The Blood Dimmed Tide Read online

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘What other conclusion can one draw? It’s obvious the ghosts don’t exist. Besides, I suspect the medium is attempting to have a row with her husband.’ He grinned. ‘Perhaps even seduce him.’

  ‘But that’s idiotic. If she was, surely she’d be more discreet about her intentions.’

  ‘Sometimes an argument in public is a safer way to defuse accumulated marital tensions.’ Marley walked over to the table and inspected the pages of Georgie’s handwriting. ‘No one else in the room saw or heard the spirits. Only one person did, and she purports to have no conscious memory of their communication. The only evidence is her scrawled handwriting and a series of doodles.’

  One of the servant girls drew back the drapes that covered the windows with a dramatic swish. In the distance, the mountain of Ben Bulben lay dark as a crypt under a gathering rainstorm.

  ‘How can you be so sure she’s a fraud? Yeats is a world expert on séances and mediums.’

  ‘And so is Georgie. I understand she has been a member of the Golden Dawn since the age of seventeen.’

  ‘If she is a fake, what has she to gain? She didn’t earn a penny for her performance tonight. Besides, the séance practically descended into chaos. Why humiliate her husband by creating these so-called “frustrators”?’

  ‘Mrs Yeats gained something more important than money tonight.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Her husband’s undivided attention. The more she holds it, the less time he can give to his former loves. Don’t you see? The “frustrators” are crucial to the fraud. They add confusion and stall for time. Otherwise, Yeats would want to publish the messages from the otherworld immediately, and reveal them to the world as proof that spirits exist, that there is a reality outside ours. No. Every hoax needs an element of failure. Georgie is happy writing endless reams of nonsense and speaking in her strange voices. As long as she has Yeats’ interest, the charade is worth continuing. And anytime he presses for results, she introduces the evil spirits to create confusion and delay. Look at what happened this evening. The “frustrators” did not allow Rosemary’s ghost to speak because she was never there in the first place.’

  Marley chuckled as I stared doubtfully at the pages of automatic writing. Remarkably, his face had relaxed. The more sinister world of spies and subterfuge had loosened its grip on him, if only for a moment. ‘To tell you the truth, I enjoyed this evening’s performance. It was more fun than a trip to the theatre to watch the captivating Maud Gonne.’

  ‘You should get out more often, if that’s the case.’

  ‘You’re one to talk.’ He stared at me knowingly.

  I felt his disbelieving mind search out a new target. ‘Do you have me under surveillance?’ I asked warily.

  ‘Do you think I’d tell you if you were?’

  I hesitated to reply.

  ‘Unless you and Mr Yeats have devised a method of vanishing magically from the scene, I suggest you avoid Sligo’s beaches, especially at night.’ His face darkened again. I could sense the firmness of his suspicions. They were a stronghold, an unassailable vantage point from which he could launch pinpoint attacks on my integrity. Under his cynical gaze, I grew acutely aware of an unfounded sense of guilt.

  Marley added, ‘I need hardly remind you what the punishment for treason is.’

  ‘Trying to make contact with a ghost is hardly treason.’

  ‘Let me save you and Mr Yeats the bother of any further botched séances or embarrassing paranormal investigations. Rosemary O’Grady was a fanatic. Of the same mould as Maud Gonne. Generally speaking, fanatical women are unpredictable and dangerous creatures. They resist being controlled. They are cold-blooded and have no fear of death, and they don’t always obey orders or stick to plans.’

  ‘What orders had she been given?’

  ‘My sources tell me she was at the centre of a plot to bring German weapons by submarine to Sligo.’

  I tried to absorb the implications of what he had said.

  ‘This was an international conspiracy that threatened the British Isles as a whole. A plot hatched to plunge Ireland into chaos. I want to stress to you that withholding information about the Daughters of Erin and their intentions is tantamount to treason.’

  ‘I have nothing to withhold.’ I thought of the Ireland I had encountered so far, and wondered whether it was not already slipping into chaos.

