“With a smile in our hearts, a prayer on our lips, and a refill in our mug? You pay. You are the lord we are supposed to be getting drunk as.”
“A pretty impoverished lord, as we all are these days. I can see to the smile and the refill.”
“As to how exactly to start, I have no idea whatsoever,” said Hal, with a sad smile. “How do you start unraveling a mystery that seems to revolve around a whole world losing its power to remember the past? As if reality itself were going senile?”
“Find reminders? Something to jog the world’s memory? You are the one with the book on mnemonics.” Manfred shrugged. “I am moving copies of my books and journals to the island, so that whether I am there or at Magdalen, I will still have my material.”
“But I would like to spend as much time on your mansion as I can,” said Hal. “Maybe some reminders are buried there.”
And Manfred invited him to meet Saturday afternoon for a meal at the mansion, assuming the workmen, royal historian, and the officer from the royal commission on antiquities gave him no further troubles.
“And one more toast!” said Manfred smiling sardonically. “That I might find a cook, have the power turned on, and have a guest room furnished by then, or else it is the cold beans for you, and sleeping on that damned cot!”
5. Worst Best Man
The Apparition
A storm rose over the channel, and adverse winds kept the ferry wallowing in the swells, like a cart tied to a mad horse running up gray hills and down, and the rain was a curtain. The tide changed, and the skipper was able to bring the ship to harbor just as the storm departed. Black clouds, as dark as locust swarms, crept slowly away from each other, an army retiring each man to his own tent. The first star shone, and the moon was a scimitar.
Manfred was not there to meet him at the dock yet again. Unsmiling and uneasy, Hal shouldered his rucksack, took up his hawk-headed cane, and walked.
A road that had never felt the tire of any motorcar ran straight through fields and pastures grown purple and blue in the dusk. There were no streetlamps in the half a dozen houses at the crossroads which formed the village, no floodlights, no lit signs. One small gas lamp was permitted to wink above the signboard of the Inn. Hal turned at the crossroad and continued.
Beyond the village, the ground rose and fell in domelike hills of green and sudden vales of shadow. Once or twice, he saw a cottage and a barn, windows shuttered, and no light showing. Then the farms and apple orchards were behind him, and pastures divided by hedgerows and low walls of mossy stones were before. In the distance, on a high peak, he saw the gaunt silhouette of the old windmill, called simply La Baton, its sails motionless.
The sound of his footfalls echoed oddly, and Hal was reminded of old myths of hollow hills under which inhuman creatures feasted in utter darkness and danced in perfect silence, to music inaudible to human ears. Then he recalled with a start that the hills of Sark were hollow indeed, or some of them: pirate coves carved out by the sea, or watery caves hidden at high tide, or shafts cut in the abandoned silver mines, or bunkers and tunnels burrowed out by diligent German soldiers during the war, some, perhaps, yet undiscovered.
“How like the mind of man this island is!” he thought. “Our daily worries and distractions walk through pleasant orchards of ideas, but the deep places are where our longings and obsessions hatch like eggs, or unspoken passions: all of that is below the roots of the landscape of the mind, where we can never meet them. Unless we fall into a pit.”
And the walk grew steeper and more broken, until the path he trod was a stairway. Before him loomed the dark and breathing shadows of Wrongerwood, and the leafy mass against the twilight sky seemed to have been drawn by an artist using charcoal in feathery strokes.
As he feared, the great house was dark. The windows were blind. The dunce-cap peak of the dovecote rose silently to one side, empty of birds; the eight-sided belltower rose before him, empty of bells. Beyond was the crenellated silhouette of the northern wing, ancient and strange as the dreams of forgotten medieval sieges, melees, and massacres. In the gloom, he saw the silhouetted contour of the flattened dome of the central priory, the rectilinear shape of the northern tower, and round shape of the signal tower, its antique cannon protruding into the night air like the horn of a rearing unicorn. The image of the gold lion guarding the main doors of the East Wing glared at him with murderous fury.
