Drood (25 page)

“Uncle Amun’s speciality turned out to be in sacred healing sciences. He was—and Drood was trained to be—a high priest in the Temples of Sleep dedicated to Isis, Osiris, and Serapis. This so-called healing sleep, my dear Wilkie, went back in Egyptian lore and practise for more than ten thousand years. The priests who had the power to induce such healing sleep also gained power and control over their patients. Today, of course, we call this practise by its scientific name of mesmerism and know its magical effects as the induction of magnetic sleep.

“You are aware that I have an ability of my own—some say a rare talent—in this art, Wilkie. I have told you of my training with Professor John Elliotson at the University College Hospital in London, of my own private investigations into the power, and of my own use of Magnetic power to help poor, phantom-afflicted Madame de la Rue—at her husband’s insistence—over a period of many months in Italy and Switzerland some years ago. I would have completely cured her, I am certain of this, if Catherine had not intervened because of her insane and baseless jealousy.

“Drood told me that he sensed my control of such Magnetic mesmeric power the moment he saw me on the hillside above the accident carnage at Staplehurst. Drood said that he recognised the gods-given ability in me instantly, the same way Uncle Amun had recognised the latent abilities in him when he was a boy of four so many decades earlier.

“But I digress.

“For the rest of his boyhood and young manhood in Egypt, Drood pursued mastery of his powers through the rituals and knowledge of the ancients. Did you know, for instance, my dear Wilkie, that no less an historian than Herodotus tells us that the great king Rameses, Pharaoh of all Egypt, once became so seriously ill that there was no hope for him and he, in Herodotus’ words but also the words of Drood’s uncle and teachers, ‘descended into the mansion of death’? But Rameses then returned to the light, cured. This pharaoh’s return has been celebrated for thousands of years, and continues to be celebrated in Islam-dominated Egypt today. And Wilkie, do you know the mechanism for Rameses’ miraculous return from the dark mansion of death?”

Here Dickens paused for dramatic effect until I was finally forced to ask, “What was it?”

“That magical power was mesmeric magnetism,” he said. “Rameses had been mesmerised, according to ritual and method, at the Temple of Seag, was allowed to die as a man, but was brought back—cured of his fatal disease—as something more than a man.

“Tacitus tells us of the celebrated Temple of Sleep in Alexandria. This is where young Drood did most of his midnight studies and where he emerged as a practitioner of this ancient art of Magnetic Influence.

“That night in his temple-library in Undertown, Drood explained to me—actually showed me the parchments and books—that Plutarch reported that both the prophetic and curative sleep induced in the temples of Isis and Osiris utilised a mesmeric incense called Kyphi, which is used even today—Drood let me smell it from a vial, Wilkie—as well as the music of the lyre to bring on such mesmeric sleep. The Pythagoreans also used this Kyphi incense and the lyre in their secret cave and temple ceremonies, since they believed as the ancient Egyptians did that such Magnetic Influence, properly directed, can free the soul from its body and create a full rapport with the spiritual world.

“Don’t look at me that way, my dear Wilkie. You know I am no believer in mere ghosts and spirit-rappings. How many have I exposed in my talks and essays? But I
am
an expert in Magnetic Influence, and I hope to become a greater expert in the science very soon.

“According to Herodotus and Clemens Alexandrinus, this prayer and mesmeric control of a dying man have been used for ten thousand years at all important Egyptian funerals—

“ ‘Deign, ye gods, who give life to men, to give a favourable judgement of the soul of the deceased, that it may pass to the eternal gods.’

“But you see that
some
souls they do not release, Wilkie.
Some
souls they hold under their Magnetic Influence and bring back. Such it was with the Pharaoh Rameses. Such it was with the man you and I know as Drood.”

D
ICKENS STOPPED WALKING
and I stopped next to him. We were less than half a mile from Gad’s Hill now, although we had been walking at something less than Dickens’s usual frenzied pace. I confess that I had been half-mesmerised by the sound and tone and drone of Charles Dickens’s voice for the past twenty minutes or so and had noticed almost nothing of our surroundings.

“Have you found this boring, Wilkie?” he asked, his dark eyes sharp and challenging.

“Don’t be absurd,” I said. “It’s fascinating. And fantastic. It’s not everyone who is permitted to, or every day that one is allowed to, hear an
Arabian Nights
tale from Charles Dickens.”

