The Pierced Heart: A Novel Read online

  The man, when he enters, is not quite as Maddox had envisaged him. He is smaller, slighter—there is no stage charisma here, no presence to command the eye. For unlike Charles, Maddox has indeed heard of this man, even if he has never seen the marvels he manufactures.

  “You are known as Professor de Caus, I believe. In your professional capacity?”

  The man flushes; and Maddox senses that he may have become uneasy both with his part and his past, and he wonders whether it is his return to England that has occasioned this, or what has happened to his daughter.

  “The name is not merely a play on your own, I take it, but a reference to Salomon de Caus?”

  The man starts. “There are few who know that name, these days. But yes. It was a deliberate choice.”

  Maddox turns a page of his book. “Hydraulic engineer, theorist of perspective, eminent mathematician, contriver of mechanical miracles and speaking statues, optical illusionist, and even, some say, occult magician. Yes, I should say it was indeed a suitable choice.”

  The man comes closer. “That book—”

  Maddox turns to the title page; the paper is mottled with age, the leather dry: New and rare inventions of water-works shewing the easiest waies to raise water higher than the spring by which invention the perpetual motion is proposed. A work both usefull, profitable and delightfull.

  “That’s the John Leak translation of 1603,” says Causton, in wonder. “That book is extraordinarily rare. And extraordinarily expensive.”

  “I collect books,” says Maddox simply, closing the volume and placing it carefully on the table beside him. “And in any case, the subject is of interest to me. Do, sit down.”

  Whatever Causton might have expected in this house, it was clearly not this. He takes a seat, but sits on the edge of it, like a nervous pupil. And Maddox notices now that he, too, has a book in his hands.

  “What brings you here, Mr Causton? I would be happy to explain my great-nephew’s scheme of charges, if that is what concerns you.”

  “I feel so foolish—I could have given this to him before, but I was distressed—I was not thinking coherently—”

  He is still clutching the book, and Maddox sees that there are various loose sheets interleaved between the pages.

  “It is a scrapbook,” he explains, seeing Maddox’s eyes upon it, and flushing again. “Lucy—my daughter—began it as a child. It is a record of my work—of our work.”

  Intrigued now, Maddox holds out his hand and Causton gets up and brings it to him. “But the chief reason I have brought it here is because it contains portraits of Lucy—I thought you might be able to send one to your nephew, so that he is familiar with her appearance.”

  He opens the book on Maddox’s lap, and leafs quickly through a handful of playbills and newspaper cuttings. “These at the back are the most recent. Here—this is very like.”

  And there she is. Softly shadowed and sepia-toned. Curls of bright hair hang about her face, but how dark her eyes might be Maddox cannot guess, for her eyelids are closed and her chin lifted, trance-like.

  “Is it the effect of the daguerreotype that she looks thus?” he asks, for the girl’s skin seems agonisingly pale.

  Causton shakes his head. “I wish it were, but no. It is the consequence of her condition. She has suffered from night spasms and sleepwalking since she was very young, and most especially since her mother’s death. Some of the doctors who examined her diagnosed a chronic and pernicious chlorosis—”

  “A form of anaemia?”

  “Indeed. But in recent months there have been other symptoms, other phenomena, which none of them could explain. Or could explain only as the proof of madness, or hysteria.”

  “I do not take your meaning.”

  “For some years Lucy has assisted me in the phantasmagoria, indeed she exhibited an uncommon facility for it, even as a child—”

  “She must take that talent from you.”

  The man flushes. “Lucy is not, in fact, my daughter, though I have long since regarded her as my own and loved her as such. I married her mother when Lucy was five years old—we met when I worked for a short time with a travelling fair where Margaret, also, was employed. She was a widow, and had been supporting both herself and Lucy for several years. That, of course, was before I met Monsieur Étienne-Gaspard Robertson. Before”—this with a lift of the chin—“I had my own establishment.”

  Maddox nods. “My apologies—I should not have interrupted you. You were saying—your daughter has been your amanuensis.”

