Part 8 (1/2)
”We can discuss him later. Will you join us?”
”I confess, Lord Atwood-I'm curious.”
”You'll have to stop calling me that. Call me Mercury. It's a game, but rather an important one-we don't use the names of ordinary life here. All are equal. All seekers in the dark, aren't we? Our common goal is understanding, and we are all equally distant from it. Besides, you can't have Mr Smith the butcher or Mr Boggs the bank clerk stamping about in the astral stuff, knocking things over. Or Lord What's-his-name of What-have-you, for that matter. So-you need a new name.”
”A nom de magicienne? Something Latin, I suppose?”
”As a matter of fact, I was thinking Venus.”
Josephine thought that was very inappropriate, and said so.
Atwood smiled, and opened a door onto an upper gallery of a large library.
A wrought-iron staircase led down to the library's floor, where a little group of men and women stood, making conversation, or carrying out obscure preparations. A large circular table occupied the centre of the room. In the middle of the table there was an arrangement of spherical electrical lamps glowing in a variety of odd hues; the room was otherwise gloomy. A man in a black coat bustled around, wiping the gla.s.s of the lamps, adjusting their flames and nudging them in slight orbits around one another, with the care of an artist. Every time he moved a lamp, ripples of dim glinting light ran across the book-bindings on the walls of the room, s.h.i.+mmering like schools of fish.
There was a pattern painted on the parquet floor, in blue and red, green and purple and gold. It had something of the look of a star-map rendered by an astronomer in the grip of either hysteria or genius. Thick curving lines, with arrow-heads pointing in all directions; lines made of characters that Josephine couldn't recognise; a series of concentric circles, the outermost of which reached all the way to the feet of the bookshelves at the edge of the room. The table sat near the centre of these circles, nearly but not quite at the heart of the pattern.
On one wall there was an immense grandfather clock. In a corner there was an untidy collection of musical instruments; in another corner lay a heap of tools-a broom, paintbrushes in a bucket, a ladder, a rifle.
Atwood leaned over the railing. ”Now, that's Jupiter down there, in the black dress. She has a temper, and considers herself one of the great brains of England-which she may very well be, for all I know! I don't consider myself more than a stumbler in the dark, after all-and so I make up for my deficiencies by having a circle of talent always around me. And that chap there in the green, the bald one with the philosophical beard, he's a theologian-he goes by Ura.n.u.s, when he's a guest here. The chap who resembles the Prime Minister goes by Neptune. Do you see the rules of the game? We have a vacancy for a Venus. Now that I think of it, we've never had a poet before! Ah, and the Indian fellow there-”
”Mercury.” The woman Atwood had named Jupiter called up from below. Her voice was sharp, ringing, impatient. ”Can we begin?”
Atwood glanced at Josephine and rolled his eyes. Then he turned back to the door behind them and performed a quick series of gestures with his hands, rather like the stations of the cross, and muttered something too quiet and quick for Josephine to hear.
He leaned over the balcony again. ”It's safe,” he said. ”As safe as anywhere in London these days, anyway.”
The woman he'd called Jupiter pointed at Josephine. ”You invited a ninth, without telling me?”
”A happy coincidence. Can we squeeze her in, do you think?”
”I think you've been keeping me in the dark, Mercury, and you know I dislike that. Now, come down, and stop playing the fool.”
”Wait,” Ura.n.u.s said. ”How do we know she's not one of theirs?”
Atwood sighed, turned to Josephine, and took both of her hands in his. ”Are you,” he said, ”one of theirs?”
”I hardly know who you are.”
”Well, that's good enough for me.”
Atwood descended the staircase, and Josephine followed.
The man they'd called Ura.n.u.s grumbled but returned to his conversation. He was talking to a fat, pale young man in a turban; discussing the news of the campaign in Afghanistan, where the Army was encountering difficulties. Hangings all round. Crack of the whip. So on and so forth. She was both relieved and disappointed that their conversation was so utterly conventional.
It all reminded her in an odd way of her first arrival at Cambridge. The book-lined room and the stuffy opulence. The sense of ancient ritual and a club to which one was being admitted, on sufferance; the cast of eccentrics, bores, wits, and geniuses; the looming threat of Examination.
”Well,” said Jupiter. She was arranging cards on the table, and rearranging the lamps, while the man in the black coat-who gave Josephine a business-like nod-arranged the chairs. The man who went by Ura.n.u.s and the young man in the turban were now talking about the depreciation of the rupee-or, at least, Ura.n.u.s was lecturing and the younger man was nodding. The turbaned man did not look Indian; the man Atwood had identified as Indian-solid and dark and white-haired-wore a bright red tie, and no turban.
Atwood took Jupiter's hand, smiling, and kissed it.
”Not now,” she snapped. ”You-Venus, if you're to join us. Has Mercury troubled himself to tell you anything? Or has he been playing his usual games?”
”He was ... intriguing.”
”Hah,” Atwood said.
”I'm certain he was. Are you a believer?”
”A believer, ma'am? I don't quite know. A believer in what?”
Jupiter raised an eyebrow. ”Hmph. That's a fair answer to an unfair question, my dear. May the G.o.ds preserve us from believers, spoon-benders, table-rappers, psychometrists, levitators, mesmerists, tea-leaf readers! Well-all you must do is follow instruction. Please sit. There.”
Josephine sat. Something about the woman's voice brooked no question. In Josephine's experience, where an occult fraternity had secret names, like Mercury or Jupiter, there were also hierarchies and t.i.tles and inner and outer circles. This was clearly the inner circle of something-or-other ... except perhaps for the young man in the turban, who had the air of a novice, a supplicant, eager to please. There would usually be a circle within the circle, two or three individuals who were first among equals: they might be very quiet, or they might boom and fizz with energy, but in either case they would be the sort of person who commanded attention. Atwood and Jupiter both fit the description well enough.
Ura.n.u.s and the young man in the turban sat down on either side of Josephine, and took her hands in theirs. The old man's hand was dry, and the young one's hand was damp.
Atwood sat across the table. He winked, then sat back, his face obscured by a lamp.
Josephine counted nine lamps, each glowing a different shade: golden orange, aquamarine, damask-red, sap green, amaranthine....
The business-like man in the black coat set up a camera on a tripod. Then he lit incense in a little brazier and sat down between Atwood and the Indian man, placing his hands over theirs.
”Your b.l.o.o.d.y chairs are b.l.o.o.d.y heavy, Mercury.”
”Quiet,” Jupiter said. She walked around the table.
The pale young man in the turban leaned in close and whispered. ”I know that look. I'm new here too.”
”h.e.l.lo. You must be, ah...”
”Saturn.”
He had an odd, nervous laugh. She smiled politely.
”It's all a bit odd, isn't it? But Lord At-that is, Mercury's company has the most intriguing reputation. Doesn't it? I don't think we've met. Sorry. I'm rather nervous, frankly. One wants to make a good impression. Do you have any notion of what we're supposed to do?”
The scent of the incense filled the room. It was pungent; sweet and oily. Josephine's head began to swim.
”I don't know,” Josephine said. ”They're very secretive.”
Another nervous laugh. The camera clicked.
Jupiter sat. ”You, and you.” She was looking at the camera, but she seemed to be addressing Josephine and the anxious young man in the turban. ”Decide now: stay, or go. There is risk in staying. It will not be great, if you follow instructions, but it is there. I tell you this because there must be trust.”
Josephine said nothing. She was a little alarmed; but she'd heard that sort of dire warning before. Mrs Sedgley often warned of the great peril that the members of the Ordo V.V. 341 faced, peering too deeply into the spirit world.
”I will stay,” said the man in the turban.