Yearn (6 page)

Intrigued, the working girl looked up. “Nice island that would be—where did you say it was?”

“Does it matter? Prudence, I am making you an offer of a lifetime. Who knows what might happen if it works? I'm also offering you twenty crowns.”

For the first time in their conversation Prudence looked interested, her pretty face sharpening as she made some quick mental calculations. “Twenty-five . . . and ten for my . . . ‘assistant.' . . .”

D'Arcy inhaled sharply. Twenty crowns was double her usual fee and thirty-five was exorbitant. He simply didn't have the money. Calculating wildly, he realized he had no choice; he would have to visit at least two of his more sympathetic unmarried relatives to borrow the money and live off cockles and cheap beer for the rest of the month. But he was committed: he was determined to execute the ritual at any cost. “Done. There's just one other point: there is another man involved.”

“Oh saucy, Mr. D'Arcy, but I suppose two men and two girls could have a lot of fun. And it's lucky for you that I do like the occasional tryst with a pretty young girl. Still, servicing three is a lot more work. Is he a reasonable chap?”

“I think you'll like him. He's young, handsome, and clean enough.”

“And you'll be the master of ceremonies, so to speak?”

“I will be directing the movements of the ritual,” D'Arcy replied cautiously, settling on the word
movements
because of the musical connotation, and thinking of the ritual as a benign symphony somehow gave the whole notion a dignified legitimacy. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his last ten crowns. “See this as a deposit.” He held out the crowns. Finally Prudence's fingers closed around the money. “The rest we get on the night?”

“Gentleman's word.”

“Well,” the prostitute said, sliding the money into the large purse she always kept hanging off her belt, “at the very least it will be an education. And I'm always looking for original ways to educate meself. I think this new girl Amelia has talent. She's very pretty and has an enthusiasm for the theatrics. Just tell me the time and place and what we should be wearing and I promise prompt and professional service, as always, Mr. D'Arcy,” she concluded with a tiny flick of her very pink tongue.

 • • • 

The young sweep glanced about the private garden square, then slid closer to D'Arcy on the park bench. “You mean to say that we will all spoon together for the sake of . . .'ow would you call it . . . magic?” His voice was a tense mixture of incredulity and excitement.

D'Arcy stared out at the small pond, upon which a drake was strutting his prowess to a disinterested mate. If only his life was as uncomplicated as that of the lusty drake. Swallowing his own nervousness, he mustered up the last of his resolve. “It is more in the pursuit of a native science, young Harry, and I will be following the words of the diary to the last letter.”

“And these are definitely the words of the great man himself?”

“Absolutely; I have verified both the handwriting and Banks's very turn of phrase. It is indisputably his reportage. You have made a great find, and I shall see to it that you are mentioned in my book.”

“An honor, sir, but I was hoping for a more fiscal kind of reward. . . .”

“Indeed, and I will, naturally, pay you well for partaking in our little secret ritual.”

“How well?”

D'Arcy knew he would not be able to borrow more than the sum of sixty crowns and already his expenses were mounting up. Disheartened, he ran through a mental inventory of all his assets, attempting to calculate which he could more or less happily part with. Finally he arrived at an old set of pewter drinking mugs he had inherited from his grandfather. At least one hundred years old, it was safe to assume they might be of value to the pawnbroker. “I was thinking of the sum of fifteen crowns?” he ventured, assuming the young man's services might be worth less than the professional Prudence as, he reasoned, another man might actually be willing to pay as opposed to being paid to be included in such a venture.

“I'm in. Harry is always one to mix pleasure with commerce,” the chimney sweep retorted swiftly, winking and licking his lips as he broke into a broad smile. “As long as I'm back at the chimneys by nine the next morning.”

“Nine? Oh, I can get you back to London well before nine—after all, the whole ritual climaxes at the crack of dawn. Then we all go our separate ways. . . .”

“I'm rather looking forward to it. Very titillating, Mr. Hammer, even if I say so meself, making love and making history! Something to tell the grandchildren, I daresay.”

“Something you cannot ever tell of, sir. Unless you wish to condemn both of us to both notoriety and prison,” D'Arcy snapped back firmly.

“I was joking, Mr. Hammer. I am as discreet as a monk in a nunnery. As far as I'm concerned, as soon as it's over it never 'appened.”