Hal smiled apologetically at the imposing creature, fished the keyring out of his pocket, and held up the yellow key adorned with a lion’s face at the bow.
“This time, I have permission!” he said.
Hal tucked his walking stick under his arm, grasped the massy brass door handle, and inserted the key. With a clang of noise, unexpectedly loud, the bolt drew back. With his boot toe he pushed open the right leaf of the huge front door. Wide darkness was beyond. His eyes could make out the hint of a stairway, a tall arch leading into larger and emptier rooms. He stepped inside, and was surprised when the wind caught the door behind him and slammed it shut. Now it was dark, save for the gray slits of narrow windows high above, lit by starlight. The windows seemed to hang in the blackness, since his eye could make out no features and no dimensions of the room in which he stood.
Hal felt suddenly foolish. He had not thought to bring a flashlight, since he assumed Manfred would have arranged for the power to be on by now, and would meet him. He doubted his ability to find his way through the twisting, unpaved, rutted and leaf-strewn path through Wrongerwood on a moonless night, which meant, as he had been before, he was trapped here unless he found a lamp or a candle.
The first time he had been here with Laurel, they had forced the cellar door, looking for a lamp seen through a stained-glass window. Instead they found an empty room furnished only with a cot, canned food, and hunting rifles. She had given him the flashlight found in the room and stayed to sleep on the cot, while he had made his way back to the village. In hindsight, it seemed more than a little odd that he had done that, left the girl alone in a deserted mansion. He could not recall the two of them discussing the plan, nor could he remember when and why he had agreed to it. He must have been more upset than he knew: upset because being alone with Laurel, even for a perfectly legitimate reason, kept luring his imagination down paths he did not want it to follow.
How had this happened to him now for the second time? It was as if something inside him were playing tricks on him, maneuvering him.
Hal shivered. “If it were my subconscious mind haunting me, bedeviling and bewitching me, this would not be so bad. I would only be going insane. Like mother. Science understands the subconscious mind. It is a real thing. It’s real. But–” Even in his mind he dared not put the thought into words, lest the danger suddenly sound absurd, and his awareness of it pop like a bubble.
Wordlessly, then, he knew the danger was real. It was not the danger of madness he feared, or not that alone; rather he feared that he was being bewitched and bedeviled by something more like witchcraft and devilry than like mental breakdown. Something deliberate. Something aimed at him. But why him? Who was he but an impoverished student studying British literature?
He remembered being amused at Manfred’s expense the day he discovered his roommate believed in demon possession and exorcism. “Surely it is just mania or hallucination,” Hal had exclaimed.
Manfred had said most cases were mental illness, but some cases did not fit the pattern. If a man spoke strange languages, or knew things he could not know, or showed strength or powers beyond human norms while in the throes of a psychotic fit, there must be something more to it than mere psychosis. He had said, his deep eyes utterly serious and sober, that an unclean spirit could afflict a mentally ill victim as easily as a sane one.
“But science has proved that spooks don’t exist!” Hal had objected. “Mental illness is not more supernatural than—than a broken clock ringing thirteen! It is just a matter of a bent gearwheel in the brain, or a loose mainspring.”
When Manfred asked him to name the year when a scientist had proven this, to produce the research, the case studied, the experimental evidence, Hal had no answer at all.
So here Hal stood, in the darkness, gripping his cane in two cold hands, dwelling on dark thoughts, hearing the creaks and mutterings from the dark house, seeing nothing but the high, thin windows hovering so far above him in the dark and lofty hall.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he murmured.
A more logical but more horrible explanation occurred to him, sending a chill into the core of his soul. He dismissed it before it even took the form of words in his mind, unwilling to even consider a thought so disloyal.
A wan and uncertain light gleamed the air ten feet above him, thirty paces or more away. It flickered and fluttered like a live thing. He saw the gleam in what seemed to be an arched tunnel hanging in midair. Closer the light came, and now he saw it was held by a slender shape in white. The shape had a round face, and some flowing paleness beneath, but no legs were visible. From the grace of its motions, it was clearly female.
