Chapter Text
LONDON, ENGLAND. UNITED KINGDOM. 1907. AROUND TEATIME.
When Gale had first dipped his toes into the murky depths of spiritualism, he never would have guessed that those depths contained such alarming quantities of manifestly and unpleasantly physical goo. The table rapping mediums would have you believe they are manifesting ‘ectoplasm’—a mysterious substance that they apparently emanate from their orifices (a confronting mental image Gale pushes as far from his mind’s eye as possible) and that allows the spirits to have corporeal form. Given that séances are very much about the unworldly and ethereal, Gale had been surprised when this ‘ectoplasm’ turned out to be unsettlingly physical. Not just physical, but gooey. Over the months goo has materialised in many shades, myriad consistencies, it has splattered, it has ribboned, there have been gooey hands, gooey mouths. It all puts him in mind of youthful hours spent down by the pond in his mother’s garden, doing his best to capture slimy little polliwogs and newts with his home-made contraptions and bits of biscuit. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that people expect the spirit realm to communicate in mysterious ways, but what is wrong with a good old-fashioned letter?
Today’s guide and spirit channel, Miss Quinsy (definitely not her true name), seems like the ‘bump in the night’ type rather than an ooze, but Gale still sends a silent plea to any and all the Gods above that today, please, let there be no weird smells or sounds or bodily functions? As though divining Gale’s train of thought, a hacking retch tears through the silence and blindness enveloping him and his fellow unseen sitters. They are seated around a heavy old table, each holding the hands of those next to them to forge a link between them in the darkness and a conduit for their medium. Miss Quinsy had shepherded their group of mourners and the curious into this stuffy little parlour completely mute, taking their hands in turn and leading them to their place at the table. His assistant, Rolan, is seated to his right, and Gale gives his fingers a quick squeeze to say showtime. It was actually Rolan who had found Miss Quinsy. The young man has proved an enormous help to Gale in these long dark months since the accident, and he has even grown to enjoy his prickly and prideful demeanour. Hiring Rolan as his assistant had very likely saved his life, and certainly it had saved his sanity. Another thing he cannot claim credit for. It was dear old Tara who had been the source of inspiration there, that and Rolan’s continued and unabating requests to apprentice with him. Rolan’s arrogance may run hot, but beneath it is a man who cares deeply. In the darkness, Rolan’s fingers wiggle in response to his squeeze.
The dark of the room is so complete that the locations of the other sitters can only be identified by their breathing; however, there is one pale hole in the blanketing night. A sickly greenish-white moon floats in the air across the table from Gale, bobbing gently as though with breath. As her final act before the table lamp was extinguished, Miss Quinsy had picked up a little paint pot and a delicate brush from the table and, through gesture and imitation, asked the sturdy fellow with blonde whiskers and the ruddy cheeks of an outdoor life to paint a circle on her forehead. He did so, taking great care not to touch any other part of her body and without taking a single breath. Miss Quinsy had then gestured that their own circle all hold the hands of those seated beside them, and there had been just time enough for Gale to exchange raised eyebrows with Rolan’s look of bored contempt before the lamp was extinguished by an unseen force. It was only once the first few seconds of night-blindness had passed that Gale realised that the circle so nervously painted onto Miss Quinsy’s forehead was glowing faintly, a sickly pale moon to anchor the room to the vessel, the channel for whatever missives the spirits might bestow. A clever and subtle distraction, he had thought at the time, like those chthonic deepsea fish who lure their prey with a dancing glowing orb while they hide their glinting teeth in the stygian black. This at last was something he has not seen before. A spooky piece of misdirection, though the need for misdirection in itself is a bit of a tell. What doesn’t she want us looking at?
The rasping sound grows louder and increasingly wetter. Perhaps she actually has a genuine health concern? Gale thinks, when the noise abruptly stops and the moon grows still. A second later, he is caught completely unawares as an invisible onslaught of mystery wetness splatters loudly across his front from beard to belt buckle. Gale closes his eyes and flinches against what feels and sounds like cold custard, mentally marking the moment in his emotional topographic map—‘covered in ectoplasm’ is etched on the the misery contour line that also runs through ‘when I dropped all the cards in my first performance’ and ‘that time Bedelia Fevras got quite the wrong end of the stick and kissed me after the waltz at the ’83 summer ball’. The coldness of the substance snailing down his chin gives him reason to hope that the retching and the goo are not physically connected at least. All over his favourite Harris tweed as well!
