The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(102)
19
VERY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Wells and Doyle arrived at Murray’s house, keen to relay the good news. They were convinced their proposal would have an instantaneous effect on the inconsolable fiancé, sweeping away the cobwebs of his despair, or at least giving him enough hope to refrain from killing himself before the medium from South Africa arrived in a few days’ time.
“But he isn’t just any medium . . . He is a genuine medium!” exclaimed Doyle, trying to instill some enthusiasm into the limp figure sprawled in the armchair smelling of liquor and musty clothes. “His powers are beyond question. I can vouch for that myself, and I assure you the miracles I witnessed are indescribable. The man who performed them has no interest in fame or fortune. Those words mean nothing to him.”
And while Murray gazed at him listlessly through bloodshot eyes, Doyle began to pace up and down the room, narrating the tale of the extraordinary medium. Doyle had come across him in a village in Bakongo during his stay in South Africa. He was born to English parents and at the age of two or three had gotten lost in the veldt, that vast, wild southern African plain. A Bantu tribe had adopted him, and the village elders had given him the name Ankoma, which meant “the last child to be born.” As time passed, Ankoma had assimilated the customs of his Bantu parents and behaved no differently from any other tribal member, despite standing out among them like a cream pudding in a coal bunker. But with the arrival of adolescence, his powers began to awaken. These were so formidable that, by the age of twelve, he had already ousted the tribe’s shaman, who only knew how to make it rain, and even then only if a storm was brewing. When Doyle passed through the village of Bakongo after the bloody battle of Brandfort and heard about the legend of the Great Ankoma, the white man who made bowls and utensils levitate and who could speak to the dead, he immediately asked the Bantu chiefs if he could witness their pale-skinned shaman’s powers for himself. They agreed in exchange for a handful of baubles, and inside a miserable hovel Doyle at last saw a genuine medium in action. The scope of Ankoma’s powers was so astonishing that Doyle swore he would remember it as long as he lived. So that when Wells had come to his house the day before to ask for his help, Doyle had realized that despite his and Gilmore’s unfortunate first encounter, their paths had crossed so that he, Arthur Conan Doyle, could go to the aid of Gilliam Murray, the Master of Time. And, utterly convinced of the truth of this, Doyle had spent the whole night dictating a raft of letters addressed to senior members of the armed forces and the South African government, promising so many favors in return for the one he was asking that he would doubtless have to spend the rest of his days endeavoring to honor them. But he knew it would be worthwhile: the Great Ankoma would come to England and summon Emma’s spirit, so that Murray could speak to her and beg her for forgiveness.
Doyle ended his speech persuaded that tears of gratitude would soon start to flow from Murray’s bloodshot eyes, and he even got ready for a possible embrace from that malodorous ruin of a man. But Murray simply contemplated him in silence for a few moments; then he stood up, grabbed the bottle of whisky he carried around with him everywhere, and, stumbling but dignified, left the room before the astonished eyes of his friends and went back to the bed they had dragged him from at dawn.
Both Doyle and Wells realized that it was not going to be as easy as they had thought to persuade Murray to attend a séance given by the Great Ankoma. Over the next few days, they discovered that Murray’s views on spiritualism hadn’t changed, despite his brokenhearted, semi-alcoholic state. Each time they tried to persuade him, he would refuse, doing so in various imaginative ways: he would laugh in their faces, or hurl drunken insults at them before vomiting on their shoes, or he would order them to leave the house with a dismissive gesture, even though most of the time they were at Wells’s residence. There were even occasions when he would hurl whatever object was at hand at them, in general an empty whisky bottle . . . Nothing could breach Murray’s stubborn refusal: not Wells’s entreaties, nor Doyle’s threats, nor even the gentle cajoling of Jane, who went as far as to remind Murray that he had once saved her life and that she could not bear to be unable to save his in return. Until the eve of the Great Ankoma’s arrival in England.
Doyle, Wells, and Jane turned up at Murray’s town house to announce the news, only to find Baskerville in a state of extreme agitation. It seemed his master had spent all day locked in his room, drinking, sobbing, and hurling a stream of blasphemous abuse at his servants. Even more alarmingly, for the past hour or so he had gone quiet. Wells and Doyle exchanged nervous glances and ran upstairs to Murray’s room. His door was locked, but that didn’t stop Doyle. After several attempts, he managed to break it down, splintering the frame and almost tearing the door off its hinges. Much to their relief, Murray had not hanged himself from the rafters, nor had he taken his life by any other means. He had simply passed out. A couple of jugs and a bowlful of water later, he was sitting in an armchair, listening to what they had to say.
“Tomorrow the Great Ankoma arrives, Gilmore,” Doyle announced curtly. “And I don’t need to remind you that in order for that to happen I have had to pledge my word and use all my influence, so that I hope all my efforts won’t have been in vain.”
Murray merely shrugged. “I didn’t ask him to come.”
“Well, he’s coming!” Doyle lost his temper. “What the devil do expect me to do, send him back with a thank-you note hanging round his neck?”