The Blood Dimmed Tide Read online

  ‘Captain Oates,’ I yelled, but all I heard was my own echo.

  When the sea ebbed, I waded through the water and clambered into the darkness of the cave. It opened out into a chill galley-like chamber, its floor carpeted with seaweed. A rough ladder had been fashioned from rope and driftwood, and dangled from an opening in the roof, far above the reach of the tide. I climbed up into a smaller chamber. It was a dwelling fit for a hermit. The stone floor was covered with empty seashells and the bones of small animals. I crawled through the wicks of spent candles positioned regularly along the floor. The sheen of the wet rocks gave the appearance of countless eyes following my movements. After a few yards, the daylight gave out completely.

  ‘Come out,’ I called. ‘I only want to talk.’

  I waited for a while, shivering with the cold, my ears boiling with the magnified roar of the sea. Eventually I gave up and returned to the beach where Yeats was still standing motionlessly before the darkening Atlantic. I called out his name. He turned away from the sea in exasperation, his hair drenched with sea-spray.

  ‘The storm is drowning out all communication with the spirit world,’ he shouted. ‘We should come back another time. When the sea is calm, or by moonlight. When the powers of Neptune are greatly diminished.’

  Yeats was still convinced we should be trying to contact the dead girl’s spirit. However, I was beginning to realise that Oates was the key. He was the man we should be talking to, but he was more difficult to communicate with than a wraith on the waves. A black mood of frustration hung over us as we departed from Blind Sound.

  Yeats’ dissatisfaction deepened when we got back to his hotel. The hour had passed during which he and Georgie usually conducted their final automatic writing sessions of the day. She had left him a note and retired to bed. If Yeats wished to seek advice from his spiritual guides, he was going to have to make contact with them without his clairvoyant muse by his side.

  16

  Page of Swords

  IT seemed a whimsical landscape designer had once passed through the grounds of Lissadell, leaving behind a sprawling collection of outbuildings and glass houses interlinked by paths of broken seashells and overflowing gardens, odd corners of which he had filled with sundials, pillars, and follies now grappled by ivy and honeysuckle.

  Yeats had summoned me the next evening, along with a group of servant girls and former acquaintances of Miss O’Grady, to one of the estate’s oldest buildings, a disused Roman Catholic church. The building was so overrun by creepers that only its entrance door was visible, a blackened arch of seventeenth century masonry; its sinister effect heightened by the sudden appearance of bats swirling out of nooks in the old stone.

  Sauntering in as if he owned the place, Yeats led us through a low vaulted passage littered with the refuse of old nests and last winter’s leaves. His footsteps were unnaturally loud, their hollow sound reflecting the emptiness of the church’s inner sanctum. A table and chairs had been arranged in the middle of the floor for the evening’s performance, a private séance, with his wife performing the role of medium. The poet had chosen to wear a tight-fitting, corn-coloured suit with a green silk tie and dark trousers that looked more like breeches. Stiffly squeezed into his jacket, with his hair flapping in two grey-black wings, he resembled a butterfly struggling to escape its exotically coloured cocoon. The thought flashed through my mind that his attire might do more harm than good in attracting the spirit of a dead woman.

  Just before proceedings were due to begin, a figure appeared in the shadows of the doorway. Yeats froze at the sight of Wolfe Marley advancing towards us, his footsteps as heavy as Yeats’ but without the echo, just a dull, scraping sound like that of a badger padding across the forest floor.

  Yeats quickly recovered his poise, fixed his silk tie and with a little bow, welcomed the British agent to the séance. For a moment, I thought I detected an almost imperceptible change in Marley, his self-styled cynicism giving way to a flicker of reverence. He ducked his head and sidled to the back of the room where he found a seat behind the row of servant girls. He winked at me and produced from his damp coat a little leather-bound bible, which he patted as if for reassurance.

  A set of drapes had been hung over the arched windows. The only light came from an oil lamp positioned on the central table at which Yeats’ wife was already seated in an elegant high-backed chair. With the exception of Marley and myself the observers were all women, invited by Yeats to verify the identity of Miss O’Grady’s spirit, should she deign to make her presence felt. The spooky atmosphere of the disused church had already enchanted them. The air vibrated with their deep concentration, their rapt faces barely registering Marley’s late arrival.

  Yeats began to pace the room, a sheaf of papers in his hand, walking his haunted tightrope. The séance was already running late, and a spasm of irritation flared upon his drawn features. A lover of rituals and decorum, Yeats could rarely ignore his sense of how things should be done. The upheaval caused by Marley’s unexpected arrival had unsettled him. He returned to his meditations in a distracted manner. He murmured loudly, fidgeting with his pince-nez. He lifted them from the bridge of his nose, passed them back and forth between his hands, waved them in the air, and then slipped them into his breast pocket before finally gathering them up and folding them in their case, which he absent-mindedly left at the edge of the table, along with half his papers.

  After a great deal of huffing and puffing, he completed his invocations and preparations. Then he turned to address his audience in a low voice.