Closer she came.
Wrongerwood by Candlelight
Then he heard the clack and clatter of heeled shoes on floorboards behind him and realized what he was seeing. It was Laurel in a white nightgown carrying a candlestick. She was in a corridor one floor up, approaching him at a right angle. He was seeing her image in a full-length standing mirror on the wide landing of the double stairway. His eye had mistaken the arched frame of the mirror for the mouth of a tunnel. It was not a legless ghost, but Laurel wearing dark silk stockings that were invisible in the black background.
As her candlelight came closer, he saw more and more of the vast main hall around him. It was filled with boxes, crates, and the oblong shapes of chairs and divans crouched under white sheets. To one side was a porcelain bathtub with glass balls in its claws. To the other, a grand piano. A vast chandelier with twenty curving metal arms was hanging on its chains only four feet off the ground, all its sockets empty of bulbs.
Laurel came into view from his left and walked down from the balcony to the landing, moving with a doe-like grace. The unruly stormcloud of her hair was tied back with red ribbon, but certain wanton strands had escaped and now clung to her silk-clad body. The candlelight reflected in the mirror behind her turned the sheer fabric of her gown into a half-invisible cloud of white that caressed her half-visible curves as she moved.
The vision robbed Hal of any possible breath.
She paused on the landing long enough for her lashes to brush her cheeks. Then, she continued gliding down the staircase until she was two steps above the bottom, her eyes now level with his. Her face was serene, her gaze unblinking and hypnotic.
Her pale nightgown fell in silken loose folds to her knees but left her neck and arms bare. Lace decorated the top of its voluptuous décolletage, with a little red bow nestled deeply within her cleavage that rose and fell with her uneven breath.
Hal wet his lips, afraid that if he spoke, he would wake and she would vanish. Usually, one is not allowed merely to stare at a woman for more than a moment without speaking or looking away, even if she is an intimate friend.
He could not have looked away to save his soul.
She voiced no objection and pretended no coyness. Instead, she simply stood, basking in his gaze, her face hiding all her thoughts.
Finally he forced himself to speak. “Where is Manfred?”
When she spoke, her voice seemed so familiar, her tone half-playful, that it brought him back suddenly to himself. She was his best friend’s fiancée. The two would be wedded and happy together, despite Manfred’s current doubts, and Hal would toast his friend and rejoice, and that would be the end of it!
“…so was called away. I hope it is not anything too, too dreadful. The drama of meeting my mother nearly did him in. Poor fellow. But it does a girl’s heart good to know her brave hero will pull on the harpy’s whiskers for her, doesn’t it? Come on. We can bed together.” She turned with a graceful motion, the candlelight playing with the shadows of her voluptuous figure.
Hal blinked. “I am sorry, what did you say?”
The beauty paused with one foot on an upper stair, and half-turned to look over her naked shoulder down at him. Her skin glowed, luminous, in the golden candlelight. “I said we can find you a bed together. To sleep in. Some of the furniture is moved in, but the power will not be on until next week, due to a tax lien or some sort of late payment. I would have called you to warn you off, but there is no phone here. Hungry? I assume you want something to nibble on before turning in. Come along.”
She started up the stairs, silk fabric rustling. He was three steps behind her, his eyes at the level of her hips, which swayed delightfully in that bewitching manner that no other movement can match. The outline of her figure was clearly visible through the candle-lit silk. He chivalrously forced his eyes upward, and found himself gazing the voluminous cascade of dark, shining hair that spilled down over her white shoulders.
Gritting his teeth, he intentionally stubbed his toe against the stairs, hoping the distraction would take his mind off its traitorous path.
Such as the question of why she was wearing high heels with a nightgown?