“Well, that was certainly a first,” Gale says mildly, releasing Rolan’s hand to flick ectoplasm from his shirt cuff. Violent shushing erupts from his unseen fellow séance guests, but he can feel Rolan shuddering down his laughter in the darkness to his right. He aims a slug of ectoplasm in Rolan’s general direction and is rewarded with a satisfying “yeuch”. Suddenly very tired, Gale wipes the splatter from his face with his sleeve. This had better not stain he thinks, breathing in slowly and carefully through his nose, or I will truly turn this woman into a toad. The starchy smell of his new adornment mixes with the heavy scent of herbs and tallow cloying the lightless parlour and Gale’s head swims. He fights the urge to scream.
Two years ago he would not have been caught dead in this parlour. Two years ago he was commanding stages across Europe, the greatest magician of the age, a wonder to behold. He met kings, queens, artists, scientists, philosophers, and he outwitted and bamboozled them all. Two years ago, he had a name, a wife, a purpose. He walked into a room and turned heads. Given his current gooey appearance he’d be more likely to turn stomachs. How deeply, fantastically silly and incredibly humbling it is to see himself here, sitting in the dark, covered in slime, listening to a woman who is now panting like a dog. Where once his life was stages and coaches and balls, now it’s sitting in rooms with people mimicking the voices of little girls, speaking in tongues, cracking toes under tables, plopping cold bits of offal out of their sleeves, having accomplices hide in cupboards and howl, and any number of other deeply embarrassing charades to make people believe they are communicating with the beyond. He only suffers through this nonsense in the vain hope that he might hear her voice again, but the more time passes without a word, the vainer that hope becomes.
Though he is here under a nom de guerre (hello Victor Price, dull son of dearly departed Mabel, and certainly not a renowned magician and spiritualist examiner), Gale suspects that Miss Quinsy knows who he is and that he was hit with both barrels as her own little moment of anticipatory vengeance. London’s table-rapping community is simply not large enough to hide his true identity for long, and he is not helped by the fact that the past decade has seen a palimpsest of artist’s renderings of his face and name papering the West End. Gale always felt that Oskar drew him a mite short, but it was otherwise a fair likeness. He knows his reflection would not crack a mirror (though modesty of course, prevents him dwelling too long on such things), and as the great Archmage Gale of Waterdeep, he cultivated an intentionally and theatrically magical aura—dark eyes, long hair, neatly trimmed beard—which only serves to highlight his more natural qualities. So if Miss Abigail Quinsy is worth her salt (which she definitely isn’t but perhaps she got lucky), she may have known from the moment he walked into the parlour exactly who he is and why he is here.
A shriek from the unpleasant stuffy dark present breaks through his woolgathering—the moon is shaking from side to side, the woman no doubt acting out a spasm or convulsive fit to accompany the appearance of the ectoplasm. The door to the parlour opens and warm gaslight spills in, along with Miss Quinsy’s manservant (summoned by the shriek, no doubt, as a signal of some kind), who races in to fuss over his still-convulsing employer. Gale takes a moment to inspect the damage to his appearance while the others scrape back chairs to be nearer to the medium. The substance does indeed appear to be a flour-and-water concoction, it is already drying crustily around the edges. No great damage done then. Looking up he catches Rolan smirking, and gives him a glare in response.
“Ma’am?” The manservant is saying, a little too loudly. “Ma’am, it’s me, it’s Graves.” (Graves! Ha! No doubt they thought that terribly clever.) Graves, for his part, is putting on quite the performance—eyes wild, hair tumbling from place, hovering ever so slightly too close to his mistress in his great distress—but all eyes are on Miss Quinsy as she shakily opens her eyes and lifts her ring-encrusted hands to her brow. She casts a quizzical gaze at the tableau, all the faces peering at her, Gale and Rolan still staunchly in their chairs while the other sitters hover nearby.
