The Blood Dimmed Tide (17 page)

‘She fears you lack the passion. She knows about your secrets.’

‘What secrets?’

‘That you’re still in contact with Iseult Gonne. That you wrote to her during your honeymoon to let her know how unhappy you were. Is that correct?’

I could sense Yeats’ tension. He had become captivated by Iseult after agreeing to take charge of her introduction to London’s literary society in the summer of 1916, and had proposed to her immediately after her mother Maud Gonne spurned his latest proposal. However, the affection she showed towards him was more in keeping with that of a young woman to an adoptive father and guardian, rather than a suitor in love.

‘To a degree.’

‘How often do you write to her?’

‘I don’t know. Barely once a week. I’ve only met her twice, since the wedding.’

At this revelation, a buzz of conversation erupted from the audience of servant girls. Distracted, Georgie’s eyes fluttered and she awoke. Yeats sat down, sighing. The spell was broken, the moment lost. Even though he was a renowned poet and orator immersed in public affairs, he was still capable of being surprised by his young wife, of being caught short by the interrogative gifts of her spirit companions.

In spite of my best attempts to mollify Yeats, his embarrassment made him resentful and reluctant to talk to anyone after the séance. Without uttering another word, he swept out through the heavy doors of the disused church with Georgie hurrying after him. I made to follow them but found my path blocked by Marley. He was determined to share his opinions about the séance.

‘Mr Yeats surprised me this evening,’ he said, staring at me intently. ‘He has come all the way down from his ivory tower and shown himself to be a man of flesh and vulnerability. A harassed husband and soon, I fear, a harassed father.’

I avoided his gaze.

A note of contempt sounded in Marley’s voice. ‘Tell him he should stick to his poetry.’

‘Are you suggesting the séance was a failure?’

‘A successful fraud, rather than a failure,’ he declared. ‘No more than that. One of the most beautifully acted deceptions I have ever seen. The medium’s performance was a
pièce de résistance
that would grace the Abbey stage any day of the week.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘What other conclusion can one draw? It’s obvious the ghosts don’t exist. Besides, I suspect the medium is attempting to have a row with her husband.’ He grinned. ‘Perhaps even seduce him.’

‘But that’s idiotic. If she was, surely she’d be more discreet about her intentions.’

‘Sometimes an argument in public is a safer way to defuse accumulated marital tensions.’ Marley walked over to the table and inspected the pages of Georgie’s handwriting. ‘No one else in the room saw or heard the spirits. Only one person did, and she purports to have no conscious memory of their communication. The only evidence is her scrawled handwriting and a series of doodles.’

One of the servant girls drew back the drapes that covered the windows with a dramatic swish. In the distance, the mountain of Ben Bulben lay dark as a crypt under a gathering rainstorm.

‘How can you be so sure she’s a fraud? Yeats is a world expert on séances and mediums.’

‘And so is Georgie. I understand she has been a member of the Golden Dawn since the age of seventeen.’

‘If she is a fake, what has she to gain? She didn’t earn a penny for her performance tonight. Besides, the séance practically descended into chaos. Why humiliate her husband by creating these so-called “frustrators”?’

‘Mrs Yeats gained something more important than money tonight.’

‘What was that?’

‘Her husband’s undivided attention. The more she holds it, the less time he can give to his former loves. Don’t you see? The “frustrators” are crucial to the fraud. They add confusion and stall for time. Otherwise, Yeats would want to publish the messages from the otherworld immediately, and reveal them to the world as proof that spirits exist, that there is a reality outside ours. No. Every hoax needs an element of failure. Georgie is happy writing endless reams of nonsense and speaking in her strange voices. As long as she has Yeats’ interest, the charade is worth continuing. And anytime he presses for results, she introduces the evil spirits to create confusion and delay. Look at what happened this evening. The “frustrators” did not allow Rosemary’s ghost to speak because she was never there in the first place.’

Marley chuckled as I stared doubtfully at the pages of automatic writing. Remarkably, his face had relaxed. The more sinister world of spies and subterfuge had loosened its grip on him, if only for a moment. ‘To tell you the truth, I enjoyed this evening’s performance. It was more fun than a trip to the theatre to watch the captivating Maud Gonne.’

‘You should get out more often, if that’s the case.’

‘You’re one to talk.’ He stared at me knowingly.

I felt his disbelieving mind search out a new target. ‘Do you have me under surveillance?’ I asked warily.

‘Do you think I’d tell you if you were?’

I hesitated to reply.

‘Unless you and Mr Yeats have devised a method of vanishing magically from the scene, I suggest you avoid Sligo’s beaches, especially at night.’ His face darkened again. I could sense the firmness of his suspicions. They were a stronghold, an unassailable vantage point from which he could launch pinpoint attacks on my integrity. Under his cynical gaze, I grew acutely aware of an unfounded sense of guilt.

