Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure (5 page)

“Quite so,”
Victor conceded.

“‘The
wisest woman in Europe,’ indeed,” she fumed. I had a feeling this was a
discussion they had had many times before and were planning on enacting again.

“I rather
think T. S. Eliot was making fun of her,” said Victor, looking around for
support. “You know
The Waste Land
?”

Neither
Yang nor I was familiar with that work, so the subject lapsed.

“Anyway,
like a garden that has been left untended, our little circle needed
pruning—there were a few members who had to be encouraged to leave. And
it needed new growth, like Elizabeth, our Mediator, and Victor, who you might
say is a transplant, who are both experienced in the Indian Vedic tradition.”

“And
Howard,” said Victor.

“A prize
bloom,” said Lavinia, “if you don’t mind the expression.”

Howard
shrugged casually.

“He's got
more original scholarship in his little finger than the rest of us put
together,” said Victor. “He's the greatest expert on Palingenesis in
England—he's written two monographs so far, and we're pressing him for a
third.”

“I am not
familiar with this word,” said Yang.

Victor
shied slightly when Yang turned to him. He was ill at ease with the Chinese
visitor.

“A form of
alchemy,” said Lavinia. “I’m sure there’s a Chinese word for it.”

“Few people
have heard of Palingenesis,” said Howard dryly. He was a pudgy, anaemic young
man with wispy, receding hair and steel-rimmed spectacles. “It is the art of
recovering the form of a thing from its ashes.”

“Show him
the pictures,” urged Victor.

“This is
one of my experiments,” Howard said. He drew a set of photographs wrapped in
wax paper from an inner pocket and passed them to Yang. “The first picture
shows a test tube containing salts extracted from the ashes of a rose. In the
second, heat is applied to the test tube, and you can see the results.”

Yang
examined each photograph in the sequence. “Shoots grow from the ashes, then
buds and leaves and a flower. Your rose, no doubt.”

“Lavinia
found a young man to do the photography,” said Victor. “I believe these
pictures are unique.”

“The
phoenix, which is resurrected from its ashes, is also part of Eastern legend as
it is in the West, is it not?” asked Lavinia.

“Indeed.”
Yang frowned slightly, an expression so unusual that it looked theatrical. He
smoothed his beard. “To me, this resembled the occasion when the sage
encountered a hermit living by a river. The hermit explained that after
meditating for twenty years, he was able to walk across the water. The sage
said ‘Poor fellow! Did you not know there is a ferry, just around the river
bend, that will take you across for a farthing?’”

The company
laughed awkwardly.

“There are
many flower stalls in London,” Yang added.

“It’s more
about the principle of the thing—”

“You’re
quite right, Mr Yang. It's not that remarkable,” said Howard, cutting Victor
off. “After all, Browne did it two hundred years ago. Palingenesis was
performed in front of the Royal Society last century—Phillips reproduced
a sparrow from its ashes. Even Yeats did it—WB Yeats, the Irish poet. He
described his experiments to Madame Blavatsky in this very room. And, as you
can see from the sixth and seventh pictures, as soon as the heat is removed,
the phantom crumbles back into dust. It is insubstantial, vastly inferior to
the cheapest flower-stall bloom.”

“But it’s a
phenomenon that might explain much. Robert Boyle suggested it might explain the
Resurrection. Of, ah, Jesus, you know.” Victor added to Yang. “Or apparitions
of the dead in graveyards, rising from their dust.”

“It’s only
a theory,” interjected Elizabeth.

“But you
see,” said Victor, “Howard has been experimenting with fixing the phantom with
radium salts as one fixes a photograph.”

“Merely a
hypothesis as Elizabeth says,” Howard said carelessly. “I shall write up my
experiments, such as they are, one day.”

