Property of a Lady(78)

But I can’t get rid of the notion that the burning jealousy and the hatred I harbour for William Lee is somehow taking on substance – that it’s striding through my workshop, watching its chance to take possession of my mind . . .

I’ve reread that last sentence, and I know it sounds like the ravings of a disordered mind. But there is something in my workshop that wasn’t there before, and whatever it is I don’t like it.

October 1888

The more I read, the more I find references to music in the ancient beliefs. Music that possesses power over men’s minds and souls . . . Orpheus with his lyre, charming the denizens of hell into giving him back his lady . . . The medieval dances of death, with the victims forced by demons to dance until they dropped . . . The beckoning cadences of the Plague Piper wearing his glaring red mask of agony, leading his victims to the twin Towers of Fever and Madness . . . The el diablo chord, which the medievals believed could summon the devil.

And a strange and eerie chant from the world’s earliest time that is believed to have power over the dead and the ability to cast men into deep, dreamless sleep.

October 1888, cont’d

William Lee’s clock is almost finished and will remain in my workshop until just before Christmas, when it will be taken to Mallow House. It’s a beautiful piece of work. I never made a better clock.

And yet, and yet.

When I look at it I see that something has got into the making that I never intended. Is it the outline of the moon in the arch-dial? Has it a sly, leering look as if something has given the serene features a vicious tweak? And the pendulum case itself – if I look at it in a certain light, the grain seems to form itself into a writhing human creature. Does it resemble Hogarth’s images of Bedlam, with the poor lunatics trying to escape their bleak prison? Looking out at the world with despair and hatred?

Hatred. That word again.

Only last month I witnessed a case of hatred that had tragic results. A fight between two men in the Black Boar – one accusing the other of violating his sister. I was there, drinking a glass of ale with one or two acquaintances – it’s a convivial place of an evening, the Black Boar, and I like to share the company of my fellow men sometimes. It reminds me that there’s an ordinary and sane world beyond the shadowy, secret library.

But on that night an ugly fight broke out between the brother and the seducer. It began as a verbal battle, but it ended with the seducer being felled to the ground and smashing his head against the stone chimney breast. They summoned the local medic at once, and I helped in staunching the blood, but the man was already dead, and the jealous brother was taken to Shrewsbury Gaol. He stood trial and was found guilty. He will hang this coming Monday. A dreadful waste of two lives – three, if you count the girl, for this will taint her life for years to come. It determines me to fight and vanquish this scalding hatred that courses through me and fills me with bile.

October 1888 cont’d

But all the resolve and determination in the world does not quench this overwhelming desire for Elizabeth. Perhaps if I had not been inside her house – if I had not sat on chairs where she must have sat, touched doors and walls she must brush past every day . . .

Just once. If I could have her just once. But how? How? I would not use force on her, but if only there was some way . . .

Some months ago Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends led me to the dark root of his parody of the Hand of Glory legend. He clearly knew the original source of the belief, of course, and after some searching I knew it as well. It has its core in music – music again! – in an eerie sequence of music that is credited with the power to open locks and cast every person in a house into a deep and dreamless slumber.

Every person in the house . . . William Lee, the child, their servants . . .

How far can I believe this? How much of it is old wives’ tales, the beliefs of the credulous, the wish-fulfilment of the bereft or the lonely?

Even if it were true, I cannot do it. I dare not. In any case, my reading has informed me of what’s needed to set the enchantment working and the ingredients are impossible to obtain.

Or are they? For on Monday morning, by nine o’clock, the one ingredient that would normally be beyond my power to acquire will be there for the taking.

Next Monday afternoon I am to attend a meeting of the John Howard Group at Shrewsbury Gaol.

And at 8 a.m. on that day they will have hanged the murderer who killed his sister’s seducer in the Black Boar.

October cont’d

I am moved to copy down parts of the recipe for creating the Hand of Glory – partly so I have the information in a safe place other than on my shelves. There are several versions, but this one, from Petit Albert, dating back to 1722, is the most detailed.

‘Take the right or left hand of a felon who is hanging from a gibbet beside a highway. Wrap it in part of a funeral pall and, so wrapped, squeeze it well to drain all blood. Then put it into an earthenware vessel with zimat, nitre, salt and long peppers, the whole well powdered. Leave it in this vessel for a fortnight, then take out and expose it to full sunlight during the dog days until it becomes quite dry. Next, make of it a candle with the fat of a gibbeted felon, virgin wax, sesame and ponie, and use the Hand of Glory as a candlestick to hold this candle when lighted.’



The practice of hanging a felon from a gibbet hasn’t existed in this country for a century or more so I cannot follow this part to the absolute letter. But I believe – and trust – that the hand of any hanged murderer will suffice. The dog days are a difficulty – October in England can scarcely be called sufficiently hot to warrant that term; however, there is another version of the enchantment which says this: