WILLIAM DAVEY
My decision to forego the trip aboard the steamship bound for Calcutta was based directly on the threat posed by the chthonic spirits. I wondered at the time why it was necessary for them to travel aboard ship at all: given their propensity to turn up at the most inconvenient time and place, why could they not simply appear in India and let me lead them to the statue? It might have been that while I was threatened by their presence aboard Empire Star, I would be more valuable alive than dead. The Levantine had told me in Manchester that I would eventually come to work with the stoicheia—they might be looking for another opportunity to convince me.
My decision to go to Paris, however, was not made merely to throw off those pursuers. I had at least one potential ally there. I had expected to have to find him: instead, after a fashion, he chose to find me.
Paris is a city of contradictions. Its residents—at least the ones who frequent its better parts—revel in their republicanism and their emperors, their saints and their apostates. Englishmen—unlike Scots—must overcome a long heritage of dislike when they come to the city. It is enough to underwrite the cost of restaurants and reading rooms and entire hotels that cater to the Anglophone traveler. Regrettably, those who patronize such places to the exclusion of the rest of the city fail to appreciate the city’s complexity and wonder.
I had not been there in more than twenty years. It was immeasurably changed, mostly through the work of the famous Baron Haussmann—saint to some, apostate to others—who had been given a mandate by Emperor Louis Napoleon to change the face of the city. Much to the consternation of tens of thousands of residents and businessmen, his plan drew a series of broad lines across the map of the city, delineating wide boulevards that ran straight and true and crossed at major intersections. Much of that work was still in progress in the fall of 1860, though the mass expropriation of land and buildings to accomplish this feat had largely come to an end.
As is often the case with older cities, Paris’s mesmeric background aura, the symphony that drowned out a thousand other noises, largely derived from its labyrinthine pattern of streets and alleys, hills and waterways. Haussmann’s modernization changed all that, at least for the majority of the city. It was due to this alteration that I was noticed.
Just before tea-time—a time of business in the City of Light, since Parisians are fond of long midday pauses, causing consternation to many foreign visitors—I was enjoying a strong cup of coffee and a delicate pastry in a café on one of the metropolis’ newest streets, the Rue Saint-Antoine. My good French had obtained me adequate service from the staff, but my English accent earned only disdain from the other patrons. The coffee was a beverage best drunk either very slowly or all at once. The pastry, however, I had brought to ruin in a fraction of the time it had taken to carefully erect its delicate edifice.
As I watched the day’s shadows slowly lengthen, a man approached. He was attired somberly but fashionably, and had an overly serious face. He had no hair atop his head: it appeared as if his tonsure had decamped from there and made for the sides, where it curled loosely around his skull. What was more, though he held his hands loosely at his sides, his left was slightly raised, palm turned. In short, he was attempting to cause me to rise from my seat to greet him.
He was a mesmerist. And if he could not perceive my own capabilities, he was a terribly incompetent one.
I relaxed in my seat, placing my hands on the table in front of me, palms down. I caught his glance and then slid my left hand forward, turning it very slightly at the wrist toward an adjacent seat. Without letting him go, I directed him to that chair. He obligingly sat in it. As soon as he had settled, I removed my hands from the table.
The gentleman started, as if I had just jostled him awake.
“Excuse me, Monsieur,” he began in French. “I—”
“You are quite right,” I interrupted. “Garçon,” I added, catching the waiter’s eye. “Please attend my companion here, Monsieur—” I looked at the man, who still looked somewhat startled. “I’m sorry, I did not get your name?”
“Leconte de Lisle,” he said obligingly. “Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle.”
“Yes. Of course. Coffee for you, Monsieur? Or something else?”
“Coffee.”
“It is not the best,” I said conversationally, “but it is strong and full-bodied. Another coffee.” The waiter nodded curtly.
I turned my attention back to Leconte de Lisle. “Good of you to join me, sir,” I said, adding quietly, “but you must work on your technique. If I were of a more unforgiving disposition, I might find it necessary to teach you a lesson.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do not make me change my mind.”
He paused, as if gauging my earnest, then nodded. “Very well. But may I have the honor of knowing with whom I speak?”
“My name is William Davey.”
His raised eyebrows pushed his hairless forehead comically upward.
“Monsieur Davey,” he said. There was some indication that he at least recognized the name.
