The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi

  “We can follow it through the farm?”

  “Yes. All a part of the estate.”

  “Thank you. I think we’ll go and have a look at the ruins.”

  “Mind how you go, sir. Walls. Unstable.” Honesty peered up at the flat layer of cloud. “Rain’ll get worse, too.”

  The groundsman hesitated.

  “Is there something else, my man?” Burton asked.

  “Haunted, sir.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The castle. It’s haunted.”

  “By whom?”

  “Lady Blanche Arundell. Mistress of the castle when the Parliamentarians attacked it. 1643, that was. Her ghost walks the battlements.”

  “I presume the current Miss Blanche was named after her.”

  “That’s right. Legend has it that the ghost also appears as a white owl whenever there’s a death in the family.”

  “I hope, then, that we don’t see one. Good day to you, Mr. Honesty.”

  Burton and Swinburne touched the brims of their hats and moved on. As they passed by the edge of the woods, the poet said, “Was your lady of the night the spook, do you think?”

  “More likely it was Isabel.”

  “Isabel? Really? What the dickens was she up to?”

  “I have no idea,” Burton replied. “But as soon as I heard she had a restless night, I realised the figure I saw resembled her, though I glimpsed it only vaguely. She may have been sleepwalking. She spent her childhood on this estate, and in those fields—” he employed his cane to point ahead at the farm’s pastures, “—there was often an encampment of Gypsies. She became rather fond of one of them, a woman named Hagar Burton, who predicted that Isabel would fall in love with a man who had the Burton surname.”

  “Fate, irreversible and inscrutable,” Swinburne murmured.

  “Perhaps. Of course, when Isabel and I met in Boulogne back in ’fifty-one, she immediately placed great stock in the childhood prophecy. For the past eight years, while I was overseas for extended periods, she drew much comfort from the idea that we were destined to be together. Unfortunately, earlier this year, she bumped into Hagar Burton again, and this time received an utterly preposterous but very upsetting forecast. The gypsy told Isabel that I would murder her while she was still wearing her wedding dress.”

  “By James! How positively macabre!”

  “If someone you’ve had faith in for a long time told you something you cannot give any credence to, would you not suffer a degree of nervous excitement?”

  “And it’s to that you ascribe her sleepwalking?”

  “That and her being overwrought about the party. I think she came to these fields unconsciously seeking the gypsy.”

  They climbed over a stile and followed the path along the edge of a sloping meadow in which sheep were sat with legs tucked under them and heads hunkered into shoulders. The animals regarded them nervously but didn’t move, unwilling to abandon the dry patch beneath their bodies.

  The rain fell harder.

  They crossed another field, passed a small lake, and ascended a wooded bank toward Old Wardour Castle. The ancient edifice loomed over them, a massive hexagonal structure of grey stone. The Arundell family had acquired it in 1544 but a hundred years later it was partially destroyed during the Civil War. The southwestern corner was completely wrecked, its walls collapsed, what remained of them ragged, and the rest of the castle had been gutted and badly damaged. Deep cracks were visible in its moss-clad walls and piles of fallen masonry still lay all about.

  There were ravens everywhere. Huddled against the downpour, they watched the two men approach, their eyes glittering blackly.

  Burton and Swinburne passed beneath the remnant of a barbican and entered through an east-facing arch. They walked along a short passageway into a central courtyard upon which the rain was splashing noisily. The entrances to vaulted rooms lay to the left and right of them, and ahead a columned portal arched over the foot of a spiral staircase.

  Swinburne gazed at the irregularly placed windows, the towering walls, the projecting stumps of lost floors and ceilings, and declared, “Rossetti would be transported into a state of ecstasy by this place. He’d have visions of white knights and fair damsels, of courtly manners and just crusades.” He twirled his umbrella and pronounced:

  In the noble days were shown

  Deeds of good knights many one,

  Many worthy wars were done.

  It was time of scath and scorn

  When at breaking of the morn

  Tristram the good knight was born.

