GEORGIANA SHACKLEFORD
Let me state at the outset that my sense of propriety is very firm, but I do not let it conflict with the desire to do what I feel is necessary—or what cannot be avoided.
Consequently, the idea that I should appear to be the improper companion of an insane naturalist determined to experience a lightning storm at sea firsthand does not trouble me a bit. People can believe what they want, and can speak as they please. What is important—indeed, what is critical—is that the deed was done. In a few days, we shall be in Calcutta, and—
Yes, Reverend Davey. I said we, and I meant it. I did not track you down and follow you aboard Malabar Princess merely to save your life, though it is perfectly clear to me that it was an act of Christian charity to have done so—else you, not the chthonic spirit, might have been consumed by the nereic one. Once you reach India you will need my help. It is freely offered: better that you are accompanied by someone acquainted with the place than to have you simply stumble about. The stakes are far too high for that.
What is more, sir, I think we can readily dispense with the usual preliminaries in which you dismiss my contributions merely because I am a woman. Ah. I am gratified to hear it. Knowing your views on that matter makes it easier to proceed.
I know a great deal about you, Reverend, but I assume that you are not acquainted with me in the least. It therefore is incumbent upon me to explain to you who I am, how I come into this adventure and why I know of you—and your objectives in India. Le Maître explained some of it, but as you are aware, he can be rather cryptic at times. He sent me to—
Well. Best to begin at the beginning.
Much of what I know about you, Reverend, is from conversations with Monsieur Dupotet, but my acquaintance with the Art dates back considerably further.
More than twenty years ago I met Dupotet for the first time, when he was exhibiting his skill in London. My Martin—we were married nearly fifteen years at the time—had taken a modest interest in the science. He refused to call it what the adepts did, “the Art”; we visited the Baron’s salon in Regent Square and saw his experiments with the servant girl. Dupotet informed me without preamble that I had some innate talent with the Art, something which both Martin and I dismissed out of hand.
It was widely believed at the time that mesmerism was simply beyond the capacity of women to perform, as it might lead to the development of nervous conditions, hysteria and the like. Still, I welcomed the flattery; Martin regularly received the lion’s share of attention in public, and I—the wife of a civil servant—was merely decoration. Dupotet told me that those who practiced the Art had the half-light to guide them: while not completely illuminating, it was a great advantage over the dark world of those who lacked talent.
I see that the expression is familiar. I suspect that he said something like that to every talented mesmerist he met.
In 1842, Martin obtained a posting to Calcutta as a custom house inspector. Our daughter had already married, and our two sons were grown—we had purchased a commission for Arthur, and Theodore was in his second year at Cambridge. Some of my lady friends wondered that I would undertake such a perilous journey to such an inhospitable place, but I did not wish to remain in England and have my husband thousands of miles away. And it would be an adventure; a trip to a foreign, exotic place would be a tonic to my dreadfully boring existence. There is a large expatriate community in Calcutta, and I was sure I would be able to make myself at home there.
And so I did. There are two keys to getting along in society: the first is to know what people want to hear; the second is to listen to them. You must take care to notice not only what people tell you, but what they do not. I flatter myself that I was capable of moving in any society, and realized at once that to be in India meant to interact with Indians. I received excellent advice on the ways and means to set up a household in Calcutta. I listened to what was said and not said and learned what was expected. Martin and I made a life for ourselves in India. It was not London, of course, but it was comfortable.
Some ladies find refuge in polite distractions; I longed for something to do. I daresay that the Ladies’ Society for Native Female Education provided me with an outlet for my energies. A Mrs. Huntingdon, whose husband had come out in the 1820s with the Company, was the most prominent member, and it was from her that we all took our lead. We were—
Men? Of course, the governing officers of the Society were men, administering the spending of money and the relationship between our activities and the mandates of the Governor-General. Beyond that they took little interest in the Society’s day-to-day affairs. Men in India found other distractions. Even my dear heart had his head turned by the occasional native odalisque, though I daresay he did not keep a harem of them as did some grandees.
You are shocked by that, Reverend Davey. You should not be—either for the act, or for my acceptance of it. Men follow their desires first, their hearts second, and their good sense third. While my husband was a sinner and not a saint, he was selective in his tastes and discreet in his indulgences. As far as I know, he left no legacies behind.
To be clear: I was not a victim of those tendencies—merely a bystander.
In any case, my distraction was in the nature of a great project. The young women we sought to reach had been kept distant from the light of Christian teaching, but that was the least of it; they could not read or write or do simple sums. In the most extreme cases, when their husband departed this life, they were expected to lie down with the body when it was burned and die with him. It was a cruel, unjust fate for half of the population of that teeming country: Beatrice Huntingdon—a disciple of Mary Anne Cooke—and the rest of her followers, myself included, were determined to do something about it. The Englishwomen found meaning in their lives as well, I think. We could do something fulfilling with our time and our hands and our minds.
Yes. I think you are exactly right: we were still somewhat blind to the basic truth of the situation—that is, about what caused the Mutiny. But any subject of Her Majesty could be found equally guilty of that sort of hubris. India is a different, deeper place than most of our countrymen think—and it is not merely a blank slate on which we can draw our own vision of civilization. We did not even consider the possibility that the clay we sought to mold would resist the shape we wanted. It seems far simpler in hindsight.
I know that you are waiting for me to tell you how I came to be associated with Monsieur Dupotet. Before that, however, I must tell you that I know a great deal about you—some of which I have heard directly from Le Maître. I shall have your promise as a gentleman that you will eventually give me your part of the story. Since you know that I am an acquaintance of Eliza Weatherhead, then you know that she suffered a rather unpleasant fate at the hands of James Esdaile. I met Eliza at Hooghly, and even assisted in her brief wedding preparations before she left for Scotland with Doctor Esdaile.