“I am looking for the Baron.”
“Baron?”
“Baron Dupotet.”
“Le Maître?”
“Is that how he styles himself these days? Yes, I’m looking for Le Maître. I shall be most obliged to you if you can tell me where I can find him.”
“He does not receive visitors, Monsieur Davey.”
“He will receive me. Where does he reside?”
“I do not know, precisely,” Leconte de Lisle answered. He seemed nervous and uncomfortable. “But,” he added, as I frowned slightly and placed my hands back on the table, “he often takes a constitutional in the Tuileries gardens an hour or so before sunset. He does not go out in the open very much.”
“Why is that?”
“He does not wish to accidentally lose contact with the earth.”
“Indeed.”
“So I am informed.”
“So you are not an intimate of Baron Dupotet. Of Le Maître.”
“I must admit I am not. But his direction is that we should be vigilant for auras we don’t recognize. You were a stranger, Monsieur Davey. I did not mean to offend, but I did not recognize you.”
“Yet you know who I am.”
He swallowed. “Yes. There are few English practitioners whose reputation is greater. I am surprised that you are here.”
“In this café?”
“In Paris.”
“It was a spur of the moment decision. I shall await Le Maître in the gardens—but if I should fail to meet him today, I ask that you send him a message.”
“Certainement,” Leconte de Lisle said. He seemed relieved: apparently my reputation was something to be conjured with.
“Tell him that you met me, Monsieur, and that an old intimate … I need his help.”
“He has—” Leconte de Lisle began. “He is—Have you been in contact with Le Maître recently? You may find him changed.”
“Only by letter. But I have not actually seen him in many years. What do you mean when you say he has ‘changed’?”
“I am not the intimate of Le Maître. I expect that you will find it out for yourself.”
On my way to the gardens, I stopped into a small bookshop. There, to my surprise, I came upon several volumes bearing Leconte de Lisle’s name on the spine; they were collections of poems with classical themes. The work was ponderous, monotone, abstracted feelings and scornful phrases and declamations. I was no expert on poetry—then or now—but I thought they were complete rubbish. The shopkeeper, however—a diminutive, hyperactive little man with pince-nez and a little waxed turned-up moustache—set aside his natural Parisian disdain for foreigners when he noticed my interest; he gushed uncontrollably about the genius who had penned the works. I allowed myself to be separated from several francs and left the shop with a copy of Poèmes antiques in my possession, wondering if there might be a table somewhere in my future with a fourth leg that might need bracing.
It proved useful cover when I reached the Tuileries. In the waning afternoon sunlight, I sat on a bench and puzzled through the poems, reinforcing my opinion of the man and his work. Passers-by did not disturb me, because there was apparently some unwritten law regarding the interruption of a reader of poetry, even if obviously foreign. Still, I remained alert and took note when Charles Dupotet de Sennevoy, walking stick in hand, made his way toward my chosen bench, the breeze stirring fallen leaves around him as he approached.
He looked indeed much different from when I had last seen him, more than twenty years earlier, when I had been his student in London: then he had been most fashionable in his dress, almost flamboyant. Now his attire was somber and conservative, even a bit out of fashion.
He had aged—so had I: but now he walked in a peculiar way, gliding along the ground, his feet rising slowly and then falling rapidly, as if his boots were heavy. He recognized me at once and smiled as if we had not been apart for many years.
“William,” he said. “May I join you?”
“Of course.” I gestured to a seat beside me—not with a mesmeric gesture: Dupotet was at least my equal in skill with the Art. “I presume you heard of my intention to meet you.”
“One hears things.”
“Your student?” I held up the little book, which I closed and set on the bench. “An interesting fellow.”
“An interesting choice of phrase.”
“He’s a buffoon, actually. I chose to exercise restraint because I am in your domain, Charles. But he is ill-prepared. I hope that you do not have him employed in anything serious.”
“Buffoon.” Dupotet smiled. “We are concerned about visitors. You have stirred a great deal of trouble across la Manche, William. I cannot imagine what you think you’re doing—but it is more dangerous than you know.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are still Chairman, non?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are responsible. You must put a stop to these activities before they go any further. There is no good that can come of making bargains with elemental creatures of that sort. Even if you do not care about the next life—and many do not—the stoicheia are fickle and capricious and will not fulfill your desires in this one.”
