The Angel of Highgate (10 page)

His eyes were focused on the images playing out in his head; he did not see the throbbing coals of the fire, the sexton lolling in the lopsided chair, or even the room before him.

“How old were you, sir,” the sexton asked, “when your mother passed?”

Thraxton’s eyes refocused as his mind journeyed back across many years. He looked at the sexton’s face, half-lit from one side, like a phase of the moon.

“I was nine years old when her heart finally failed. I remember the weeks before her death, when she was too ill to see me for more than a few minutes before I was shooed out of the room by the physician. One day, I found Mary, one of our domestics, sobbing outside my mother’s rooms. When she saw me, Mary pulled me to her and hugged me. My face was buried in her apron and she hugged me so tight I could hardly breathe. And I knew then—I knew…”

Thraxton’s voice broke on the last word. His eyes shone as he raised the pewter mug, gulped the last swallow of brandy, and set the tankard at his feet.

“I was taken in to see her. She had been laid out in the bed. My father lifted me so that I might kiss her. I remember the feel of her lips. Stiff. Waxen. Cold.

“From that moment on, I was forgotten. It was as if I too died that day, for even the tiny amount of affection I occasionally received from my father was withdrawn. I became a ghost, a very small ghost that haunted the hallways of that vast house. My father remarried two years later and things became very much worse. For now I was a reminder. All the portraits of my mother were taken down, but every time my father or his new wife saw my face, they saw my mother’s face. I became a recrimination. The greatest crime one can commit against a child is to withhold love. How can one thrive, grow, without it?

“Then there was the day—four years after my mother’s death—when I was playing in the grounds of our house near the family mausoleum. The place was always kept locked, but on this particular day I saw that the door had been left open.

“I was a young boy and naturally curious. I entered and found lanterns burning. The crypt contained the coffins of our family, going back generations. I found my mother’s coffin. I remember reading her name on it. The coffin screws were silver doves. They had been removed and set upon the bier. Even as a young boy I knew what happened to bodies left exposed after death. I had seen dead animals in the woods of our estates. I wondered if she would look the same. I had no fear when I lifted the lid and finally looked inside.”

Thraxton tapped the ash from his cigar and drew deeply on it, then exhaled a lungful of silver smoke.

“Perhaps it was the coldness of the crypt, or the dry air within, but her body was in a perfect state of preservation. In truth, she looked little different than the day she died. She was still beautiful. Still young. Although her hair was longer, for it had continued to grow, as had her fingernails. I remember touching the back of her hand. The skin felt like cold, stiff leather. When I lifted her arm, it was light as a bird’s wing.

“She looked to be sleeping, not dead. I recalled all the happy hours I had spent in her arms. And so I climbed into the coffin, and lay with my back to her chest. I wrapped her arms around me, and pulled the coffin lid down upon us. It was dark, but the darkness did not frighten me, for I was once again in my mother’s arms, in a place where nothing could hurt me. The coffin smelled of the rose petals scattered inside. After some time I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened by a flash of light—the coffin lid being thrown open—and found myself looking up into the face of our groundskeeper, a rough, foul-tempered man. He was very angry, though not nearly as angry as my father proved to be. I received the strapping of a lifetime. At first I thought it was because of what I had done, but now, as an adult, I realize why he was so angry.

“My mother always wore an amulet around her neck. It contained a piece of amber with a small insect trapped inside. As a child I was always fascinated with it, and my mother let me look at it whenever I asked. The amulet had been a present from my father on the first anniversary of their wedding. My mother had been buried with the amulet. But a day after I received my strapping, my stepmother appeared at the dinner table wearing my mother’s amulet. My father had presented it to her as a gift on their third wedding anniversary.”

As he remembered it, Thraxton’s face contorted with hatred and disgust.

“My father had robbed my mother’s grave for a trinket to present to his… his whore! I ask you, what kind of monster does that?”

Thraxton looked away into the shadows, a muscle twitching in his lower jaw.

“From the way I stared at the amulet all through dinner it became very obvious to my father that I knew exactly where it came from. I’m sure it became apparent to him that I was becoming more than just an inconvenient reminder of my mother. Needless to say I was packed off to public school soon after. Which, of course, is where I first met you, old stick.”

For the first time since he had begun his reverie, Thraxton looked over at Algernon. But with the exertions of the night, coupled with the brandy and Thraxton’s droning, his friend had nodded off long ago. The Toby jug dangled loosely from his fingers, ready to spill. A small pile of ash from his cigar was burning a hole in the threadbare upholstery of the chair arm. Thraxton reached over, pulled the jug from Algernon’s fingers and set it on the floor, then gently retrieved the cigar and tossed it in the fire.

“That’s quite a story, milord.”

Thraxton looked up to find the sexton’s kind eyes fixed upon him. He was about to say something when he was interrupted by a faint but eerie screech. When Thraxton turned to look, an icy chill ran through him. At the window a pair of luminous yellow eyes peered in at them from the blackness.

The sexton got up, ambled to the window and opened it. In sprang an enormous black tomcat with huge golden eyes. “It’s only me moggy, Pluto,” the sexton said.

Pluto jumped down from the windowsill, swayed over to Thraxton and dropped something small and black at his feet.

A dead mouse.

A
lthough Algernon had only enjoyed perhaps twenty minutes of sleep in the last forty-eight hours, it was a Monday morning and those who were not of the leisure class had jobs to go to. After a hastily eaten breakfast, he hailed a cab in order to catch the steamer for Kew Gardens where he held the position of head botanist. (A position he owed thanks in large part to Thraxton’s influence and patronage of the Royal Botanical Gardens.)