“I think
it’s delightful to call up flowers from ash,” said Lavinia. “One day, I may be
able to carry a whole garden around with me in a case and produce bouquets
whenever I like. What is more important is that it gives proof positive that
science and esoteric wisdom can be fruitful together. Proof positive that is
portable. I am afraid we have twisted poor Howard’s arm…”

“We
persuaded him to send samples to an American gentleman,” said Victor. “A
 
wealthy New Englander who’s absolutely
crazy about European magic.”

“Think what
we could do with his sponsorship!” Lavinia beamed at Howard.

“Please
excuse my poor ignorance,” said Yang. “Why has this been neglected by Western
scientists?”

“They can’t
make it work because they don’t know the words,” said Howard.

“But it is
scientific,” said Victor quickly. “Howard can tell you all about it. I
understand while he’s explaining it—it’s all to do with ‘entropy not
enthalpy’ of heat—but five minutes later, it’s out of my head. Tell our
visitor about thermodynamics.”

“Please
do,” said Lavinia. The two were like parents coaxing a shy child to perform in
front of strangers.

“I don’t
think we want to go into that now,” said Howard, adjusting his glasses. This
was not enough for his audience, and he was forced to go on. He gave a slight
smile. “As with many things—metallurgy, crop rotation—the ancients
stumbled on the technique without understanding how it works. You know, there
was a place in Spain that made excellent swords using a secret, magical recipe.
The smiths used to hold the iron in the fire while reciting a certain psalm
three times. Of course, what they didn’t realise was that it was the exact
timing that this gave them, and not the words themselves, that was important in
forming the metal to the perfect balance between hardness and flexibility. Or
at least, that’s how science interprets it. But it might be the harmonic
vibrations of the voice, or perhaps even the information contained in the words
– there’s so much we do not know.”

“Only
Palingenesis, it’s about reversing time—and organising principles—”
Lavinia prompted. “Paracelsus says it’s like magnetism…”

“I’m simply
picking away at the science behind an established phenomenon, isolating the
active ingredient, like extracting quinine from the bark of the fever tree.”
Howard stopped and looked down. That was all we were going to get of science.

“Most
interesting,” said Yang with the slightest of bows.

“The boy is
too modest,” said Victor. “Hides his light under a bushel.”

“A little
nurturing will see his talent flourish,” said Lavinia. “Now Elizabeth, my dear,
are you quite ready to face the Otherworld?”

Elizabeth
had been stifling a yawn, bored by this technical version of Theosophy. She was
waiting for her moment to shine.

“Quite
ready, thank you, Lavinia. I do not think the Spirits will disappoint this
afternoon.”

“With Mr
Yang’s powers added to our own, the effects should be wonderful,” said Lavinia.

At a nod
from Lavinia, Victor rearranged the furniture with the help of some others. I
was directed to move some chairs; it was all very democratic.

“We are
privileged today to be joined by a distinguished visitor from China, an adept
in the ways of Taoism,” Lavinia told the assembled company while Yang gazed
blandly into the distance. She went on to explain how we owe gunpowder to the
Taoist alchemists, and what other things they had discovered while Europe was
lost in the Dark Ages.

Elizabeth
took her place at a circular table, flanked by Lavinia and Victor with Yang and
Howard completing the circle, while the rest of us looked on from a row of
folding chairs. Instead of just touching fingers, the five sitters joined
hands—”to make a better connection,” Lavinia explained. Holding hands
with Yang and touching that long fingernail might have been disconcerting, but
Howard gave no sign of noticing.

The thick
velvet curtains were drawn, and the darkness of the room was relieved only by a
small metal lantern in the centre of the table, which cast a low, flickering
light over the proceedings. All you could make out were the faces of the
sitters.

The
transformation was total. In just two minutes, an ordinary suburban drawing
room had taken on the aspect of a temple crypt where some ancient ceremony was
to be enacted. First, Lavinia spoke a prayer—or invocation as she termed it—in
a language that I did not recognise. Then Victor uttered his own brief
incantation in a high-pitched, wailing voice.

