The Circle of Sappho (9 page)

The nine ‘muses' sat down on the circled stones, while their leader moved into its middle and stood by the altar. The items brought by Gretchen and the others had been left on a wooden table beside the altar and Elsa began making preparations for the ceremony that was about to be conducted. She picked up a container and took off its top. She poured its contents into several small wooden cups and then handed them around. She kept a cup for herself and, holding it up, tipped some of the liquid onto the altar. After this libation, she began an incantation.

‘Oh, goddess Aphrodite, we honour you in the name of Sappho. Look down on us tonight, this night of the full moon, and see us for who we are – your devoted servants, made flesh to perform acts to venerate your honour and take part in devotional recreations that bring glory to your name. We ask you in all your wisdom and reverence to accept our latest additions to our Circle and thus return our number to its whole.'

Elsa tipped a little more of her cup's contents onto the altar and then drank the remainder. She turned to observe the Circle, as each girl mirrored her actions. Once this had been completed, honey cakes were placed on the altar and burnt; the sweetly scented smoke permeating the air, rising upwards towards the goddess. The liquid the girls had drunk now began to make them feel woozy and light-headed, yet at the same time, liberated. It was not an unpleasant feeling and any earlier anxiety or fears they may have had disappeared with the smoke.

At each gathering, it was tradition that one of the ‘muses' gave a performance appropriate to the discipline she represented. Tonight it was the turn of ‘Terpsichore' – the muse of dance – and after more incantations had been uttered, the girl stood up. Instruments which had been brought were now played; a slow, rhythmic and melodious refrain started proceedings, to which Terpsichore began to dance in time, her movements both fluid and natural. As the music's tempo increased, so did her movements, until the point where the music and dance became as one, interchangeable as the dancer began to sing Sapphic poems while she danced. The musicians, along with the rest of the girls, now joined in, dancing wildly as they played. The performance had reached such an intoxicating state that the girls shed their nightdresses so as to feel the empowering moonlight fully on their pale-white and exposed skin and to experience completely the liberation from dancing naked in the open air.

While the scenes of wild abandon continued, Elsa, who had remained with her cloak covering her body throughout the whole ceremony, moved forward and taking Anne by the arm, manoeuvred her across to the altar and then up onto it, on her back, once more. Elsa let her cloak slip onto the ground and now, also naked, climbed onto the altar and then on top of Anne. She began to move her body up and down the other girl. As the movement became ever more rapid, Elsa began another invocation.

‘Oh, Aphrodite, we honour you in the name of Sappho, the high priestess of love, poetess of the senses, seducer of the innocent; by engaging in the veneration of the flesh, I call on you, oh Goddess of love, beauty and sexuality, to witness this act in your name and that through the coming together of these two bodies, in physical union, we pay the ultimate tribute to you.'

As Elsa's movements became ever more rapid her feet began to push Anne's legs apart. The supine girl did not offer any resistance as she lay entranced and motionless, as she had been throughout the evening. The girl on top of her, however, had begun to thrust her body back and forth and on one of these movements, Anne's body jerked and she let out a moan, as if entered.

‘We pay tribute to you, Sappho,' exclaimed Elsa, as she continued thrusting, ‘and your tradition of physical love between women.'

One of the other girls stopped dancing and looked over to the altar. Shocked by what she now saw, she stormed angrily across towards it.

‘What you are doing is not part of the ceremony,' she shouted. ‘You are making a mockery of our sacred meetings.'

Before she could reach the altar, Gretchen stepped in her way and grabbed her. The girls wrestled with each other momentarily before a blow to the face from Gretchen sent the objecting girl to the ground. The other girls stopped to watch, equally horrified at what they were witnessing. By now Elsa was cloaked again and stood by the altar. She looked contemptuously at the assembled girls.

‘Do not look so appalled,' she said. ‘You are all my
hetaira
and I will say what happens or not within this Circle. And if any of you do not like it, or thinks they might tell someone about our meetings, I suggest you do not, as the consequences will be too terrible to comprehend. Miss Leigh was naïve in her ways, as there is so much more we can achieve through these gatherings.'

The girls stood in a huddle, confused and in shock. All they knew was that the Circle of Sappho had now been broken and would never be the same again.

For as long as Bridges could remember, George had possessed an eye for the women. He trusted his companion with his life, but not with any female he was friendly with. They had grown up roaming the streets together, although he did not know how long ago this was. He remembered though when George came to live with him. It was the year they built the row of houses opposite where Mr Swann was shot at by the man in the carriage. As young boys they watched as the walls slowly rose up and earned a little money by doing small jobs for the workers, as well as warning them when their boss was coming so they could stop playing cards and get back to work.

It was the day the builders had added the windows to the houses that George had found his mother dead. He returned home and there she was, sitting in her chair as though asleep. With no father, brothers or sisters to look after him, he ended up on the streets, sleeping wherever he could find.

When Bridges told his own mother about George, his family had taken him in. It was hard to feed another mouth at first, but after a short while George paid his way. George always protected Bridges as they grew up and they developed a language between the pair of them, even before Bridges' mother taught George to ‘finger-speak'; Bridges' father was also deaf and so his mother had learnt how to communicate with him. She had taught her son as well. Bridges' vocal chords were intact, or so she once told him, as he could laugh and make noises, but as he could not hear language being spoken, he had no idea how to pronounce it. Bridges and George still used their ‘secret' language when they did not want anyone knowing what they were saying; this was usually when they found themselves in a spot of trouble.

