When I had visited her on the second of January, I brought legal papers for her to sign so that Charley and I might get our fair share of the £5,000 from Aunt Davis that was the source of her annual income— or be able to assign it to someone we chose—should Mother die before we did.
Everything proceeded at breakneck speed towards the gala dinner at Gloucester Place and theatre party immediately afterward. Caroline and Carrie had decorated the huge house as if there were to be a royal coronation there, and our food bill that week equalled six months of our regular purchases. No matter. It was a time to celebrate.
On a Thursday, I wrote:
90Gloucester Place
Portman Square W.
Jan 17th, 1868
My dear Mother,
It was a great relief to me and to Charley to hear that you had made the move, and established yourself again under Mrs Wells’s care. I am not surprised to hear that you are terribly fatigued by the exertion. But when you have rested I hope and trust you will begin to feel the benefit of this change. Let me hear—in two lines—how you go on—and how soon you will let me come (or let Charley come) and see you in the new place. Remember that the quiet and the freedom from London interruptions are sure to help me to get on with my work. Also—when you can write without too much trouble—let me hear when it will be convenient for me to send a small supply of brandy and wine to Bentham Hill Cottage.
The play goes on wonderfully. Every night the Theatre is crammed. This speculation on the public taste is paying, and promises long to pay me, from fifty to fifty-five pounds a week. So make yourself easy about money matters.
I am getting to nearly halfway through The Moonstone.
No more news at present. Goodbye.
Yours ever afftly WC
LITTLE DID I KNOW that this would be the last letter I should ever write to my dear mother.
That second week of the new year had been so congested with work on The Moonstone and theatrical-related labours that once again I had to move my night at King Lazaree’s from Thursday to Friday. Detective Hatchery did not seem to mind—he said it was easier to find the night away from his regular duties for Inspector Field on Friday than on Thursday—so once again I treated my huge bodyguard to an excellent dinner (this one at the Blue Posts tavern on Cork Street) before he led me into the darkness of the dockside slums and escorted me safely to that terrible place of cold granite and graves that Dickens had long since christened St Ghastly Grim’s Cemetery.
Hatchery had a new book to read through that night of vigil—Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond, I noticed. Dickens had once mentioned to me that he liked the way Thackeray had arbitrarily divided the large novel into three “Books” and had borrowed the idea for all of his own subsequent books. But I did not mention that small professional item to Hatchery, since I was in a hurry to get below.
King Lazaree greeted me as warmly as always. (I had mentioned to him the week before that I might be coming on Friday rather than Thursday, and he had assured me in his perfect English that I would be welcome and expected any time.) Lazaree and his large Chinese guard showed me to my cot and handed me my opium pipe, prepared and lighted, as always. Filled with good feeling about the day and my life—knowing that this pleasurable sense of satisfaction would be enlarged a hundredfold during my hours under the pipe—I closed my eyes and allowed myself, for the hundredth time in the safety of that deep-sheltered cot, to drift up and away on the rising, curling smoke of amplified sensation.
That moment was the end of my life as I had known it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
You may wake now,” says Drood.
I open my eyes. No, that is not correct. My eyes were already open. Now, with his permission, I can see through them.
I cannot lift my head nor move it from side to side, but from where I lie supine on a cold surface, I can see enough to know that I am not in King Lazaree’s opium den.
I am naked—that much I am able to see without moving my head and can tell from the press of cold marble on my back and buttocks that I am lying on what might be a block of stone or a low altar. I feel the movement of cold air across my belly and chest and genitals. Above me on the right, a giant black onyx statue, at least twelve feet tall, shows a man’s body naked to the waist with a short gold skirt wrapped around his middle, and his powerful arms ending in huge, muscled hands hold a golden spear or pike. The man’s body stops at the neck, and the head of a jackal completes the terrible black form. To my left, a similar lance-holding statue rises to the same height, but instead of a jackal’s visage, this one sports the head of some great curved-beaked bird. Both heads stare down at me.
Drood steps into my field of vision and also looks down on me in silence.
The creature is as pale and loathsome as I had dreamt of him in Birmingham and as I had glimpsed him in my home in June of the previous year, but otherwise he looks very little the same.
He is naked from the waist up, except for a wide, heavy collar that appears to be made of hammered gold with inset rubies and strips of lapus. On his naked, grub-white chest hangs a heavy gold figure that at first I take to be a Christian cross, but then notice the elongated loop at the top. I have seen similar items behind glass in the London Museum and even know it is called an ankh, but I have no idea of its significance.
Drood’s nose is still no more than two slits in a living skull’s face, his eyelids are still missing, but around his deep-set eyes he has painted whorls of dark blue—so dark as to appear almost black—that come to points like cat’s eyes at the sides of his temples. A stripe of blood-crimson rises from between where his eyebrows should be and then up over his forehead to bisect his bald, white, and seemingly skinless scalp.
He is carrying a jewel-encrusted dagger. Its tip has been freshly dipped into red paint or blood.
I try to speak but find I cannot. I am not able even to open my mouth or to move my tongue. I can feel my arms, legs, fingers, and toes, but cannot will them to move. Only my eyes and eyelids are mine to control.
He faces to my right, with the dagger in his hand.
“Un re-a an Ptah, uau netu, uau netu, aru re-a an neter nut-a.
I arefm Djewhty, meh aper em heka, uau netu, uau netu, en Suti sau re-a.
Khesef-tu Tem uten-nef senef sai set.
Un re-a, apu re-a an Shu em nut-ef tui ent baat en pet enti ap-nef re en neteru am-es.
Nuk Sekhet! Hems-a her kes amt urt aat ent pet.
Nuk Sakhu! Urt her-ab baiu Annu.
Ar heka neb t’etet neb t’etu er-a sut, aha neteru er-sen paut neteru temtiu.
May Ptah give me voice, remove the wrappings! Remove the wrappings which the lesser gods have placed over my mouth.
Come unto me Djewhty, bearer of Heka, full of Heka, remove the wrappings! Remove the wrappings of Suti which fetter my mouth.
May Tem turn back those who would restrain me.
Give me voice! May my mouth be opened by Shu with that divine instrument of iron with which the gods were given voice.
I am Sekhet! I watch over the heaven of the west.