  Burton looked at a dark entrance beyond which steps led down into darkness. He shivered. “You and your fellow Pre-Raphaelites might realise the romance of it but I see dank cellars, cobwebby dungeons, and claustrophobic corridors. Let’s get back to the house, Algy. I have little immunity to British rain, and ruins make me melancholic.”

  “That’s because you see in them the remorselessly degenerative attentions of Chronos,” Swinburne murmured as they turned and exited the castle. “Who, we now know, is not at all as we conceive him.”

  An immense unkindness of ravens watched them depart.

  A little over an hour later, they’d changed into dry clothes and were warming themselves by a fire in the manor’s principal sitting room. They were joined by various of the other guests, including Doctor John Steinhaueser, who’d arrived while they were out and was now enjoying Blanche’s undivided attention, despite the indignant presence of her husband.

  Isabel was also with the party, looking wan and listless but stubbornly refusing Doctor Bird’s insistence that she return to bed.

  “Then humour me by drinking beef broth,” the physician advised her. “It’ll help you regain your strength.”

  “I concur,” Steinhaueser said. “And chamomile tea before bed, hmmm?”

  Sadhvi interjected, “I can mix a herbal brew of slightly greater potency.”

  “Good idea,” Bird responded. “You have to sleep more deeply, Isabel. We can’t have any more somnambulism.”

  “Ah,” Burton exclaimed. “So it’s confirmed? You’ve been sleepwalking?”

  Isabel nodded. “Yes, Dick. My feet are all cut up. It seems I walked barefoot on a gravel path in the gardens. I remember nothing of it.”

  “Doctor Steinhaueser,” Blanche said, “may I call you Styggins?”

  “By all means.”

  Smythe Piggott cleared his throat.

  “Styggins,” Blanche went on, “do you agree with George that my sister’s symptoms are those of a headstrong and totally unreasonable young lady who steadfastly refuses to allow anyone a say in the arranging of her engagement party, who is deaf to all opinions other than her own, and who really is the silliest thing ever?”

  “Um, I don’t recall putting it quite like that!” Bird interrupted.

  Steinhaueser laughed. “If you’re suggesting that Isabel should allow others to take some of the responsibility, then you are entirely correct.”

  Isabel raised her hands. “Enough, please! The work is done. I can afford to rest now.”

  Burton took her hand and squeezed it. “See that you do. We’ve waited a long time for this. I’ll be demanding many a dance from you come Saturday. I expect you to be your sparkling best, is that understood?”

  “It is, Dick.”

  The conversation moved on to other topics. Eliphas Levi was asked about his background, and talked at length about how his desire to be a Catholic priest proved incompatible with his radical beliefs, which had twice resulted in prison sentences. Uncle Renfric didn’t approve of this revelation at all, and hobbled from the room muttering, “Charlatans, atheists, and criminals! Hah! I suppose I’ll have the chapel to myself, at least!”

  Swinburne was next to stoke the furnace of indignation. At lunchtime, he drank too much wine and mused that any flower probably enjoyed a closer relationship with the divine than even the most pious human could achieve. “What shrubbery doesn’t pass the day in
silent meditation upon the pure and joyous elegance of existence?” he pondered.

  “The cognisance of God in all His glory is exclusive to Man, Mr. Swinburne,” Eliza Arundell objected. “That is why we have dominion.”

  “Really, ma’am?” Swinburne drawled. “Do you include the Brahmin and the Muslim? What of the African tribesman or Australian aborigine?”

  Mrs. Arundell bristled. “Outside the Church there is no salvation, sir. Those you mention will go to the everlasting fire unless, before the end of life, they have joined the one true Church of Jesus Christ, the Saviour.”

  Swinburne threw up his arms and squealed, “My dear lady, if a faith, in order to feel secure in itself, must condemn anyone whose opinion differs from its own, then it is a faith with no faith at all!”

  “Algy, please,” Burton growled. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

  Mrs. Arundell pushed her chair back and stood, her back stiff. “For once, I’m in agreement with my future son-in-law. If you feel it appropriate to question the beliefs held by your hosts, sir, then you are not a gentleman. I insist that you hold your tongue. If you cannot, you will oblige me by leaving this house.”

  With that, she turned and stalked from the dining room.