  “It was more than that—Lucy has been the prime mover in many of our most successful representations—she would play the armonica, operate the lantern—”

  He stops, and a cloud crosses his face.

  “But then something changed,” says Maddox. It is an assertion, not a question.

  Causton sighs. “I have wished, so many times since, that I had acted differently. Lucy was averse to the idea from the start, but I persuaded her—I said it would make our fame, secure our future. And our need for money was very great. The popularity of the phantasmagoria was waning, and our expenses were considerable. But of this, of course, she knew nothing. I did not consider it a subject fit for a young woman.”

  Maddox waits, having learned, many years before, the value and use of silence.

  Causton takes a deep breath. “I created a new spectacle. A new purpose for the magic lantern. One in which Lucy played the most vital and central part.”

  “And what was it that you had her do?”

  “She spoke to the souls of the departed. She summoned the spirits of the dead.”

  “I see.”

  There is silence awhile. The ticking of the clock, the shouts of children on the street, and a sudden furious yowling as Thunder defends his territory in the yard behind the house.

  “Clearly,” says Maddox eventually, “your daughter did not communicate, in truth, with the dead. So in what did this performance consist? You had, I take it, some kind of mechanism—some stage apparatus?”

  “I employed an Influence Machine. A glass ball, which would spin and glow when Lucy laid hands upon it. My intent was to produce a suitably spectral appearance, while suggesting that the apparitions were conjured by the miracle of science, not the deceptions of sorcery.”

  “It was a deception, all the same.”

  “That was Lucy’s view. But I said it would do no harm. How wrong I was, how wretchedly wrong. And yet how could I have known that the harm it would do would be not to those who witnessed it, as she feared, but to Lucy herself?”

  “She was injured in some way?”

  He nods. “She said she found the touch of the machine—distressing. That it produced a sensation of heat and pain in her nerves. But as it made no such impression on me, I was disinclined to take her words seriously.”

  Maddox eyes him, wondering whether he, too, had eventually come to see his daughter as either mad or hysterical. Is that what kindles his guilt now? Because it is guilt that drives him, there is no question of that. Love, yes, but guilt more.

  Causton looks up and sees Maddox’s face. “You must understand—the things she described—there was no physical cause—no discernible illness that could possibly have occasioned them. And then later, when she started to talk of seeing things in the glow of the machine—of brightly coloured flames of cold light—no sane person sees such things, Mr Maddox. The doctors I consulted insisted that an asylum was the only remedy—”

  Maddox frowns. “But you did not, I deduce, take that course.”

  “No, I did not. Because it was then that I remembered something I had come upon when I was preparing the new spectacle. In the course of my research I had read mention of the work of an Austrian nobleman—of studies he had conducted which led him to conclude that certain sensitive persons may perceive the touch of crystals upon the skin as heat or, conversely, cold. I could not recollect where I had read this, but I did recall that he had carried out an experiment with a young
woman in which he gave her a magnet to hold which had been exposed to the light of the moon, and water to drink which he had steeped for many hours in the same light. The water induced violent vomiting, while contact with the magnet produced a sensation of the most distressing uneasiness, and the feeling of an inward struggle in her breast and head. Apparently the effect was even more pronounced if she remained in a darkened room for some hours before the experiment took place. The symptoms—the very language used—was exactly what my Lucy had described. It came to me at once that this might be the explanation—that it might be the magnetic current generated by my own machine that had caused her new affliction, and the many hours we spent in the dark, in the phantasmagoria, had only served to accentuate it. I ceased our performances at once and wrote that very day to this Baron Von Reisenberg. I received a reply from him by return of post. He informed me that he had conducted several such experiments on individuals he termed ‘sick sensitives,’ and that young females were particularly susceptible to the phenomena he described. He said he would be in England for the Exhibition, but he was willing to travel earlier, if that would assist me, and see Lucy at our house in Whitby.”

  Causton gets up and walks to the window. “I wonder now if any of it was true—whether all his so-called experiments were merely a blind—a means to obtain unhindered access to innocent and vulnerable young women.”