He barely heard what she was saying. “I found a chamber that is fully furnished, with a working light and wood in the fireplace, and, of all things, a wine bottle. Thirsty? It is sort of a weird, Arab-looking affair shaped like a spiral shell or something. I think Manny’s ancestors must have been half-cracked, some of them, or hired a half-cracked architect. Whether it was the excesses of the Edwardian Age, or the prudery of the Victorian Age that drove them mad, I am sure I could not say.”
He blurted out, “Why are you dressed that way?”
She glanced down at herself as if in surprise. “Well, I was on my way to bed.”
“You wear heels to bed?”
“No, the floor is cold, and these were the only pair I brought.” She stretched out one shapely leg and pointed her toe. “Like them? I thought I was coming to dine, and I wanted to look nice, more fool I. You were hours late, and so I assumed Manfred had phoned you in time, and you were not coming. The cook is long gone, I sent her home, and so are the Levrier boys who helped move in the furniture. Carried in on horse-drawn wagons from the dock, all throughout last week, so it was quite a sight.”
“Shouldn’t you put something on to answer the door?”
Her green eyes flashed, perhaps in anger, perhaps in amusement. “Bad enough when my mother tells me what to wear! I am mistress in my own house here, or it soon will be! And I was not coming to answer the door because you did not ring the bell. I heard a noise and I came to look. I did not know the door had opened. Imagine my surprise to see you standing inside my locked house where no one is supposed to come unless invited! Now I am sorry I tempted you to become a break-in artist. I did not think it would become your profession.”
“I was invited!”
“To come at five o’clock! What ungodly hour is it now? There are no clocks here. Invited guests ring the bell, they don’t break in!”
“I did not ring the bell because there were no lights on, and I thought no one was home because I assumed you had gone down to the inn!”
“Anyone who was a thoughtless boob, I suppose,” she said coolly. “Manfred was called away, and he took the keys with him. So if I left before you came, I would have had to leave the front door hanging open, which would have been unwise. But how is it that you are not locked out?”
“I have the key.”
Now she stopped and turned, looking down at him, and her eyes did flash with anger, with no playfulness in them. “That is preposterous. Why would he give the keys to you and not to me?”
“I–I don’t know… He wanted my help to solve the mystery of this house.”
“I would like to solve the mystery of why he does not trust me!” she blazed. “At times, he is a total stranger to me. He disappears, sometimes for days
on end, and later says he does not remember where he went!” Her eyes sought his. She said, “You have a funny look on your face. What has Manfred said about me? Is he having second thoughts?”
A quiet inner voice told Hal to tell the truth, but instead he threw out his chest and forced a hearty grin to his features and said, “No, he is madly, head-over-heels in love with you! He just wants to get his dissertation out of the way, and clear up these legal matters, get his fine new house here up and running—it is hectic. He is under stress! You should not read into things, you know, Miss du Lac?”
She tossed her head to throw stray strands back from her face, and sighed, and said, “Well, that is nice to hear, even though I know you don’t mean a word of it. Shall we go and eat the dinner Manny had the cook whip up for us?”
Laurel took a step, then two, and looked back again. Hal had not moved. She said archly, “Or are you going to run off, leaving me alone in a haunted house to sleep on a bare cot again? Well, there is actually a four-poster bed in the master bedroom now, and a battery-powered space heater. I appreciate that you don’t want to cause a scandal by seeing me without a chaperone, but I will remind you that I am a woman of iron self-control, and your attempts to tempt my virtue have fallen considerably short of your sinister intentions.”
“My attempts at what? Miss du Lac, I am not the one who came to the door half-naked!”
“No, merely the one who broke in on me when I was half-naked!” she said with a malicious smile. “But come! All will be forgiven once you sit and eat, and drink the wine I found. Wonderful vintage. And stop worrying about my attire! You should see what the girls on the beach wear in France.”
“If you could put something on…”
“This is actually my wedding dress. I just left the veil in the hatbox.” She purred, and she swayed with languid, swinging steps down the corridor, her heels clattering brightly, taking the candle with her.