddenly booming. He was unsure of what she meant him to see. The gale blew hard and scudding clouds obscured the light of the setting sun. Perhaps she meant him to witness an echo of her last living moments. He watched carefully as twilight fell and cast its violet hue over the storm-tossed scene. The waves arched their backs higher and higher. He was about to give up and turn back when he caught a glimpse of a small dark object floating far out, just before it disappeared from view. He waited and the object reappeared, drawing closer to the beach. It was the head of a swimmer rising and falling with the waves.

The appearance of the swimmer was matched by a series of furtive movements on the beach. Two thickset men appeared from a nearby cave, prompting Oates to take cover behind a large rock. They walked to the water’s edge and waited. They seemed oblivious to the plight of the swimmer struggling for his life. For a while, he seemed to stall, bobbing with the waves, gulping brine, and then a tall wave picked him up and carried him closer to the beach.

The swimmer slid down the long white chute of the incoming wave and rolled with the breaking surf, his chest bound by several coils of thick rope which stretched back into the sea. His body had barely come to rest when the two men surrounded him. They worked on him like a pair of brisk undertakers, efficient and professional, wrapping his form in white cloth. Then they undid the rope, and tugged on it, heaving together with all their strength. The rope sliced through the waves like a powerful glistening tail. The men sucked in their breath and pulled harder. A barrel popped out from the waves, and then several more, all bound together by the rope. When they had hauled all the barrels ashore, the men dragged the swimmer’s body back to the cave. They returned for the barrels, rolling them across the sand and heaving them over the rocks. Soon they were all gone. The tide rose, covering the sand, washing smooth their traces. Oates reappeared from his hiding place. He had observed what the ghost meant him to see, two men recovering the body of a half-drowned swimmer as though his soul was their bounty, and a flotilla of barrels unspooling through the strength-sapping waves. A thought began to evolve in his head. He realised he was in great danger standing on the sands of Blind Sound.

It was almost dark and a storm had picked up when Yeats and I reached Blind Sound. We met a pair of horses pulling a cart loaded with barrels, and a man with his hat pulled low on the riding seat driving the animals ferociously onward with a whip.

Yeats clambered over the rocks to the little sandy beach but the force of the wind almost blew him back into my arms. His figure looked slight and vulnerable against the breaking waves. I scrambled after him. The shore had the pummelled appearance of a battleground. Crabs and shellfish packed the rock pools like soldiers in trenches, while the debris of a landslide lay strewn across the beach.

‘We should be careful,’ Yeats shouted above the wind. ‘It’s not only wrack from the human world that is washed ashore on this wild beach. Blind Sound is haunted by supernatural flotsam. On nights like these, shipwrecks and the ghosts of drowned fishermen ride the waves.’

I surveyed the narrow strip of beach, the grim rocks, the recessed façade of the cliffs that resembled a natural amphitheatre. Yeats raised his arms as though he were a high priest and the beach an altar built for the adoration of restless spirits. He began an invocation. I retreated, not wishing to break his concentration.

I picked my way over an uneven rampart of upended bushes, tree-roots and the boulders of a collapsed stone wall. A short distance further along the coast I could see an isolated hillock, half of which had caved into the sea. The waves had wormed their way in a series of tunnels that looked like slits along the base of the hillock. I clambered along the shore, sliding over slippery rocks, and got as close as I could to the caves.

The wind whistled through them, making a mournful piping kind of music, and I thought instantly of Orpheus visiting the underworld. I felt a mysterious pull towards the caves, and would have investigated further but my attention was caught by a figure emerging from the rocks between Yeats and the cliffs, staggering like a cripple towards the sea. His head was matted with mud and his uniform was torn. His face gleamed with sea spray. It was Captain Oates, looking wilder and more unkempt than the last time I had seen him.

I watched his crab-like movements across the sand to where Yeats was engrossed in his invocation. To my horror, the captain removed a revolver from his jacket and pointed it in the direction of Yeats. My heart seized up with fear. Only an hour ago, we were sharing a bottle of wine; now my mentor seemed a few degrees away from death. I roared at the top of my voice but the wind hurled my words back. A wave struck a rock beside the two men, rising high above them with explosive force. Yeats stood erect against the churning sea, oblivious to everything, his arms raised above his head, like a man about to disappear into a whirlpool.

I grabbed some small rocks and began throwing them in the direction of Oates. Fortunately, their movement was enough to distract him. He looked round with a haunted face and crept back to the gloomy rocks from which he had emerged. Pushing away the thought that the captain might be capable of killing, I gave chase, but there was no sign of him amid the rocks. The only possible hiding place was a small cave in the cliff face, its dark mouth frothing with waves. I stared at the entrance and waited.

Where else could Oates have run to? On this lonely bay, there were no forests to hide in or abandoned mansions to raid for food. There was only the sea and the treacherous-looking cliffs. What else could he do? I hung back waiting for him to reappear from the cave, as the crest of a huge breaker filled its mouth with churning water.

‘Captain Oates,’ I yelled, but all I heard was my own echo.

When the sea ebbed, I waded through the water and clambered into the darkness of the cave. It opened out into a chill galley-like chamber, its floor carpeted with seaweed. A rough ladder had been fashioned from rope and driftwood, and dangled from an opening in the roof, far above the reach of the tide. I climbed up into a smaller chamber. It was a dwelling fit for a hermit. The stone floor was covered with empty seashells and the bones of small animals. I crawled through the wicks of spent candles positioned regularly along the floor. The sheen of the wet rocks gave the appearance of countless eyes following my movements. After a few yards, the daylight gave out completely.

‘Come out,’ I called. ‘I only want to talk.’

I waited for a while, shivering with the cold, my ears boiling with the magnified roar of the sea. Eventually I gave up and returned to the beach where Yeats was still standing motionlessly before the darkening Atlantic. I called out his name. He turned away from the sea in exasperation, his hair drenched with sea-spray.

‘The storm is drowning out all communication with the spirit world,’ he shouted. ‘We should come back another time. When the sea is calm, or by moonlight. When the powers of Neptune are greatly diminished.’

Yeats was still convinced we should be trying to contact the dead girl’s spirit. However, I was beginning to realise that Oates was the key. He was the man we should be talking to, but he was more difficult to communicate with than a wraith on the waves. A black mood of frustration hung over us as we departed from Blind Sound.