WILLIAM DAVEY
A day later, I was in Edinburgh. It had been my intention to go immediately to George Square and convene a meeting of the principal members of the Mesmeric Society, but I was sure that I had not quite recovered from the assault by the chthonic being at the Manchester railway station. Assault is a fair characterization: the power of the being, its method of attack and the rapidity with which it had seized control of the moment, affected me to an extent that I declined to reveal in any way to the Scottish mesmerists.
What troubled me more—if all of that had not been enough—was that this being had manifested at all, self-willed and self-motivated, and had been able to undertake such an attack. I believed that it had to have been summoned; chthonic beings were not supposed to be able to manifest without the will of a mortal person to compel them.
Finally, I was most disturbed by the being’s last pronouncements—that he sought to provide me with a lesson, that all of our Art would ultimately depend on interaction with such beings. It reminded me of Quillinan’s nonsense about mesmerism and the need to worship at the Delphic shrine of technology. Moreover, I had the sense that while he had sought me out on the Oxford Road platform he had done so almost incidentally, as if that had not been his primary purpose in Manchester. But why had the Levantine come? What was the purpose of the Levantine’s “instruction”?
And finally—was he correct?
I chose to spend a day or two in a rather modest hotel near the cluster of railway stations beneath North Bridge, a few hundred yards from the High Street. My tiny guest room overlooked the fruit and vegetable market. Winter precluded much of its activity, thus sparing me the worst of its customary sounds and smells.
In that tiny room, I tried to take stock of the situation, of what Dr. Braid and the Levantine had said, and made an effort to restore my lost equilibrium. I have often been criticized about my earnestness in the clerical profession; I must confess, however, that I spent some time in St. Giles’ in pursuit of that goal. Whether that was in response to the stinging imputation of James Braid, or from a genuine desire for communion with the Lord whom my profession entitled me to represent, I leave it to my readers to decide.
At last, when I was ready to take up the matter that had brought me to Scotland, I sent a letter care of the Mesmeric Institute office in George Square, informing Colquhoun, the secretary, that I wished to meet with the principals on the following evening. I expected an immediate response; what I received instead was a note inviting me at teatime to the sitting room at the Royal Scotsman, the great hotel on the High Street above, a few hundred yards away from my mean lodgings.
I admit that my curiosity was piqued by the note. John Campbell Colquhoun was as willing to talk—and at length—as any man I ever met; he was a polyglot advocate—a Scots solicitor—who fancied himself a mystical scholar. I had a copy of Isis Revelata, of course, but would more readily use it to balance the legs of a table than actually take the time to peruse it. I expected, even dreaded, the onslaught of his words as a part of the meeting I desired to convene.
I am not much impressed with public figures. Dickens, for all of his fame, had always been more of a nuisance than an asset in the Committee’s deliberations. He was Elliotson’s particular friend, and his wealth had helped underwrite our activities, but his self-importance was grating. None of us sought fame for the Art, though many of us had written books about it—my own Illustrated Practical Mesmerist continued to enjoy popularity among amateurs. However, the famous who were party to the Committee’s work were occasionally compelled to come to terms with the relative value of that fame in the society over which I presided—to wit, not very much.
But it was something they rarely admitted to themselves. Instead, it was most often forced upon them in private.
My companion for tea was one of those public figures: Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish writer and historian, who I had not even realized was in Edinburgh. He was alone, absent his invalid wife, with whom his relations had long been strained. Some wag had quipped that their marriage had at least made two people unhappy instead of four; I could well imagine.
He had taken a position in one corner of the room, his back to a pillar, a great window nearby overlooking North Bridge. He was perusing a book; he glanced at me as I crossed the room—and set it aside perhaps a few moments too tardily for punctilious courtesy.
I ignored it: this might be his city and his land, but there was no doubt who should defer to whom. He rose and offered me a perfunctory bow, then extended his hand, which I accepted. He gestured me to a comfortable seat.
“I trust your trip north was comfortable,” he began.
“March is a wretched month to travel. I hadn’t known you were in Scotland, Carlyle.”
“I went up to Largs to pay my respects to the General. I was certain you would appear, and wasn’t about to leave it to Colquhoun or Holland or the rest of the pygmies.”
“That’s rather harsh.”
“So be it. The General agreed—oh, and he told me about Margaret’s Law as well; it confirms what I already suspected.”
“The cairn? Was there something to ‘suspect’?”
“Davey, do you know your all-consuming fault? Your constant assumption that since the majority of the people you govern are fools, that it must be the case with everyone. Margaret’s Law is not just a cairn—it’s where the Brisbanes keep the records they captured from King Magnus. I’ve seen them now, and it confirms what I had already inferred—that the Vikings, bless them, knew about the Odylic force six hundred years ago.”
Carlyle could draw upon a vast supply of arrogance; it was his all-consuming fault.
“Have you told John Colquhoun about it? I’m sure it would launch him into mystical rapture.”