"G-Graves?” She stammers. “Am I truly here?” She looks around again, this time deliberately catching Gale’s eye with a flash of something like defiance, before inhaling a shaky gasp and collapsing like a hand-less Punch or Judy. With the gasp the spell is shattered, and the sitters all clamour to be the most helpful to their fallen psychopomp.
"Open the window, clear the vapours from the room!”
“Has anyone a fan?”
“Sal volatile? Or perhaps a cold compress?”
"She needs a good whiskey is what she needs, or a brandy if you’ve got it. Sorts out a nervous disposition in no time.”
"This isn’t nerves, you old fool, this is a spiritual ailment!”
"Here, back up now everybody, back up I say, give the poor woman some air…”
The stentorian fellow with the penchant for whiskey reaches out a hand tentatively, hovering just over the medium’s wrist. “Miss Quinsy,” he barks, waiting for a sign of waking before leaning forwards to give her arm a gentle tap. When this does not rouse her, he looks around at the group for instruction.
"Go on,” says the mousy young lady to Gale’s left. “Try again.” Once again, the man reaches for the medium’s wrist, but before he can so much as twitch Miss Quinsy surges up and grabs him by the hand. He launches himself backwards instinctively to evade her clutches, but he is held fast in her bony fingers, trapped between her and the table. Miss Quinsy’s face contorts into a rictus of fear, eyes rolled back in her head, her whole body tense against some unseen pressure. A strange clicking noise comes from her throat.
“Father?” Her voice is thin, reedy, and high, the voice of a scared child. “Is that you Father? It is so very dark here, and so very cold.” The sturdy man, hand still captured in Miss Quinsy’s grasp, heaves a shocked sob, and Gale growls his distaste through his teeth.
“Father, why have you left me here all alone?” Miss Quinsy’s eyes focus on the hand still gripped in her fingers, and slowly, inexorably, she pulls it towards her. Gale is unable to look away, as trapped as the owner of the fingers himself. The hand reaches Miss Quinsy’s mouth—there is a hush of held breath and anticipation, ruddy fingers brush against lips, then a wet ‘snap’ as Miss Quinsy clamps her mouth down multiple knuckles deep like a tortoise snatching a leaf of lettuce.
At that moment several things happen: The sturdy man screams at a volume and pitch that Gale would never have believed he was capable; Miss Quinsy gives a show-stopping performance of emerging from her trance to the discovery that she has a stranger’s fingers tickling her tonsils and throws herself bodily backwards, pushing her chair into Graves; Graves screeches as a chair foot lands on his toe and he bounces into the back wall; knocking the wall jolts free a long pole like a snooker cue hidden behind the mantelpiece which bangs to the floor with a clash; and everyone else in the room rushes to join Rolan and Gale on the safe side of the table. It seems as good a time as any to put this whole evening out of its misery.
"I think,” Gale mutters, leaning towards Rolan, “that may be our cue.” Rolan’s entire face, neck, and ears are brick red from his efforts to suppress his laughter, but he closes his eyes for a second to settle himself and nods.
“Agreed,” Rolan replies, “I would like to disappear in a puff of smoke, preferably sooner rather than later.”
"Perhaps you would like to do the honours?”
Rolan turns to face Gale properly, surprise and a hint of something darker—guilt?—colouring his expression for a moment before sinking away again.
“By all means,” he says, with all his usual haughty composure. Rolan briefly glances from the scared and confused sitters on their side of the table to the still-hopping Graves and the no-longer-mystical Miss Quinsy attempting to roll the snooker cue out of sight with her foot, and clearly decides his best stage is exactly where he is standing. The man cannot resist the opportunity to perform, Gale thinks, but resigns himself to enjoy the show.
"Ladies and gentlemen,” Rolan begins gently, reining in his usual ringing baritone, “I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this evening has all been a most sinister dupe, perpetrated by a truly wicked fraud.” He pauses, perhaps to give Miss Quinsy a chance to protest, but she and Graves only raise their hands to their breasts in shock. He rolls his eyes and continues.
“My name is Rolan, and this—“ he gestures to Gale “—is the great Gale of Waterdeep, illusionist and spiritualist investigator of some renown.” Gale shuffles a little at the description, but he takes heart at the looks of recognition from a couple of the sitters. Miss Quinsy and Graves, on the other hand, glare silent daggers at him.