  Maddox nods slowly. “But he did, indeed, treat your daughter?”

  “If you may call it that. He claimed she was a most interesting case.” His voice is bitter now. “That she had enabled him to draw a vital new conclusion which he was confident would lead to a momentous step forward in his work.”

  “Did he say what that was?”

  “Not specifically. But I remember that he became most animated when he discovered that Lucy had been diagnosed with chlorosis. And that her cycle of menstruation coincided always with the time of full moon. He was so confident, I was foolish enough to hope for a cure—that he might be able to restore her to health. And now—”

  Maddox leans over, rather laboriously, and fumbles for the bell-rope. “If you will forgive me a moment,” he says, reaching now for paper and pen, “I must wire at once to my nephew. With luck, I may be able to get a message to Folkestone before he arrives there.”

  A few moments later Billy puts his head round the door, and is dispatched to the Post Office on the Strand, with an injunction to go at once and no loitering. Billy stares with undisguised curiosity at Maddox’s visitor, and then at the paper he has been given, but as he cannot read, he’s unlikely to find much enlightenment there.

  Causton, meanwhile, has been watching, clearly torn between relief that something is happening, and bafflement as to what that might actually be. When the door closes, Maddox turns again to him.

  “If you can leave me an address where I might find you, I will ensure that you are kept informed of my nephew’s progress.”

  “You wish to keep the scrapbook?”

  “If I may. Should my nephew fail to apprehend this man before he leaves the country, I will ensure that a picture of your daughter is sent on to him.”

  When Causton is gone Maddox sits for a while, pensive, but the day is warm and some time later he starts awake to a knock at the door. It’s Billy, who hands him a telegram and then hovers, shifting from foot to foot while Maddox reads it.

  “Very well, Billy,” he says eventually. “That will be all. You may bring tea, if you would.”

  “Right you are, Mr Maddox.”

  The old man lifts himself a little in his chair, stiff after his sleep, and it’s only then that he realises that little Betsy is sat on the floor at his feet, with the scrapbook on her knees and the pictures strewn haphazardly on all sides. Maddox smiles. “You like looking at the people, Betsy?”

  She looks up at him and nods, in that over-strenuous way little children have.

  “Dis one,” she says, pointing a slightly sticky finger. Maddox edges forwards in his seat and looks down. It is another daguerreotype, but this time the girl pictured can’t be much more than eight. She is sitting on the lap of an older woman, clearly her mother, and both are in their Sunday best, the little girl with her hair ringletted and ribboned, and the woman in a heavy gown of some sombre unreflecting colour. She is heavy-set and dark-haired, the woman, and neither is smiling, though given the immense period of time they would have been required to sit, unmoving, for the portraitist, that is not, perhaps, so very surprising.

  “Could you pass it to me, Betsy?”

  The child crawls across to the picture on her hands and knees and presents it in a charmingly formal fashion, to the old man. He touches her golden hair a moment then whispers, “I think I can hear your mother calling.”

  You might wonder how he knows this, since Nancy is at this very moment two floors below them, behind the closed kitchen door, and the little girl (whose hearing must, surely, be more acute than his) has showed no signs of noticing anything, but Betsy does not seem perturbed by such considerations, and merely smiles, retrieves her doll from the sopha, and skips off happily downstairs.

  As for Maddox, he sits staring at the picture in the silence, his left hand fluttering a little as it does when he is tired, or distressed. And then he turns again to the escritoire at his side, takes a sheet of paper and his pen, and begins, slowly, to write.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “LUCY!” CRIES CHARLES, HIS voice hoarse with anxiety, seizing the handle of the carriage door. “Lucy!”

  But when he throws it open all he finds is an elderly lady in a black silk mourning gown with a fat pug dog on her knee, frowning at him over her pince-nez. And then Sam is at his side, and the man in the tall hat is striding round the coach towards them, his face irate. “What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing? Who are you? How dare you approach my mother in this insolent manner?”

