Trick of the Light

Sophia said nothing but she remembered the woman sitting beside him in the audience who drank up every word when Magnus addressed the assembly.

The lieutenant’s wife, perhaps.

A husband and wife do not always believe in the same things.

‘However,’ Roach continued, grimly, ‘I can do little to stop the flight of the gullible towards manifestations outwith the proper bounds of the Christian Church. It is a free country.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ she replied quietly.

‘It would appear that your Mister Bannerman was a profoundly split person. One part human, one part monster, if what the inspector tells me is true.’

‘It would appear so.’

‘And yet someone with your – if I am to believe you – mystic abilities saw no sign of this?’

‘My point entirely!’ McLevy chimed in.

‘Great minds,’ said Roach, ‘coincide.’

He gave his inspector a sharp look and McLevy sat a little back into his chair. Sophia had never seen the man so subdued and wondered for a moment at the cause.

But then she had a response to find.

‘To be split is to be separated from the other. There is no connection. No trace between. Inside the one entity is another. Neither knows of the other’s existence.’

‘That is all you have to say?’

‘That is all I can say.’

Then it was over. McLevy stayed slumped in his seat as if drained of pith, the lieutenant escorted her to the door where a gawky young constable saw her to the station exit.

The constable had a livid red birthmark spreading up his face from the side of his neck and kept rubbing at it as they crossed the station floor.

She was aware of all eyes upon her and a babble of noise coming from the outside.

The young man kept his gaze averted till they got to the door then just before he opened, blurted out a question.

‘Can you cure people, like Jesus?’

His eyes were innocent. Like a child’s. And it pierced her to the heart.

‘No,’ she answered softly. ‘I cannot perform miracles. It is not my gift. I am sorry.’

For a second she almost reached out to touch the mark that lay upon his face but touching a policeman can often be misconstrued.

He released the door and delivered her to the waiting journalists who were milling around in the street; the news had been at last officially broken to them of the murder of Gilbert Morrison and the death of a murderous American, and the Edinburgh press were hungry for blood.

She stood helpless, pinned at the threshold as the questions rained in upon her; like stones thrown, sharp, cutting, insinuating, wheedling, each seeking to slice a headline from her body.

Sophia knew a moment of panic as if she had been cast out, abandoned, then the door behind opened and a hand grasped her elbow.

James McLevy, his face set in grim lines, steered her through the jostling horde and into her waiting carriage.

He slammed the carriage door shut and leaned in with the voices calling like seagulls in the background.

Her words of gratitude were beaten to the punch.

‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ he said.

Then it was a race back to the hotel where more of the press waited, back to her rooms past the curious glances of the good citizens in the foyer, then close the door and pull the curtains.

All that was past.

Everything is in the past.

Now she sat at the shrine. Safely locked away. No-one could touch her in this place. The small precious leather suitcase lay empty, the contents arranged as they were in every hotel, every lodging place. A secure room must be laid aside and there she had her peace.

Where he watched over her.

The good man.

Tonight she would sit in front of an audience of hungry souls and inhabit the terrifying emptiness inside her mind before the voices began to announce themselves.

Not unlike a railway station… There was some truth in what the inspector had remarked.

For a moment there was a tug of humour at her lips and then she surveyed everything laid out like an altar: a white linen cloth, the candles lit for purification, a smell of scented honey, a shaving brush and closed razor, a leather belt stained with travel, two silver uniform buttons that she polished every day.

And the letters. Inside the mother-of-pearl box and tied with her own silk ribbon, red as if love tokens.

Sophia had just perused and replaced inside the last. It filled her with the same terrible anger as always.

Betrayal. On every side.

She closed her eyes and let the past wash over her like the sea.

Sweet magnolia trees.

Sophia was riding hard. Just turned fifteen, her blood racing with the horse; she rode bareback, legs astride, like a nigra heathen, said Uncle Bart.

Though he was not really her uncle, just…a friend of the family.

They had lost the plantation to the carpetbaggers but kept a small farm, enough to eke out a decent living, though not enough for her mother who lamented a lost life.

The Glorious South.

Melissa Sinclair mourned that loss, her airs and graces wasted on a hard life of toil.

Sophia did not think it so hard. They had enough to eat, some horses, cows and chickens, two men, ex- Johnny Rebs who worked the place and that Uncle Bart kept in line on his frequent visits.

She was a strange child, so said her mother. Left by the faeries perhaps. Or by a dead soldier. Lived in a world of her own.

And Sophia did. An intense, secret world where her father rode over the hill to wave his hat in the air before sweeping down to hoist her on to the saddle and off to ride the wild winds.

The father she had never seen.

He had died in the war. Melissa told stories of his bravery and noble ways but her daughter felt that the mother blamed him somehow for the lost battles.

The more she praised, the more something did not ring true but Sophia loved him with a fierce pride.

He was a good man. She could see it in the photograph that Melissa had kept along with a pitifully few mementoes of his last and hasty visit.

His death was a mystery. Her mother would not let her see the letters that she guarded so jealously and when she questioned Uncle Bart he merely said, Died for his country, little girl.

Now she was a big girl. Fifteen. Bart looked at her different. Made her feel hot. Strange. Flattered.

Men change when women do.

Her mother looked at her oddly as well, and then sang praises of the father as if the memory might keep Sophia still a worshipping child.

That day when she left the horse to cool down in the stable, why did she do things differently?

No shout through the house to announce her arrival, no slam of the front door which she delighted to do because it made the whole house shake to the rafters.

No. Walk quietly up the stairs, led by the sounds to the mother’s bedroom.

Did she already know what she would find?

A strange chorus like a bullfrog and a mocking bird. Low grunts, high stifled shrieks.

Open the door softly to see her supposed uncle but no such thing, his hairy naked back, her mother’s legs splayed around him, mouth contorted, the Glorious South.

And Sophia had screamed. Lord, how she had screamed.