Property of a Lady

September 1888

This evening, while I was planing and smoothing the mahogany for William Lee’s clock, (it’s like silk, and it’s the colour of her hair, glossy and dark), I thought something leaned over my shoulder as if to look more closely at what I was doing: there was a whiff of foetid breath and the impression of a bony finger digging into my neck. I spun round at once, but there was nothing there.

I dare say the cheese I had for supper is to blame. It’s well known that roasted cheese can upset the digestion. I shall leave a note for Mrs Figgis, telling her not to serve cheese with my supper in future.

But I can’t get rid of the notion that the burning jealousy and the hatred I harbour for William Lee is somehow taking on substance – that it’s striding through my workshop, watching its chance to take possession of my mind . . .

I’ve reread that last sentence, and I know it sounds like the ravings of a disordered mind. But there is something in my workshop that wasn’t there before, and whatever it is I don’t like it.

October 1888

The more I read, the more I find references to music in the ancient beliefs. Music that possesses power over men’s minds and souls . . . Orpheus with his lyre, charming the denizens of hell into giving him back his lady . . . The medieval dances of death, with the victims forced by demons to dance until they dropped . . . The beckoning cadences of the Plague Piper wearing his glaring red mask of agony, leading his victims to the twin Towers of Fever and Madness . . . The el diablo chord, which the medievals believed could summon the devil.

And a strange and eerie chant from the world’s earliest time that is believed to have power over the dead and the ability to cast men into deep, dreamless sleep.

October 1888, cont’d

William Lee’s clock is almost finished and will remain in my workshop until just before Christmas, when it will be taken to Mallow House. It’s a beautiful piece of work. I never made a better clock.

And yet, and yet.

When I look at it I see that something has got into the making that I never intended. Is it the outline of the moon in the arch-dial? Has it a sly, leering look as if something has given the serene features a vicious tweak? And the pendulum case itself – if I look at it in a certain light, the grain seems to form itself into a writhing human creature. Does it resemble Hogarth’s images of Bedlam, with the poor lunatics trying to escape their bleak prison? Looking out at the world with despair and hatred?

Hatred. That word again.

Only last month I witnessed a case of hatred that had tragic results. A fight between two men in the Black Boar – one accusing the other of violating his sister. I was there, drinking a glass of ale with one or two acquaintances – it’s a convivial place of an evening, the Black Boar, and I like to share the company of my fellow men sometimes. It reminds me that there’s an ordinary and sane world beyond the shadowy, secret library.

But on that night an ugly fight broke out between the brother and the seducer. It began as a verbal battle, but it ended with the seducer being felled to the ground and smashing his head against the stone chimney breast. They summoned the local medic at once, and I helped in staunching the blood, but the man was already dead, and the jealous brother was taken to Shrewsbury Gaol. He stood trial and was found guilty. He will hang this coming Monday. A dreadful waste of two lives – three, if you count the girl, for this will taint her life for years to come. It determines me to fight and vanquish this scalding hatred that courses through me and fills me with bile.

October 1888 cont’d