The Wanderer (26 page)

‘Is there anything we can do for you in return?’ the marchioness asked.

This question allowed Duncan to indulge his subversive impulses with impunity.

‘I would ask you to pledge to do what you can to improve the plight of the worker. Many have been cozened into exchanging fields for factories, lied to, misled. Though, as farm labourers, they broke their backs tilling and sowing, they were at least their own men, and worked in the health-giving air of the country. Now they have their backs broken for them on the wheels of dark mills, reap none of the fruits of their labours, toil for a pittance in mephitic pits. All whilst the owners cavort with Mammon. Beware the industrialist!

‘Beware also your leaders! In the future, wars will not be fought nation against nation for political ends, but waged merely to fill the purses of the arms manufacturers. The poor will be sent to their deaths for naught but greed. Even you, rich as you are, will likely not be spared, for War in the industrial age will no longer be constrained to the battlefield, but will stalk abroad smiting at haphazard. Only the servile scientists will escape the fall of the axe, for they have placed their souls in hock for their lives, have pledged to develop the fell, havocking weapons of which the potentates dream.

‘Beware the industrialist, beware your leaders, and give to your poor!’

Augustus Kellner sighed.

‘That’s good advice.’

‘Life is unfair. Get over it or kill yourself,’ said Jacob Bridges, in his curiously stilted, lilting intonation.

Putting her hand on the simpleton’s shoulder, the marchioness said, gently, ‘He’s already dead, dear.’

There was shuffling, stifled titters, choked sniggers. Taking advantage, Duncan dredged his tongue with sherbet, swilled it, slavered and snorted froth, groaned. When he again had everyone’s attention, he began to speak, ‘A spirit demands to communicate with the company. A young man. With a birthmark on his upper-arm. Form of a cross.’

‘Lucas, is that you?’ Rebecca Graves asked, sobbing pitiably.

Duncan altered his voice, began to speak with an adolescent boy’s cadences.

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Oh, son, son. I miss you so much.’

‘I miss you too, Mother. Are you well?’

‘Oh, Lucas, I wish that I weren’t. I wish I could soon be joining you.’

‘You mustn’t say things like that. We’ll be together when God wills it.’

‘My son, how are you?’

‘Things here are wonderful, Mother. So many interesting people to talk to, no more pain. Do you remember those terrible headaches I used to have?’

‘Yes, of course, my darling. Are they gone?’

‘Completely, it’s such a relief.’

‘I’m so, so glad. Have you seen your grandmother?’

Here Duncan began to tip the table violently, then said, in his Marat voice, ‘The young man has left us now. But there are other souls crowding in.’

Rebecca Graves wept, hunched over the table.

The séance went on and Duncan ‘channelled’ several more spirits: a former suitor of Lady Alicia Hitchman, killed in a duel; Charles MacLellan, Heather’s plutocrat husband; Douglas Kilbride’s former butler, but recently dead of consumption; and twin girls, victims of brutal murder, who were fabrications Duncan invoked to lend credence. When he felt it was time to end, he caused the tablecloth to float into the air with one of his devices, screamed, sat upright in his chair, cried out for the lamps to be turned up.

The participants then filed through to the drawing room, redolent of coffee, vintage port, fragrant cigars, joined the sceptics. A discussion about spiritualism and the occult was struck up. After an hour or so, Walker, by then very drunk, approached Duncan, perched on the arm of his chair, raised a
glass, looked about the room, and proposed a toast to the medium. The other guests joined him in it. Then he leaned close, whispered conspiratorially, ‘Impressive stuff, I must say. You had them eating out of your hand.’

Duncan’s rejoinder was weak, ‘It’s the spirit-world that deserves the credit. I’m merely a conduit.’

‘Don’t worry, I don’t intend to expose you. It’s an artful hoax and you have my admiration. Besides, deep down almost everyone knows spiritualism’s just flim-flam. They’re just so desperate to believe. You’re aiding them really, solacing them in their grief.’

Duncan snorted.

‘No, I really believe that,’ the strange Walker said.

‘Well?’

‘I was only wondering whether you’d be interested to see real evidence of the eldritch, proof there truly are more things in Heaven and Earth, so to speak.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘And if the prospect of having the scales plucked from your eyes does not strike you as its own reward, I’ve also discovered wealth for the taking. If you’re curious, meet me tomorrow at midnight, outside the main entrance to the Necropolis.’

