It was my turn to surprise him! He sat up in his chair and looked at me keenly. I began to doubt he had drunk as much wine as I had first thought.
“Yes—yes I do! Ach, how can it be that such a lowly urchin has sampled the legendary delights of the Calipash Private Library, and yet I have never done so?”
“I could not say, my lord.”
“Perhaps—do you then know why it was burned? I could not understand what my father said regarding the matter. His speech was too far gone when I asked.”
I was happy to have something to hold over him, so instead of answering him directly, I stood and began to fill a plate from the contents of the sideboard—salmon salad, cold chicken, succulent orange-slices, tongue in aspic. I avoided the cold boiled.
As I selected the last elements of my repast, over my shoulder I said, “Your father did not share your opinions, my lord.”
“Oh? How so?”
“He burned the collection after finding me perusing an illustrated copy of Fanny Hill—or, at least, what I know now was a…let us say variant edition of that classic pornography, rewritten to emphasize deviant black magicks than matters carnal. He was so very horrified that he whipped me out the door and into his coach, to be taken directly to school, never permitted to return.”
I did not add that he had discovered me with my hand under my own skirts, frigging myself furiously whilst looking at the naughty pictures, strange though some surely were.
It had been a humid summer day, and I had just that year discovered the delights of that revolving bookcase. Actually, I do not believe my guardian knew of the Private Library before that day, as when the old Lord Calipash walked in on me, he snatched the book away, and, eyes wide, had demanded to know where I found such a thing; after seeing what else the collection held he had shouted that he would burn the lot of it, that such titles could do nothing but induce evil in women and men alike.
Though I have never had any reason to doubt my lord’s having followed through on the threat, it made me sad to hear he had really done so. It was, after all, an impressive collection of very rare, decadent, and often shockingly corrupt tomes. Those on the subject of fornication were my favorite, of course, but those were fewer and farther between than I liked. Far more of the collection was made up of rather mouldy books on performing dark sorceries and profane rituals to honor a pack of heathen gods who sounded rather rum compared to Zeus or Thor. There was one I recall that had loads of filthy pictures—a translation of some sort of foreign sex and murder manual, it seemed to me. I can’t recall the title but I know an Englishman named Dee saw fit to have the book available in our tongue, but I question his decision there. It was a far cry from Burton’s Kama Sutra; I can’t imagine anyone would find those positions or actions pleasurable, but there’s no accounting for taste, I suppose. But that wasn’t alclass="underline" there were books on horrid-sounding cannibal cults of the ancient world—Nameless Cults, I think the title was—and I recall there was even a treatise on the delights of necromancy by a young woman of the family, Rosemary Vincent, whose portrait still hangs in the gallery! Though a stilted homage—or, funny, it must have been a precursor, for she lived during the eighteenth century—to Shelley’s Frankenstein, my ancestor’s manual, Resurrecting the Dead for Work and Pleasure was entertaining reading at the very least, as it detailed how one might create some sort of composite creature from dead bodies using common household items and magic spells, many drawn from some of the other books in the Private Library. I had even cross-referenced a few, bored creature that I was…I wonder if Shelley had a copy of her work? It seems the sort of thing Byron would have had lying about.
It occurs to me as I write this that it was in that strange sex-manual where I had once before seen the chimerical tortoise-image my guardian had been wearing. There had been two creatures hand-drawn upon the page, one very like my guardian’s pendant, and another in the same style, of a winged, hound-faced sphinx. I saw the same image in a few books, come to think of it, though those had Latin titles and were indecipherable to me.
“Well well well, Fanny Hill,” said Orlando Vincent, interrupting my thoughts as he poured himself another tipple from the decanter. “Variant or not, it seems the adage is true—what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. The slut’s pup is a slut herself!”
“Then you must be as illegitimate as I, for you are no gentleman!” I said hotly.
“Mind that temper, cousin,” he said, and slurped his wine at me lewdly.
“And you mind your manners!” said I. “I shall not be calumniated by a messy-haired stripling, drunk on his father’s wine. Good night, sir!” Thus I rose, and took my leave of him.
I wasn’t really that offended, I just wanted to make it clear to him that he could not speak to me like that. But upon reaching my rooms I regretted my decision; I was not yet tired. The strange day had enlivened me rather than the reverse.
Remembering that when I was a girl and wakeful in the night I used to sit at my window and brush my hair until I was sleepy, I changed into my night-clothes and blew out the candle. Yet while I thought the ritual would settle my mind, when I saw how ill-tended the storm-lit grounds of Calipash Manor were, instead of relaxing me, looking upon them brought back my earlier feelings of gloom, horror, and ruination.
Especially when I saw that the woods were not so overgrown as to prevent me from seeing the Calipash family crypt through the pine-boughs!
I felt a shock when I saw the crumbling Doric structure, quite as if I had been struck by a bolt of the lightning still occasionally illuminating the night sky—how had I forgotten the nightmarish sepulcher until that very moment? Not that there was anything actually frightening about the place, of course. I had merely scared myself nearly out of my wits in there as a child.
What it is about graveyards that so captivate children I know not, but I would venture there often as a girl. It was far from the house proper, which made it exciting, and overgrown, which put me in mind of fairy-circles or some such nonsense. The day I found enough bravery in myself to push open the door—and found it unlocked—I made my one and only exploration of its interior. There I had fancied I saw a ghost, or perhaps it was the Ghast, a puerile notion I know…though I confess, looking out upon that temple in miniature again, the little hairs on the back of my neck rose quivering.
A sudden movement tore my eyes away from the loathsome mausoleum. A lone figure ran across the grounds. It was, of all people, Orlando Vincent! Pell-mell he pelted over the grass and through the dregs of the rainstorm, and he was headed toward the graveyard, curiously enough. I wondered on what errand he went; it must be something so urgent it could not wait until morning, so I watched him dash to the crypt and duck inside its carven doorway.
It could not have been five minutes later that he emerged, though with quite a different air about him. Instead of seeming like a man possessed of a desperate mission, he had the lackadaisical aspect of a gentleman very much at his leisure. He stood casually under the overhang of the crypt-entrance for a moment, hands in his pockets—and then he looked up at me!
How he knew I was at my casement I could not say, but I am sure he knew, and I felt another strange shock when his shadowed eyes met mine. I raised my hand in greeting, not knowing if he could see the gesture, but he mirrored it. When a final flash of lightning illuminated the grounds I saw he was smiling at me.
I felt a flush of passion worthy of my heroine Camilla and rose from my seat, alarmed at myself. It was then that I re-lit the candle and sat down here—to write—to try to settle my mind. I am not sure if it has worked…