An
expectant hush fell over the room. My senses were sharpened, on the alert for
trickery or stage magic.

“I am
listening.” Elizabeth's round white face was oddly distinct in the candlelight.
“I am listening.”

The silence
stretched on for a minute, two minutes. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. I
could make out the pale outlines of the curtains, the rounded forms of the
people around me.

“I am
Flavia, wife of the governor of Londinium,” said Elizabeth. She sounded too
much like a railway-station announcer for me to be impressed. Questions crowded
my mind about how she could be speaking in English and why she still said
Londinium rather than plain London.

“Greetings
once more, sister Flavia,” said Lavinia. “We honour you, who are our gatekeeper
to the Otherworld, our guide through the tracks of eternity.”

“Is that
you, sister Lavinia? I salute you from beyond the veil.”

“Have you
others there with you? May we speak with the one from far Atlantis who you
promised us before?”

“You may,”
said Elizabeth gravely. “Let it be known that I keep my vow.”

It was too
preposterous. They wanted us to believe that contacting the afterlife was like
getting the girl at the switchboard to put you through to a local number. I'm
as open-minded as the next man, but that performance strained my credulity.

“Gah.”
Elizabeth grunted the sound in an impossibly low voice. She lowered her eyes
and started breathing deeply then began a low mutter of harsh, jagged
syllables. It sounded like some simple, made-up language with many repetitions.

“Who is
there?” asked Lavinia.

Elizabeth’s
voice doubled up on itself by some trick of ventriloquism so that there were
two voices speaking, and then many, a whole crowd of them muttering the same
rhythmic phrase over and over.

“Tell us
who you are,” said Victor.

Elizabeth’s
mouth seemed to be moving independently of the sound, which made me wonder
about concealed gramophone players. And then she gave a deep belch—which
under other circumstances might have reduced an audience to
laughter—before continuing her low gabble.

It was less
of an entertainment than I expected. I thought the séance was all about
contacting people one knew to talk to them on the other side. Or at least, you
might speak to known historical personages. Julius Caesar might tell you where
his crown was buried or something, but this was all meaningless.

I yawned,
and the candlelight flickered and grew dimmer. The shadows across Elizabeth's
features wavered, and for a moment, it seemed that she had no face at all. She
started rocking backwards and forwards, chanting louder.

“What is
she saying?” asked Yang.

“In the
name of Tau-Tri-Delta,” said Victor. “I abjure you to speak your name.”

Elizabeth
gave a convulsive jerk as though she was being sick. At first, I thought she
really was sick, but what came out of her mouth was not vomit but a peculiar
greyish substance. The only thing I could compare it to would be frogspawn
ejected underwater by the female frog: billowing, gelatinous stuff, and lumpy,
but with no real substance. Except that this was alive, stretching and easing
itself into a snake that reached halfway across the table before rearing up
slowly and dissolving in the air.

“Stop it,”
said Lavinia.

Elizabeth
twitched again, and this time, a double stream of ectoplasm rolled out,
uncoiling and reaching like a pair of serpents or tentacles. It looked,
frankly, quite menacing, and Yang leaned back in his seat away from it.
Seemingly, he could not, or would not, let go of the hands of the other two.

The
ectoplasm fell apart again into a smoky slush that dribbled off the table in
all directions and disintegrated into nothingness. Already, a third and greater
wave was coming. Elizabeth’s jaws were opened wider than I would have thought
possible, as though they were being forced apart from inside, but still she was
gargling that low, rhythmic chant.

“Break the
circle!” Victor was calm and forceful, but there was urgency in his voice.

“I can't!”
said Howard.

All the
sitters all started talking together in a chaotic babble. Like a man who
accidentally takes hold of a high-voltage cable and finds himself unable to let
go, the sitters were locked together. The ectoplasm surged out into a great
puddle that flexed itself, a grey snail emerging from its shell, sliding
forwards, and dividing into triple streams that each wriggled toward Yang.