The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (47 page)

Such are the observable facts. But Silver’s solicitous attitude toward the effigy leads me to an additional conclusion. The woman interred in this hallowed ground, I do not doubt, was once my poor friend’s mate.

19 April 1899

Lat. 1°10’ S, Long. 71°42’ E

An altogether extraordinary day, bringing an event no less astonishing than our discovery of the aborigines. Once again Silver led me to his mate’s graven image, whereupon he reached into his satchel – an intricate artefact woven of reeds – and drew forth a handwritten journal entitled
Confidential Diary and Personal Observations of Katherine Margaret Glover
. Even if Silver spoke English, I would not have bothered to enquire as to Miss Glover’s identity, for I knew instinctively that it was she who occupied the tomb beneath our feet. In presenting me with the little volume, my friend managed to communicate his expectation that I would peruse the contents but then return it forthwith, so he might continue drawing sustenance from its numinous leaves.

I spent the day collaborating with Mr Chalmers in cataloguing the many
Lepidoptera
and
Coleoptera
we have collected thus far. Normally I take pleasure in taxonomic activity, but today I could think only of finishing the job, so beguiling was the siren call of the diary. At length the parrots performed their final recital, the tropical sun found the equatorial sea, and I returned to my cabin, where, following a light supper, I read the chronicle cover to cover.

Considering its talismanic significance to Silver, I would never dream of appropriating the volume, yet it tells a story so astounding – one that inclines me to rethink my earlier theory concerning the Neanderthals – that I am resolved to forego sleep until I have copied the most salient passages into this, my own secret journal. All told, there are 114 separate entries spanning the interval from February through June of 1889. The vast majority have no bearing on the mystery of the aborigines, being verbal sketches that Miss Glover hoped to incorporate into her ongoing literary endeavor, an epic poem about the first-century
AD
warrior queen Boadicea. Given the limitations of my energy and my ink supply, I must reluctantly allow those jottings to pass into oblivion.

Who was Kitty Glover? The precocious child of landed gentry, she evidently lost both her mother and father to consumption before her thirteenth year. In the interval immediately following her parents’ death, Kitty’s ne’er-do-well brother gambled away the family’s fortune. She then spent four miserable years in Marylebone Workhouse, picking oakum until her fingers bled, all the while trying in vain to get a letter to her late mother’s acquaintance, Elizabeth Witherspoon of Briarwood House in Hampstead, a widowed baroness presiding over her dead husband’s considerable fortune. Kitty had reason to believe that Lady Witherspoon would heed her plight, as the circumstances under which the baroness came to know Kitty’s mother were unforgettable, involving as they did the former’s deliverance by the latter from almost certain death.

Kitty’s diary contains no entry recounting the episode, but I infer that Lady Witherspoon was boating on the Thames near Greenwich when she tumbled into the water. The cries of the baroness, who could not swim, were heard by Maude Glover, who could. The author doesn’t say how her mother came to be on the scene of Lady Witherspoon’s misadventure, though Kitty occasionally mentions fishing in the Thames, so I would guess an identical diversion had years earlier brought Maude to that same river.

Despite the machinations of her immediate supervisor, the loutish Ezekiel Snavely, Kitty’s fifth letter found its way to Briarwood House. Lady Witherspoon forthwith delivered Kitty from Snavely’s clutches and made the girl her ward. Not only was Kitty accorded her own cottage on the estate grounds, her benefactor provided a monthly allowance of ten pounds, a sum sufficient for the young woman to mingle with London society and adorn herself in the latest fashions. In the initial entries, Lady Witherspoon emerges as a muddle-minded person, obsessed with the welfare of an organization that at first Kitty thought silly: the Hampstead Ladies’ Croquet Club and Benevolent Society. But there was more on the minds of these six women than knocking balls through hoops.

Sunday, 31 March

Today I am moved to comment on a dimension of life here at Briarwood that I have not addressed before. Whilst most of our servants, footmen, maids and gardeners appear normal in aspect and comportment, two of the staff, Martin and Andrew, exhibit features so grotesque that my dreams are haunted by their lumbering presence. Their duties comprise nothing beyond maintaining the grounds, the croquet field in particular, and I suspect they are so mentally enfeebled that Lady Witherspoon hesitates to assign them more demanding tasks. Indeed, the one time I attempted to engage Martin and Andrew in conversation, they regarded me quizzically and responded only with soft huffing grunts.