  ‘We are merely asking your cooperation if you come across any information about gun smuggling.’

  ‘Am I being recruited as a spy?’

  ‘We are seeking your cooperation, as a loyal British citizen.’

  ‘So if I should uncover a plot to smuggle weapons I should contact you.’

  ‘That is correct.’

  Marley backed off with a smirk. I left the church in a hurry. I had the strong feeling that any further spiritual investigations conducted by Yeats in public would not involve his wife as a medium. He was under considerable strain and I feared he might try to free himself from the smothering and unfamiliar constraints of marriage by doing something desperate like contacting his former lover, Maud Gonne.

  17

  Eight of Cups

  CAPTAIN Oates picked his way over heaped landfall, broken fencing, treeroots ripped from the earth, and strange-looking stone slabs sticking up at odd angles like headstones amid the sea pebbles. If he had not been tracking the mysterious movements of a large sailing boat, he would have stopped to examine the slabs. As it was, he would not be diverted from his surveillance. He had been following the boat’s course all evening. He watched it through his field glasses, sailing westward, riding the tide, then labouring hard against the currents, its hull low in the breaking water. He knew that the spring tides poured quickly between the rocky promontories of the bay, and that more nimble boats had been squeezed to smithereens between its rocky jaws.

  He watched the boat inch its way through an obstacle course of raised sand beds and sharp rocks until it was about to slip past the headland, when it mysteriously swung back to port and returned into view, threading its way back across the bay. Finally, he had found something worth studying in the wind-tossed oblivion of the Atlantic. After months of interrogation, the turbulent waves of Blind Sound were delivering their secrets.

  Darkness fell, and a light began to wink every ten minutes or so from the boat. It occurred to him that its crew were signalling someone on the shore. He was about to look for cover when he heard a noise from the rocks behind. Automatically, he felt for his revolver, realising as he did so the futility of the movement. He turned, prepared to explain that he was out for a stroll and had been observing the movements of what might have been porpoises or basking sharks swimming out in the bay.

  However, he offered no such explanation when he saw who was advancing towards him. It was someone who no longer had an interest in porpoises or sharks, or boats that might be smuggling weapons or contraband. A figure little more than a deeper shade of black unfurled against the black cliffs, gradually forming into the thin shape of a woman with a hood obscuring her face.

  Oates stood rooted to the spot, at once alarmed by the return of Rosemary’s ghost and reassured, the way one feels when confronted by a familiar face in a nightmare. A fresh surge of sea-water washed against his feet.

  ‘Why are you following me?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I need to know.’

  The ghost did not reply. Her hooded face was like a vortex threatening to pull him in.

  ‘The least you can tell me is whether you’re here to do good or evil.’

  ‘I’m here to give you a message.’

  ‘What sort of message?’

  ‘That you are at risk of serious harm.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Forces over which you have no control.’
/>   ‘Supernatural forces?’

  ‘Human forces. Of the most dangerous kind.’

  He was aware of the sea at his back, the forward rush of each breaking wave, and the sound of what might have been a boat’s hull smacking against the churning water.

  ‘What were you searching for every time you waded out into the bay?’

  The ghost backed away, her head hung low with the submissiveness of someone trapped in an eternity of waiting. The sound of rough voices rose from the sea.

  ‘I heard a report that it was just seashells.”

  ‘Not seashells. Men.’

  What type of seductress are you, he wondered.

  ‘Germans, to be precise,’ said the ghost.

  ‘What did you want from them?’

  Her voice turned cold. ‘Guns. Bombs. Weapons for the Daughters of Erin. I was tasked with finding a suitable bay along the Sligo coast for a German U-boat to land safely. I waded out and measured the depths of the water and the movement of the tides in every cove and inlet for miles.’

  ‘Is that what you were doing the night you were murdered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What else happened that night?’

  ‘I discovered that the Daughters of Erin were being betrayed. I collected all the tell-tale clues but couldn’t work out who to trust with the information.’

