Shadow of the Serpent

disposal.

Interesting. A hansom cab probably and she’d been with McLevy a fair passage, that would cost, these buggers wait for no one a length of time without their pockets being lined. Money to burn, eh? And her clothes were expensive.

Was she being kept? And, if so, who was keeping her? Who was up to what with whom?

Somewhere in the night, a cat shrieked as if in terrible pain. McLevy hoped it wasn’t Bathsheba. After mating, the male would be withdrawing its member and the barb at the end would be causing sore agony, a dirty trick nature played on the female of the feline species.

He produced the paper slightly blackened round the edges, shuffled it open, and peered at it in the moonlight.

It contained a name and address. At least that much was true. But only that much.

17

The Diary of James McLevy

They say the child is father to the man. I shall not dispute that assumption.

My own childhood was spent staring into the face of a madwoman. My mother.

Madness is such a strange visitation. The mad do not realise that they are so. They merely see a different world where everyone else is a demon in disguise.

It took some time to realise the insanity before me. It was quiet and insidious. I wonder how much seeped into my soul, a fear that never leaves me.

Most of the time, she was normal. A dressmaker. Good at her job. The room was clean. Then her eyes would shift to a far country and she would pour poison in my ears.

She would take to her bed and lie there in the most terrible stillness, her hair raven black on the pillow.

Black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. So said our neighbour, Jean Scott, a wee round woman, scolding and kind, who took pity on such a boy as I was, birthed to insanity.

She lay on the pillow. Maria McLevy. Her mother was Italian, her father was bog Irish and my own father, she insisted, was an angel of God who came to her one night.

The son of a madwoman and an angel. Who am I to argue?

18

As who should say, ‘I am Sir Oracle

And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!’

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice

The accustomed early morning hush in the parkland of the Earl of Rosebery’s Dalmeny estate was broken by the biting sound of an axe on wood.

A sycamore tree shuddered under the weight of the assault as the blade cut deep, wielded with great force by a man whose white hair waved accompaniment to each precise and fearsome blow.

The face was a mask of concentration while he hewed at the timber as if his very life depended upon the process.

Shirtsleeves rolled up above the elbow, the left hand gloved, but his weskit more than held its own, fob chain aglitter, as he lifted up the axe and crashed it home.

William Ewart Gladstone, three score years and ten with the vigorous strength of a man half that time-span, wrenched the blade free from the deep wound inflicted, sighted down the edge, then once more swung with such desperate, savage energy that it seemed as if he were trying to eradicate some insult perceived in the innocent grain of the tree.

It being spring, the sap oozed from the wounds of the tree like arboreal stigmata but he cared not a fig for such fancy. Up went the blade and down it chopped.

The splinters of wood flew over his shoulder and fell brokenly to the ground.

There had been times when enthusiastic followers collected these splinters like holy relics, but for this moment he was observed only by a gentleman, one of his private secretaries, and a woman who had the great man’s frock-coat draped over her arm, lightly pressed against her body.

‘The forest suffers Mr Gladstone’s desire to work up a righteous sweat,’ murmured the secretary.

The woman made no response except to press the grey frock-coat a little more firmly to her angular frame. The secretary glanced down at her with no great relish.

Jane Salter suited her name. She was a stooped skinny virgo intacta, he observed. Lank brown hair scraped in a middle parting, pointing the way to a sharp nose which sniffed a little dismally in the dank dew of early morning. Perched on the nose was a pair of pebble glasses without which she was practically blind.

The secretary, Horace Prescott, took a deep draught of air, exhaled, and watched with interest as the released breath smoked from his mouth like ectoplasm.

He was tall, languid, silver locks swept over the brow, adopting the aristocratic air of his master the Earl of Rosebery. Prescott had been affiliated to Gladstone’s staff to help with the campaign and under his ironic affected tones could be discerned a certain bitterness.

He had the appearance of a leader of men, but not the power. That lay elsewhere.

Jane Salter studied him from beneath lowered lids. How deep did that bitterness go? Despite Rosebery’s apparent total commitment to the Liberal champion, she could detect a tension from the earl and his followers.

Nothing in politics was what it seemed and friendship only lasted till the next broken promise. Treachery was rife. Like the plague.

The Great Man, she knew, held himself above such venality, but it only made him the more vulnerable to betrayal. High moral ground. A slippery slope.

The figure, silhouetted by morning sun, raised the blade like a pagan priest at a sacrificial offering.

Gladstone’s energy was astounding. He had arrived by carriage this early hour from Edinburgh almost in a frenzy, woke the whole household, then grabbed an axe and got to work as if the Furies were after him.

One more blow would suffice, calculated the People’s William, as the sycamore lurched. The knack was in knowing when to strike and escape the consequence. One more blow. A look of almost fiendish glee fell over his countenance and he peeled back his lips to show his teeth as if prepared to bite through the very bark of the tree.

Some four years before, Disraeli had calculated he was secure, that Gladstone was too old and would never again lead the House of Commons. Disraeli therefore considered it safe to accept the offer of a peerage from his adoring queen. He would still remain prime minister of course. But lead from above.

Lord Beaconsfield, he was thus dubbed. But much good it had done him. At the opening of Parliament, this very February, his emaciated figure had struggled to carry the Sword of State in the official procession. Could the Jew not carry a sword? Then Gladstone would swing the axe.

From the french windows of Dalmeny House, the stately figure of Catherine Gladstone emerged, a woman of some humour, great loyalty, and an ability to ignore what she did not wish to contemplate.