Chapter 16
Sebastian spent the next several hours looking into a young Cambridge student named Dudley Fenton, who turned out to be the fourth son and youngest child of a Berkshire earl.
The Earl’s third son, Captain James Fenton, had distinguished himself in the Napoleonic Wars and was now part of the Army of Occupation in France, while the Earl’s second son, Matthew, was the rector of the parish of St. Margaret’s, in Westminster.
For the past two months Dudley had been living with his brother Matthew, and it didn’t take much digging for Sebastian to discover that the lad was in London because he’d been rusticated, although no one seemed to know the exact nature of his sin.
Sebastian found the young, recently expelled scholar in the Reading Room of the British Museum, his head bent over an ancient leather-bound tome. Tall and rail-thin, with lifeless, badly cut sandy hair, a long neck, and a long, narrow face, he looked fifteen but was, Sebastian knew, eighteen.
“Excuse me,” said Sebastian quietly, walking up to him. “You’re Dudley Fenton, aren’t you? I’m Devlin.”
Fenton looked up, his mouth falling open and his silver-framed spectacles sliding down on his nose. “I am, but…” He swallowed. “How may I help you, my lord?”
“Your brother Matthew told me I might find you here. I have some questions I need to ask, but hopefully it won’t take too much of your time. Perhaps we could go for a walk in the gardens?”
“Yes, of course,” said the younger man, quickly closing his book and pushing to his feet.
“It’s about Upcott and the others, isn’t it?” said Fenton as they strolled the central path of the museum’s sad, cold-nipped gardens. “You’ve noticed it, too?”
Sebastian looked over at him. “Noticed what?”
“The pattern I was telling Matthew about.”
“What pattern?”
“I thought…That is to say…” Fenton looked puzzled. “Then what was it you wished to speak to me about?”
“I’m told you had an argument out at Chalk Farm Tavern with Upcott, Toole, and their friends a month or two ago.”
The younger man’s normally pale cheeks blazed with embarrassment. He swallowed hard and looked away. “Heard about that, did you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re generous to call it an argument.” His voice cracked, and when he spoke again, it was in a whisper. “It was the most mortifying experience of my life.”
“Why were you out there?”
“At Chalk Farm? We’d been watching the sunset from the top of Primrose Hill and decided to stop for a drink at the tavern before heading back to London.”
“You and who else?”
“George Babcock. He was sent down from Cambridge with me, you know.”
“Is he still in London?”
Fenton shook his head. “His father, Lord Babcock, kept insisting he return to Derbyshire, so he finally gave in and went.”
“When?”
“When did he leave London? It must be three weeks ago now. Why?”
“Just wondering,” said Sebastian. “I’m told the tavern keeper, Alison Cross, stepped in to try to stop what they were doing. Is that true?”
Fenton nodded. “She did, yes. So then they turned on her. They were like a pack of wild dogs sensing a new prey. I’d never seen anything like it.”
“Did you know the man who intervened and made them let her go?”
“Did someone?” Fenton flushed again. “I didn’t know someone did. As soon as she distracted them, Babcock and I left.” He swallowed. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”
“Was there a particular reason those men picked on you that night?”
“A reason? Not that I know of. They’ve always been like that. I can remember my brother James talking about them when he was up at Eton.”
“They were there at the same time as your brother?”
Fenton nodded. “He used to call them the Fomorians.”
It struck Sebastian as a telling nickname. The Fomorians were a supernatural race of monsters from Irish mythology who were said to be the personifications of chaos, darkness, and death. He drew the wooden wolf from his pocket and held it out. “Have you ever seen this before?”
Fenton paused to take the carving in his hands and turn it over thoughtfully. “No. Why?”
“It was found near where Toole was killed.”
“On Primrose Hill?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a beautiful piece, isn’t it?” He ran his fingertips over the pattern incised in the wolf’s flank. “That’s a Dara knot, you know.”
“A what?”
Fenton looked up. “A Dara knot; it’s a kind of Celtic knot.
You see how all the lines are interwoven so that they have no beginning or end?
It’s a symbol of eternity and inner strength.
The word ‘Dara’ is said to come from the same root as the Irish word ‘doire,’ for oak.
Some people think ‘Druid’ comes from the same root. ”
“You’re interested in the Celts?” said Sebastian.
“I’m interested in their myths—all myths, actually.
It’s a fascinating subject, don’t you think?
The way virtually the same stories reappear over and over again with only slight variations in civilizations thousands of miles—and thousands of years—apart.
It’s why Babcock and I were rusticated. We wrote this essay comparing the Egyptian, Greek, and Celtic myths about resurrected gods with, well, you know.
” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I thought it was fascinating. The dons thought it was blasphemous.”
“It’s only been five years since Percy Shelley was sent down from Oxford for much the same thing, so you’re in good company.”
Fenton gave him a grateful smile, then said, “But you do see the pattern I was talking about, don’t you?”
Sebastian shook his head. “What pattern?”
“How the three of them were killed. Keebles was drowned, Toole was burned, and now Upcott has been hanged!”
“That’s significant?”
“Yes! It’s the threefold death.”
“The what?”
His voice rising with excitement, Fenton handed the wolf carving back to Sebastian.
“There are actually two kinds of threefold deaths. The first tends to involve kings, heroes, or gods, and it’s where one person dies simultaneously in three different ways.
You know—like the fellow who got shot with an arrow, then hit on the head by a boulder that knocked him into a lake so that he drowned.
But there’s another kind of threefold death that refers to the methods of killing that Lucan says the Celts used for their human sacrifices. ”
Sebastian remembered Emmanuel Royston-Jones saying that Fenton and Babcock had been talking about the first-century AD Roman author Lucan the night Toole and his friends picked on them. “And what does Lucan say?”
“In his poem De Bello Civili, Lucan says that Celtic human sacrifices to the god Taranis were burnt, those to Teutates were drowned, and the ones to Esus were hanged from trees. Of course, Upcott wasn’t exactly hanged from a tree, but he was hanged from a wooden scaffold, which is basically the same thing, when you think about it.
And Keebles was drowned, while Toole was burnt! ”
Sebastian felt a chill crawl up his spine.
“We think Taranis was a sky god, while Teutates was a water god and Esus a vegetation god.” Fenton looked at him expectantly, his eyes gleaming with a scholar’s excitement behind his spectacles. “So it fits, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Sebastian. “It fits.”