  He thought to himself that that was the problem with belonging to a secret revolutionary society. Who did you trust to report your suspicions?

  ‘I found out there was never going to be any weapons arriving at Blind Sound. Only contraband. Alcohol mostly.’

  Oates thought of the girl with the fire of revolution burning in her head, wading out in her long dress every night into the Atlantic. A fluttering sound filled the air behind him, like that of wind moulding the canvas of a sail. A curtain of luminous sea mist passed between them. The wind dropped, and the waves grew softer, the sea denser.

  The figure of the ghost seemed distracted. Something was different about her tonight.

  ‘You must go now,’ she urged him. ‘If you stay here any longer, you’ll face the same death I endured.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘The smugglers will hide you in a coffin and let the sea swallow you up.’

  ‘Then I will make the sea spit me out.’

  ‘Come with me now to the top of the cliffs. Up there you will see everything with absolute clarity.’

  Oates stared up at the moonlit cliffs, the crumbling rocks that gave onto the direst drops. He knew of higher cliffs but few were as imposing as the overhanging cliffs at Blind Sound. Again, the ghost urged him to leave, as though he were stubbornly clinging to a sinking ship. He sensed a note of growing exasperation in her voice. The wind rippled through her long black gown. She shivered.

  ‘Sometimes I can’t help wondering if you’re not dead at all,’ he said. ‘That you might be more alive than I am.’

  Her form was immediately charged with energy. She sidestepped him and jumped onto a rock. ‘Tell that to the priest who buried me.’

  He climbed the rock and clutched at her long gown. It struck him that he could be as wanton as he liked with a ghost.

  ‘Your heart is healthy,’ said the figure. ‘Pulsating in its own blood. I see it. I feel it. But mine is rotten and shrivelled.’

  ‘I want to see your face.’

  ‘You can’t look at me,’ she whispered urgently.

  His hand pulled at her gown, tore it apart. He felt cold flesh and fell back in surprise. She seemed to be sighing but it might have been the sound of the wind flowing through her torn robe.

  ‘I still can’t see your face.’

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ she warned. ‘It’s the face of a living woman you want to see.’

  She was agitated. Her body trembled.

  ‘Then why do you tempt me?’ There was hurt in his voice.

  ‘I have taken my life to the grave.’

  ‘I’m not afraid to join you.’

  ‘If you want me there is no need to go to the trouble of dying. There is a better way.’

  ‘How?’

  She removed her hood and revealed the silhouette of her face. The wind whipped her hair against her cheeks. He reached out to brush it aside but at that instant, an oil lamp flashed from a nearby rock. Its intermittent beam distracted his eyes. Someone was advancing towards them. The ghostly figure of the girl flickered against the light and then disappeared swiftly from view.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he shouted into the darkness. But she was already gone.

  He looked up. Two men, bare-chested and muscle-bound, were trotting towards him with oil lamps swinging in their hands. He had seen them before, the night the swimmer had been dragged ashore tied to an anchor rope. Their malevolent faces surrounded him, the grey hairs on their chests matted from the sea.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ they demanded. He could smell the salt tang of the Atlantic.

  ‘A ghost.’

  ‘Are you fooling with us?’ said one of them, removing a knife from his belt.

  ‘Wait,’ said the other. ‘It’s the captain. The chief wants to speak to him.’

  He bounded into the darkness but they ran after him, diving onto his legs, the three of them scuffling together. Oates tried to roll down the beach into the sea, his body lacquered with sand and seaweed, but he was no match for the two men with their wide shoulders and powerful gripping arms. They were well-rehearsed gymnasts of violence; in the light of the oil lamps, their shadows threw fierce somersaults against the sand and rocks. Soon they had overpowered him, pinning his body to the soft sand, raining down a barrage of blows. A whimper emerged from his dry throat, a plea for mercy. He gulped down cold air that reeked of blood and salt.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said a voice from the rocks. It spoke loudly but without conviction. A figure stepped into view. At first, Oates believed he was safe when he recognised who it was, a fellow member of the Crown forces, but when he stared into his eyes, any hope that he might be saved rapidly dissolved.

