Doyle nodded attentively, glancing at Chandros, deep in a one-sided conversation with Eileen, who seemed as equally preoccupied as Doyle with her soup.
"I myself was quite unconvinced of their existence for the longest time," said the Bishop, between noisy slurps. "As you can well imagine—public school, Church of England, already a vicar—"
"Unaware of whose existence?" asked Doyle.
"Why, the elementals, of course," beamed the Bishop. He had managed to splatter droplets of broth all over his spectacles. "Until I met Professor Vamberg—then the scales fell from my eyes like autumn leaves!"
"They are known by different names in different cultures," said Vamberg, clearly irritated by the Bishop's cheery intrusion. "You are of Irish descent, are you not, Doctor?"
Doyle nodded. His soup was gone; he was tempted to ask Vamberg, who hadn't so much as wet his spoon, if he wouldn't mind giving his over.
"In Ireland you know them as leprechauns: the little people. Here, in Britain, they're called brownies or elves, with many regional variations: 'knockers' in Cornwall, the pixies of Scotland, the trows of Shetland and Orcadia. The Germans, of course, know them as kobolds or goblins—"
"I'm familiar with the mythology," said Doyle, annoyed by the man's condescending pedantry.
"Ah, but you see, it is a great deal more than mere mythology, Doctor," said Vamberg, waving his spoon for emphasis.
In came the next course; thank God, thought Doyle. It's not enough to perish by way of starvation, they have to bore me to death simultaneously.
"Roast partridge on a bed of cabbage," announced the Bishop.
Partridge? There must be some mistake, thought Doyle. This was a single wing, and it was easily the size of a turkey's. And that cabbage leaf covered the entire plate. They were in the north of England: Where did one find produce like this in the depths of winter? Gift horses, decided Doyle, tasting the first cut of the wing; the meat was succulent and tender and, he had to admit, on first bite as flavorful as anything he'd ever eaten.
"These figures of legend, so familiar to us from folktales and children's stories, are in actuality the unseen architects and builders of the natural world," continued Vamberg, as disinterested in the partridge as he had been in the soup. "Wood nymphs, water naiads, sprites of the air—there is a reason why these traditions persist in every culture, even in one as ostensibly advanced as our own—"
"What reason would that be?" said Doyle, unable to resist picking up the wing with his hands and tearing into it.
"Because they are real," said Vamberg. "I've seen them. Spoken to them. Danced with them."
Not recently you haven't, thought Doyle. "Really."
"Shy creatures, extremely reticent, but once contact is made—and I was able to do so initially with the help of Caribbean tribal priests—one quickly learns how extremely eager they are to cooperate with us."
"How terribly interesting," said Doyle, finishing off his partridge.
"Isn't it just?" piped in the Bishop, trickles of grease shining like tinsel around his mouth and chin.
"Cooperate how, exactly?" asked Doyle.
"Why in doing what they do best," said Vamberg. "Growing things."
"Growing things."
Vamberg picked the immense cabbage leaf off his plate. "What if I were to tell you the cabbage seed that produced this leaf was planted in dry sand three weeks ago, deprived of all water or nutrients, and harvested this very morning?"
"I would say, Professor Vamberg, that you've spent too much time dancing around toadstools," said Doyle.
Vamberg smiled dryly and lifted the wing from his plate. "And if I were to tell you that when it was freshly dressed this afternoon, this bird was only two weeks old?"
Servants were clearing and laying in the next course, two of them rolling in a silver-hooded steam table.
"So these elementals, as you call them, presumably have nothing better to do than help you raise partridges the size of eagles?" asked Doyle.
"Trout with lemon!" said the Bishop.
The hood of the table was rolled back, revealing a single, intact fish on a garnish of lemon and parsley. Its coloring and markings identified it as brown trout, but the thing was the size of a sturgeon. The servants carved and served. Doyle caught Eileen's eyes, hers filled more with wonder than the profound unease stirring inside him.
Vamberg smiled like Carroll's Cheshire cat. "Oh ye of little faith."
A plate of the trout landed in front of Doyle. As savory as it looked and smelled, he was rapidly losing his appetite; the idea of this mysteriously denatured meat made him queasy. Glancing around the table, he noticed Alexander Sparks also refrained from eating, instead staring intently across at Eileen. At the other end, a napkin tucked in his collar like a child's bib, His Highness the Duke of Clarence aggressively sucked up his fish in greedy, gluttonous mouthfuls, sloshing it down with sloppy gouts of wine, all the while making noisy drones of infantile contentment, completely oblivious to the company and his surroundings.
"Delicious!" pronounced the Bishop. A beautiful fair-haired altar boy stood at his side. The Bishop whispered in his ear and ran his stubby fingers possessively through the boy's locks.
"Another benefit unlooked for came from that encounter— this was on the island of Haiti, by the way—when the priests introduced me to an elixir of various herbs, roots, and organic extracts they said the elementals had revealed to them," said Vamberg. "The priests of Haiti have been using this compound judiciously for centuries: They discovered that when administered in the right amount, in conjunction with certain medical practices, this compound virtually strips a man or woman-—any man or woman—of their conscious will."
"I'm sorry?" asked Doyle.
'Their will is no longer their own. It renders them docile, pliant, completely under the command of the priests, who
men employ these people however they see fit, as field or household help. Even the most intractable subjects become obedient. Trustworthy. Well behaved."
Slaves. Mute and unreasoning as marionettes, servers were laying in a meat course: Doyle tried not to think what manner of hideously altered beast might have yielded these ripe morsels of flesh.
"That's how Haiti solved the servant problem," chimed in the Bishop with a broad wink. "How nice to speak freely in front of the help."
Vamberg sent the Bishop another venomous look before continuing. "The priests are a closed fraternity; this knowledge is guarded with their lives. I was one of few outsiders— the only European—who has ever been given access to this treasure. I've even improved the effect with a simple, surgical procedure, used in conjunction with the compound."
No wonder Bodger Nuggins ran, thought Doyle. Better dead facedown in the Thames than an ambulatory corpse like Lansdown Dilks, stored away in some root cellar like a sack of nightsoil—
"Marvelous!" said the Bishop.
"It was years later, during my travels in the high country of Tibet, that I met a man with the vision to see how this procedure might one day be utilized in a broader, more socially useful fashion." Vamberg gave a nod to Alexander Sparks.
So that's how it began, with Sparks and Vamberg. The meeting of two dark minds, a seed brought back to English ground to reach its full flower of corruption—
A crash of crockery startled him. A servant on the far side of the table had dropped a plate. The man bent down, his movements addled and sluggish, and attempted to scrape up the fragments of china and the scattered food around it with his hands.