“Fantastic,” repeated Dickens, smiling thinly. “Do you find it too fantastic to be true?”

“Charles, are you asking me whether I think Drood was telling
you
the truth with this story or whether you are telling
me
the truth?”

“Either,” said Dickens. “Both.” His intense gaze never left my face.

“I have no idea whether this Drood spoke a word of truth,” I said. “But I trust that you are telling me the truth in your narration of what he said.”

I was lying, Dear Reader. The story was too absurd either for me to accept it or to believe that Dickens had accepted it. I remembered that Dickens had once told me that 1001
Arabian Nights
had been his favourite book when he was a child. I wondered now if the accident at Staplehurst had released some childhood strain in his character.

Dickens nodded as if I had answered the schoolmaster correctly. “I don’t need to remind you, my dear old friend, that all of this information is told in confidence.”

“Of course not.”

He smiled almost boyishly. “Even if our Inspector Field friend threatens to tell the world about the Landlady and the Butler?”

I waved that away. “You did not tell the heart of Drood’s story,” I said.

“I did not?”

“No,” I said flatly. “You did not. Why was he there at Staplehurst? Where had he come from? What was he doing with the injured and dying?… I believe that you once said it looked as if the Drood creature were stealing the souls of the dying there. And what on earth is he doing in a cave beneath the catacombs beyond a river in a tunnel?”

“Rather than continue the narration…” said Dickens even as he began walking again, “. . . since we are rather close to home, I shall just answer your questions, my dear Wilkie. But first of all, Hatchery was correct in his detective work and assumptions about Drood’s presence at Staplehurst. The man was in a coffin in the baggage car.”

“Good God!” I said. “Why?”

“For precisely the reasons we surmised, Wilkie. Drood has enemies in London and England who attempt to locate and harm him. Our Inspector Field is one of those enemies. Nor is Drood either a citizen of our nation or a welcome foreign visitor. In fact, in the eyes and files of all official sources, he has been dead for more than twenty years. So he
was
returning in a coffin from a trip to France… a trip in which he met others of his religion and expertise in the Magnetic Arts.”

“Extraordinary,” I said. “But what about his odd behaviour at the accident site, lurking and leaning over victims who were dead when you visited them next? ‘Stealing souls,’ you said.”

Dickens smiled and beheaded a weed, swinging his blackthorn stick like a broadsword. “It shows how mistaken even the trained and intelligent observer can be when deprived of all context, my dear Wilkie. Drood was not stealing the souls of those poor dying wretches. On the contrary, he was mesmerising them to ease the pain of their passage and saying the words of the ancient Egyptian funeral ceremony to help them on their journey, using some of the very words I quoted to you a few minutes ago. Rather as if he were a Catholic giving the Last Rites to the dying. Only with mesmeric Sleep Temple rites, he was certain he really
was
sending their souls on to their judgement by whatever gods they worshipped.”

“Extraordinary,” I said again.

“And as for his history here in England and the reasons for his presence in Undertown,” continued Dickens, “Drood’s arrival in England and his altercation with a sailor, knife and all, are almost exactly as old Opium Sal related it. Except
in reverse.
Drood was sent to England more than twenty years ago to look up two cousins of his from Egypt—twins, a young man and young woman who had mastered another ancient Egyptian skill, the ability to read each other’s minds—and Drood arrived with thousands of pounds in English cash and more wealth in the form of gold in his luggage.

“He was robbed the second night he was here. Robbed on the docks by British sailors and slashed viciously with a blade—it is there that he lost his eyelids, ears, nose, and part of his tongue and fingers—and thrown into the Thames like the corpse he almost was. It was some of the residents of Undertown who found him floating in the river and brought him below to die. But Drood did not die, Wilkie. Or if he did, he resurrected himself. Even as he was being robbed and slashed and beaten and stabbed by the unnamed English thugs in the night, Drood had deeply mesmerised himself, balancing his soul—or at least his mental being—between life and death. The scavengers from Undertown did find a lifeless body, but his Magnetic-induced slumber was broken by the sound of concerned human voices, just as he had commanded himself under mesmeric self-control. Drood lived again. To repay those wretched souls who had saved him, Drood built his library–cum–Temple of Sleep in their underground warren. There, to this day, he heals those he can heal, helps those he can help through his ancient rites, and eases the pain and passing of those he cannot save.”