Before Duncan could ask any further questions of the rum Walker, the marchioness interrupted their murmured conversation, ‘Mister Walker, you appear to be monopolizing our guest. I’m sure everybody would like the opportunity to quiz him about his extraordinary gift.’

The Necropolis. Though conceived as a tribute to the city’s esteemed dead, it had, by that time, less than half a century after its inauguration, fallen into neglect; its grounds were strewn with empty liquor bottles and encroached upon by slum dwellings, its monuments were graffiti-scarred; it had, in ignorance, been laid out on a cankered drumlin, in darker times the site of a fane
consecrated to dire rites, was blighted.

Duncan, unknowing, was fond of the boneyard’s silence, thinking it peaceful, not dread; he’d visited it often during the time he’d been living in filth in the Great Eastern Hotel and knew many of the tales of those buried there. From where he waited, at the Necropolis’s wrought-iron main gates, Duncan could see the hotel to the south; lambent orange and red, lit from within by fires, it seemed a rough-hewn jack-o’-lantern.

The night was cold, and the sky, clear, though smog roiled in the streets and fog draped the cemetery. Elevated above the shroud by the column it stood on, the dour statue of John Knox, a leader of the Protestant Revolution, was silhouetted against a sickle moon; the clergyman hectored the city beneath with a sermon whose hard lessons were illustrated by passages drawn from the Bible he held in his hand.

The appointed hour passed and there was no sign of the strange Walker. Duncan began pacing back and forth. To the north, Glasgow Cathedral loured, its stonework soot blackened. Once, three years before, he’d gone inside, descended the stairs to the lower church, to the tomb dedicated to Saint Kentigern, also known as Mungo, founder of Glasgow. There he’d read a plaque which gave an account of one of Mungo’s famous miracles; at the time, he’d been teaching himself his letters and had taken all opportunities to practice. The text on the panel told how an adulterous queen, Longoureth, presented to a young lover a ring given to her by her husband, King Rhydderch Hael. The king had been told about the affair by a servant, but trusted in his wife’s fidelity. Not long after, though, he saw the band on the lover’s finger and was consumed with jealousy. He conceived a plot to force his wife to own to her faithlessness. On a hunting trip with his rival, he got the younger man drunk, took the ring from his finger, threw it in the Clyde. Then, on his return, he demanded his wife present the ring to him, and, when she failed to do so, publicly denounced her, locked her up. But, while
imprisoned, Longoureth managed to persuade one of her warders, a man smitten, to get a message to Bishop Mungo, begging shriving and aid. The man of God directed the besotted guard to go fishing in the Clyde and return with his first catch. When the warder reeled in his line, there was a sleek pink-bellied salmon flapping on the end of it. Mungo slit this fish open from gills to gut, found, in its stomach, the missing ring. The warder took it back to Longoureth and received who knows what reward for his pains (the account maintained decorous silence on this point). The queen then presented the ring to her husband, who had no choice but to publicly forgive her, pay penance for his accusation. Reading about it, Duncan had been struck by how easily Kentigern’s ‘miracle’ could have been accomplished by deceit and sleight of hand.

Duncan had been waiting some time when Walker came skipping down the road, out of the sallow smother, dressed in motley, carrying a canvas bag, and grinning obscenely, his periwig askew.

‘So glad you’ve come,’ he slurred.

The man was a soused buffoon; there were no riches to be had, no revelations; Duncan wondered why he’d come.

‘Sorry. A mistake. Think I’d better leave.’

‘Nonsense. Don’t get chicken-hearted on me. You probably just need a drink.’

Walker proffered a hip-flask, solid silver, ornate chasing, an antique, probably worth quite a bit. Shrugging, Duncan took it, sniffed its contents. Cognac, good quality. He tilted his head back, took a swig, savoured it before swallowing.

‘So, will you come with me?’ Walker asked.

Duncan shrugged.

‘You said there were riches. Proof of the strange.’

‘Beneath the knoll,’ Walker gestured behind him. ‘Do you know about the catacombs?’

‘I know plans were made, but abandoned. It was unsafe or
so?’

‘My dear sir, don’t believe all you’re told. Those plans were carried out. The place is riddled. As for unsafe, well…’

Walker scratched his scalp under his wig with long filthy nails, then went on.