Marley added, ‘I need hardly remind you what the punishment for treason is.’

‘Trying to make contact with a ghost is hardly treason.’

‘Let me save you and Mr Yeats the bother of any further botched séances or embarrassing paranormal investigations. Rosemary O’Grady was a fanatic. Of the same mould as Maud Gonne. Generally speaking, fanatical women are unpredictable and dangerous creatures. They resist being controlled. They are cold-blooded and have no fear of death, and they don’t always obey orders or stick to plans.’

‘What orders had she been given?’

‘My sources tell me she was at the centre of a plot to bring German weapons by submarine to Sligo.’

I tried to absorb the implications of what he had said.

‘This was an international conspiracy that threatened the British Isles as a whole. A plot hatched to plunge Ireland into chaos. I want to stress to you that withholding information about the Daughters of Erin and their intentions is tantamount to treason.’

‘I have nothing to withhold.’ I thought of the Ireland I had encountered so far, and wondered whether it was not already slipping into chaos.

‘We are merely asking your cooperation if you come across any information about gun smuggling.’

‘Am I being recruited as a spy?’

‘We are seeking your cooperation, as a loyal British citizen.’

‘So if I should uncover a plot to smuggle weapons I should contact you.’

‘That is correct.’

Marley backed off with a smirk. I left the church in a hurry. I had the strong feeling that any further spiritual investigations conducted by Yeats in public would not involve his wife as a medium. He was under considerable strain and I feared he might try to free himself from the smothering and unfamiliar constraints of marriage by doing something desperate like contacting his former lover, Maud Gonne.

17

Eight of Cups

CAPTAIN Oates picked his way over heaped landfall, broken fencing, treeroots ripped from the earth, and strange-looking stone slabs sticking up at odd angles like headstones amid the sea pebbles. If he had not been tracking the mysterious movements of a large sailing boat, he would have stopped to examine the slabs. As it was, he would not be diverted from his surveillance. He had been following the boat’s course all evening. He watched it through his field glasses, sailing westward, riding the tide, then labouring hard against the currents, its hull low in the breaking water. He knew that the spring tides poured quickly between the rocky promontories of the bay, and that more nimble boats had been squeezed to smithereens between its rocky jaws.

He watched the boat inch its way through an obstacle course of raised sand beds and sharp rocks until it was about to slip past the headland, when it mysteriously swung back to port and returned into view, threading its way back across the bay. Finally, he had found something worth studying in the wind-tossed oblivion of the Atlantic. After months of interrogation, the turbulent waves of Blind Sound were delivering their secrets.

Darkness fell, and a light began to wink every ten minutes or so from the boat. It occurred to him that its crew were signalling someone on the shore. He was about to look for cover when he heard a noise from the rocks behind. Automatically, he felt for his revolver, realising as he did so the futility of the movement. He turned, prepared to explain that he was out for a stroll and had been observing the movements of what might have been porpoises or basking sharks swimming out in the bay.

However, he offered no such explanation when he saw who was advancing towards him. It was someone who no longer had an interest in porpoises or sharks, or boats that might be smuggling weapons or contraband. A figure little more than a deeper shade of black unfurled against the black cliffs, gradually forming into the thin shape of a woman with a hood obscuring her face.

Oates stood rooted to the spot, at once alarmed by the return of Rosemary’s ghost and reassured, the way one feels when confronted by a familiar face in a nightmare. A fresh surge of sea-water washed against his feet.

‘Why are you following me?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because I need to know.’

The ghost did not reply. Her hooded face was like a vortex threatening to pull him in.

‘The least you can tell me is whether you’re here to do good or evil.’

‘I’m here to give you a message.’

‘What sort of message?’

‘That you are at risk of serious harm.’

‘From whom?’

‘Forces over which you have no control.’

‘Supernatural forces?’

‘Human forces. Of the most dangerous kind.’

He was aware of the sea at his back, the forward rush of each breaking wave, and the sound of what might have been a boat’s hull smacking against the churning water.

‘What were you searching for every time you waded out into the bay?’

The ghost backed away, her head hung low with the submissiveness of someone trapped in an eternity of waiting. The sound of rough voices rose from the sea.

‘I heard a report that it was just seashells.”

‘Not seashells. Men.’

What type of seductress are you, he wondered.

‘Germans, to be precise,’ said the ghost.

‘What did you want from them?’

Her voice turned cold. ‘Guns. Bombs. Weapons for the Daughters of Erin. I was tasked with finding a suitable bay along the Sligo coast for a German U-boat to land safely. I waded out and measured the depths of the water and the movement of the tides in every cove and inlet for miles.’

