The Hollow Ones(54)

Orleanna was the muse behind all of Hugo Blackwood’s successes, the fire in the furnace of his ambition. She was the daughter of one of his mentors and grew up in a home of learning and study. Intelligent and also savvy, Orleanna was the more ambitious of the two of them; she desired for her husband success in every form. He still marveled, daily, that he had won her affection; and every day since their wedding, he endeavored to reward her support.

She glowed as though lit from within, and Blackwood was a doting husband. Were it not for Orleanna’s attractive nature, the way she drew people to her, Blackwood would have been perfectly happy never attending or hosting another social event. Indeed, it was her influence that made him seek out a compelling and charismatic personality such as John Dee. Orleanna Blackwood possessed, in the parlance of the day, “the intellect of a man,” to the point that Blackwood sometimes would remind her, in social settings, to mind her role; privately, their far-ranging discussions sometimes ran into the late hours, fired by candlelight and a draught or two of wine. Extraordinary figures such as Dee delighted her, and whereas other wives were content—nay, encouraged—to mix only among those of their fair gender, Orleanna thrived in the acquaintance of learned men. This made Blackwood selfish; she made him possessive, though not to a fault. It is human nature to want to possess beauty, to celebrate purity, to safeguard uniqueness.

Dee himself had once told her that she was born in the wrong era, that she was a woman who existed “centuries before her time.” Privately, Orleanna dismissed Dee’s compliment as mere polite chatter, but Blackwood knew she had drawn deep satisfaction from his evocation of her.

And now seeing her suffer so was the greatest burden Hugo Blackwood could bear. That night at John Dee’s library, the sinister séance, haunted him, and he feared he had somehow brought harm to his home, his hearth, his love. He had little memory of the events of that night—though he had racked his brain to recall them, to the point of despair—but only of returning home just before dawn, and Orleanna waking in their bed, and in her somnolent state asking for a kiss…

He remembered she recoiled from his taste, the flavor of solder lingering in his mouth. She said she woke the next morning with the burnt taste still upon her palate, the source of which he could not explain.



Talbot, the spiritualist, called upon Hugo Blackwood one evening, appearing at the door wearing his monk’s skullcap, his eyes furtive and inquiring.

“A manbeast,” he said, relating his wild story to Blackwood in the kitchen over tea. “The face of a wolf and the arms of a bear.”

“Talbot,” said Blackwood, seeking to calm him.

“I’ve seen it. Out of the corner of my eye, always—but there. In the shadow. Behind a tree. In the next room.”

“You have a fever,” said Blackwood.

Talbot gripped Blackwood’s hand and brought it to his forehead. “Cool as river stone.”

The shadow—it had crawled next to him—wet—cold.

“Mind fever,” said Blackwood, taking back his hand.

“And the odors,” said Talbot. “The dampness. Over all.”

“Edward,” said Blackwood. “I thought you were…more of an enthusiast with regard to the spirits…”

“A charlatan?” said Talbot.

“That sounds harsh,” admitted Blackwood. “But I thought you were more of a performer. The scrying. Your trances.”

Talbot stared deeply into his shallow cup of tea. “Have you any port?”

“None, I’m afraid. Orleanna hasn’t been to market. She’s unwell—”

“The wormwood we drank that night. I feel I remain under its spell. I can’t trust my own eyes…my own thoughts…”

Blackwood nodded, relieved that Talbot had given air to his own fears. “A shadow has been cast.”

Talbot sipped at his tea, and, finding it foul, threw it cup and all into Blackwood’s sink, where it smashed. “Rotted,” Talbot muttered. “Everything…”

Blackwood sniffed his own brew. Indeed, it was foul. Even the tea leaves had turned.

“Hugo!” cried Orleanna, her voice muffled through the walls.

Talbot looked frightened.

“My wife,” said Blackwood, leaving him, moving through two closed doors to the bedroom. “The noise must have alarmed her.”

Orleanna sat up in their bed, looking horrified.

Blackwood explained, “Talbot’s here, my love, he dropped a teacup…”

She wasn’t listening to him. He saw that her call to him had nothing to do with the crash.

She was staring at the wall upon which she had hung a tapestry not three months before.

A pleasing cross-pattern in colors of burgundy, gold, and jade, purchased from a shop in London on a balmy, carefree summer day, a furnishing for their bedchamber.

Blackwood looked at the hanging. He saw nothing remarkable.

“No—behind it, Hugo,” she said, her face and mouth twisted as though she was about to scream.

Blackwood went to her, touching her face, imploring her to look at him. But her eyes would not leave the tapestry.

“Shall I…shall I take it down?”

She stared, unanswering. Mesmerized.

“Down it comes,” he said at once, determined now. He crossed to the wall and gripped the woolen textile. But before he removed it from its mounting rod, the weaving collapsed as though of its own weight, falling heavily to the floor in a heap.