“Join hands, please.”
Burton reached out and felt his hands gripped by his neighbours.
“True freedom comes not from rights granted in the courts of law but from the complete absence of law. True freedom cannot be imposed from without but must flower from within. True freedom is not the prerogative to do something but the right to do anything. True freedom knows no bounds, no reason, no moral centre, no belief, no time, no place, no status, no god.”
“No god,” they chorused.
“Gentlemen, rules must be broken.”
“Rules must be broken.”
“Propriety must be challenged.”
“Propriety must be challenged.”
“The status quo must be unbalanced.”
“The status quo must be unbalanced.”
“Though each of us here occupies a privileged position, we must each be willing to sacrifice it that the human species may progress, for the cycle of ages turns and a time of transition is upon us.”
Burton stifled an exclamation. Again, those words!
“Each has a part to play in the great upheaval that is to come. Each part is essential to the whole. Do not waver. Do not doubt. Do not question.”
The room was suddenly heavy with a presence, sensed but not seen.
The clock stopped.
A strange tone entered the host's voice; it was as if another person-female-was beginning to force her own words through his vocal cords.
“We shall go forth this night, as we have done before. We shall carry the vibrations of change to the people. We shall guide them to true liberty.”
“True liberty!” the group chanted.
“Urk!” the host said.
Burton stared at him. The man had suddenly thrown his head back and opened his mouth. A bubbling, shifting, globular substance was rising into the air from deep within his throat-the king's agent could see the sides of the man's esophagus undulating as the matter rose up through it.
Ectoplasm!
Possessing the qualities of both a liquid and a gas, the strange material rolled and twisted upward into the cloud of tobacco smoke. Burton squinted, unsure how to interpret the scene that unfolded before him. It appeared that the layer of smoke was glowing slightly and bulging downward over the centre of the table.
The female voice now filled the room. It wasn't coming from the man any longer, but reverberated, it seemed, in the very atmosphere itself.
“Send forth your astral bodies, my sons. Undertake our great work. Walk abroad and touch the souls of the unenlightened.”
The bulge in the smoke rapidly congealed into the shape of a woman's head and shoulders, hanging upside down from the cloud. A swirling, wispy arm reached out and a vague finger touched one of the Rakes on the forehead. Burton watched in amazement as a ghostly form detached itself from the man's seated figure. It hovered behind him for a moment before blowing away on an unfelt breeze, dissolving into the gloom of the chamber.
“Go forth, apostles, and liberate the downtrodden and the oppressed.”
She had a Russian accent.
The woman's finger touched a second man and a wraith emerged from him and vanished.
She turned until she was facing the Rake sitting on Burton's left. Her eyes were jet black, glinting in the smoke like gemstones.
Lady Mabella. The murderer of Sir Alfred Tichborne.
“Travel through the astral plane, my child, and-”
She paused.
Her eyes swivelled to Burton and fixed upon him.
“You!”
He jerked back in his chair and gasped, tried to stand but couldn't. Pain gripped the back of his head as if a cold hand had clamped down on his brain.
“Intruder! Spy!”
She had not spoken aloud. Her voice was now inside his skull.
The host twitched and choked as the ectoplasm continued to flow from his mouth. The two men whose astral bodies had departed sat blank-eyed and motionless. The three other men turned their heads and regarded Burton. One of them said something but no sound emerged. There was no sound in the room at all; a profound, unnatural silence had fallen.
Everything slowed and became motionless. Only the ghostly woman moved.
Something wormed its way into Burton's mind.
“Who are you?” she hissed.
He flinched and fought against her intrusive probing. Get out of my head!
“My! How resistant! I am impressed! You have willpower! No matter, your defences are nothing to me. Your name is Richard Burton. Ah. I see you have a reputation. A scholar, an explorer, and-an irritant!”
Withdrawing into himself, the king's agent visualised the mental chambers and structures he'd established through self-mesmerism. His knowledge of Edward Oxford-and of a future that had been destined but which was now cut loose and replaced-he set aside. He devalued all the routes to it and made them seem so entirely insignificant that they would, he hoped, be overlooked. At the same time, he strengthened the mental walls surrounding his more personal and sensitive memories and tried to make them impenetrable.
He was using his own insecurities to entice her away from the information he needed to protect.
It worked.
“No, no, malchik moi! There is no hiding!”
The words were like a blade, running him through.
Who the hell are you? Don't try to fool me with that Lady Mabella nonsense!
A cruel chuckle echoed in his skull.
“Ah yes, the unfortunate Tichborne clan and their silly curse! How convenient that was!”
His walls were breached.
Stop!
“My, a complicated little thing, aren't you? What is this? You are in the employ of the king himself! So I was right! You are a spy!”
The beady black eyes bored into his. He struggled and failed to look away.
He tried to distract her: For all your hokum, you're nothing but a murderer and thief. You killed Jean Pelletier, didn't you?
“ Pah! I simply appeared before him and he dropped dead from fright, the weak fool. ”
You took his diamonds. And then the Francois Garnier Choir Stones.
“ Yes, yes. I lifted them through the solid metal of a safe just as I could pull your brain from your skull without breaking the skin of your scalp. ”
And replaced them with onyx crystals. Why? Did you think to delay investigations into the matter?
“Yes. I see that it didn't work. How did you discover my little deception? Let us find out.”
He felt her burrowing deeper and deeper, and he allowed the intrusion, for as she penetrated his mind, he found that he was able to stealthily enter hers.
“Bozhe moi! Brunel and Babbage! So, the detestable Technologists have an interest in the diamonds, too!”
Babbage had plans for the stones. Your intentions, though, seem rather more nefarious, and to achieve those ends, you've made unwitting pawns of the Rakes, have you not?
“Unwitting? More like witless. The vacant-headed fools! Becoming the leader of their pathetic clique was child's play to one such as
I.”
The woman's weakness was obvious: she possessed overweening vanity. She was supremely confident in her abilities and, having no knowledge of his Sufi training, vastly underestimated him. However, in order to inveigle information from her, he had to keep her occupied, and the only way to do that was to sacrifice the deeper reaches of his own mind-to give her access to his insecurities, sorrows, and regrets.
It was agony.
Burton felt his heart tighten as she infiltrated the grief he associated with the Berbera expedition-but he pushed through the pain and surprised her with a question: Who is Arthur Orton?
His unexpected probe was so forceful that the answer flared in her mind before she could stop it. Burton saw confirmation that the Tichborne creature and Orton the butcher were one and the same. The man had been chosen for her scheme because he possessed a peculiarly well-developed ability to project coercive mental energy, though he was oblivious to this talent. He'd been using it unknowingly in Wagga Wagga to attract customers to his shop, and they had come, despite fearing and loathing him due to his disgusting appetite for raw meat. Implanting the Choir Stones beneath his scalp had greatly enhanced the ability.