‘When the Necropolis was first opened there were entrances all over. But they were sealed up, that untruth you’ve heard put about, and that was that. But I’ve been down there.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘There are tunnels, vaults filled with treasures. You see, before the catacombs were closed, a number of the great and good of the city of that time were buried there, some inhumed amid opulence, crypts crammed with luxuries, for all the world like Pharaohs, as if the pull of pagan rites was too strong at the last, and they abandoned religious scruples.’

He took out the hip flask again, had another pull from it.

‘This is something I found down there. There’s lots of other loot like it. Some of it’s too unwieldy for me to carry alone and it’s all fairly deep underground. The upper levels have already been plundered. But together we could make a good haul.’

Duncan nodded.

‘Right.’ It sounded unlikely, but perhaps there was something in it. ‘What about this preternatural stuff?’

‘Well…I must warn you, the place has a dread atmosphere, and strange things are said to have happened there. I’ve seen things too.’

‘Oh, I’m not afraid of boggarts, or anything of that sort.’

‘No. You’re a man of reason,’ Walker said, a mite sardonic. ‘Good. But, still, I feel I must tell you the stories. It’d be on my conscience otherwise.’

He smirked.

‘Fine. Get on with it then.’

‘Of course.’

Walker doffed his periwig. Duncan glimpsed scabs, boils,
before it was slapped back again.

‘So, burial in the catacombs proved very popular with nobs in the years after the Necropolis opened, even for many who’d also monuments or mausolea commissioned for the graveyard itself. The vaults were all soon taken, and a decision was made to dig out more. Miners, working to this purpose, hacking away with picks by oil lamp, broke through into some primeval warren. A crew of six was sent down to explore it. Only one was ever seen again, found several days later in the cellar of a house some miles distant, naked, gibbering, hair turned white as new-fallen snow. No sign of how he got there. The foreman, fearful of losing labour, had him committed to a lunatic asylum, put about the lie the others of the detail had blundered into a pit. But, the miners were anyway wary and the olden ways were blocked off.’

Walker paused, grimaced, before continuing.

‘He’s still there, that man, in the madhouse, still deranged. I’ve visited him. Feral, now very old, cowering, filthy, in the corner of his cell, whimpering, shrieking. His flesh is all over cankered.

‘Anyhow, the works continued, but were plagued. Knockers tormented labourers, moved props. Strange howls and scrabblings were heard, and lamps were, of a sudden, extinguished where all was still and the air, good. Then there was a cave-in. Thirty-seven men killed. The tunnels were abandoned altogether after that.

‘These incidents have been forgotten by all, save a few with long memories, grey hair, wrinkled, sagging skin. Some of those grizzled ancients insist the tunnels broken into weren’t delved by nature, but terrible elder beings, were outerlying passages of the regions of Agartha, those primeval borings said to riddle this spinning husk.

‘I don’t know what I believe about this myself, but I’ve heard scuffling and muttering down there, felt, at times, stalked. And I’ve
seen
things too.’

Walker stared at Duncan, eyes wide.

‘Pah!’ Duncan scoffed. ‘If weird things do exist down there, I’d like to see them. But I don’t believe it.’

‘As you will. Still, I wanted to assuage my scruples, apprise you we may be in danger. I see you’re a brave man, not to be discouraged, and esteem it nonsense, in any case. But, anyway, here is your opportunity to wash your hands of the venture.’

Walker folded his arms across his chest, regarded Duncan sly.

It was chill. Duncan rubbed his hands together.

Walker was a sot. If there were any riches to be found, it would be easy enough to cheat him of his share, perhaps even without violence.

‘No, no. I’m undeterred.’

Walker grinned.

‘Good. Follow me.’

He turned, and, producing a key, unlocked the Necropolis gates, went through, lurched away. Duncan followed, close on his heels. The two men went along a cobbled path, crossed the Bridge of Sighs, a bridge of lichen-starred masonry spanning a stream, the Molendinar Burn, that was, that night, in spate, seethed. On reaching the far side, Duncan looked up at the Necropolis knoll. The graveyard’s trees had shed their leaves, and a drab mulch lay thick on the ground. But, as it had been wet, the place was still green, overgrown with weeds, moss, ivy, bramble, nettle.