“Go on,” whispered Margaret Trelawny, pushing her just a bit, so that she slid to the edge of the armchair. “Go to your mother.”
Feeling numb, Alice stood up and walked over to Mrs. Raymond. She had no idea what to do. Mrs. Raymond grabbed her wrist and pulled her over, more roughly than necessary. “Just open your mind,” she hissed under her breath. “I can’t do this unless you open your mind to me. Do you understand?”
Open her mind how? Alice did not even know that it was closed. But then she felt it—another presence in her head, tugging at her consciousness, pulling her spiritually rather than physically. She looked down at her arms in wonder. The mesmerical waves—she could see them flowing from her to Mrs. Raymond. Their waves were merging. Suddenly they were no longer seated in the common room of the Alchemical Society. Columns were rising around them, coming together into pointed arches between walls of white stone with statues of saints in carved niches, and then windows of stained glass, letting in multicolored light, and then up until the illusion knit itself together into a high domed ceiling, gilded and painted. Alice had never seen anything so magnificent in her life.
“The dome of St. Paul’s!” said Harker in wonder, like a visitor from the country seeing it for the first time. “How is this possible?”
“Well, damn,” said Mr. Morris. “Now that’s impressive.”
And then, like the illusion of Queen Victoria, it dissipated, the cathedrals and statues and stained glass swirling away like smoke. Once again they were standing in the common room. Alice’s arm hurt where Mrs. Raymond had gripped it.
Dr. Raymond rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Wonderful, wonderful,” he said. “You see, Helen, this is what I always wanted. This is what I suffered and sacrificed for. Look what you and little Lydia can do together. Surely this will allow us to implement Professor Moriarty’s plan.”
“No,” she said coldly. “It will not. Even drawing upon Lydia’s powers, I can only maintain such an illusion for a limited period of time. We need to fool hundreds of people over a period of weeks.”
“And for that, we need something more,” said Moriarty. “What we need, gentlemen, is to summon the Great God Pan!” He said it dramatically, as though it might mean something important. However, the only response was Dr. Raymond’s sharp intake of breath and Mr. Harker’s “I’m afraid I don’t understand. What does classical mythology have to do with all this?”
“Dr. Raymond, if you will explain?” said Moriarty, looking irritated.
Raymond took a deep breath and said, “I’m not quite certain what you mean by it, Moriarty—whether you mean what I think you mean. But it’s an alchemical procedure that I myself… well. It’s a metaphor, of course. The alchemical sciences have long used metaphors to express the inexpressible, or what, for practical purposes, must be kept hidden from the ignorant public. As you know, the god Pan was the Greek deity of the natural world. To summon Pan means to summon the energic powers of the Earth and contain them within a host. That is what I tried to do, long ago, to a girl—a beautiful young girl, my wife, Helen’s mother. Unfortunately, her mind could not support such an influx of power, and she went mad. At the time, unbeknownst to me, she was with child. You see the result.” He nodded toward Mrs. Raymond. “My wife died in a mental hospital, so I sent Helen to be raised in the country, which I thought would be healthier for her. Besides which, I did not want to be reminded of my dear departed. Since my experiments were not yielding the results I wanted, I gave them up and pursued other studies. And then, after many years, for we had become estranged, I heard from Helen again. I’m sorry that we did not speak for so long,” he said to Mrs. Raymond. “And I’m glad to see that you have grown into such a fine woman. You have your mother’s eyes, my dear.”
Mrs. Raymond did not respond.
“Well,” he said after a moment. “When Helen contacted me, she told me something I could scarcely believe. I am still not certain whether to credit her account.…”
“And yet it is entirely accurate, Dr. Raymond,” said Miss Trelawny. “As I’m sure you all know, for it was featured prominently in The Times, six months ago my father discovered the burial chamber of Queen Tera. That was not surprising—such discoveries seem to be made every year, now that we have men such as Flinders Petrie in Egypt and the support of the Egypt Exploration Fund. What did surprise us was the intact state of the chamber, which had never been looted, and the paintings we found on its walls. Queen Tera was the High Priestess of the Temple of Isis at Philae. On the walls of her burial chamber, in faded hieroglyphs, was described a ritual for raising the energic powers of the Earth and imbuing the High Priestess with such powers. For those of you not familiar with Egyptian history, Tera was the second wife of Ptolemy Auletes and mother of Cleopatra, whom you know from Shakespeare. After Ptolemy’s death, she was sent as far away from Alexandria as possible—to Philae, near the first cataract of the Nile, on the border between Egypt and Nubia. There, she became High Priestess of the Temple of Isis. She died in 30 B.C., when Augustus invaded Egypt. After he had secured Alexandria, he sent his soldiers south, to attack Philae—most likely because Tera was there. Cleopatra was already his captive—he was planning to parade her through the streets of Rome. It would have been imprudent to leave her mother, the former queen, behind in Egypt, where she might try to ascend the throne and challenge the Roman forces.”
Miss Trelawny leaned forward and looked at each one of them, as though addressing them directly.
“We know what happened at Philae because those who survived recorded it on the walls of Tera’s tomb. The priestesses defended the temple, and many of them were killed. Tera herself died leading the defense. The survivors ordered a tomb to be built for Queen Tera. Its walls were covered with friezes carved into the stone. Among them, my father found rituals and recipes—medicines long lost to civilization, ways of performing surgical procedures—as well as an account of that final battle with the soldiers of Augustus. They showed lightning coming out of Tera’s left hand. They also depicted a ritual for raising the energic powers of the Earth and containing them within a living host, who was intended to be the High Priestess herself. Once these powers were contained, they could be redirected and used—for whatever purpose the host desired. This ritual, my father attempted to perform, with himself as host. Also present were Eugene Corbeck, my father’s assistant, and my fiancé, Malcolm Ross—a solicitor like yourself, Mr. Harker. You will no doubt have heard of the terrible accident that took my father’s life, as well as those of Ross and Corbeck. But it was no accident. There was, indeed, an explosion in the room where he housed his collection, but it was not set off by bitumen, as reported in the papers. Rather, it was the ritual itself that killed them. You see, the ritual demands a sacrifice—as it fills a host with power, it must drain power from another. Someone must die. My father did not realize that—he had not read the original Egyptian hieroglyphs as carefully as he should have. Alas, I realized it only after his death, when it was too late. This ritual can indeed give you gentlemen power—but do you truly want to attempt it? The two men I loved most in the world perished in the quest for knowledge. Do you, too, wish to risk your lives for the power and wisdom of ancient Egypt?”