The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi

  “En octobre!” Levi exclaimed.

  “He’ll drown for sure!” Monckton Milnes cried out.

  They set off at a trot, Levi huffing and puffing, and upon drawing closer to the gathering, heard shouts and protests above the ceaseless uproar of the waters.

  “Don’t be a fool, lad!”

  “It’s too rough, Algy! Come back at once!”

  “Swinburne, you lunatic! Give it up!”

  Burton saw Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He also recognised William Bell Scott, the Scottish artist and poet who resided in London and was famous for his decorative embellishments to Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s colossal transatlantic liner, the SS Titan. A small woman in capacious skirts and with a lace bonnet, he took to be Lady Pauline, and standing beside her, hook-nosed and with a moustache that swept around his jawline into sideburns, was her husband, Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan. Two other men were present, both of about thirty years in age, neither of whom he knew.

  “Sir Walter,” he said, as he reached them, “I’m Burton.”

  It was Lady Pauline who answered. “Sir Richard, how wonderful! And Mr. Monckton Milnes! Welcome! Welcome!”

  “I do hope you don’t mind,” Burton said, “but we’ve brought an additional guest. This is Monsieur Eliphas Levi, an accomplished occultist and philosopher.”

  “Not much the philosopher, I regret,” Levi corrected. He took Lady Pauline’s hand, bowed, kissed it, and said, “Enchanté.”

  “Delighted,” she responded. “Gentlemen, if you will forgive me, I shall make introductions in a moment. As you can see, my little Carrots is up to his usual tricks.” She pointed out to sea, where the small red-headed individual was plunging through the waves. “Put him next to rough waters and he invariably jumps into them.”

  “By James!” Monckton Milnes exclaimed. “But he’s a strong swimmer!”

  Sir Walter added, “And a remarkably accomplished horseman, too, but in both disciplines he acts like a blithering idiot and takes damned silly risks!” He raised his voice to a shout. “Algernon! Come out of there and warm your bones with a swig of cognac!” Turning back to Monckton Milnes, he grinned and said, “That’ll get him. Always does. What!”

  The swimmer turned toward the beach, stretched out, and allowed a mountainous wave to drive him to shore. Once in the shallows, he stood, gave a squeal of delight, and loped through the water and onto the sand. Lady Pauline averted her face and called, “For goodness sake, put on your clothes and don’t do that again!”

  “Fear not, dear lady!” the little poet answered. “For now I have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death!”

  “Yes, yes,” she responded impatiently. “Sir Richard, Monsieur Levi, Mr. Monckton Milnes, forgive me. Algernon is, as ever, a terrible distraction. Allow me to present the party. Gabriel, you surely know.”

  The minister of arts and culture greeted Burton and Monckton Milnes, and to Levi said, “Rossetti, monsieur. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “William Scott,” the hostess continued, and after handshakes had been exchanged, turned to a tall, slender man with curling brown hair, a somewhat asymmetrical face, and a stiff and awkward stance. “And this is Charlie Dodgson, an up-and-coming writer.”

  He smiled rather shyly and said, “I’m happy to—that is, pleased to make your—to meet you.”

  “Arthur Hughes,” Lady Trevelyan went on, pulling forward a dark-complexioned individual who had very long black hair. “A talented artist and illustrator. My husband, Sir Walter. And this—” she added, as the swimmer, now fully dressed, joined them, “is Algernon Charles Swinburne, who recently toured the continent having fled Oxford University where he achieved precisely nothing, and who, apparently, is destined to be a notable poet, if he manages to stay alive long enough.”

  “Pah!” Swinburne screeched in a high-pitched voice. “You exaggerate wildly! About my risk-taking, I mean; not about the notability of my poetry!”

  Burton looked in amazement at the little man. In aspect, the fledgling poet was extraordinary. He was in his early twenties, but tiny and childlike—barely five feet tall—with sloping shoulders that appeared far too weak to carry his huge head, the size of which was magnified by the tousled mass of red hair standing almost at right angles to it, despite being sopping wet.