  “I say!” Swinburne muttered. “I never claimed to be a gentleman.”

  “Pretend to be, lad,” Monckton Milnes advised. “Pretend to be.”

  After lunch, the remaining Arundells made their excuses and left their wayward guests to their own devices.

  Isabel returned to her bed. Isabella Beeton, Sister Raghavendra, and Lallah Bird settled in the drawing room.

  Swinburne found a desk and set to work on his poem, Tristan and Isolde. Monckton Milnes and Levi buried themselves in the depths of a philosophical discussion. Sam Beeton and Doctor Bird played billiards. Burton chatted with Steinhaueser.

  The afternoon passed, the rain pattered against the windows, and at seven o’clock everyone reconvened for dinner. Mrs. Arundell kept the length of the table between herself and Swinburne. Monckton Milnes assiduously regulated the poet’s drinking and Burton was at his sociable best, charming the gathering with tall tales of Africa and, quite remarkably, managing to keep those tales clean and palatable. Isabel, too—having napped for four hours—was effervescent and witty, which prompted Sam Beeton to say to Burton during the post-prandial smoking, “You two belong together, that much is obvious to all.”

  “I never felt I belonged anywhere until I met her,” Burton replied. “Now I feel I can belong any place at all, provided I am with her.”

  Beeton smiled and nodded. “I understand exactly what you mean, old man. Why, before I married, I was—Good Lord! What was that?”

  A loud scream had echoed through the manor.

  “Les femmes!” Eliphas Levi exclaimed.

  Without another word, the men crashed out of the smoking room and raced along the hallway to the drawing room, where they found the women gathered around Lallah Bird, who’d apparently swooned onto a chaise longue.

  “Stand back, please,” John Steinhaueser commanded. “Allow Doctor Bird to attend his wife.”

  “What happened?” Burton asked.

  “I don’t know,” Isabella Beeton answered. “She opened the curtain—” she pointed toward a nearby window, “—to see whether the moon had pierced the clouds, then screamed and fell back in a dead faint.”

  “It was a face,” Blanche said. “I saw it, too. A terrible face!”

  Smythe Piggott moved to his wife’s side and put a comforting arm around her.

  “I need to get smelling salts from my bag,” George Bird muttered.

  “Here, I have some. I always carry them with me,” Steinhaueser said, handing a small bottle to his colleague. He turned as a footman entered the room. “Would you fetch a glass of brandy, please?”

  The clockwork figure clanged its assent and hastened away.

  Burton moved to the window and looked out. The rain was still falling and the night was pitch dark. He couldn’t see a thing.

  Lallah Bird uttered a small cry and pushed the smelling salts away from her face. She moaned and put her hands to her mouth. Her husband helped her to sit up.

  The footman returned with the brandy, and after a couple of sips of it, Lallah’s eyes fluttered open and she wailed, “I saw a man! Oh, George! A horrible brute at the window!”

  “There there, dearest,” Bird said. “It was probably Tom Honesty, the gardener.”

  “He hardly qualifies as a brute,” Swinburne protested. “And at this time of night? In this rain?”

  The doctor frowned at him. “I think it rather less likely that we’d have an intruder in such weather, don’t you?”

  “It wasn’t Tom,” Lallah said. “It was a—a—a monstrosity!”

  “I’m going to take a look outside,” Burton announced. The other men—with the exception of Uncle Renfric and Doctor Bird—immediately elected to accompany him.

  While the group changed into overcoats and boots, the cousins Rudolph and Jack went down to the basement storage rooms and returned with five clockwork lanterns.

  Separating into pairs, the men left the manor and spread out across the grounds. Burton, with Swinburne, first examined the lawn where it abutted the wall beneath the window, but the grass there was short, springy, and despite being wet, didn’t hold a print.

  They spent forty minutes in the unceasing rain.

  There were no signs of an interloper.

  George Bird gave his wife a mild sedative and the women went to bed. The men stayed up until well past midnight.

  When Burton finally retired, he looked in on Bram and found him fast asleep. The explorer hadn’t seen much of the boy—just for the change of clothes after visiting the castle and dressing to dine in the evening—but he knew the Whisperer was enjoying his time “below stairs,” having become a firm favourite with the staff.

