Other areas on the grounds hovered in Temple’s fainter memories, ones that he later investigated as an adult. Dashwood had, in fact, had a cavern carved out of a hill; he jokingly called it the Cave of Trophonius, the architect of Apollo’s temple, whose legendary mythical grotto was a place of nightmares. The den and everything about the estate was designed to provide pleasure, lust, and laughter, not fear; the garden grounds were crowded with sculptures of gods such as Venus and Hermes, with exaggerated emphasis on their more private parts.
Over the entrance of the former abbey, the Medmenham Monks—as they called themselves—carved their password in French: Fais ce que voudras. On one side of the entrance stood a stone statue of the Roman goddess of silence, Angerona, while the Egyptian god of silence, Harpocrates, stood on the other side. Both held their fingers to their lips, urging visitors to keep all the secrets that they would soon witness and partake of.
Inside the atrium hung twelve stained-glass windows depicting the apostles in various obscene poses; in the opulent living room, a pornographic fresco had been painted on the ceiling. Hospes negare, si potes, quod offerat, announced the carving above the entrance to the Roman Room: “Stranger, refuse, if you can, what we have to offer.” That room was crowded with silk-upholstered couches and decorated with paintings of naked fornicating couples, many of them kings of England disporting with notable contemporary prostitutes. Adjacent was a library devoted solely to books about either faith or copulation, from the Queen Anne Book of Common Prayer and Psalter to Fanny Hill, from the Koran to the Kama Sutra. Downstairs, a vast wine cellar abutted a pantry stocked with fine meats and freshly baked desserts.
During his childhood visit, Temple Franklin was shipped off to the main Wyndham estate a few miles away with a teenage girl hired to mind him so he could be sheltered from the activities within the abbey. Only later in his personal investigations did he learn what his grandfather must have experienced.
There were officially only twelve Friars of St. Francis Wycombe, plus Dashwood, who in their mock religion was the Christ to their Apostles. The abbot of the day selected the wines, arranged for the catering of the meals, and had first pick of the “nuns” available for coitus. As a guest, Franklin joined the fifty or so lesser members of the club who were permitted to participate in the revelry though not the ceremony.
The night that Temple Franklin missed, he later learned from one monk, was particularly drunken and debauched—an evening of pure urge and indulgence without restraint—not to mention blasphemous: A chapel ceremony was a dark and obscene parody of a Latin Mass, with a toast to Satan and the powers of the world beneath. With incense burning and black candles casting a purplish light, cultists had approached the body of a lovely nude young woman spread out on the altar and drunk sacrificial wine from her abdomen.
From there, everyone proceeded to the Roman Room, where Medmenham Monks and friars could have their pick of various masked women dressed in nuns’ habits. The women came from all over—there were prostitutes from London, of course, but friars and monks brought mistresses and girlfriends and even wives and sisters, and once a monk brought his stepmother. Local women would also join in the fun, enjoying the naughtiness under the cloak of anonymity and appreciating the opportunity to share intimacies with the elite and possibly even a member of the royal family. Couples or larger groups would use the couches, individual rooms, spots in the garden, and, of course, the Trophonius cave.
The Hellfire Club was more than just a haven of depravity, Temple Franklin would write years later to his half brother; it had tremendous social and business benefits. The bond of the shared illicit and secret experience was one aspect, but more powerful was the knowledge that you could ruin an ally with these secrets—and that he could do the same to you. It meant that one member would do almost anything for the others because they would do the same for him; no one had a choice. Sir Francis Dashwood labored mightily to fund the colonies before the American Revolution, Temple noted. He did everything Ben Franklin wanted him to do. And Franklin was a great supporter of Dashwood’s in every conceivable way.
The flip side must have been true as well, Charlie realized as he listened to Bernstein. Members of the club were prevented from retaliating against one another as they might have done otherwise, not unlike the modern geopolitical concept of mutually assured destruction. The men of the Hellfire Club were thus bound together forever. A member’s secrets were safe but only because everyone knew a betrayal would mean the indiscreet betrayer would soon see his secrets spilled as well.
Which was not to say that the monks of the Hellfire Club of the eighteenth century all got along famously. Lord Mayor of London John Wilkes and John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, loathed each other. But they had to limit the damage they inflicted, since treading too far beyond an insult at a tavern might result in the full force and fury of the club striking them down. They were all to be protected. Temple Franklin mentioned pages who had disappeared after attempts at blackmail and prostitutes whose pregnancies were taken care of via mysterious means.
“So the Hellfire Club was about much more than pleasures,” Margaret said. “It was about alliances.”
“Oh my God,” Charlie said.
“What?” asked Bernstein.
Charlie gazed at Margaret and then at Bernstein. “There’s a Hellfire Club in Washington, DC—today. And I went to one of its parties.”
He explained how many oddities he’d witnessed that night at Conrad Hilton’s penthouse that had to have been traditions handed down from Sir Francis Dashwood’s perverse clubhouse. From Strongfellow using the password “Do what thou wilt” to gain entrance to the library to the two small stone statues holding fingers to their lips outside its doors, there were far too many similarities for it to have been anything else. The engraving Hospes negare, si potes, quod offerat, the stained-glass portrayals of important men posed pornographically with naked women, the portraits of presidents and prostitutes—it was a twentieth-century version of what Temple Franklin described in West Wycombe, England.
“Good Lord,” Margaret said.
“I don’t know anything about this party,” Bernstein said.
“It was last month, a wild affair,” Charlie said. “Everyone was there. McCarthy, Cohn, Carlin, the Kennedys, Strongfellow, Allen Dulles…”
“So you’re saying they’re all members of this deviant club?” Bernstein asked.
“Not necessarily,” said Margaret. “Because Charlie’s not a member and he was there.”
“I assume most there weren’t actual members. Just as in England, Ben Franklin wasn’t a Medmenham Monk, though he enjoyed a lesser affiliation in the club, since he was trusted to keep his mouth shut. There were twelve monks plus the Christ figure, right? Maybe it’s the same here? I didn’t even know what I had walked into.”
“Some of those guys must be monks, though,” Margaret suggested.
Charlie massaged his temple, trying to recall details. “The room Strongfellow knew the password to get into, the library. Maybe that was where the monks were? Carlin was there, and McCarthy. Um…Whitney from General Kinetics. Dulles from Central Intelligence. Sam Zemurray from United Fruit was there. They had the stained-glass portraits and such, though I didn’t recognize everyone in them, and to tell you the truth, I was pretty drunk and didn’t really study them.”
“That’s a lot of powerful people in that library,” Bernstein said.
The three sat in silence, a ticking clock the only noise in the room.
“Okay, this is now officially kind of scary,” Margaret said.
“Why?” asked Bernstein.