“You make him sound like a saint,” I said.

“In some ways, I believe he is.”

“Why did he not just go home to Egypt?” I asked.

“Oh, he does, Wilkie. He does. From time to time. To visit his students and colleagues there. To help with certain ancient ceremonies.”

“But he continues to return to England? After all these years?”

“He still has not found his cousins,” said Dickens. “And yes, he feels England is as much his home now as Egypt ever was. After all, he
is
half English.”

“Even after killing the goat that bore his English name?” I said.

Dickens did not answer.

I said, “Inspector Field tells me that your Mr Drood—healer, master of Magnetic science, Christ figure, and secret mystic—has killed more than three hundred people in the past twenty years.”

I waited for the laughter.

Dickens did not change expression. He was still studying me. He said, “Do
you
believe that the man I spoke to has killed three hundred people, Wilkie?”

I held his gaze and returned its noncommital blankness. “Perhaps he mesmerises his minions and sends
them
out to do the dirty work, Charles.”

Now he did smile. “I am certain that you are aware, my dear friend, through the teachings of Professor John Elliotson if not through my own occasional writings on the topic, that a subject under the influence of mesmeric slumber or mesmeric trance can do
nothing
that would violate his or her morals or principles if that subject were fully conscious.”

“Then perhaps Drood mesmerised killers and cutthroats to go out and do the killings that Inspector Field described,” I said.

“If they were already killers and cutthroats, my dear Wilkie,” Dickens said softly, “he would not have had to mesmerise them, would he? He simply could have paid them in gold.”

“Perhaps he did,” I said. The absurdity of our conversation had reached some point where it was now unsustainable. I looked around at the grassy field shimmering in the afternoon autumn light. I could actually see Dickens’s chalet and the mansard roof of his Gad’s Hill Place home through the trees.

I put my hand on the Inimitable’s shoulder before he could begin walking again. “Is increasing your knowledge and skill in mesmerism the reason you disappear into London at least one night a week?” I asked.

“Ah, so there
is
a spy in my family circle. One with frequent digestion problems, might I guess?”

“No, it is
not
my brother, Charles,” I said a trifle sharply. “Charles Collins is a man who keeps confidences and is fiercely loyal to you, Dickens. And he will someday be the father of your grandchildren. You should hold him in higher esteem.”

Something flickered across the writer’s face then. It was not quite a shadow—perhaps an instant of revulsion, although whether it was at the thought of my brother married to his daughter (a union of which he never approved) or another reminder of Dickens himself being old enough to be a grandfather, I will never know.

“You are correct, Wilkie. I apologise for my jesting, although the jests have been made with familial affection. But some quiet voice tells me that there will be no grandchildren issued from the union of Katey Dickens and Charles Collins.”

Now what the deuce did he mean by
that?
Before we came to blows or resumed walking in silence again, I said, “It was Katey who told me about your weekly trips to the city. She and Georgina and your son Charles are worried about you. They know that the accident still haunts and afflicts you. Now they fear that I have introduced you to some foul abomination in the fleshpots of London to which you are, if you will pardon the expression, magnetically drawn at least one full night a week.”

Dickens threw his head back and laughed.

“Come, Wilkie. If you cannot stay for the delectable dinner Georgina has planned, at least you must stay long enough to enjoy a cigar with me as we look in on the stables and watch the children and John Forster at play on the lawn. Then I’ll have little Plorn take you by cart to the station for the early-evening express.”

T
HE DOGS RUSHED
us as we came up the drive.

Dickens almost always kept dogs chained near the gate, since too many surly vagabonds and unkempt vagrants exercised the habit of wandering off Dover Road to ask for unmerited handouts at the back or front door of Gad’s Hill Place. First to welcome us this afternoon was Mrs Bouncer, Mary’s tiny little Pomeranian, for whom Dickens adopted a special, childish, almost squeaky voice for all his communications. A second later bounded up Linda, the ambling, bouncing, rolling Saint Bernard who always seemed to be in a perpetual tumbling match with the great mastiff named Turk. Now these three entered into an absolute ecstasy of leaping and licking and tail-wagging at the greeting of their master, who—I freely admit—did have an extraordinary way with animals. As with so many people, dogs and horses seemed to understand that Charles Dickens
was
the Inimitable and needed to be revered as such.