  Swinburne’s bright green eyes met his, and he yelled, “By my ailing Aunt Agatha’s blue feather hat! What a grand old time you’ve had of it, Burton! The riddle of the Nile solved at last! Hurrah! Hurrah! And you, Monckton Milnes! Aren’t you the man with the absolutely whopping collection of erotica? I say, have you any of de Sade’s work? Bound in human skin, no doubt! I hear he’s de rigueur among the Whippinghams, Bendovers, and Lashworthies! I must indulge! I simply must!”

  “Really, Carrots,” Lady Pauline protested. “Do control yourself.”

  “Incidentally,” the poet said. “Cognac. I was promised it and I demand it.”

  Sir Walter handed over a silver hip flask, which the little man put to his lips and upended.

  “Ah! Much better!” He passed it back. Sir Walter looked at it, shook it, found it to be empty, gave a rueful sigh, and said, “You were only meant to take a sip. What!”

  “My whistle required a wetting,” Swinburne answered, “for I intend to recite my latest while we walk to the headland and back.”

  The party continued along the beach, the men holding their hats as the breeze stiffened. Swinburne skipped along, his movements jerky, his gestures excessive. “Laus Veneris!” he announced, and began:

  Asleep or waking is it? for her neck,

  Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck

  Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;

  Soft, and stung softly—fairer for a fleck.

  But though my lips shut sucking on the place,

  There is no vein at work upon her face;

  Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt

  Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways.

  “Gad!” Monckton Milnes whispered to Burton. “Remarkable! Remarkable!”

  It was. Swinburne, though shrill-voiced, was so eloquent and evocative in his performance that his poetry became almost mesmeric, raising such an emotive response in the listeners that every other thing they sensed appeared to fuse with his strange lilting intonation, and the crashing waves sounded as if they were eulogising the words and rhythms with far-off acclamations.

  Burton strolled and listened and absolutely marvelled.

  The poet’s praise of Venus continued until they reached the headland where the outlying cottages of Cullercoats overlooked the beach. He finished:

  I seal myself upon thee with my might,

  Abiding alway out of all men’s sight

  Until God loosen over sea and land

  The thunder of the trumpets of the night.

  He stopped, took a deep breath, turned to face the group, and said, “Shall we convene in the local tavern before we head back?”

  “That was breathtaking, Algy!” Sir Walter said.

  “A masterpiece!” his wife agreed.

  “Bravo!” Levi cheered.

  “A work of genius!” Rossetti declared.

  “I found it incred—that is, utterly extraordinary, and, um—” Dodgson added.

  Monckton Milnes stepped forward. “Mr. Swinburne, I should very much like to see about getting your work into print.”

  Swinburne hopped up and down and waved his arms. “Never mind that now! The tavern awaits! Come along! Come along!”

  He scampered up a slope and they followed him into the village.

  Eliphas Levi leaned close to Burton and murmured, “Il est un jeune homme très doué, non? But also very strange!”

  A few minutes later, they found The Copper Kettle—which overlooked Cullercoats Bay—and settled in its lounge bar. The introductions made on the beach were now supplemented as—in conversations expertly guided by Lady Trevelyan—the men discussed their work and inte
rests.

  It was an exceptional gathering of singular personalities: Burton, magnetic, forceful, but somewhat troubled; Monckton Milnes, stylish, charming, and eclectic; Levi, perceptive and inquisitive; Rossetti, complex and a little pensive; Charles Dodgson, quiet, dreamy, and self-conscious; Arthur Hughes, brooding but penetrative in his comments; Sir Walter, passive but jocular; and Swinburne, whose enthusiasms and excitability increased in proportion to his consumption of alcohol, for which he displayed such an inordinate predilection that, three hours later, when the party departed the establishment, he required Rossetti and Hughes to hold him upright.

  As they proceeded southward along the Grand Parade, Dodgson’s hat was snatched from his head by the wind and flung far out to sea. “My goodness!” he exclaimed. “Where’s my topper off to? It looks like—it appears that the weather is change—is taking a turn for the worse!”