“I know that.”
“Then stop it now. Too many of their kind have already made the journey into our realm. The means to dispose of them are not readily available—we have all we can do to control them.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here, Charles.”
“Ah. I assumed you would get to that eventually. Very well, my old friend: why, exactly, are you here? Don’t tell me that you need my help.”
“I need your help.”
“Did I not just expressly request that you not tell me that?”
“I assumed that was merely a rhetorical flourish.”
He smiled again. My dry English wit always entertained him, for some reason I could not fathom: it seemed impenetrable to most Frenchmen, even in their native language.
“It is not,” I said.
Baron Dupotet took a moment to reply, as if my earnest answer took him aback.
“My dear William, my Society has no interest in your quarrels and petty violence. I thought I had made that clear on many occasions.”
“This is not a power struggle within the Committee, Charles. Well, I suppose that it is, to some extent, but it is far more than that. It involves a more fundamental challenge to the way in which these beings are contained.”
“You know how they are contained, William?”
“They call it the ‘Glass Door,’” I answered. “Someone is trying to open it.”
“I don’t think I have heard that term before.”
“This is their term, Charles. For centuries, many—most—of them have been trapped in the polar regions. Only recently have they found their way back into temperate lands.”
“Due to—”
“Polar explorations.”
“Eh, oui?” Dupotet lifted one foot and settled it, then did the same with the other. The sound of his boots was heavy and solid. “Recently. That makes sense. Polar regions, you say?”
“Without doubt. I have it from an unimpeachable source—the testimony of one of the beings.”
“I told you that bargains with—”
“It was not testimony I received directly, Charles. It was an account …” I let my sentence drift off. An elderly couple, she in a long dress a little out of fashion, he in a handsome suit, walked by, the woman clinging to the man’s elbow. He moved with military precision: he might have been a soldier with the first Napoleon. He offered us a tip of the hat, which we returned with a polite nod. When they had passed, I continued. “It was an account given to James Esdaile’s wife by her—inhabitant—and relayed to me. It was very revealing.”
“And you credit it with being true.”
“I am convinced of it. And I concur with your concerns, Charles. These beings pose a direct danger to us: all of us—English, French, Hindoo and Moor and Chinaman, too. I must prevent them from their goal.”
“To open the ‘Glass Door.’”
“Precisely. It is my intention to go to India for that reason.”
“India? Why India?”
As succinctly as I could manage, I outlined the role of James Esdaile in the events of the past two years. I refrained from mentioning the nature of the object I believed to be the key to the Glass Door. He was distant and detached as he listened. Dupotet had changed from the man I had known when we both were younger and less burdened by responsibility.
I have always been inclined to the belief that information should be in the hands of the minimum possible number of people—for their protection as well as the guardianship of my own interest. I would be beholden to Dupotet should he choose to help me; there was no need to involve him further.
By the time I had finished, the sun had vanished beyond the Champ de Mars and lamps were being lit. Dupotet continued to sit quietly for several moments, then turned his attention directly to me.
“You have told me only half the story, my friend. Or—is it the entire story, fashioned from half-truths?”
“I have told no lies, Charles. But I have kept some details to myself.”
“Then I ask you. What help do you wish? How do you intend that I assist you?”
“I need to travel to Calcutta. I expect now to make much of the journey by a route I had not planned. I do not think that it is critical that I reach India before the chthonios that boarded Empire Star. Richard Daniel is already ahead of me in any case. Still, I do not think that my mission brooks further delay. You have contacts across Europe—or once did: I wish to prevail upon you to write to them, so that I may obtain introductions and assistance.”
“I should call in favors on your behalf.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“The Committee is held in less than high regard in certain quarters, William. I assume you know that. Your methods—your methods in particular—have excited some controversy.”
“I have done what I felt was necessary, Charles. I am not here to make apologies or amends.”
“I had asked that you not request my help.” He sighed. “And you took it for a rhetorical flourish. Very well, William: for the sake of our old friendship—and because the need is great—I shall do this. But there will come a time that I will call in this favor—doubled or trebled, I imagine. I trust my meaning is clear.”
“Extremely so.”
“Good.” Dupotet, once resolved, seemed almost relaxed. He stood up and I joined him. “Then I think we should attend to the next pressing concern before us.”
“Which is?”
“Dinner.”