“I’ve told no one. Sir Thomas passed the secret to me, and me alone.”
“So you’re his chosen successor.”
“I consider myself to be, yes.”
“I shall let you know whether I agree after I deliberate on the matter. I am not sure that it is appropriate for a public figure such as yourself to be head of the organization—and as you are not customarily in residence here—”
“Since when has it been your right to—”
“Since May 1842,” I said, interrupting him and spreading the fingers of my left hand.
Carlyle gripped the arms of his chair. I could see his teeth clench as his mouth snapped shut; but to his credit, his gaze never left mine.
Five seconds along, I would have expected to see sweat on his brow despite the chilly temperature of the sitting room, but he appeared cool. His posture was rigid, his back leaning hard against the chair, but he still managed to say, “That situation will not prevail forever.”
“No,” I answered in as reasonable a tone as I could muster. “But it prevails at this moment.”
I kept my fingers extended for another few seconds, then formed them into a fist and rapped it lightly on my left thigh. He reacted as if he had been punched in the gut but recovered quickly and smoothly.
His eyes proclaimed contempt. I wondered to myself then whether I had made an enemy, and a dangerous one—he had resisted me more strongly than I would have expected.
“Do you expect an apology?” he managed after a moment.
“You can acknowledge my authority in these matters. If you do, we can continue this discussion.”
It had become quiet in the sitting room. One of the features of mesmeric power is its tendency to disperse outward, especially when strong emotions are in play. Several people in the drawing room had stopped what they were doing, their cups raised and held in mid-motion, their attention drawn to the place where Carlyle and I sat. No doubt some of them knew him; I was fairly well assured that none of them knew me.
“This is not a formal challenge,” Carlyle said between his teeth. “Set them loose.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Carlyle. Surely some of them must be wondering what this is about.”
“Set them loose,” he repeated, without moving and without removing his eyes from me. “I do not know why it is necessary to create a public spectacle.”
“I am answering your question, Carlyle. You asked ‘since when,’ and I told you. Since May 1842, when Quillinan resigned to take care of his wife, Dora. A half-dozen men wanted the position but it was awarded to me. Not, I should add,” I said, “without some spectacle.”
“Set,” he said.
With a force of will that was palpable from ten feet away, he managed to unclench his hand from the armchair.
“Them. Loose,” he finished, making a cutting gesture—not a very demonstrative one, but more than I should have expected him to make.
Somewhere in the tearoom a china cup, a fancy one I imagine, crashed to the floor and the moment was interrupted. The quiet was replaced with the normal hubbub of such a place, dishes and conversation and so forth.
Carlyle was still relatively immobile, but he had broken my hold on him. I decided upon a tactical retreat: no good would come of a further confrontation, the outcome of which I could not readily control.
I relaxed my hand. He relaxed his grip on the chair arms.
“That was completely unnecessary, Davey,” he said after a few moments. “And if it was done in an effort to compel my obedience or coerce my conduct, you can be assured that it may result in the exact opposite effect.”
“Is that a formal challenge?”
“You know damned well that it is not. At this time.”
I picked up a delicate shortbread biscuit with the emblem of the hotel baked into its surface, admired it for a moment, and then bit into it.
“I will, therefore, take that under advisement. So tell me. You saw what was in Margaret’s Law; did it make any sense to you?”
The abrupt change of subject seemed to catch Carlyle by surprise: he sat forward, his glower dissolving into a sort of baffled frown, and folded his hands in his lap. “I can assure you that it did, but I will not discuss it here.”
“Where would you prefer?”
“In public. But first, Davey: tell me what this information is worth.”
“I should like to see the merchandise before I pay for it.”
“You have the word of a gentleman that it is worth as much as any information you can presently buy. I ask for a quid pro quo: confirm me as your deputy here in Scotland, and I shall consider the debt paid.”
“What assurance do you have that I will keep my end of the bargain?”
“The only assurance that anyone could have in this circumstance. I shall have to rely on the word of a gentleman. Tell me, Davey, is that something I should count upon?”
It was a frigid day to walk the streets of Edinburgh, but walk them we did. From the Scotsman Hotel, we crossed the bridge above the railway station and strolled along Princes Street, past the monstrosity of the Scott Monument, past Jenners and the Royal Hotel.
Finally, we settled onto one of the benches facing Edinburgh Castle on the mound. The late afternoon sun was bright but gave scant warmth. Carlyle sought to appear unaffected; but he was already sixty-five years of age at that time, and despite his arch Scots superiority, it could not have been easy for him to tolerate it. But what he told me was more than worth the price.
THOMAS CARLYLE
I realize, Reverend Davey, that it is not the habit of most persons—even educated ones—to take an interest in history; to the average gentleman that simple word compels a shudder, reminding him of school days and agonizing lessons. Yet even one fascinated by the ebb and flow of the tides of man’s existence eventually comes to realize that there is another story, guided by a hidden hand, of which even the most articulate scholar may not be aware.