  ‘My dear guests, I must warn you that in a few minutes you will be surrounded by an invisible host of dead people.’ He stared closely at the row of servant girls, his eyes charged with a magnetism that seemed to draw all the shadows of the empty church towards his strained features. ‘In this very room several of your relatives may already be waiting, along with the ghost of Rosemary O’Grady.’

  He invited the audience to ask questions of the spirits, if they felt strongly motivated. ‘Don’t hold back,’ he urged them. ‘Remember that if a question forms on your lips, it is because somewhere in the hidden universe there lies an answer.’ He reassured them by adding that if anyone felt overpowered by the influence of a malign spirit, he would immediately conduct a ritual which would sever their connections with the harmful spirit.

  His audience may not have understood him, but they did not seem to mind. It was enough to be in the presence of someone, who, in their eyes, had successfully invoked the spirits of the invisible world. They followed his every word and movement, as children do, safe in the knowledge that someone wiser than they would protect them from the pitiless forces of the wandering dead.

  Their attention shifted to Georgie, who had shed her air of sober respectability in a way that would have shocked the North London branch of the Women’s Fellowship, of which her mother was still an ardent member. She stood up, revealing a long black gown with three strands of golden rope tied around her waist. She raised a dagger dipped in wine and intoned the oath, ‘I solemnly promise to persevere with courage and determination in the labours of the Divine Science.’ Then she lowered herself back into the seat. Georgie was thoroughly steeped in the rituals and lore of the Golden Dawn. An adventurous, educated woman, she had joined the order four years previously, with Yeats as her sponsor, and had diligently climbed the order’s ladder of knowledge, mastering astrological science and lunar studies, as well as the order’s difficult colour and geometrical symbolism.

  Her knowledge of the moon’s movements, and the entire planetary and zodiacal symbols was so profound that she and Yeats could converse fluently in this private language. Lately, she had risen to the highest levels, and attained knowledge of the order’s most dangerous practices, meditations on the secret Hindu symbols, such as the black egg of the spirit, which was believed to convey powers of clairvoyance and spirit channelling.

  Marley leane
d towards me and whispered, ‘I hope they’re not planning on sacrificing anything. Or anyone.’

  Yeats walked over to one of the draped windows and opened it slightly. A breeze went straight through the room. Georgie’s dark hair stirred. Her eyes were open but aimed past Yeats and the assembled spectators. They had the clouded look of someone in a trance.

  ‘Do I speak clearly enough?’ said Yeats in the deep, Homeric tones which told those assembled that they were in the presence of a great poet and orator, even if it made some of them squirm.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Georgie.

  ‘What messages do you have for us?’

  After a pause, she drew a strangely formed beast on a sheet of paper. Yeats beckoned me to his side to help him examine the figure.

  ‘Is it a stag?’ he whispered.

  ‘No, a unicorn.’

  ‘A portent clearly.’

  ‘But of what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But this is your field of expertise.’

  ‘Sometimes the medium’s symbols are indecipherable. Sometimes they are a concrete expression of a thought so abstract it cannot be divined by mortal minds.’

  Georgie began to write in her strange, jerking script. Yeats retrieved the page before it fell onto the floor. It read: ‘Lie down every afternoon for thirty minutes between two and three and meditate on the heir.’

  Yeats sighed. He kept his voice low. ‘It’s Martha.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of Georgie’s more maternal spirit guides. She’s all “baby-baby”. The conception of a Yeats heir is top of her agenda.’

  ‘How many spirits does Georgie have?’

  ‘So many I have not yet recorded them all.’ He sighed. ‘Some are what I have termed “frustrators”, spirits of evil intent who try to disrupt the flow of communication with false information and lies.’

  I stared at his wife, imagining the countless spirits floating above her, colourless and shapeless shades in search of form, lost souls hovering between life and death. I wondered whether Rosemary’s ghost was among them.

  With a flourish of her pen, Georgie began writing words upside down. Four times she inscribed the equation ‘sword=birth’ followed by another ‘fish=conception’. She announced she would bear a son in a year’s time if Yeats performed the necessary rituals.

  Yeats coloured at the outburst. ‘Enough of this baby talk. Can’t you speak of anything else?’ he hissed.

  Her voice coarsened. ‘We instruct Saturn to melt into Venus.’

  ‘What?’ replied Yeats. ‘Again, tonight? But I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Not too exhausted to pose question after question.’

  ‘I’m not an animal. I can’t live up to these demands.’

  The servant girls, who had been watching the exchange with fascination, turned to each other and giggled. So far, Georgie had maintained an enviable serenity. Yeats glared at his young wife as though she had brought this humiliation upon him deliberately. He dropped his gaze, feeling mocked. His hands, a middle-aged man’s slightly gnarled, sun-spotted hands, sat clasped tightly between his knees.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he persisted.

  ‘You’re trying to get away.’

  ‘Away from what?’

  ‘Your marital obligations.’

  Yeats closed his eyes and groaned.

  ‘There is a blackness within you that keeps bubbling up. Can’t you stop being so gloomy and pay more attention to the needs of the medium?’

  While Georgie spoke, she doodled. A rash of triangles drawn like daggers spattered across the page. Yeats grew pale. He stood up and moved to the other side of the table where the bottle of wine sat with some glasses. Turning to me, he whispered, ‘I’m under attack by my chief tormentor. A malign spirit called Leo who introduces himself with the symbol of a dagger.’

