The White Forest (13 page)

“If there was a God, I think he’d make his house on the Hampstead Heath,” Nathan was saying, drawing a cigarette from its case. Maddy had brought the cigarettes—case and all—from her travels in France with her mother that winter. Nathan put the cigarette between his thin lips and barely inhaled. Though there were times when he said he “needed” to smoke, I suspected he was only making a show for Maddy, as it seemed he didn’t actually know how.

“Being on the Heath doesn’t make me think of God,” Maddy said. “It makes me feel even more that we’re alone. Time comes unhinged. We’re drifting into days that occurred before the Saxons or the Romans.” She’d learned her atheism and her sense of poetry early on from her father, Adolphus. “I can almost see a great, bony creature there,” she said, pointing to a far patch of grass that moved restlessly
in the wind, “raising its vulgar head to peer in our direction. It’s something from the fossil record—come to life.”

We looked out across the Heath but saw nothing. Nathan had read to us recently from an article on archaeological digs in North America where scientists were uncovering the bones of massive creatures from the past. He was fascinated by the idea that this history of the world was packed away beneath our feet. He said that one day we’d know everything that ever happened in the past and in what order.

“Will this creature devour us?” Nathan asked lightly, smoke curling from his open mouth.

“It only watches,” she replied. “And wonders about us.”

“It suffers from ennui,” Nathan said, “like you, Jane.”

I let his comment pass, focusing on the cemetery behind him. The stones were emitting the new frequency, smooth and low—and the frequency was organizing itself into an image of the pale forest with the white stream running through it. I must have shown these thoughts on my face because before I knew what was occurring, Nathan was beside me, saying, “Jane, what’s the matter,” and he put his hand on my hand. I didn’t have time to dampen my experience and hide it from him. His expression changed from concern to dismay. He took a small step back, nearly stumbling over a loose rock. Maddy was there to steady him, and Nathan put one finger to his ear, as if to stop a ringing, all the while continuing to stare at me.

“What was that?” he asked.

I acted as though I didn’t know what he meant.

“When I touched you,” he said. “There was something new. My head was full of not a color or a sound, but a
place
.”

“Perhaps you should sit, Nathan,” Maddy said. “Sit here.” She helped him to a large rock. Nathan sat but barely acknowledged her help. His gaze was so fixed on me. “Jane, are you experiencing something new? Something you haven’t told us about? I saw white trees and a still stream that looked as though it was made of marble.”

I avoided his glance. How could I talk about what I was experiencing—that the souls of the objects had reconfigured to make a
kind of geography? What the gravestones were now communicating was a transcendent realm—not merely an intuited space, but a physical space. The fact that the objects were alive was not as significant as the fact that they concealed within themselves a silent kingdom. Father had once told me the Gnostics believed each human being concealed within himself a Heaven. I wondered if this was somehow the Heaven of the objects.

“Jane,” Nathan was saying, “are you a doorway to that place? Can we go there?”

I found I could not answer. My gaze shifted from Nathan to Maddy, and I caught an expression on her face that disappeared in the next instant. I was sure I’d seen it though. It had looked, quite impossibly, like loathing.

“Jane, the Doorway,” Nathan added softly. “I felt almost like I could open you.”

•   •   •

It was after the discovery at Highgate that Nathan began his research in earnest. He brought stacks of bound manuscripts to Stoke Morrow, most of them from the Middle Ages. I had no idea where he procured such texts, and he would only tell me that his father’s wealth had its benefits. Nathan eventually began to focus on a particular Italian writer known as Theodore de Baras, a monk who’d lived on the island of Malta in the thirteenth century. De Baras wrote extensively about the levels of the medieval Heaven, specifically the highest, known as the Empyrean. Nathan translated a passage from de Baras’s bound codex:

The Empyrean is not made of fire as some would have it; rather it is a cool place, still as a stone. I hold the belief that the Empyrean is neither the lost Garden of Eden nor even a part of God’s own Heaven, but rather a remnant of that realm which existed before Creation. The Empyrean is a place of innocence and purity where there is no question of good or evil. There are no trees of temptation,
no fear of expulsion. It is most akin to the Hindu Nirvana—a place free of greed and delusion. It is my studied opinion that the Empyrean is a remnant that I will henceforth call the Great Unmade, and to enter it would be to gain freedom from suffering brought on by Creation. Many think it impossible to make a pilgrimage to such a place, but I believe there is a way. I speak here of the Roman girl and the fabled
music of the spheres
.

“Who is the Roman girl?” I asked, intrigued.

Nathan turned the worn manuscript page. “It doesn’t say any more about her. This is only a partial document, I think. There appear to be pages missing. But listen to this, Jane.” He began reading again:

The music of the spheres is the vibration that all matter emits. It is said to be inaudible to the human ear. Only God and his angels can perceive it. Yet I now believe there are those gifted few who apprehend these vibrations. And through the cracks, they can see even the silent place—that which existed before the Word. I pause here to relate historical instances. In particular, a woman spoken of on the island of Malta, known only as the Lady of Flowers.

“Stop,” I said. I could feel my heart beating quickly in my chest. I’d never revealed the name my mother had spoken to me. Nathan hadn’t even paused when he’d read it in the manuscript. “Give me the book, Nathan.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I held out my hand. “Just give it to me.”

He did as I asked, and the codex moaned when I touched it. A faded woodcut on the yellowed page showed a woman in a long and twining robe. Wrapped about her body were coarse vines that bloomed with mouthlike flowers—gaping things. Horrid. The woman’s expression was disdainful. She stared out at me, knowing more than I knew. I thought of the oval painting concealed in the wardrobe at Stoke Morrow, and then I thought of my mother’s own
words:
She’s there, blooming in the darkness, silent and waiting
. How was it possible that Mother’s Lady was here in this medieval text?