D'Arcy studied the young sweep, who returned his gaze, steady and unflinching. The young biographer then held out his hand and the two men shook on the agreement. From a distance it all looked very innocuous.

 • • • 

Later that day, D'Arcy visited two wealthy cousins and an uncle. He borrowed the total of sixty crowns, then hocked his pewter mugs and received another forty crowns. After further study of Banks's description of the ritual he went in search of a number of other essentials: a piglet (required as an animal sacrifice to Atanua, the Polynesian goddess of fertility and of the dawn); a sweet vegetable called a yam, which was also required as a ritual offering; a ground cloth, upon which the orgy was to take place, that had to be marked up with magical symbols and totems exactly as described in Banks's notes; and, finally, a wooden bowl to be held up at the point of climax by the two male participants.

The piglet he rescued from a slaughterhouse in Smithfields market. The small, cowering beast appeared so grateful D'Arcy couldn't help but feel a little guilty for the innocent adoration of the animal, who had no idea that D'Arcy had merely substituted one nasty fate for another. The yam was harder to locate. After a lengthy search he remembered a shipping colleague of his father's who imported vegetables and fruit from the colony of the West Indies. He visited the offices of the company at the London docks and, after paying a visit to the bemused gentleman, left an hour later with a box of the strange, twisted yellow vegetable. As for the ground cloth, he left this task to his tailors with a drawing of exactly how it should look. Discreet as ever, the Savile Row tailors asked no questions. The wooden bowl he bought from an importer of exotic goods off a small arcade on Bond Street. It was, to his immense satisfaction, actually from Tahiti. Finally the last but most essential ingredient of the ritual—an object belonging to one's nemesis, the person one wished to inhabit for an hour—was already in his possession: Tuttle's white glove.

And so, after an exhausting two days of hansom cabs and brisk walking, D'Arcy discovered himself one street away from his publisher and found he could not resist a spontaneous visit. Pushing past Dingle, the secretary, D'Arcy made his way straight into Mr. Crosby's office and caught the corpulent gentleman in the middle of a prolonged post–afternoon tea repose. He was accompanied by a snore that rattled around the room like a trapped djinn. Crumbs of Stilton cheese were still caught in the whiskers of his handlebar mustache, blowing, as they were, like snowflakes, abreast every exhalation.

D'Arcy stood over the desk (with a dirty lunch plate ignobly placed over some poor fop's manuscript) and coughed loudly. The publisher woke with a small shout, his flailing arms scattering pages in his surprise, his eyes finally focusing upon the young biographer. “Mr. Hammer, you shocked me! I was deep in thought,” he announced as he hurriedly plucked the soiled napkin from his shirtfront and placed the plate behind the desk. “You are audacious, sir, to interrupt a man from such a reverie.”

“Forgive me, sir, but it was the excitement of the hunt.”

“The hunt?”

“The hunt,” D'Arcy repeated.

“I understand,” the publisher replied gravely, when it was patent he did not. “The spontaneous vigor of young writers, not least their imagination, is, after a time, somewhat tiresome,” he concluded philosophically, addressing the last observation to the portrait of the deceased Mr. Bingham. D'Arcy, fearing another of Crosby's soliloquies to the dead, interrupted: “You don't understand: I have found it!”

“It?”

“The element that will propel my biography into a stratosphere Mr. Tuttle can never possibly imagine, never mind actually achieve! A secret account of a magic ritual conducted by the young Joseph Banks on the island of Tahiti—the contents of which are so scandalous, so un-Christian in the most titillating way that it will assure huge sales of the book. Sir, you and I will both be rich!”

The publisher studied the young man standing before him, taking into account his heightened color, the feverish glaze of his eyes, the exhaustion that played across the taut cheekbones. He was fond of the young biographer, having nurtured him through his first manuscript, believed in him when others had not, nursed him through the bouts of insecurity and, on occasion, paranoia; why, he'd even been known to advance him money—but, most important of all, he had been at Harrow with D'Arcy Hammer's father, Lord Hammer, and in England that, as we know, counted for an awful lot.

“My dear young man, are you eating properly?” he inquired, brushing the last of the Stilton from his face.

“Did you not hear me? I tell you I have discovered the Holy Grail of biographies, the unpublishable heart of the great man. Why, the journal itself was hidden up a chimney in the Royal Institute—Joseph Banks's old study.”

