The Seance (10 page)

My father, though he admired the picture, was more concerned about the prospect of my being arrested for trespass, and exacted a promise that I would not venture uninvited upon the Wraxford estate again. I agreed readily enough, believing that I would be able to apply my new-found talent to any subject I chose. But my next study of the keep at Orford looked markedly inferior to its predecessor, as did my efforts at several other favourite scenes. Something had been lost, an absence as palpable as a drawn tooth and yet impossible to define; some mysterious collaboration of hand and vision, a facility I had not even been conscious of possessing. Where once I had simply painted, all was now laboured, forced, unnatural; and the harder I struggled against this mysterious inhibition, the worse the result. I thought of returning to the Hall, but aside from my promise I was restrained by a superstitious fear that if I tried to repeat my success,
Wraxford Hall by Moonlight
would somehow ... not dissolve before my eyes, exactly, but reveal itself as flashy and mediocre. Perhaps I really was deluding myself; the thought had occurred to me often enough, and I had not submitted the picture to expert judgment; I felt I could not show it, for fear of alarming my father. Yet my heart insisted that I had done something remarkable, though at a price I would rather not have paid.

Then in October of the following year, all was changed by my father’s sudden death from a stroke. Now I was free to devote myself entirely to painting; except that my talent had deserted me, and besides, selling the practice seemed like a betrayal of my father’s memory, even his trust. Our clients expected me to carry on; Josiah, our elderly clerk, expected it; and so I went on ‘just for the time being’, as I kept telling myself, unsure whether it was conscience or cowardice that kept me in harness. My sole act of defiance was to hang
Wraxford Hall by Moonlight
upon my office wall (I told anyone who asked that it had been done from an old mezzotint) where it was displayed on the afternoon when I first met Magnus Wraxford.

I had received a note from him to say that he would very much like to meet me; he did not indicate why. I knew from my father’s notes to the Wraxford papers that Magnus was the son of Cornelius’s younger brother Silas, who had died in 1857. Cornelius had made a new will in 1858, leaving his entire estate to ‘my nephew Magnus Wraxford of Munster Square, Regent’s Park, London’. Out of curiosity I wrote to an acquaintance in London to ask if the name meant anything to him. ‘Well yes, as it happens,’ he wrote. ‘He is a medical man – studied in Paris, I believe; practises mesmerism, of which as you know there is a great deal of suspicion amongst the established practitioners. Claims to be able to cure heart disease, among other illnesses, through mesmeric treatment. Apparently his patients – especially the women – can’t speak too highly of him. Said to be very charming, personally, but nothing much in the way of fortune, which of course compounds the suspicion against him.’

I do not know quite what I was expecting, but even as Magnus Wraxford was shown into the room I knew that I was in the presence of a superior intelligence; yet there was nothing of condescension in his manner. He was about my own height (a shade under six feet), but broader in the shoulders, with thick black hair and a small, pointed beard, neatly trimmed. His hands were almost square, with long, powerful fingers, the nails clipped very close, unadorned except for a fine gold signet ring, bearing the image of a phoenix, on his right hand. But it was the eyes beneath the high, domed forehead that compelled your attention: deep-set, of a very dark brown, and extraordinarily luminous. For all the friendliness of his greeting, I had the unnerving sensation that my innermost thoughts were on display. Which was perhaps why, when his gaze turned to
Wraxford Hall by Moonlight
, I at once admitted my trespass. Far from disapproving, he admired the picture so warmly that I was quite disarmed, the more so when he insisted that any apologies were due to me.

‘I am very sorry,’ he said, ‘that my uncle put you off so discourteously.

He is, as you will have gathered, the most unsociable of men. He tolerates me only because he thinks I can help him in his – researches. But surely you and I have met before? In town, at the Academy last year – the Turner bequest? I am sure I saw you there, at any rate.’

His voice, like his gaze, was wonderfully persuasive; I had indeed visited the exhibition, and though I could not recall seeing him, I felt half convinced that we really must have met. We had both, at any rate, admired
Rain, Steam and Speed
, and deplored the hostile reaction it still inspired amongst the hidebound, and so we settled ourselves by the fire and talked Turner and Ruskin like old friends until Josiah arrived with the tea. It was four in the afternoon on a chill, overcast day, and the light was already fading.

‘I see that my uncle was at work that night – unless that sinister glow in the gallery window is your own inspiration,’ said Magnus, looking again at my picture.

‘No, there really was a light; rather unnerving, I confess. People in these parts firmly believe that the Hall is haunted, and your uncle a necromancer.’

‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that there may be some truth in those tales, at least on the second point ... You noticed the lightning rods, I see.’

I had spoken lightly, which made his reply all the more surprising. For a moment I thought that he must have said ‘no truth’.

‘Yes – I have never seen a building with so many. Is your uncle especially afraid of thunderstorms?’

‘On the contrary ... but I should first tell you that the lightning rods were originally installed some eighty years ago, by my great-uncle Thomas.’

‘Was he,’ I asked, wondering if I had misheard him again, ‘the Thomas Wraxford who lost his son in a fall from the gallery and later – vanished?’