Lord Thraxton’s day, meanwhile, assumed its usual leisurely pace. After breakfast, he retired to his rooms and slept until early afternoon. Upon awakening, he called for his blue brougham to be brought around. An hour later the carriage deposited him, once again, at the London Cemetery at Highgate.

During his late breakfast, Thraxton had decided to revisit the cemetery during the hours of daylight while the events of the previous night were still fresh in his mind. Compared with last night’s miasmic fog, the day turned out to be dry and crisp under bright sunshine and brilliant blue skies, and the winding paths were strewn ankle-deep with the scarlet and gold of autumn’s glory. But after strolling for the better part of an hour, he found the cemetery so different in daylight that it conjured none of the associations he had been seeking. Weary, and still feeling the effects of his nocturnal misadventure, he abandoned his search, but determined to make some productive use of the visit by composing a new poem.

He had brought his book of blank pages and pen, and now he sought out the place in the cemetery where he usually wrote. The gravestone slab was elevated a foot and a half from the ground on stout stone legs, so as to form a kind of table or low bench. The epitaph showed that the grave belonged to one Emily Fitzsimmons, who had shuffled from this mortal coil at age sixty-three, much to the eternal grief of her adoring husband Walter and their two children Amelia and Francis. Thraxton sat upon the grave, facing toward the massive stone gateway flanked by a pair of faux obelisks that formed the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue. With the book resting upon his thighs, he took out his favorite pen and jotted the title of today’s poem at the top of the blank page: “The Highgate Spirit.”

Thraxton’s eyes danced along the whorls and curlicues of his handwriting set in blue ink upon a blank white page. He had his title, his theme. As a form of meditation, he gazed skyward, watching puffy white clouds tumbling and reforming while he awaited inspiration. After ten minutes he came to himself and realized that the muse was uncharacteristically silent that day. Clearly her throat was in need of a little lubrication.

Thraxton set down his pen and picked up his phoenix handle walking stick. Before leaving home he had refilled the glass tube with an aged and oakey brandy. He unscrewed the sipping cup, and yanked the cork loose with his teeth. Careful not to waste a drop, he filled the cup then quickly drained it and poured himself another. Despite the brilliant sunshine it was a chilly, brisk day and the brandy warmed his innards. He was reassembling the walking stick when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look.

In the shadows sprawled beneath a canopy of elm trees, a slender black shape glided silently through the distant gravestones.

He stood up and looked, but it had vanished.

Thraxton dropped the walking stick and took off running.

As he reached the path he glimpsed it again, fleetingly. It seemed to be moving in a direction slanting diagonally away from him. Thraxton abandoned the path and crashed through the underbrush. It was darker beneath the canopy of trees. Although the cemetery had only been open a few years, many of the graves here were already overgrown. Thraxton leaped over graves in his haste, eyes scanning ahead for another sight of the black wraith. He spotted it, barely fifty feet away, gliding away from him. He lost sight momentarily as he dodged around a stand of elm trees, but kept running. He leapt over another grave and almost crashed into a dark crouching form.

A woman in a veil and black mourning dress knelt at a handsome marble grave while she placed flowers upon it. She looked up with a startled expression, eyes wide, mouth open as Thraxton stood over her, panting and flushed.

It took a moment for them to recognize one another.

“Mrs. Pennethorne!” Thraxton blurted. He suddenly noticed the fresh flowers laid upon the grave and the name
Charles Pennethorne
engraved on the handsome marble headstone. In her widow’s black lace dress and black bonnet, Thraxton had mistaken Constance for the specter he had seen the evening before.

“I… I… please, forgive me,” Thraxton stammered. “I did not mean to intrude. I thought you… I mean, I most humbly beg your pardon.”

Mortified by his own bumbling stupidity, Thraxton bowed slightly and was about to take his leave when Constance rose and graciously offered her hand.

“Not at all,” she said, smiling to show she had recovered from her initial surprise. “Once again, Lord Thraxton, your entrance displays great dramatic flair.”

Thraxton felt himself blushing and thought,
Congratulations, Geoffrey. You’ve made a complete arse of yourself.

She laughed at his obvious embarrassment. “No, it is good to see you again. I have not forgotten your generosity at the British Museum.”

Thraxton gently shook her hand and nodded politely at the grave. “Your beloved late husband, I take it?”

She nodded.

“Forgive me. I shall intrude upon your grief no further.”

He turned to leave, but she put a hand on his arm. “No, please. I was just about to leave. My friends are waiting at the gate. Perhaps you would be gallant enough to walk with me?”

And so the pair strolled together along the leaf-strewn paths. It was considerably warmer in the sunshine. Were it not for the bare trees and the dense carpet of fallen leaves, it could almost have been taken for a spring day.

“You are here to visit a loved one, Lord Thraxton?”

“No, I come here to write,” Thraxton replied. “I find the melancholy atmosphere of Highgate, all this sorrow and brooding loss turned to stone, conjures my poetic muse.”

Constance smiled. “Ah, you are a poet?”

“There are those who would argue the point, but yes, I title myself as such. It is so much more agreeable than admitting that I basically do nothing at all.”

Constance could not hold back a wry smile, which Thraxton took as a sign of encouragement. “Forgive my boldness, Mrs. Pennethorne, but I must confess that upon seeing you at your husband’s grave, I was struck by how your great natural beauty was rendered quite transcendent by a widow’s grief.”

“You are terrible flatterer, Lord Thraxton.”

“It would seem a sin to keep such pulchritude wrapped in a widow’s weeds forever. I believe there are seasons in all things—life and death. Perhaps when your season of grief has passed, you will be free to open your heart again to another love among the living?”