Tristram the good knight was born.
Burton looked at a dark entrance beyond which steps led down into darkness. He shivered. “You and your fellow Pre-Raphaelites might realise the romance of it but I see dank cellars, cobwebby dungeons, and claustrophobic corridors. Let’s get back to the house, Algy. I have little immunity to British rain, and ruins make me melancholic.”
“That’s because you see in them the remorselessly degenerative attentions of Chronos,” Swinburne murmured as they turned and exited the castle. “Who, we now know, is not at all as we conceive him.”
An immense unkindness of ravens watched them depart.
A little over an hour later, they’d changed into dry clothes and were warming themselves by a fire in the manor’s principal sitting room. They were joined by various of the other guests, including Doctor John Steinhaueser, who’d arrived while they were out and was now enjoying Blanche’s undivided attention, despite the indignant presence of her husband.
Isabel was also with the party, looking wan and listless but stubbornly refusing Doctor Bird’s insistence that she return to bed.
“Then humour me by drinking beef broth,” the physician advised her. “It’ll help you regain your strength.”
“I concur,” Steinhaueser said. “And chamomile tea before bed, hmmm?”
Sadhvi interjected, “I can mix a herbal brew of slightly greater potency.”
“Good idea,” Bird responded. “You have to sleep more deeply, Isabel. We can’t have any more somnambulism.”
“Ah,” Burton exclaimed. “So it’s confirmed? You’ve been sleepwalking?”
Isabel nodded. “Yes, Dick. My feet are all cut up. It seems I walked barefoot on a gravel path in the gardens. I remember nothing of it.”
“Doctor Steinhaueser,” Blanche said, “may I call you Styggins?”
“By all means.”
Smythe Piggott cleared his throat.
“Styggins,” Blanche went on, “do you agree with George that my sister’s symptoms are those of a headstrong and totally unreasonable young lady who steadfastly refuses to allow anyone a say in the arranging of her engagement party, who is deaf to all opinions other than her own, and who really is the silliest thing ever?”
“Um, I don’t recall putting it quite like that!” Bird interrupted.
Steinhaueser laughed. “If you’re suggesting that Isabel should allow others to take some of the responsibility, then you are entirely correct.”
Isabel raised her hands. “Enough, please! The work is done. I can afford to rest now.”
Burton took her hand and squeezed it. “See that you do. We’ve waited a long time for this. I’ll be demanding many a dance from you come Saturday. I expect you to be your sparkling best, is that understood?”
“It is, Dick.”
The conversation moved on to other topics. Eliphas Levi was asked about his background, and talked at length about how his desire to be a Catholic priest proved incompatible with his radical beliefs, which had twice resulted in prison sentences. Uncle Renfric didn’t approve of this revelation at all, and hobbled from the room muttering, “Charlatans, atheists, and criminals! Hah! I suppose I’ll have the chapel to myself, at least!”
Swinburne was next to stoke the furnace of indignation. At lunchtime, he drank too much wine and mused that any flower probably enjoyed a closer relationship with the divine than even the most pious human could achieve. “What shrubbery doesn’t pass the day in silent meditation upon the pure and joyous elegance of existence?” he pondered.
“The cognisance of God in all His glory is exclusive to Man, Mr. Swinburne,” Eliza Arundell objected. “That is why we have dominion.”
“Really, ma’am?” Swinburne drawled. “Do you include the Brahmin and the Muslim? What of the African tribesman or Australian aborigine?”
Mrs. Arundell bristled. “Outside the Church there is no salvation, sir. Those you mention will go to the everlasting fire unless, before the end of life, they have joined the one true Church of Jesus Christ, the Saviour.”
Swinburne threw up his arms and squealed, “My dear lady, if a faith, in order to feel secure in itself, must condemn anyone whose opinion differs from its own, then it is a faith with no faith at all!”
“Algy, please,” Burton growled. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
Mrs. Arundell pushed her chair back and stood, her back stiff. “For once, I’m in agreement with my future son-in-law. If you feel it appropriate to question the beliefs held by your hosts, sir, then you are not a gentleman. I insist that you hold your tongue. If you cannot, you will oblige me by leaving this house.”
With that, she turned and stalked from the dining room.
“I say!” Swinburne muttered. “I never claimed to be a gentleman.”
“Pretend to be, lad,” Monckton Milnes advised. “Pretend to be.”
After lunch, the remaining Arundells made their excuses and left their wayward guests to their own devices.
Isabel returned to her bed. Isabella Beeton, Sister Raghavendra, and Lallah Bird settled in the drawing room.
Swinburne found a desk and set to work on his poem, Tristan and Isolde. Monckton Milnes and Levi buried themselves in the depths of a philosophical discussion. Sam Beeton and Doctor Bird played billiards. Burton chatted with Steinhaueser.
The afternoon passed, the rain pattered against the windows, and at seven o’clock everyone reconvened for dinner. Mrs. Arundell kept the length of the table between herself and Swinburne. Monckton Milnes assiduously regulated the poet’s drinking and Burton was at his sociable best, charming the gathering with tall tales of Africa and, quite remarkably, managing to keep those tales clean and palatable. Isabel, too—having napped for four hours—was effervescent and witty, which prompted Sam Beeton to say to Burton during the post-prandial smoking, “You two belong together, that much is obvious to all.”
“I never felt I belonged anywhere until I met her,” Burton replied. “Now I feel I can belong any place at all, provided I am with her.”
Beeton smiled and nodded. “I understand exactly what you mean, old man. Why, before I married, I was—Good Lord! What was that?”
A loud scream had echoed through the manor.
“Les femmes!” Eliphas Levi exclaimed.
Without another word, the men crashed out of the smoking room and raced along the hallway to the drawing room, where they found the women gathered around Lallah Bird, who’d apparently swooned onto a chaise longue.
“Stand back, please,” John Steinhaueser commanded. “Allow Doctor Bird to attend his wife.”
“What happened?” Burton asked.
“I don’t know,” Isabella Beeton answered. “She opened the curtain—” she pointed toward a nearby window, “—to see whether the moon had pierced the clouds, then screamed and fell back in a dead faint.”
“It was a face,” Blanche said. “I saw it, too. A terrible face!”
Smythe Piggott moved to his wife’s side and put a comforting arm around her.
“I need to get smelling salts from my bag,” George Bird muttered.
“Here, I have some. I always carry them with me,” Steinhaueser said, handing a small bottle to his colleague. He turned as a footman entered the room. “Would you fetch a glass of brandy, please?”
The clockwork figure clanged its assent and hastened away.
Burton moved to the window and looked out. The rain was still falling and the night was pitch dark. He couldn’t see a thing.
Lallah Bird uttered a small cry and pushed the smelling salts away from her face. She moaned and put her hands to her mouth. Her husband helped her to sit up.
The footman returned with the brandy, and after a couple of sips of it, Lallah’s eyes fluttered open and she wailed, “I saw a man! Oh, George! A horrible brute at the window!”
“There there, dearest,” Bird said. “It was probably Tom Honesty, the gardener.”