  ‘I’m not going to let you off so lightly,’ said the voice.

  He knocked back a glass of wine in a single gulp. ‘Oh yes you will.’

  ‘Drinking will only heighten the fatigue.’

  His hand shaking slightly, he filled another glass.

  ‘You must keep up your obligations.’

  ‘I must? Why? Who says I must?’

  I rose and was about to say something but he threw me a look that made me hold my silence. Georgie stopped speaking and seemed to sink into a deeper trance. Yeats relaxed slowly, like a man who had appeased an intimidating child. The air in the room changed slightly. The smell of roses wafted from the window. Yeats held Georgie’s hand and she returned a timid pressure, gazing at him with mute eyes.

  I leaned toward Marley and whispered, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Mesmerising,’ he replied. ‘A haunted church, a beautiful medium in a trance, a deluded poet seeking the hidden secrets of the universe, and a room apparently full of mischievous ghosts. I’m captivated.’ A light had been switched on in his eyes, as if a pinch of humanity and imagination still burned there.

  Yeats addressed the spirit. ‘You must understand we have not come here to discuss domestic matters. The last time you monopolised the séance. I command you, let the other spirits speak.’

  Several minutes passed and Georgie did not utter a sound. Then her voice softened. ‘I see a young lady. She has a message.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I cannot hear. She is too far away. Now she is drawing closer.’

  ‘What is she wearing?’

  ‘A dress embroidered with flowers.’

  The smell of rose blossoms was so strong I stiffened. I tried to push away the fantastical idea that somewhere in the room the spirit of a murdered young woman had just stepped out of the pitch black of eternity.

  ‘She is very afraid.’

  ‘Why is she afraid?’

  ‘She says there is a hostile influence in the room. She is pointing to someone in the corner. A malign influence with bristling grey hair. If you won’t drive him away she’ll scream.’

  ‘Is she referring to a demon or the actual presence of a man?’ Yeats glanced at Marley.

  ‘All men are demons in her eyes.’

  Yeats paused. ‘Then am I a demon, too?’ He raised his chin in wounded defiance.

  Georgie’s voice thickened. ‘Why not? Aren’t you a man?’

  ‘Then your chosen medium is the soulmate of a demon.’

  ‘A demon and his soulmate.’ The voice gave a low chuckle. ‘What a stirring combination.’

  ‘I want to hear more about the murdered girl.’

  ‘She has a story to tell but doesn’t want to speak to you. She says the room is not safe. She’d rather talk to you on the beach at night. Under the influence of Neptune.’

  ‘I have taken all precautions possible to make the church safe.’

  Georgie’s voice changed tone again. ‘You still wish for a son to consummate your marriage?’

  ‘What has wishing for a son got to do with this séance?’

  ‘Because it involves the medium. Some men torment their wives wishing for a son. They have no idea of the havoc they create. You should be content that her blood is healthy and the children will be well.’ The voice continued, insinuating, probing sensitive ground. ‘The medium doesn’t think you are capable.’

  ‘How am I not capable?’ Yeats struggled to speak with authority, but his voice broke into a bleat.

  ‘She fears you lack the passion. She knows about your secrets.’

  ‘What secrets?’

  ‘That you’re still in contact with Iseult Gonne. That you wrote to her during your honeymoon to let her know how unhappy you were. Is that correct?’

  I could sense Yeats’ tension. He had become captivated by Iseult after agreeing to take charge of her introduction to London’s literary society in the summer of 1916, and had propose
d to her immediately after her mother Maud Gonne spurned his latest proposal. However, the affection she showed towards him was more in keeping with that of a young woman to an adoptive father and guardian, rather than a suitor in love.

  ‘To a degree.’

  ‘How often do you write to her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Barely once a week. I’ve only met her twice, since the wedding.’

  At this revelation, a buzz of conversation erupted from the audience of servant girls. Distracted, Georgie’s eyes fluttered and she awoke. Yeats sat down, sighing. The spell was broken, the moment lost. Even though he was a renowned poet and orator immersed in public affairs, he was still capable of being surprised by his young wife, of being caught short by the interrogative gifts of her spirit companions.

  In spite of my best attempts to mollify Yeats, his embarrassment made him resentful and reluctant to talk to anyone after the séance. Without uttering another word, he swept out through the heavy doors of the disused church with Georgie hurrying after him. I made to follow them but found my path blocked by Marley. He was determined to share his opinions about the séance.

  ‘Mr Yeats surprised me this evening,’ he said, staring at me intently. ‘He has come all the way down from his ivory tower and shown himself to be a man of flesh and vulnerability. A harassed husband and soon, I fear, a harassed father.’

  I avoided his gaze.

  A note of contempt sounded in Marley’s voice. ‘Tell him he should stick to his poetry.’

  ‘Are you suggesting the séance was a failure?’

  ‘A successful fraud, rather than a failure,’ he declared. ‘No more than that. One of the most beautifully acted deceptions I have ever seen. The medium’s performance was a pièce de résistance that would grace the Abbey stage any day of the week.’