  “Metropolitan Police, sir,” says Sam quickly, as the pug starts up yapping and growling. “Case o’ mistaken identity. Our apologies.”

  Then he’s pulling Charles away, and hauling him back towards the railway station, hissing, “What do yer think yer doing? You’ll get us both in ’ot water at this rate. We’ll just ’ave to wait, Chas. We knew ’e probably wouldn’t be ’ere this early. We’ve jus’ gotta be patient.”

  “No,” insists Charles, frowning. “Something’s wrong, I know it.”

  He looks back to where the man in the tall hat is now presenting his documents at the foot of the gangway, and the elderly lady is being wheeled up onto the ship. “I’m going to board. I think Von Reisenberg’s given us the slip—gone another way. I think he asked about Folkestone deliberately, knowing full well that we would question Williams. If I take this crossing I could be in Paris by the early hours—I can get a train to Vienna from there.”

  “But Rowlandson said we weren’t to go any furver—”

  “Yes, I know he did, but that only applies to you, not me—Causton is my client now. I have every right to pursue his interests, in whatever way I see fit.”

  “So what am I supposed to do in the bleedin’ meantime?”

  “Wait to see if he comes for the five o’clock boat and then send a message by it to the telegraph office in Boulogne. They can wire me at the Gare du Nord. If you have him, I will return at once. If not, I will change trains and go on at once to Austria.”

  Sam starts to object but Charles is not listening. “And wire my uncle as well, will you—he’ll worry, else.”

  And with that he’s striding towards the foot of the gangway and fumbling in his pockets for money and his passport, not noticing that Watkins is toiling up from the office, waving a piece of paper in his hand.

  “A wire for you,” he calls, half out of breath, “from a Mr Maddox, in London.”

  But the steamer is blowing its horn now, and Charles can do nothing but seize the paper and stuff it into his pocket, before racing up the swaying plank to the ship, and the sea.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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  Lucy’s journal

  I HAVE BEEN here now, two days. This room high in his castle, and low under the sky.

  The crossing from Dover to Ostende took more than twelve hours, and as the day drew on the weather worsened, and we were soon pitching in heavy seas. He locked me in my cabin, telling me to sleep and be still, and I lay there, as the waves rolled beneath us, and the tears rolled down my cheeks onto the rough cotton pillow.

  When we reached port, it was some time before he came to summon me, telling me, once more, to shield my eyes before he led me up through the empty decks. And despite the shadows I walked in I could tell, as I stepped gingerly down the walkway to the dockside, that the sky was darkening and the rain falling. The quayside was almost deserted by then, with but one cab waiting, which took us through the wet and dreary town to the railway station, where a man in livery was awaiting us. His own servant, then, I thought, my heart sinking, as I realised at last—as I should have done hours before—where it was he planned to take me. In my present state of weakness my mind quailed at the thought of so many miles alone with him, so many, many miles in the closeness of a railway compartment, but in this, at least, my fears proved groundless, for he handed me into a compartment alone, then drew the blinds down and closed the door, and a few moments later the train jolted heavily into motion.

  And so it was that the journey was conducted. We changed trains at Cologne, and again at Leipzig, but there was no stop, no stay, and it was scarcely more than a day since we left Ostende that I awoke before dawn and lifted the corner of the blind to see the outskirts of Vienna. It was weeks since I had seen full sun, and my eyes were weak as a newborn’s, smarting at even the thin grey light then streaking the eastern sky. At Vienna, we were met by a carriage emblazoned with a coat of arms, and for one long last day I sat opposite him in the carriage, drifting in an uneasy slumber in which the sounds outside mingled with words half-heard and faces half-seen. And then suddenly I was awake, and the wind was whipping the coachman’s cloak against the carriage, and the rain pattering on the roof, as we started up what I could tell at once was a long steep slope, the horses straining and the wheels slipping on the wet cobblestones. Then the carriage came to a halt and when the door opened it was to darkness, and the glow of moonlight on ancient lichened walls, and I knew that I had entered the Baron’s domain.