“And you are absolutely positive it is genuine?”

“I am positive it is written in the hand of Joseph Banks and much of the reportage correlates with his earlier journal. Also, from an anthropological perspective, the description of the ritual, the artifacts used, names of gods invoked, these are all correct. There is one last piece of research I intend to carry out tomorrow night which will prove one hundred percent that the journal is authentic. Once that is completed I will insert an account of the ritual and a description of the discovery of the secret journal into the manuscript within the week.”

“That alone will ensure an article in
The Times.
” The publisher, now infected with D'Arcy's enthusiasm, had already begun to embark upon a marketing strategy.

“As well as a lecture series, perhaps starting in the very room which houses the chimney the journal was found in,” D'Arcy added eagerly.

“Brilliant, my young man! I shall have it typeset the very day you deliver the manuscript! Now, about this last piece of research, are we confident you can ensure the authenticity of the material?”

D'Arcy smiled. He couldn't help but imagine Crosby's expression if he knew the exact nature of D'Arcy's “research.” “Oh yes, that and a whole lot more,” he concluded a little more mysteriously than he had intended.

 • • • 

D'Arcy had chosen a small wood in Essex—a two-hour coach ride during which Prudence, Harry, and young Amelia had, with the help of a few bottles of stout, become noisily acquainted. Secured to the roof of the swaying coach was a small crate containing the squealing piglet, the ground cloth (meticulously stitched, pressed, and folded, with a silk label reading “Harringtons and Harringtons of Saville Row” fixed neatly into one corner), a quantity of black candles, the wooden bowl, rubbing oil, a portable clock, some water, and, of course, one large yam. He had the precious white glove tucked firmly into the pocket of his frock coat. As far as D'Arcy could tell, he'd not missed any of the elements needed—now all that was required was precise timing, the actual orgy, and the rising of the sun, the one element he was confident of.

By the time they had arrived at the entrance to the woodland, the others were quite tipsy, with Harry the sweep entertaining the two women with bawdy jokes that had them roaring with laughter. D'Arcy wasn't quite so amused. The seriousness of the venture had finally impressed itself upon his sensibility. He had to execute the ritual precisely and he feared that any deviation, any action that was not in the actual account of the ritual, might destroy the sorcery.

As the coach entered the wood, D'Arcy was pleased to see that the clearing he'd chosen was as secluded as he remembered—a small plateau set slightly above a circle of oak and birch trees. It was a full moon and the canopy of branches and leaves threw a lattice of shadow and light upon the grassy carpet beneath. He glanced over at his companions, young, eager, uneducated, and now drunk. They had no idea of the spiritual importance of the undertaking, and he worried they lacked the sophistication to understand. This disturbed him, taking, as he did, the anthropologist's view of another's culture: he felt it essential that they approach the experience with the same reverence they might approach a religious ceremony. “But for them it is a mere orgy, a ribald, indecent good time,” he observed silently to himself. “After all, you've hired two whores and a chimney sweep—it's a far cry from an eighteenth-century Polynesian princess, a high priest, and a priestess. Would the ritual still work?” These doubts and a multitude of others had plagued him the whole two hours of travel, and yet, now that they had arrived, he was condemned to carry out his plan.

The coach pulled up with a jolt, sending Amelia flying into the biographer's lap, cleavage spilling over. She was a slender, heavy-breasted redhead with pale skin that looked to be almost transparent. Prudence had told him she was very popular with a couple of the brothel's painter clients. This gave the young biographer some hope that Amelia herself might be used to sexual trysts of a more artistic sensitivity. Laughing, and with her face still in his lap, she smiled, then pursed her lips suggestively. D'Arcy's member hardened despite his determination to maintain a dignified detachment throughout, and to his chagrin, he blushed. “Steady on, Amelia, we ain't even started yet!” Harry cracked, and again the coach rocked with laughter. Just then the coachman, a sober, cadaverous-faced man D'Arcy had bribed heavily to maintain both his silence and discretion, opened the door and the three younger people disembarked in a flurry of petticoats and heavy perfume. Without a word the coachman clambered atop the vehicle and handed down the small trunk and crate containing the now snuffling piglet, which finally seemed to have had a premonition of its fate.