‘Indeed so; that gallery is now my uncle’s workroom. But the rods – quite a novelty then – were fitted at least a decade before the tragedy. And no, your ears did not deceive you a moment ago—’

My surprise at his seeming clairvoyance must have shown on my face.

‘The fact is, Mr Montague, I fear my uncle has embarked on an experiment which may place him, and possibly others, in mortal danger if nothing is done to prevent it. And so I felt I should acquaint you with the situation and – if you are willing – seek your advice.’

I assured him that I would be happy to do anything in my power, and pressed him to continue.

‘My uncle and I have never been close, you understand; I visit him two or three times a year, and we correspond occasionally. But since my student days I have tracked down various out-of-the-way books for him, mostly alchemical and occult works. He suffers, I should tell you, from a morbid fear of death, and I sometimes think this accounts for his having shut himself so much away from the world. It has certainly drawn him into strange paths of study; and in particular to the alchemists’ quest for the elixir of life – the potion which will supposedly confer immortality upon him who discovers the secret.

‘The winter before last, he began dropping hints about a rare alchemical manuscript he had acquired: a comparatively recent work, dating from the late seventeenth century. He would not reveal the author’s name, or say where he had got it. My uncle, as you will have gathered, is profoundly suspicious and secretive, but it was clear that he believed he had found something truly remarkable.

‘Last autumn, he told me that he intended to renew the cables to the lightning rods, and asked me to find him a copy of Sir William Snow’s treatise on thunderstorms. I was not altogether surprised; he had been muttering for some years about the danger of fire started by lightning. You may well wonder why he has done nothing to secure the house against fires of a more terrestrial kind, but his dislike of spending money is as powerful as his fear of death. So I sent him the book, and thought no more about it until I came up to visit him a fortnight ago.

‘The lightning rods, I should say, have always been connected to the ground by way of a heavy black cable secured to the side wall. But now
I saw that a section about six feet in length had been removed from the cable at the level of the gallery. I thought at first that the cable was being replaced piecemeal: a dangerous business, for if lightning were to strike with that section still missing, the full force of the bolt would explode into the gallery. But as I drew closer, I saw that the appearance of a gap was deceptive: the wall had been pierced in two places, with the cable leading into the first aperture and reappearing about six feet further down.

‘In his letter of invitation, my uncle had said only that he wanted to “make some dispositions”. I had no inkling of what that might mean, but as I stood contemplating this bizarre arrangement, I confess to a cold crawling sensation along my backbone.

‘I was admitted, as usual, by his manservant Drayton – a melancholy fellow of sixty or more – who informed me that my uncle was engaged in the library and had left word that he was not to be disturbed before dinner. This was not unusual; his invitations are never for more than two days, and he sees me only when he wants something. Indeed, to be frank, if he hadn’t made me his heir, I doubt I should have kept up the connection.

‘My uncle, I should say, has kept the same few servants for as long as I have known him. There is Grimes the coachman, who also serves as groom and ostler; his wife, who does the cooking (which is spartan in the extreme), an elderly maid, and Drayton. My uncle wears the same threadbare suit, day in, day out; I don’t imagine he has dressed for dinner since the day he left Cambridge, which must be forty-five years ago. Most of the house, as you would have observed, is closed up: Grimes and his wife have the keeper’s cottage, and the other servants’ rooms are on the ground floor, at the rear of the house.

‘My uncle’s apartment consists of the long gallery’ – again he indicated the lighted windows in my picture – ‘and the library and study which adjoin it. The gallery is perhaps forty feet by fifteen; the library is the same length, but with the study let into the corner by the landing.

‘As you enter the gallery by the main doors you see, at the far end of the room, an immense fireplace. But no fire has burned in it for centuries;
the space within is occupied by what at first appears to be an immense cabin trunk. It is in fact a sarcophagus made of copper, so corroded and tarnished with age that only traces of the original scrollwork remain. It was commissioned by Sir Henry Wraxford, around the year 1640, as a species of
memento mori
: his remains are interred therein.

‘In the alcove between the fireplace and the library wall stands a massive suit of armour, curiously blackened as if by fire. You would think it the work of some medieval craftsman, but as you approach you see that, from the waist down, it resembles one of those Egyptian coffins in the shape of a man. It was built in Augsburg, less than a hundred years ago, at around the same time as von Kempelen’s celebrated chess-playing automaton; Thomas Wraxford brought it back from Germany as part of the refurbishment of the Hall.

‘The gallery is otherwise bare of furnishings, except for a couple of upright chairs and a long table – which serves as my uncle’s workbench – beneath the windows where the light shows in your picture. Portraits of Wraxfords past hang above the table; the opposite wall is adorned with the usual array of ancient weapons, trophies and faded tapestries, compounding the air of desolation. A cold, bleak, echoing place, smelling of damp and decay.

‘The library next door is a typical country gentleman’s miscellany, crammed with works that no one would ever wish to read. Whenever he lets me in, the table is always clear of books and papers; he keeps his alchemical works in a locked press. The study is also his bedroom; there is a camp bed in one corner, and he takes all his meals there, so far as I know, except when I visit him. Beyond that is nothing but dust and empty corridors; I don’t suppose anyone has set foot on the upper floors since the last century.