  ‘That wasn’t a ghost you saw, Captain Oates,’ growled the voice. ‘Ghosts don’t hide their modesty behind cloaks and hoods. After all, who ever heard tell of a lost soul worried about a rip in its gown?’

  18

  King of Pentacles

  ON his home turf, Yeats was a master in the theatre of disorientation. His figure ghosted through the alleyways and side streets of Sligo town with an apparently aimless sense of direction, as though he were running blindfolded through a labyrinth. In reality, he was following a series of secretly rehearsed markers: a broken water pump, a tiny windowpane filled with the vivid greenery of shamrocks, a flaking statue of the Virgin Mary holding vigil in a damp gable wall.

  A thin drizzle had been falling since we left the séance, thickening the visibility and soaking the spirit of the town’s inhabitants, forcing them to retreat within their shuttered houses. I hurried after Yeats, my brisk steps faltering at every watery crossroads, more alleyways spiralling off into the sodden gloom, my feet crunching and slithering as the cobbled pavement gave way to slops of manure and household waste.

  At points along the journey, I glanced behind, looking for a telltale shadow, the sheen of a policeman’s uniform, or a face hidden beneath a low-brimmed hat. I kept imagining the lanky figure of Marley standing in darkened doorways, patient as a heron waiting for the right moment to strike at its prey, but the only form of life I saw was a solitary cat, which fled at my approach, a half-eaten fish head trailing from its mouth.

  Yeats pushed on until he spotted the final mark, a small thorn bush growing from a rotten chimney. We turned the corner of a building that looked frozen in the act of collapse, and found ourselves in a narrow street of shops, dumpily built, their walls bulging like the sides of a boat, the eaves of their roofs barely at head-hei
ght. I stared into windows so dark they looked as though they had absorbed a century of shadows. A visitor unused to Irish ways would have glanced over the several dusty jars discreetly displayed behind the glass and not realised the buildings were shops at all.

  A shout answered Yeats’ knock on the third door, and we stepped into what appeared on first impression to be a long, tightly packed wardrobe of unstitched greatcoats and brightly coloured dresses, but turned out on closer inspection to be a small but gruesomely packed abattoir. We pushed through the hung carcasses of sheep and pigs, sodden rags of flesh brushing against our heads. The sawdust-covered floor carried the imprints of bloody boots; offal smeared the distempered walls. The pungent metallic smell of something that was not quite organic hung in the air, which, mixed with the bloody smell of meat, made a sickly cocktail that had my stomach retching.

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’ I enquired between gasps.

  ‘To prove that Georgie is not the only one who can eavesdrop on ghosts.’

  I miscalculated the height of a step and fell against a row of carcasses. They parted like a grisly curtain and revealed what appeared to be a keg of gunpowder, the source of the unusual metallic smell. Hurriedly, I followed Yeats to the back of the room, trying not to show my surprise. Yeats appeared ignorant of what lay concealed behind the carcasses.

  The head of a little old man appeared from behind a butcher’s table with a ruffled look of surprise, like that of a priest disturbed from the inner sanctum of his confessional. His hair was stiff and wild, and his eyes had a slightly haunted look, as though the invisible world was enacting its strange myths just at the corner of his gaze.

  ‘My dear Mr Yeats,’ he exclaimed, rubbing his hands. He hurried to the door, hung up a ‘CLOSED’ sign and turned the key. ‘I have exactly what you’re looking for.’ He led us into a back room that was even smaller than the one we had left.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Owen Ahearne.’ Yeats practically cooed when he said the name. ‘A butcher by trade, but he’s also Ireland’s greatest expert on phantasmal acoustics. In his youth, he studied under Madame Blavatsky’s guidance at the Theosophical Society. Last year I invited him over to London to instruct the Golden Dawn on his latest research on metallic mediums; man-made devices which can tune into celestial conversations.’