I once saw in the Zoological Gardens an orangutan named Attila, and in my opinion Martin and Andrew belong more to that variety of ape than to even the most bestial men of my acquaintance, including the execrable Ezekiel Snavely. With their weak chins, flaring nostrils, sunken black eyes, proliferation of body hair and decks of broken teeth the size of pebbles, our groundskeepers seem on probation from the jungle, still awaiting full admittance to the human race. It speaks well of the baroness that she would hire such freaks as might normally find themselves in Spitalfields, swilling gin and begging for their supper.

“I cannot help but notice a bodily deformity in our groundskeepers,” I told Lady Witherspoon. “In employing them, you have shown yourself to be a true Christian.”

“In fact Martin and Andrew were once even more degraded than they appear,” the baroness replied. “The day those unfortunates arrived, I instructed the servants to treat them with humanity. Kindness, it seems, will gentle the nature of even the most miserable outcast.”

“Then I, too, shall treat them with humanity,” I vowed.

Wednesday, 10 April

This morning I approached Lady Witherspoon with a scheme whose realization would, I believe, be a boon to English letters. I proposed that we establish here at Briarwood a school for the cultivation of the Empire’s next generation of poets, not unlike that artistically fecund society formed by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and their acolytes in an earlier part of the century. By founding such an institution, I argued, Lady Witherspoon would gain an enviable reputation as a friend to the arts, whilst my fellow poets and I would lift one another to unprecedented promontories of literary accomplishment.

Instead of holding forth on either the virtues or the liabilities of turning Briarwood into a monastery for scribblers, Lady Witherspoon looked me in the eye and said, “This strikes me as an opportune moment to address a somewhat different matter concerning your future, Kitty. It is my fond hope that you will one day take my place as head of the Hampstead Ladies’ Croquet Club and Benevolent Society. Much as I admire the women who constitute our present membership, none is your equal in mettle and brains.”

“Your praise touches me deeply, madam, though I am at a loss to say why that particular office requires either mettle or brains.”

“I shall forgive your condescension, child, as you are unaware of the organization’s true purpose.”

“Which is?”

“Which is something I shall disclose when you are ready to assume the mantle of leadership.”

“From the appellation ‘Benevolent Society’, might I surmise that you do charitable works?”

“We are generous toward our friends, rather less so toward our enemies,” Lady Witherspoon replied with a quick smile that, unlike the Society’s ostensible aim, was not entirely benevolent.

“Does this charity consist in saving misfits like Martin and Andrew from extinction?”

Instead of addressing my question, the baroness clasped my hand and said, “Here is my counter-proposal. Allow me to groom you as my successor, and I shall happily subsidize your commonwealth of poets.”

“An excellent arrangement.”

“I believe I’m getting the better of the bargain.”

“Unless you object, I should like to call my nascent school the Elizabeth Witherspoon Academy of Arts and Letters.”

“You have my permission,” the baroness said.

Monday, 15 April

A day spent in Fleet Street, where I arranged for the Time
s
to run an advertisement urging all interested poets, “whether wholly Byronic or merely embryonic”, to bundle up their best work and bring it to the Elizabeth Witherspoon Academy of Arts and Letters, scheduled to convene at Briarwood House a week from next Sunday. The mere knowledge that this community will soon come into being has proved for me a fount of inspiration. Tonight I kept pen pressed to paper for five successive hours, with the result that I now have in my drawer seven stanzas concerning the marriage of my flame-haired Boadicea to Prasutagus, King of the Iceni Britons.

Strange fancies buzz through my brain like bees bereft of sense. My skull is a hive of conjecture. What is the “true purpose”, to use the baroness’s term, of the Benevolent Society? Do its members presume to practice the black arts? Does my patroness imagine that she is in turn patronized by Lucifer? Forgive me, Lady Witherspoon, for entertaining such ungracious speculations. You deserve better of your adoring ward.

The Society gathers on the first Saturday of next month, whereupon I shall play the prowler, or such is my resolve. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I trust it will serve to enlighten this Kitty.

Sunday, 28 April

The inauguration of my poets’ utopia proved more auspicious than I had dared hope. All told, three bards made their way to Hampstead. We enjoyed a splendid high tea, then shared our nascent works.

