Death in the Castle (14 page)

… L
ADY MARY STIRRED IN
her wide canopied bed. She opened her eyes and gazed into the darkness and lay motionless. Something had wakened her, a noise, a voice, perhaps. Had Richard called her? She sat up, yawned delicately behind her hand and switched on the lamp on her bedside table. The white curtains at the windows were billowing gently into the room and the air was damp. The expected rain had come and now there must be fog rising from the river. She turned back the blankets and felt for her satin slippers on the floor. She must go at once and see if Richard wanted something. Slipping into her white negligee, she lit the candle to guide her through the passage between her room and Sir Richard’s, the passage that had no light otherwise, and pattered softly through it. Both doors swung open easily, she entered his room and going to the bed, she stood looking down at him, shielding the flickering light of the candle from his face with her hand, lest he awake.

“Richard,” she whispered.

He did not answer. He was asleep, his breathing deep and steady. It was not he, then, who had called. Who could have waked her? She tiptoed out of the room and into her own again, closing the doors. Should she go back to bed? She hesitated, shivering in the damp air. Then as always when she was undecided she gave herself up to concentration, standing with her eyes closed, until at the far end of the long tunnel she saw the shining light of awareness of what she should do. …

The familiar sense of ease, of relief, warmed her body. No, she was not to go back to bed. Put on something warm, her flannel robe, and what then? Just walk about, perhaps, feeling everything, feeling it to be the right moment, perhaps waiting until
they
told her? She might not hear a voice, but sometimes she was moved by feeling, as though unseen hands, lighter than the mist, were touching her cheeks, her hands, her shoulders, guiding her somewhere. Yes, now she could feel
them,
leading her down the passage and the corridor to the great hall. She yielded herself until at last she stood under the chandelier, and felt herself stopped. Wait, she felt, wait to hear a voice, King John’s voice, if it were his, poor King John. He had always been one of her favorites, nevertheless. She had come across a description of him once in an old book in the library.

Tall and fair of body, with fierce blue eyes and ruddy fair hair; voracious, always hungered, a young man coming late to love, and having no shame in drinking all day and all night—

It had made her think of Richard when they fell in love—“coming late to love,” so late that she had wondered if there had been a woman before her. She had not dared to ask, and for awhile had been eaten up with unspoken jealousy because he told her nothing of an earlier love. She looked up expectantly into the chandelier and saw the crystals twinkling and shining faintly in the candlelight, like a face with a thousand eyes.

“Very well,” she said softly, “if it’s the moment then say something—please, King John, tell me where the treasure is!”

She gazed upward, head thrown back, her long silvery hair streaming down her back and listened, her face intent.

“Or what is it?” she whispered into the light.

… Kate was asleep, too, but lightly. She had left a candle burning on her dressing table, a small candle set into a deep bowl against possible fire. She kept a candle always burning lest Lady Mary call her at night. She lay quietly now as she slept, her dark hair loosely curling on the pillow, and her bare arm flung upward about her head. The other hand lay open, palm upward, on her breast. She was beautiful asleep, though no one was there to see her, half smiling, dreaming perhaps of recent adventures, the lily pond and the sunshine, the firelight in the great ball and John’s tall figure at the window.

A door creaked and her eyes opened. She waked at the slightest sound, aware even in her sleep of the two for whom she felt responsible because she loved them.

“Yes?” she called.

No one answered. She raised herself on her elbow and saw a dark silhouette, a shadow at the door. She caught her breath, stopping with her hand to her mouth the sound that might have come involuntarily. Lady Mary came into the room.

“It’s only I, Kate. My candle went out and I’d forgotten to put the box of matches in my pocket.”

She walked to the bed and looked down into Kate’s wide eyes. “What’s the matter, child? Have you seen something, too?”

“No, my lady—only I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“I wasn’t expecting to be here,” Lady Mary said, “but I was called. I got up and waited for instructions and now it’s quite clear to me, Kate, that this is the right moment for us to act.”