I told you that I have seen what is concealed in Margaret’s Law. It is one of the greatest treasures of the Brisbane family—and the General himself gave me the key. He worked it out over the course of five decades; it tells us what we should undoubtedly have discerned all along—that though they did not call it that, the Northmen were intimately aware of the Odic or Odylic force, and that they used it to their advantage. They were able to do so because they made contact with chthonic spirits and other stoicheia when they voyaged to the far north, near the North Magnetic Pole. The insula magnetum—not truly an island, of course—is one of their dwelling places.
When Prince Magnus—remarkable coincidence in the name, don’t you think?—ran aground near Largs in Ayrshire in 1263, all of the Northmen’s knowledge, all of their tradition, fell into the hands of King Alexander III of Scotland. The whole account of their northernmost journeys had been inscribed in detail on a series of whale-bone plaques, as intricate and detailed as the full-rigged ships that whaling men carve.
It was certainly not intended that the Northmen lose those plaques. King Haakon Haakonsson, Magnus’s father, intended that the fleet winter in Orkney; I should think that he would have wanted to take them with him, as they were valuable artifacts. I wonder if the loss of the plaques helped him along to his final reward.
I have considered that possibility as well, Reverend Davey. Of course no official account of such a thing exists, but it would hardly surprise me to learn that someone—perhaps some chieftain who was a distant ancestor of Sir Thomas—employed some version of the Art to cloud the minds of the Northmen. Whatever the case, the thirty-eight plaques were placed in a plain wooden strong-box worked with bronze fittings and concealed beneath Margaret’s Law. Their existence remained a closely guarded secret, one that was passed down through generations until it became part of the lore of the Brisbane family.
They would have been no more than quaint artifacts if it had not been for Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane. At the commencement of the current century, explorers from many lands began to make approaches to the poles, both north and south. Some of these men are well-known, such as Ross and Franklin. Portions of these accounts have been held closely since they were recorded—and other portions were lost with the expeditions. It is clear, however, that these stoicheia found their way back to more temperate climes along with, or perhaps in place of, the individuals who found them.
I am approaching my point, Davey. You are impatient as always; I wish to provide you with fair value for your investment.
Both Franklin and Brisbane resided for a time in the southern hemisphere. During Franklin’s time there, he mapped the coast of Van Diemen’s Land—Tasmania—while Brisbane served as governor of New South Wales. While Franklin spent most of his time at sea, Brisbane had a more bureaucratic and scholarly occupation. One of his greatest accomplishments was in the field of astronomy; his observations led to the identification of more than seven thousand stars in the southern skies: the Brisbane Catalogue.
Why is this important? A fair question. When Sir Thomas took up residence on his estate at Largs in 1826, he took upon himself the task of examining the whale-bone plaques of King Magnus, seeking to decipher the coded meaning. What he realized was stunning: the key to the code was the patterns of stars—southern stars.
It was the beginning of Sir Thomas’s interest in the Art, I suspect. It would be another twenty years before von Reichenbach began to describe the “Odylic force”—but Brisbane learned of it then and there, sometime in 1826 or 1827. He realized what no one else had guessed: every brush with the polar regions, north and south, was a glance through the Glass Door. It is in those regions that the stoicheia reside.
WILLIAM DAVEY
When he had finished his description, Carlyle looked off into the distance toward the great hill upon which Edinburgh Castle perched—the Mound, etched in late afternoon sunlight.
“Do you think Sir John Franklin was looking for the ‘magnetic isle’ on his last expedition?” I asked.
“It would not surprise me. I think Admiral Ross was looking for the same thing. I am even inclined to believe that the mountains he saw—the ‘Crocker Hills’—were real, and that only a true practitioner could see them. He spent four years in the Arctic and found the Magnetic North Pole.”
“And returned with chthonic spirits in his foremast?”
“It is conceivable that Ross himself came back”—Carlyle turned to face me, with a knowing smile—“with a more intimate relationship with a chthonic spirit. Rather like poor Esdaile’s wife.”
“We would have known.”
“Yes. I suppose we would.” Carlyle stood stiffly; I joined him. Even the brief time we had been sitting there had had unpleasant aftereffects. “Do you consider yourself sufficiently well compensated?”
“If I said anything other than ʻyes,’ I expect you would show some of that anger for which the Scots race is justly famous.”
“Is that your intention?”
“No. Of course it is not. What the information means,” I said, “is presently beyond me. But it places an entire new cast on relations with these creatures.”
“There, I think you are mistaken,” Carlyle said. “They are and remain alien. They are also our enemies, I think; some members of the Scottish Mesmeric Society were victims of that alienness. None of their families will shed a tear for the death of James Esdaile, nor particularly care that the young woman was merely possessed!”
I extended my hand to Carlyle once again, removing my glove. He did the same and we shook hands. I do not think that he was much mollified by this modest show of camaraderie; dislike still burned in his eyes. For my part, I saw little basis on which I could build any sort of trust.
But for the moment, at least, we could view each other as allies.