The Reverend Tobias Crowther of Stoke Newingtown is a blowsy man of cheerful temper. For the past year he has devoted his free hours to
Deathless in Bethany
, a long dramatic poem about Lazarus’s adventures following his resuscitation by our Lord. He read the first scene aloud, and with every line his listeners grew more entranced.

Our next performer was Ellen Ruggles, a pallid schoolmistress from Kensington, who favored us with four odes. Evidently there is no object so humble that Miss Ruggles will not celebrate it in verse, be it a flowerpot, a tea kettle, a spiderweb, or an earthworm. The men squirmed during her recitation, but I was exhilarated to hear Miss Ruggles sing of the quotidian enchantments that lie everywhere to hand.

With a quaver in my throat and a tremor in my knees, I enacted Boadicea’s speech to Prasutagus as he lies on his deathbed, wherein she promises to continue his policy of appeasing the Romans. My discomfort was unjustified, however, for after my presentation the other poets all made cooing noises and applauded. I was particularly pleased to garner the approval of Edward Pertuis, a wealthy Bloomsbury bohemian and apostle of the mad philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Mr Pertuis is quite the most well-favored man I have ever surveyed at close quarters, and I sense that he possesses a splendor of spirit to match his face.

The Abyssiad
is a grand, epic poem wrought of materials that Mr Pertuis cornered in the wildest reaches of his fancy and subsequently brought under the civilizing influence of his pen. On the planet Vivoid, far beyond Uranus, the
Übermensch
prophesied by Herr Nietzsche has come into existence. An exemplar of this superior race travels to Earth with the aim of teaching human beings how they might live their lives to the full. Mr Pertuis is not only a superb writer but also a fine actor, and his opening cantos held our fellowship spellbound. He has even undertaken to illustrate his manuscript, decorating the bottom margin with crayon drawings of the
Übermensch
, who wears a dashing scarlet cape and looks rather like his creator – Mr Pertuis, I mean, not Herr Nietzsche.

I can barely wait until our group reconvenes four weeks hence. I am deliriously anxious to learn what happens when the visitor from Vivoid attempts to corrupt the human race. I long to clap my eyes on Mr Pertuis again.

Saturday, 4 May

An astonishing day that began in utter mundanity, with the titled ladies of the Benevolent Society arriving in their cabriolets and coaches. Five aristocrats plus the baroness made six, one for each croquet mallet in the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. After taking tea in the garden, everyone proceeded to the south lawn, newly scythed by Martin and Andrew. Six hoops and two pegs stood ready for the game. The women played three matches, with Lady Sterlingford winning the first, Lady Unsworth the second, and Lady Witherspoon the last. Although they took their sport seriously, bringing to each shot a scientific precision, their absorption in technique did not preclude their chattering about matters of stupendous inconsequentiality – the weather, Paris fashions, who had or had not been invited to the Countess of Rexford’s upcoming soirée – whilst I sat on a wrought-iron chair and attempted to write a scene of the Romans flogging Boadicea for refusing to become their submissive client.

At dusk the croquet players repaired to the banquet hall, there to dine on pheasant and grouse, whilst I lurked outside the open window, observing their vapid smiles and overhearing their evanescent conversation, as devoid of substance as their prattle on the playing field. When at last the ladies finished their feast, they migrated to the west parlor. The casement gave me a coign of vantage on Lady Witherspoon as she approached the far wall and pulled aside a faded tapestry concealing the door to a descending spiral staircase. Laughing and trilling, the ladies passed through the secret portal and began their downward climb.

Within ten minutes I had furtively joined the Society in the manor’s most subterranean sanctum, its walls dancing with phantoms conjured by a dozen blazing torches. A green velvet drape served as my cloak of invisibility. Like the east lawn, the basement had been converted into a gaming space, but whereas the croquet field bloomed with sweet grass and the occasional wild violet, the sanctum floor was covered end to end with a foul carpet of thick russet mud. From my velvet niche I could observe the suspended gallery in which reposed the six women, as well as, flanking and fronting the mire, two discrete ranks of gaol cells, eight per block, each compartment inhabited by a hulking, snarling brute sprung from the same benighted line as Martin and Andrew. The atmosphere roiled with a fragrance such as I had never before endured – a stench compounded of stagnant water, damp fur and the soiled hay filling the cages – even as my brain reeled with the primal improbability of the spectacle.