  The explorer fell into a profoundly deep sleep the moment he laid his head on the pillow. He dreamt he was inside a brightly lit castle, talking to Nurse Florence Nightingale, which was curious because he’d never met her.

  “You will lie still, sir, or I shall have you strapped down.”

  Damn and blast you, woman! I’m perfectly fine!

  “You know that isn’t true.”

  I know you’re an interfering, meddlesome, infuriating shrew!

  “Undo your shirt. I have to listen to your heart.”

  And I have to listen to whatever that blundering young dolt is thinking, which I can’t do with you fussing around me like a bloody gadfly. You’re a confounded distraction, woman!

  “Thank you. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Now shut up. You’ve made yourself breathless. Much more nonsense and you’ll have palpitations again, which is, need I remind you, exactly what you brought me here to prevent.”

  Then hurry up about it and begone! The crisis is upon us. I must concentrate.

  “Richard! Richard!”

  Burton woke up. Someone was knocking on the bedroom door.

  “Richard! Rouse yourself, man!”

  Bram Stoker stepped out of the valet’s room, rubbing his eyes.

  “See who that is, lad,” Burton mumbled. He sat up and reached for his watch. It was a quarter to eight.

  Bram opened the door. John Steinhaueser, wrapped in a dressing gown, stepped in. “Richard. Come at once. Something is wrong with Isabel.”

  “What? Is she ill?” Burton jumped out of bed, lifted his jubbah from the bedpost, and hastily wound it about himself.

  “She won’t wake up. Her maid found her in—in—”

  “In what?”

  “She might be in a coma, Richard.”

  Burton told Bram to prepare his clothes then followed Steinhaueser out of the room and along first one corridor, then a second, until they came to Isabel’s room. Her mother and father, both in night attire, were standing by the door, their faces drawn and pale.

  Henry Arundell reached out and
took the explorer by the elbow. “Steady, son. Doctor Bird and Sister Raghavendra are with her.”

  Burton looked past him and saw Isabel in her bed, her pallid features framed by outspread hair. She looked ghastly, her face as white as the sheets on which she lay, her skin translucently taut again her cheekbones, her breathing laboured and painful to hear.

  Steinhaueser said, “Mr. Arundell, I should like Richard to be at her bedside. His presence may pull her out of it.”

  Arundell looked at his wife, who chewed her bottom lip and gave a hesitant nod.

  “Very well,” Arundell said. “Providing Miss Raghavendra is also present.”

  Steinhaueser nodded and led Burton into the room. The explorer took hold of Isabel’s hand. It felt cold and limp.

  “Deeply unconscious,” Doctor Bird said. “But I can’t fathom why.” He rubbed his chin. “I hear you’re well practised in the art of mesmerism, Sir Richard. Tell me what you think of this.” Leaning over his patient, he used his thumb to lift her right eyelid. Isabel’s pupil was fixed, directed straight ahead, the iris a pinprick.

  Burton gave a guttural confirmation. “She appears to be entranced.”

  “Not comatose, hmmm?” Steinhaueser asked. “But the sluggishness of her pulse—is that symptomatic of a mesmeric stupor?”

  “It is,” Burton said, “as is, in extreme cases, catalepsy.” He dropped his fiancée’s hand and turned to her parents. “Mr. Arundell, I should like to call Monsieur Levi.”

  Before Henry Arundell could answer, his wife snapped, “I hardly think the presence of a failed priest is necessary!”

  “On the contrary,” Burton said, “Monsieur Levi possesses specialist knowledge. His opinion regarding this is essential.”

  Isabel’s mother opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by Henry Arundell, who gripped her arm, muttered, “Be quiet, dear,” and said to Burton, “I shall fetch him at once, Richard.”

  “Thank you, sir. Mrs. Arundell, would you step in, please? I want to send Sister Raghavendra back to her bed.”

  Sadhvi shook her head. “I’m all right.”

  “No,” Burton said. “Go and rest. You may be needed to nurse Isabel later.”

  The Sister reluctantly stood and left the room.