He was now garbed in the traditional costume worn by the members of the original Hell Fire Club, which had been founded some fifty years earlier by Sir Francis Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer and, later, Lord leDespenser.
Dashwood had founded the Order of St. Francis of Wycombe, the inner circle of which included the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, Thomas Potter, Paymaster General, and other distinguished men who, together with Dashwood himself, formed a coven of thirteen. There were also associate members to this society of rakes, among them Lord Holland, the Earls of Oxford and Westmoreland, the Marquis of Granby, the Duke of Kingston and the notorious John Wilkes.
The meetings of these gentry were held in the Abbey on Medmenham Island in the Thames, and consisted of blasphemous rituals followed by orgies. In order the better to parody their mockery of Christian rites, the men all wore the robes of monks and the women they brought with them from London—the majority of whom were among the most beautiful demi-mondaines of the day, but also some society women who concealed their identities with masks—wore the costume of nuns.
Leaving the cloakroom, Charles went up a staircase in the middle of the hall, leading to a large salon on the first floor. Some thirty to forty ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, enjoying a buffet supper, some standing at a long table carrying an excellent cold collation, others sitting at small tables to which they had carried plates and glasses.
All the men except one were clad similarly to Charles, in grey monks' robes with hoods that hid the colour of their hair, and were masked. The exception was a tall, gaunt, hook-nosed, elderly man known as the Abbot He wore a mitre on his head, in the centre of which there was a large cat's eye, a robe of mauve silk and, dangling from his neck on a gold chain, there was, instead of a crucifix, a diamond-studded crux ansata, the Egyptian symbol of immortality.
Beside him at the top of the stairs, receiving the guests, stood the Abbess, whose name was Katie O'Brien; a woman who, both in face and figure, had a loveliness that would have drawn the eyes of many men in a large gathering immediately towards her.
In striking contrast to the angelic beauty of the Abbess, the features of the tall Abbot were of a special ugliness that might have been designed in hell. His great hooked nose above a receding chin gave the impression of a bird of prey, the high cheekbones of his thin face were pitted with the scars of smallpox and his hooded eyes seemed to gleam with evil. His mouth was loose, his teeth uneven and yellow. His hypnotic glance radiated strength and power; and Charles, having on the night of his initiation seen this Priest of Satan avidly possess several women one after another, knew that his lust was insatiable.
It could be only this last characteristic, Charles decided, that made these lecherous women give themselves to the hideous Abbot so eagerly. It then occurred to him how fortunate he was to be a man, so had been initiated by the beautiful witch; whereas the women members had all had to submit to being initiated by the Abbot and, however licentious by nature, must have felt an almost overwhelming horror at having, for the first time, to give themselves to this repulsive representative of the dark powers.
The women were also masked but wore the black gowns of nuns, and white, banded coifs across their foreheads, from which black weeds concealed their hair and the sides of their faces.
In their case there were three exceptions. Two were clad in the white costumes of novices and, in addition to masks, wore veils that entirely obscured their features. The third was the Abbess, who was wearing a mauve silk robe and, on her bosom, a huge cat's eye, surrounded by emeralds. She was Irish and had achieved a considerable reputation in occult circles in Dublin for her prophetic gifts. A few years earlier she had come to London armed with introductions from several of the Irish nobility to friends in England also interested in the occult. Some while after Lord le Despenser's death, the original Hell Fire Club had disintegrated, but memories of it had lingered on, and she had had the clever idea of resurrecting it as a means of attracting wealthy patrons.
She was a tall woman and, alone among the ladies, wore no mask. Her face was very pale and, although she was in her early forties, not a wrinkle marred the perfection of her magnolia skin. Two features made her strikingly beautifuclass="underline" a very full-lipped mouth, which she painted scarlet, and a pair of magnificent dark-blue eyes, such as are rarely seen outside Ireland. Above them black eyebrows curved down to meet across the bridge of a Roman nose, giving her an imperious expression.
Some of the members of the club were old acquaintances, and did not seek to hide their identities from one another, while others preferred to remain incognito; but the Abbess could have put a name to any of them, and at once recognised Charles.
From the beginning she had been particular about whom she admitted to her Order and she had accepted Charles, in spite of his youth, only because he had special qualifications. Not only was he an Earl with a fine town mansion and White Knights Park, a great property in Northamptonshire, but she had special designs concerning his future. Since she had personally initiated him the previous November, she had not seen him and, for the past quarter of an hour, had feared he did not mean to come that night.
Moving forward to meet him, she gave him a charming smile, extended her left hand for him to kiss and said in a husky voice with a slight Irish lilt:
'It is late you come, little Brother, but are nonetheless welcome.'
As he took her hand, his own trembled slightly from the memory of the pleasure she had afforded him at his initiation. Bowing, he murmured, 'I pray your pardon, Reverend Mother. I was detained by an unfortunate accident.'
'It is no matter.' She waved her hand, on which there was another big cat's eye in a ring, toward the buffet. 'You still have time to fortify yourself with a glass or two of wine before our ceremony, and you are called on to make libation to Lilith-Venus in the person of one of my lovely daughters.'
Walking over to the buffet, Charles was handed a goblet of champagne by one of the footmen. A minute or so later he found the Abbess beside him. Holding out a small, black velvet bag, she said:
'As you are late in arriving, there is only one number left, but your chance of drawing a partner who will demand as much as you are capable of giving is not lessened by that'
Charles put his hand in the bag and drew out an ivory plaque on which was the number 6 and was attached to a piece of magenta ribbon. Having bowed her away, he tied the plaque on to his cat's eye brooch and, now filled with excited anticipation, began to look quickly about the room.
The friend who had introduced Charles to the club had told him that the majority of the female members were married women who had elderly or unsatisfactory husbands, and found this way of satisfying their pent-up desires greatly preferable to taking a regular lover; as, by concealing their identities, they were spared the anxiety of clandestine meetings and any possibility of becoming involved in a scandal. This applied also to the unmarried girls who had been introduced by cynical roues, after finding that they delighted in lechery and had a taste for variety. All of them came from the higher strata of society, as the Abbess had no mind to dispense to professional courtesans any part of the twenty guineas she charged her male members for each attendance.
Owing to their masks, coifs and nun's robes, all the women present, apart from height, appeared almost identical, and Charles had to spend several minutes mingling with the crowd before he found the nun with a plaque numbered 6 suspended from her cat's eye brooch.