  Burton looked to the west and saw the dark clouds Monckton Milnes had noted earlier, now expanded dramatically and piled high into the upper atmosphere.

  “Le jour tombe,” Levi observed.

  “Straight back to Wallington, I think, gentlemen,” Lady Pauline announced. “There is a storm coming.”

  Burton shivered at the ominous words.

  At Tynemouth’s coach house, Sir Walter hired the same two steam-driven landaus his group had arrived in. He, his wife, Rossetti, Hughes, and the barely conscious Swinburne squeezed into one, while Burton, Monckton Milnes, and Levi were joined by Dodgson in the other.

  The carriage lurched into motion and Dodgson, who was leaning out of the window and looking at the sky, received a faceful of steam. He dropped back into his seat, coughing. “By golly, I shall never learn my lesson. These steam transports are forever puffing—that is, blowing their fumes into my face!”

  “But they make the world more small, non?” Eliphas Levi said. “We travel so much fast de nos jours!”

  “I am afraid—I fear they make literature smaller, too, Monsieur Levi.”

  “Oui? How is that?”

  “If steam has done nothing else, it has at least contrib—added a whole new species to English literature. The booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the—the—the murder comes at page fifteen, and the wedding at page forty—surely they are due to steam?”

  “Bien sûr, you speak of the publications for sale at the train stations, non?”

  “I do, sir—er—monsieur. And if the Department of Guided Science succeeds in its intentions—its plans, and one day we travel by electricity, then we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the murder and the wedding will be—will come on the same page!”

  Burton and Monckton Milnes laughed, and the latter said, “Have you read any of Sir Richard’s accounts, Mr. Dodgson?”

  “No, sir, I regret not.”

  “He stuffs into them so many appended facts, qualifiers, and opinions that your observation has given me a whole new understanding of the term ‘footnote,’ for if steam shortens a journey to the extent that only a booklet may be read, then Burton’s volumes must require one to forgo the railway and take a very long walk!”

  The landau, following the other, turned onto the coast road toward Newcastle upon Tyne. The wind gusted against it, causing it to rock.

  “Have you known Swinburne for long, Mr. Dodgson?” Burton asked, grabbing at the edge of the bench to steady himself. He stifled a hiss as his arm gave a pang.

  “Not at all, Mr. Burt—Sir Richard. I’ve not—I hadn’t ever encountered him until my arrival at Wallington Hall yesterday. It is Rossetti with whom I am—that is, who I am friends with. He strikes me as—I refer to Mr. Swinburne—as a very eccentric fellow. It’s a quite fantast—an amazing thing, but did you know that he cannot feel pain at all?”

  “He can’t feel pain? How is that possible?”

  “It seems his brain is arranged—is not put together in the normal manner. Indeed, there are certain forms of pain that he even senses—interprets as—as pleasure. According to Rossetti, it has resulted in him acquiring a rather—um—um—peculiar taste for—for—for—”

  “Whippingham, Bendover, and Lashworthy,” Monckton Milnes offered.

  “Yes.”

  “You mean flagellation?” Burton asked.

  Dodgson cleared his throat, went beetroot-red, and nodded.

  “The English vice,” Levi declared. “You are a race très drôles!”

  Monckton Milnes said, “Must I remind you that the Marquis de Sade was French, Monsieur Levi?”

  “A philosopher and Utopian! In transgression, he seek to expand the mind, to allow for the establishment of Socialist thought, but you English—ha!—all you want is the whack, whack, whack of the strap!”

  Dodgson crossed his arms and legs and mumbled, “Anyway, the more time I spend with—in Mr. Swinburne’s company, the more I think him curiouser and curiouser.”

  By the time the two carriages reached the train station in Newcastle, the clouds had filled the sky from horizon to horizon. They were dark and billowing, suggesting gale-force winds at a high altitude. Even at ground level, the gusts were now whistling and howling with growing ferocity.

  “It’s the end of our long, hot summer,” Lady Pauline commented as the party climbed aboard the Glasgow train. “And thank heavens for that. You gentlemen will never understand the infernal combination of heat and corsets. I’m certainly not the fainting type, but I came perilously close to it this season.”