There was an older brother in the family but he had died. All Bridges could remember was that it had been sunny the day he last saw him. Bridges was down by the river, with George, when his brother came along and gave him a wooden knife he had just made. That was the last time Bridges saw him. It later became common knowledge that he had been killed by a local gang and his body thrown into the river, but even though he and George looked, they had never found any sign of it.

George had taken over as his protector full time, but it did not take long for Bridges to toughen up himself and together they became a match for the other children who tried to intimidate them. Looking back, it was always like that; George and Bridges against everyone else.

They had become thief-takers because of a magistrate. They had grabbed a man and held onto him as he came out of a building, after someone had shouted for them to do so. The gentleman who shouted, and whose house had been broken into, turned out to be the magistrate. He asked them if they wanted to become thief-takers. They were not quite sure what this entailed, but when he told them how much money they could make they said yes straight away. They soon began to get a reputation as a couple of hard men and on several occasions were asked to join one gang or another; but they always preferred to work alone.

Although they had earned good money, their financial situation had still been tough until Mr Swann arrived the previous year. Before his arrival, they had only been paid when they caught someone. Mr Swann, however, paid them regularly, whether they were successful or not. They had learned from the time they were children not to trust people with lots of money, but there was something different about Mr Swann, something they had both acknowledged from the moment they had seen him in the Duke of York asking about Wicks.

They were now in the Fountain Inn, waiting to meet Mr Swann and they had information which was sure to please him. It was the previous evening when the man Swann was asking about had been seen by the stallholder. The man was with Wicks. They were going into the Duke of York when the stallholder had noticed them. He had been certain it was him, but even more so after being shown the portrait they had been given by Mr Swann. Hopefully this information would put Mr Swann in a generous mood and they would get a little extra money. Everything was going well for them, Bridges thought, it was just a shame his thoughts were so troubled.

‘The ‘trouble' was a woman called Rosie, or rather the situation she now found herself in. Bridges had met her one evening at the Fountain; she had been with a group of women while he had been alone, as George was off in another part of town with a married woman. One of the women in the group could finger-speak, although not deaf herself, and she had ‘spoken' for him when it became obvious he and Rosie had eyes for each other. The woman had also accompanied them the first few times they had gone out together – George had made up a foursome although lost interest after the second outing – but they had been on their own after that, as Rosie had learnt enough to finger-speak with Bridges.

Rosie lived in nearby Peter Street, although her landlord now wanted her out and had recently increased the rent several times, to the point where she could no longer afford to pay it. Bridges had given her what money he could and, added to her wages from her job at the factory, it had been enough for a while. However, with the latest increase it was no longer enough. Bridges had gone to confront the landlord but the meeting developed into a fight, resulting in Bridges' black eye. The landlord now told Rosie she had to leave by the end of the week or she would be forcibly removed. That was in five days' time.

When Bridges told George about it, he had refused to help. Rosie had met with Mr Swann to tell him about knowing Thomas Malone back in Ireland and, later that evening, after Mr Swann had left, George had made a crude pass at Rosie while Bridges was out the back of the inn. On his return he found George gone, his lifelong friend bearing a grudge against Rosie, to the point that he would not even discuss Bridges' suggestion of letting her stay with them until she found somewhere else. Rosie was making the best of it. She had laughingly told Bridges she would pawn her most treasured possession, a beloved violin – which she had had in her possession since childhood – and buy a mansion, but Bridges was worried for her and did not know what to do. He only hoped something would turn up and that it would be soon.

After Swann had finished at the abbey, he had returned to the house in Great Pulteney Street and had spent the next couple of hours checking his manuscript to make sure the information he had verified was correct. Once finished, he had left and headed towards the Avon Street district. He was to meet George and Bridges later that evening, but first had to change into a disguise.

When Swann had engaged the artist to create a portrait of the Scarred Man the previous autumn, he had inadvertently led Wicks straight to him. He had even been followed once when he was in disguise, or so he believed, and had therefore decided to take more precautions.

The warehouse Swann had subsequently rented for his more covert activities was in the Avon Street district, near the river. Its rear entrance was located at the end of several long and narrow passageways; ideal for observing if anyone was following behind. It was also ideal for keeping his promise to Mary of not bringing his ‘work' home. Once at the warehouse he would choose a disguise; the space that the large building afforded meant he could keep a complete wardrobe of clothes, make-up, wigs and other assorted items there, much more than he would have been able to do at either the house in Great Pulteney Street or his consulting rooms at No.40 Gay Street. Once changed, he would then simply leave via one of the passageways and quickly lose himself among the throng of people always around in the area. From there he would be free to continue on to his destination, which tonight entailed meeting the pair of thief-takers, George and Bridges, at the Fountain Inn.

Swann sat at the writing desk he had set up in the library of the house in Great Pulteney Street. Light from the full moon came shining through the nearby window and he had no need of a candle to be able to see. He opened a bottle of '98 Lafite, poured himself a glass of the red wine and began to write his journal. He always tried to write an entry each day, recollecting his thoughts and any main developments in the cases he was working on.