Kate, gazing up at Lady Mary, felt suddenly afraid—of what? Not of this gentle aging figure, surely, whom she knew better than she knew her own impulsive self, she sometimes thought, except that Lady Mary looked at this moment so transparent, so fragile, so unearthly, that she—

“Have you heard a voice, my lady?”

“I don’t know,” Lady Mary replied. “I think I did hear someone, but I can’t be sure I really heard anything—or anyone. I was simply pervaded, if you know what I mean—”

“I don’t, quite,” Kate said, wondering.

Lady Mary was a trifle impatient. “I can’t stand here explaining, Kate. It’s simply that I feel
them.
I know
they
are moving about. There’s excitement. Get up at once, Kate.
They
can be very difficult if
they
are wanting to tell us something and don’t find us waiting.
They
will go off in a huff. It’s quite difficult for
them
to reach us, you know. I daresay
they
try as hard as we do.”

Kate reached for her rose-colored dressing gown. She smoothed back her tumbled hair and tried not to shiver. Lady Mary did look strange—resolute, grave, but remote, especially her eyes—

“Shouldn’t we take someone with us, my lady?” Kate asked. “I’ll call Grandfather, shan’t I?”

“Certainly not,” Lady Mary said. “He’s much too old. We don’t know where we’ll be led—perhaps into the dungeons. He might slip on those wet stones and then we’d have to try to carry him.”

“I could call Sir Richard—or even Mr. Webster or—or the American—”

“Unbelievers,” Lady Mary declared. “They’d only send out negative impulses and then we couldn’t make contact at all. No—no—just you and I, Kate—and hurry, there’s a good girl. Carry the candle—bring your matches—”

She could only obey and she put on her little white fur slippers and followed Lady Mary into the passage, through the great hall and down then into the cellars. There Lady Mary paused to open a high old wooden cabinet in which hung hundreds of keys. She chose a huge key of bronze, green with age, and with it opened a narrow door that led into a winding corridor.

“My lady,” Kate, silent until now, spoke anxiously. “Are you sure you won’t catch cold? It’s been ages since anybody was down here—the air is like death itself.”

“There’s no such thing as death, not really,” Lady Mary said. “It’s just a change to something—I’ve told you—another level of whatever it is that we call life. It’s only a transfer of energy. Can you understand? Please try, Kate! It would mean so much to me if someone did.”

Lady Mary paused in the dim corridor. Her face was beautifully alive now, her eyes tender, her voice warm. Kate felt a deep longing to believe in her, and at the same time an impulse to run away, to fly back to the great hall, to find someone young and untouched by strangeness, someone like herself. Yet who was young in the castle except John Blayne? And he was still a stranger, someone from a new world.

“It’s like the wireless, I tell you,” Lady Mary was saying. “There’s an instrument of transmission in us, but not everyone understands how to use it. Some day we’ll know quite easily and then nobody will think it strange or talk about ghosts. It’s only because we don’t quite know yet—or so few of us do—”

The dreadful thought crossed Kate’s mind now that Lady Mary might be going mad. She lifted the candle involuntarily so that the light fell on her face. Lady Mary stepped back. “Don’t do that,” she cried. “It hurts me.”

She is going mad, Kate thought desperately, and tears came welling into her eyes. Through their shimmering she saw, or thought she saw, a nimbus about Lady Mary’s head, like that of madonnas in old paintings.

She set the candle on a deep windowsill and put her arms about Lady Mary. “You aren’t well, dear,” she said. “You look so strangely at me. Perhaps you’re only tired with all the anxiety—it would be natural.”

Lady Mary drew back gently but firmly. “Stop shivering, child. I am not going mad and I feel quite clearly what you’re thinking. There’s nothing strange—it’s all quite common sense, but I won’t go into it now. Remember what we’re here for—it’s to ask
them to
show us treasure, if there is any.”

She turned away from Kate and walked ahead of her down a long winding passage that descended almost imperceptibly as they went. She walked as if she were asleep, purposefully, familiarly, her step sure, her bearing confident. She was talking, not to herself exactly, Kate thought, and certainly not to her, but as if to someone who was walking just ahead. “We need a million dollars. That’s what the American offers us. How much is that in pounds? Yes, it’s a great many pounds—at any rate, more than we could possibly get together, and Government won’t do anything. And not just rubies in the tennis court, please—this is serious. It’s the castle now, the whole castle, and where are we to go if it’s taken from us? Where are
you
to go?”

