Burton considered the strangeness of the city. It was filled with mechanical marvels, yet England’s agricultural roots were still plain to see. The place was so madly eclectic it was almost impossible to characterise.
It is off-course. It has become something it was never meant to be. It is broken.
He looked around at the square. He’d never sat here before, but a vertiginous sense of familiarity suddenly flooded through him, causing his heart to flutter.
How can you consider this natural? Velocipedes? The atmospheric railway? Steam spheres? Rotorchairs? Submarine ships? All developed within the space of twenty years? It’s impossible!
He gasped and leaned forward, gripping his cane with both hands, feeling himself dividing.
The Afterlife? Mediums? Magic rituals? Madness! Madness!
“Go away!” he wheezed. “Leave me alone!”
You’re moving too slowly. Piece it together, you fool. Hurry!
He heaved himself to his feet, reeled, and staggered to one side, only avoiding a fall by slamming the point of his cane into the ground. He raised a hand to his head and used his fingers to trace the long scar that parted the roots of his short hair. Just how much had the concussion damaged him?
He struggled to regulate his respiration then picked up his hat, put it on, and quickly walked from the square to Oxford Street, turning left into the busy thoroughfare.
Impatiently, he elbowed through the crowds, hurrying along, his mind awhirl. Traffic and voices roared in his ears. So did his pulse. He angrily knocked a beggar aside—detecting at once that the man’s blindness was a sham—and turned into Charing Cross, following it south to Leicester Square, where he entered Long Acre, which, a few yards on, joined St. Martin’s Lane. A few more paces took him to its junction with Mildew Street, and there, on the corner and opposite a building site, he found the League of Enochians Gentlemen’s Club. It was an unprepossessing three-storey building with a plain portico arching over the three steps that led up to the entrance. He tried the door. It was locked. He knocked and waited. He yanked the bellpull; knocked again. No one came. Muttering an oath, he was turning away when a flier, pasted to the wall beside the door, caught his eye.
THOMAS LAKE HARRIS
America’s Foremost Scryer and Summoner
Author of The Wisdom of Angels
A Lecture Entitled:
EVOCATION AND COMMUNICATION:
ON SUMMONING ADVISORS FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD.
Here: Wednesday 9th November, 9 p.m.
Open to Members and Sanctioned Guests Only.
Note to the General Public:
Mr. Harris will be giving a presentation entitled:
THE TRUTH OF SPIRITUALISM
At Almack’s Assembly Rooms,
King Street, St. James’s,
On Tuesday 8th November, 8 p.m.
Open to all.
Burton copied the details into his notebook, descended the steps, and walked a little farther along St. Martin’s Lane until he came to Brundleweed’s. Once again, the jeweller’s was closed and the grille covered the window. Looking past the metal bars, he noticed changes in the window display. The tools on the benches had been moved. Plainly, Brundleweed was around; the explorer had just been unlucky in catching him.
Tearing a page from his book, he took his pencil and scribbled: Require engagement ring at earliest possible. Please inform when convenient to call. Alternatively, deliver to me at—
He added his address, signed the note, pushed it through the letterbox, and walked back the way he’d come. Halfway along Oxford Street, he turned right into Vere Street. Number 7 was a narrow house squashed between a hardware shop and a Museum of Anatomy. It had a bright yellow door and a tall, narrow, blue-curtained window. He lifted the knocker and banged it down three times. After a short wait, the door opened. He knew instantly that he was facing Countess Sabina.
She was of indeterminate age; either elderly but very well preserved or young and terribly worn. Her hair was pure white and pinned back in a bun; her face was angular with large, dark, slightly slanted eyes, which, like the corners of her mouth, were edged by deep lines. She wore a navy blue dress with a white shawl. Her hands were bare, the nails bitten and unpainted.
She looked at him curiously, then gave a slight start of recognition and said, “You are Richard Burton.” Her voice was musical and slightly accented.
“Yes,” he replied. “I apologise that I wasn’t available when you called on me. I’ve been—” He reached into his pocket and pulled out her card, holding it up with the handwritten side facing her. “I’ve been wondering about this.”
“Come in.”
She led him along a short passageway and into a small rectangular parlour that smelled of sandalwood. At her behest, he put his hat on a sideboard, leaned his cane in a corner, and sat at a round table. She settled opposite him. Her eyes never left his.
“You do not believe,” she said softly.
“In a coming storm?”
“In mediumship.”
“I didn’t. Now I don’t know what to think. Since my return from Africa, I’ve experienced one strange circumstance after another, and now nothing feels as it should, and if I find that mediums are not the charlatans I’ve always taken them for—I mean no affront—then I shan’t be at all surprised.” He paused, and added, “Countess, I know all about your role in government and about Abdu El Yezdi.”
Countess Sabina nodded and smiled sadly. “I am not offended by your skepticism. Perhaps I would feel the same way had my life been different. As it is, the responsibility of communicating Abdu El Yezdi’s instructions fell to me, and—” She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “It weighed heavily. To be at the centre of such very rapid changes in the world, and yet to know—” She stopped again and appeared to focus inward, her lips moving silently.
“To know?” Burton prompted.
“To know, as you say, that nothing is as it should be.”
“Due to El Yezdi’s influence?”
“It goes far deeper than that, sir.”
Burton unconsciously ran the fingers of his right hand across his jawline. The sensation he’d experienced in Portman Square was still with him. He felt disjointed, more so even than during the days of malarial fever.
A shaft of light was slanting through the gap in the curtains. Dust motes waltzed slowly through it. Burton’s and the countess’s shadows stretched across the floor and up onto the flock wallpaper. The room felt suspended in limbo.
“Would you explain from the beginning?” His voice was oddly hollow to his own ears. Distant. “Tell me about when Abdu El Yezdi first contacted you.”
The countess took a long, slow breath, exhaled, and said, “It was when the Great Amnesia was first recognised. According to my diary, I arrived in London in 1838 to search for my cousin, who’d come here from our native Balkans the year before and had not been seen since, but that mission meant nothing to me when I read of it. The accounts of my activities during the three years leading up to The Assassination, although set down in my own hand, felt like the recollections of someone else. I was disoriented and lost. It was as if I’d gone to sleep in my own bed in the old country only to awaken in an unfamiliar room in a strange land. To make matters worse, I began to experience vivid dreams, in which another used my own voice to address me. I thought I was going mad.”