The parlor around us was spinning. Objects creaked. I continued to stare down at the picture, looking into the woman’s hard, black eyes. She, in turn, stared back at me, concealing the answer to all the mysteries I longed to solve. The desk between Nathan and me wanted to split open and reveal the terrible white forest beneath.

I let the book fall from my hands.

At some great distance, Nathan was saying, “Jane, are you quite all right? Can you hear me, Jane?”

I
left Maddy in the southern woods, Vidocq’s record of Ariston Day still hidden in the pocket of my dress. Despite the fact that Maddy wanted to begin an investigation, I still didn’t think it was wise to share the stolen information with her. I arrived home and spread Vidocq’s papers on my father’s writing desk, reading his meticulous script. I learned that “Ariston Day” was not the man’s actual name but one in a series of pseudonymous affectations. Day was born Archibald Douglas in County Sligo, Ireland, to a destitute farmer who’d taken his own life shortly after the birth of his son. Several other monikers were listed: “Aristotle Dorn” and “Agathon Demeter.” Day alternately presented himself as being from Italy, Greece, and the Russian Empire. He had no perceptible Irish accent and was, Vidocq wrote, “largely a product of erasure.”

What came next was more troubling. The Theater of Provocation was apparently not Day’s first foray into cults. The first such gathering was short-lived, assembled from boys who were Day’s peers in County Sligo. This was before Day made his pilgrimage to Rome—an event that Vidocq said transformed the Irish boy into a philosopher and a possible mystic. The Sligo group met in a disused sheep barn outside of Day’s humble village. According to records of the local magistrate, the meetings were halted by order of law after
one of the members—Sean Fellhorn—had been spiritually “violated.” The specific act of violation was not named in the magistrate’s documents, but according to hospital records, Fellhorn became so corrupt he could no longer be allowed in the proximity of women. The boy also refused to read from the Bible and would not speak his father’s name. Vidocq wrote:

As is often the case with the ridiculous court systems in out-of-the-way villages, the punishment for the corruption of young Fellhorn did not suit the actual crime. Ariston Day (then called Archibald Douglas) was to be hanged for leading the boy astray, but by some miraculous last-minute overturning of the magistrate’s rule, he was set free. This precipitated Day’s escape from County Sligo and his perpetual life in hiding.

The second cult, which was of a more extravagant and nefarious nature, came to fruition in Suffolk after Day returned from his stint in Rome. Day based the Suffolk cult on the Eleusinian Mysteries, a series of ancient initiation ceremonies that were meant to honor Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, the queen of Hades. In order to participate in the Eleusinian Mysteries, Greek boys who’d reached the age of puberty were sworn to a vow of secrecy and sent into a system of tunnels where they were terrorized by priests and hierophants who were dressed as primeval monsters. The terror was intended to purify the boys—to make them heroes. It also provided them with visions of enlightenment that they were sworn never to share with anyone.

Day gathered his Suffolk cult in Saint Rudolph’s cave, a narrow shaft that opened onto a ballroomlike subterranean chamber, which he filled with burning tapers and the effigies of animals made from sticks and pelts. As with Day’s Fetches, the Suffolk boys were sworn to secrecy. Little was known about the rituals performed in the cave, though they were later believed to have involved some form of blood rite, as many of the boys bore similar scarification on their necks and
chests. The reign of Day’s Suffolk cult ended when one of his young followers was found naked in the woods one winter morning, mumbling something about the opening of the Heavens and a procession of angels. The boy later died in a hospital room from what was deemed exposure, and though no injunctions were placed on Ariston Day, he was soon enough gone from Suffolk, only to reappear nearly a year later in London.

“Throughout all of this,” wrote Vidocq,

Day’s goal has remained consistent. He wishes to achieve a large-scale transcendence in which humankind will be returned to what he imagines an original “Paradise”—his so-called spiritual bedrock. It is this grand delusion, this wish to be the world’s savior, which makes him so dangerous. He will do anything to reach his goal, and my fear is that Day has found his perfect match in Southwark. He has learned to avoid the vigilant eye of small communities. Southwark is a chaos where he can submerge himself and experiment with his Fetches to his heart’s content. I should note that I have made a thorough investigation of the Temple of the Lamb but cannot find sign of either Day or his Theater of Provocation. The proprietors of the tavern claim to know nothing of him. My search continues.

The papers made no specific mention of Nathan’s case, but the inferences were frightening indeed. Ariston Day was not to be trifled with, and he was certainly capable of doing harm in his search for grand transcendence. Day’s letter indicated that he believed me to be the key to his endeavors. It was likely he thought I had some connection to the original Paradise, and I worried that he believed I could provide that connection through the Empyrean itself.

I folded the sheaf and lowered it into the fire, which Miss Anne had recently stoked, and though the papers burned, my thoughts of Ariston Day persisted.

•   •   •

Before I could further agree or disagree with Maddy’s plan to circumnavigate Vidocq and take the investigation of Nathan’s disappearance upon ourselves, we were off in her black carriage, shuttling toward Hyde Park for our rendezvous with the Fetches at a tavern called the Silver Horne that bordered the park’s silent pastures. With us was the Lees’ shepherd dog, Ferdinand, a mangy sort of animal that had not been bathed in some time and made me wish I hadn’t asked for protection.

“You’ll promise me you aren’t going to do anything foolish,” I said. “The Fetches aren’t your run-of-the-mill society boys—at least not anymore.”

Maddy scratched Ferdinand on his awful head and replied, “Honestly, Jane, when have you ever known me to behave foolishly? And you know my feelings on this subject—once a society fop, always a society fop. My guess is we could strong-arm the whole lot of the Fetches if we so choose.”