I knew there was something wrong—I eventually learned what had been done to the poor girl, but to my regret, I simply learned it far too late.
WILLIAM DAVEY
It took us most of two days to dry out and recover from our little jaunt on deck. No one saw anything of Fi or the nereic creature, of course: she had not been a passenger on Malabar Princess, and the creature had simply been a part of the storm. With it gone, the ship steamed into clear weather and open water. I was taken for a wild-eyed savant who had not had the sense to stay out of the storm, and Mrs. Shackleford played the part of my levelheaded companion who had gone out there to drag me in. The ship’s surgeon examined us, reproved us and released us on our own recognizance.
Word of our unusual diversion made the rounds of the passengers, and I was viewed either with newfound respect or with haughty bemusement. Mrs. Shackleford—Georgiana—determined that we should take our constitutionals and our meals together, and for the next two weeks we scarcely spent a waking hour apart. It was not a love interest: though neither of us strained ourselves to dissuade anyone aboard the ship on that account. On the other hand, neither of us had any interest in testing the other’s prowess with the Art. She recognized my skill, and I hers. I was well out of my domain; if and when we were both back in Britain, there might have to be an adjustment to that relationship, but for the moment, it could stand.
“It was the Mutiny that changed my life, of course,” Georgiana told me as we sat out on the deck, spying the distant coast of Persia as we steamed eastward. “As it did so many in India.”
“I can imagine.”
“Many lives were lost in that terrible event, William.” She had taken to addressing me by my first name, as I employed hers. Life-threatening combat against stoicheia granted access to that particular intimacy. “Including my husband’s.”
“You have not spoken of this before.”
“There was no need. It is still painful, though the event itself freed me from a relationship that had long since grown cool. He was on a task for the Customs Service and was killed during a fire.” She looked stonily away from me, as if putting the incident aside in her mind—placing it in a compartment where it would be safe and could no longer hurt her.
Yet it still seemed to hurt.
“I am so sorry.”
“He deserved better. But it was a terrible time, a dangerous time. Many of us felt unsafe: most nights, and many days, I would not even go abroad in the city. After Martin was killed, there was an intimation that I might be in danger.
“Then, someone rescued me. A khansamah—a sort of master butler.”
“I know the term.”
“You do? Then you should be aware that the khansamah of whom I speak is someone who was known to her: a man named Gobinda Shah Ahmadi, who had served in the same house as Eliza when she was first in India.”
“I see,” I said. Once again, this man has come into the tale, I thought. “How did this—Gobinda—help you, Georgiana?”
“He took me away from Calcutta. We journeyed to Varanasi—to Benares, as it has been Anglicized. Benares is one of many holy cities dedicated to one or another of their many deities; it is of particular significance to Lord Shiva, who is said to have founded it five thousand years ago. Gobinda had tried to secure a position for Eliza in Benares before I first met her: I advised her against it. Irony has an unhappy habit of catching up with us, don’t you think?”
“Aptly put.”
“Thank you,” she said, with a gracious nod of her head. “Gobinda is an adept—a practitioner of the same Art you, Monsieur Dupotet and James Esdaile all employ or employed. The disciplines of the school at Benares, however, are closely tied to the worship of Lord Shiva. A considerable body of knowledge was made available to me during my eight months in residence.
“Prior to the Mutiny, there were very few Englishmen there, but a strong presence was stationed at Ramnagar Fort afterward, though the Kashi Naresh was not at all happy about it; because of the conflict, Westerners were said to be disliked in the city. Most of them had no interaction with the natives, of course; I was even warned by the commander that I should consider withdrawing to Bombay or Calcutta—but due to my relationship with Gobinda, I was as safe there as in any city in India.”
“This Gobinda fellow was your teacher in Benares. Did he convert you to become a Hindoo?”
“He most certainly did not,” she answered. “And my progress in the Art as it is taught there was limited.”
“Because of your unwillingness to embrace the Hindoo pantheon?”
“No, rather because I could not dance.” She vouchsafed me a tiny smile, as if that explained everything.
“I see.” I did not, but was unwilling to admit it.
“I must tell you, William, that Lord Shiva indeed exists. It is quite apparent to me that whatever He is, He is extremely powerful. The opponents we faced a few days ago are as children to Him. I had a few momentary contacts with His avatar. I was terribly frightened by them, and by the realization that the Mutiny itself—though caused by deep resentments and strong feelings—was set off by something else, something completely different and dangerous.”
“I suspect I know what that might be.”
“I am sure you do. It is what is drawing you to India, William—and drawing me along with you. The Great Rebellion was set off in part by the effects of the artifact that James Esdaile left behind when he departed India nine years ago—a tiny bronze statue that only just contains a spirit more powerful than anything we have faced.
“We must find it, and find a safe place for it.”
“‘We’?”
“Of course, we,” she said to me, as if it were the most natural conclusion in the world. “We have had this discussion already, William. You continue to assume that you can accomplish this task alone. Le Maître told me it was one of your great failings. You simply must be shut of this conceit.
“When we reach Bombay, we should be able to gain some further insights, and I can help you search for the object in Calcutta. I was at James Esdaile’s house the night Eliza was taken by the chthonios,” she added, looking away from me. “If only for her sake, I should like to make up for that.”
I could recognize an irresistible force when I saw it, and saw no alternative than to say, “Madam, I shall be glad of your help.”