“Given that we are gathered here today with the hope of communicating with the spirit realm, firstly, I would like to express my condolences, and my understanding. It is an incredibly hard thing, to lose a loved one, which is why these frauds—“ Rolan turns to scowl at Miss Quinsy and Graves “—are the lowest, most despicable of creatures. Vultures, here to pick the carcasses of your loved ones clean. There is no one beyond the veil here except Miss Quinsy.” Around him, Gales senses that their fellow sitters are beginning to understand what is happening: confusion is becoming suspicion, faith is turning to frowns, and Miss Quinsy is noticing her audience slipping away from her power. She rises slowly from her chair, eyes fixed with all intensity on Rolan.
"Viper in my bosom," she intones in a voice surprisingly low, steady, and furious. “The spirits were unsettled today, and now we see why. These men,”—casts her arm accusingly at Rolan and Gale—“these faithless sceptics, are here to rip away the voices of the dead and muzzle them, to trample the proven methods of my craft, and to destroy me in the process. Put aside the cold-heartedness and the blindness that these men cloak themselves in to muffle the spirit realm—I ask you, what did you feel in this room?” She brings her clenched fists to her heart, looking at each sitter in turn. “The spirits reached for all of us today. Their desperation to communicate is smeared across the air, but these men“—this she aims at them both with a venomous hiss—“stood between you and denied them their voice.”
A great roiling anger ignites in Gale’s breast, flaming through the hard-won composure he usually armours his heart with to be able to face these séances.
“The desperation to communicate you have felt in this room is entirely one way, and it is mine,” he growls, the words torn from his throat before he can prevent it. “Mine. For nearly two years I have screamed, I have howled into the ether, praying for an answer, one single solitary answer. But none has come. I have sat through countless afternoons of mysterious shrieking, bangs, creaks, languages as yet unrecorded in all of humanity, and yet not one word for me. All I was, all I could have been, all of that has slipped away from me and here I stand, covered in goo, listening to another charlatan sell rattling floorboards and prestidigitation as comfort from beyond.” Realising he has let his tongue run away with him, Gale looks to Rolan to see him gazing back, shocked eyes wet with pity. Shame douses the rage and Gale glances away to escape the version of himself he sees reflected in Rolan’s eyes. Miss Quinsy is talking again but Gale isn’t listening, all he wants is for the floor to swallow him and to wake up at home, where he can dwell in memory, where Mystra’s scent still lingers around corners and in empty rooms, and where he can avoid reality until the next séance drags him back into its harsh light. After a moment of internal calm, Rolan walks into the edge of his vision to join Miss Quinsy and Graves on the opposite side of the table, and Gale returns his attention to the room.
“…You won’t mind then,” Rolan is saying as he places his hands palms down on the table surface, “if I just do this.” He flips his hands around the edge of the table and pushes, just as Miss Quinsy and Graves reach out to stop him with a cry. But their attempt is too late—instead of a grunt of exertion and a determinedly unmoved table, a small ‘click’ sounds and the table top shifts—the near side raises as Rolan’s lowers, revealing to Gale and the group gathered around him that the table top hid a secret hinged contraption that apparently allowed it to be wobbled about with ease by a very human operator.
"Ah,” Gale says, needlessly amidst the murmurs and gasps. Well, perhaps there’s always a need for a bit of showmanship. He clears his throat.
“Dear me,” he says, “I call that very poor. What kind of ectoplasm needs a well-greased hinge to lift a table?” Rolan’s look of triumph fades as he turns to Miss Quinsy and gifts her with one of his many shades of disgust. Gale smiles despite himself.
"Madam,” Rolan sneers, “I have no interest in what you have to say for yourself. My fellow sitters, however, may be of a different opinion.” He gestures to the others, whose expressions range from disbelief to rage, more than one lady’s cheeks wet with silent tears. Gale allows himself a savage moment of anticipated satisfaction that this fraud would soon be exposed to the world, unable to leech off the grief-struck and lonely anymore. Rolan winks at Gale to get his attention and nods towards the door. Time to go indeed, Gale thinks, as the group finds its voice, the silence split by raised voices and jabbed fingers. Beyond the parlour the hallway is mercifully empty, and he and Rolan whisk through the front door into the fresh shock of evening with a shared sigh of relief.