‘Is that what you were doing the night you were murdered?’

‘Yes.’

‘What else happened that night?’

‘I discovered that the Daughters of Erin were being betrayed. I collected all the tell-tale clues but couldn’t work out who to trust with the information.’

He thought to himself that that was the problem with belonging to a secret revolutionary society. Who did you trust to report your suspicions?

‘I found out there was never going to be any weapons arriving at Blind Sound. Only contraband. Alcohol mostly.’

Oates thought of the girl with the fire of revolution burning in her head, wading out in her long dress every night into the Atlantic. A fluttering sound filled the air behind him, like that of wind moulding the canvas of a sail. A curtain of luminous sea mist passed between them. The wind dropped, and the waves grew softer, the sea denser.

The figure of the ghost seemed distracted. Something was different about her tonight.

‘You must go now,’ she urged him. ‘If you stay here any longer, you’ll face the same death I endured.’

‘And what was that?’

‘The smugglers will hide you in a coffin and let the sea swallow you up.’

‘Then I will make the sea spit me out.’

‘Come with me now to the top of the cliffs. Up there you will see everything with absolute clarity.’

Oates stared up at the moonlit cliffs, the crumbling rocks that gave onto the direst drops. He knew of higher cliffs but few were as imposing as the overhanging cliffs at Blind Sound. Again, the ghost urged him to leave, as though he were stubbornly clinging to a sinking ship. He sensed a note of growing exasperation in her voice. The wind rippled through her long black gown. She shivered.

‘Sometimes I can’t help wondering if you’re not dead at all,’ he said. ‘That you might be more alive than I am.’

Her form was immediately charged with energy. She sidestepped him and jumped onto a rock. ‘Tell that to the priest who buried me.’

He climbed the rock and clutched at her long gown. It struck him that he could be as wanton as he liked with a ghost.

‘Your heart is healthy,’ said the figure. ‘Pulsating in its own blood. I see it. I feel it. But mine is rotten and shrivelled.’

‘I want to see your face.’

‘You can’t look at me,’ she whispered urgently.

His hand pulled at her gown, tore it apart. He felt cold flesh and fell back in surprise. She seemed to be sighing but it might have been the sound of the wind flowing through her torn robe.

‘I still can’t see your face.’

‘Don’t come near me,’ she warned. ‘It’s the face of a living woman you want to see.’

She was agitated. Her body trembled.

‘Then why do you tempt me?’ There was hurt in his voice.

‘I have taken my life to the grave.’

‘I’m not afraid to join you.’

‘If you want me there is no need to go to the trouble of dying. There is a better way.’

‘How?’

She removed her hood and revealed the silhouette of her face. The wind whipped her hair against her cheeks. He reached out to brush it aside but at that instant, an oil lamp flashed from a nearby rock. Its intermittent beam distracted his eyes. Someone was advancing towards them. The ghostly figure of the girl flickered against the light and then disappeared swiftly from view.

‘Don’t go,’ he shouted into the darkness. But she was already gone.

He looked up. Two men, bare-chested and muscle-bound, were trotting towards him with oil lamps swinging in their hands. He had seen them before, the night the swimmer had been dragged ashore tied to an anchor rope. Their malevolent faces surrounded him, the grey hairs on their chests matted from the sea.

‘Who were you talking to?’ they demanded. He could smell the salt tang of the Atlantic.

‘A ghost.’

‘Are you fooling with us?’ said one of them, removing a knife from his belt.

‘Wait,’ said the other. ‘It’s the captain. The chief wants to speak to him.’

He bounded into the darkness but they ran after him, diving onto his legs, the three of them scuffling together. Oates tried to roll down the beach into the sea, his body lacquered with sand and seaweed, but he was no match for the two men with their wide shoulders and powerful gripping arms. They were well-rehearsed gymnasts of violence; in the light of the oil lamps, their shadows threw fierce somersaults against the sand and rocks. Soon they had overpowered him, pinning his body to the soft sand, raining down a barrage of blows. A whimper emerged from his dry throat, a plea for mercy. He gulped down cold air that reeked of blood and salt.

‘That’s enough,’ said a voice from the rocks. It spoke loudly but without conviction. A figure stepped into view. At first, Oates believed he was safe when he recognised who it was, a fellow member of the Crown forces, but when he stared into his eyes, any hope that he might be saved rapidly dissolved.

‘That wasn’t a ghost you saw, Captain Oates,’ growled the voice. ‘Ghosts don’t hide their modesty behind cloaks and hoods. After all, who ever heard tell of a lost soul worried about a rip in its gown?’