  The Glasgow slow train—the express didn’t stop near Wallington—halted at a succession of towns and villages until, at nine o’clock, it reached Kirkwhelpington, which was little more than a hamlet, lacking even a small station. Only the Trevelyan party was getting off here, and the guardsman brought from his van at the back of the three-carriage train a set of wooden steps, which he placed beneath the door to allow the nine passengers to alight.

  Swinburne had by now recovered with no ill effects after his lunchtime indulgence. As the locomotive chugged away and heavy drops of rain began to slant down, he laughed, put his face to the sky, and hollered:

  Outside the garden

  The wet skies harden;

  The gates are barred on

  The summer side:

  “Shut out the flower-time,

  Sunbeam and shower-time;

  Make way for our time,”

  Wild winds have cried.

  “You’ll catch your death,” Lady Pauline fussed, grabbing him by the elbow. The rest followed as she hurried the little poet along a path toward a large farmhouse. The wind and rain rapidly increased in fury, soaking them all.

  “By God!” Rossetti shouted above the clamour. “Old England is in for a battering!”

  Upon reaching the ramshackle building, they were greeted by a burly giant of a man who hustled them into a barn in which was stored one of Wallington Hall’s vehicles: a very large and ornate stagecoach.

  Sir Walter said, “Bless my soul, Mr. Scoggins, what weather! Can you drive us home in this downpour?”

  “I ’ave no objection,” the farmer replied. He eyed Burton, Monckton Milnes, and Levi. “More o’ ye a-goin’ back than what come out, though. Might be a tight squeeze. Would one o’ the gents be willin’ t’ sit up top wi’ me?”

  “I’ll do so,” Burton volunteered.

  Scoggins set about fetching four horses and, with Burton’s help, harnessed them to the stage. He then ran to the farmhouse and returned with a set of waterproofs, which Burton donned. The passengers climbed aboard, Scoggins and Burton mounted the driver’s box, and moments later the vehicle was bouncing and swinging eastward, with rain hammering against it and wind slapping at its side. Thunder roared overhead, and the countryside was one second buried in pitch darkness and the next vividly illuminated, until it achieved a vague state of permanency in the form of an after-image etched onto Burton’s retina.

  The journey was short—two miles—but tested them all. Those inside the stage were thrown about as it jolted through ruts and potholes,
while the two men up top were soaked to the skin, even through their waterproofs.

  To Burton’s relief, a flash of lightning finally revealed the huge Palladian-style manor.

  They’d arrived at Wallington Hall.

  With one foot curled up on the chair beneath him, Algernon Swinburne was declaiming verse, introducing to the gathering his latest—but incomplete—work. His consumption of alcohol—which had resumed as soon as they’d arrived at the Trevelyan residence, changed into dry clothes, and gathered in the large and lavishly appointed sitting room—appeared to have no effect on his performance; his voice was clear, the words enunciated with passion and style. His audience was entranced. They listened in rapt silence, but Wallington Hall itself was not at all quiet, and the recitation was accompanied by ghastly moans, sobs, screams, and howls from the chimney as the wind moved in the flue, sounding like a horde of tormented ghosts.

  Swinburne finished:

  I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.

  For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;

  A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.

  So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.

  For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

  For a short period afterward, Lady Pauline and her guests spoke not a word.

  There came a loud rattle and crash as a slate was dislodged from the roof and fell to the patio outside the French doors.

  Burton found himself dwelling on a line from earlier in the poem: Time and the Gods are at strife, ye dwell in the midst thereof.

  Charles Dodgson broke the spell. “A lament, Mr. Swinburne? You regret the passing of—the death of paganism and the rise of—of Christianity?”

  “When we turned our eyes to the sky,” Swinburne replied, “and placed our faith in the unknowable, we ceased to worship the ground beneath our feet and all that springs from it to sustain us. See how our mighty machines now despoil it! My hat, Dodgson, I rue the day we became blinded by hope and repudiated responsibility for the world in which we live. I would rather we strive to understand what definitely is than place reliance on what probably isn’t.”