Kate was melted into pity and fresh alarm. “Ah now, Lady Mary dear, let’s go back and find somebody!”

“Nonsense,” Lady Mary said firmly. “We’re going straight ahead.
They’ll
speak when
they
can.”

And she led the way down to the dungeons.

… Sir Richard opened his eyes and stared about the room. It was still dark, the intense darkness before dawn. A voice echoed in his ears, a woman’s voice.

“Who’s there?” he shouted.

No one answered. He thought nevertheless that he heard breathing, a fluttering sort of breath, a rustle somewhere near the northern window. He fumbled on the table for his matches and knocked the box to the floor.

“Damn,” he said in a loud voice. He switched on the bedside lamp, knowing he must find the matches in case he had need of the candle. He got out of bed and knelt on the stone floor in his old-fashioned nightshirt, his bare knees chilled, and felt as far as he could reach. No matchbox!

“Damn, damn,” he muttered between clenched teeth. He got to his feet stiffly and kicked about until he found his slippers, then shuffled over to the window, knocking his leg on a corner of his desk. The shuttered window was open and the light of a sinking moon shone palely over the yew walk and the lawn. The elephants loomed monstrously large, their shadows black. He could see nothing else and he leaned out and called.

“You there—speak up!”

No one spoke, but a flock of birds sleeping in the ivy flew out in alarm. He chuckled.

“It was you then, you rascals!” For a moment he stood by the window breathing in the good air that had been so recently washed with rain, then he yawned and shuffled back to the bed, stumbling over the elusive matchbox on the way. He got in, pulled the covers about him, and tried to sleep again. It was impossible. The events of the past two days came alive in his mind and he lived over each detail. This American! He envied the youth, the gaiety, the confident power of the man. A foreboding fell upon him. Again and again England had been revived by youth of other lands. Here in his own castle, built upon Roman foundations, young Danes, coming from France as conquerors, had created a strong new life. He switched on the lamp by his bed and reached for a book he had been reading.

“Oh France,” the ancient chronicler declared, “Thou layest stricken and low upon the ground … But, behold, from Denmark came forth a new race … Compact was made, between her and thee. This race will lift up thy name and dominion to the skies.”

“And how great the blend had been,” the book said, “old Roman order with youthful human energy!”

He sighed, and knew he could not sleep. Was he not now of the old order? And did John Blayne indeed bring in the new? He laid the book away and put out the light. Shivering, he drew up the covers and fell into a troubled sleep, distressed by clouded dreams.

Hours later, or perhaps only minutes, he was wakened, or dreamed he was wakened, by the deep vague melancholy that he had come to know so well, preceding always the restless, throbbing pain inside his skull. Here it was again—and how to escape it? He dreaded the darkness that fell upon his mind. Light! He must find light. Where was the light? He could not breathe, he struggled to open his eyes, and then as if he were in heavy chains, he got slowly out of bed, fumbling for the light and unable to find it, then fumbling for the matches but he could not put his hand on the box.

He remembered that behind the swinging pane he kept matches and a candle, and he groped his way to the wall. He felt for the particular spot, the center of a star in the carving of the panel. He pressed it. The wall, which no one knew was a door except himself and Wells, swung creaking away from him. He went through it and closed it again carefully. Then he felt along the wall and found the alcove and the matchbox. The first three matches would not strike for dampness but he fumbled for the bottom match and then the flame held. He lit the candle and, blind with pain, he walked down the passage to the winding stair at its end and still with a strange purposefulness, as though he were deep in sleep, he climbed to the top, two flights up to the east tower. There the passage narrowed until it barely admitted his lean figure. At the end a door filled its width, an arched door, very low. He opened it and entered an octagonal room.

The light of the candle fell upon the thin figure of Wells, his hair in disarray and dusty with cobwebs.

He dropped on one knee. “Good evening, Your Majesty. I’d about given you up.”

Sir Richard put out his hand. Wells kissed it.