Green Darkness (7 page)

Harry and Myra also turned to Lily. “Most picturesque,” Harry said. “Quite worth seeing, must cost a fortune to keep up though.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Myra, surveying the house, the shaven lawns, the rose and peony gardens with a practiced eye. “Charming. I wonder how the owner gets enough staff. I shouldn’t want to live here myself, give me a convenient flat in Eaton Square every time, but this is very pretty.”

Lily was gratified, no longer defensive about her expedition. “Aren’t you glad you came, darling?” she asked Celia, and broke off. “Oh, this must be the guide, they said one would be waiting.”

A middle-aged woman in a floral print dress came briskly over the stone bridge towards them. “Mrs. Taylor’s party?” she inquired smiling. “As a rule we only show the place on Friday afternoons, but the owner is generous and allows exceptions when he’s not in residence. Particularly for Americans, since he is one.”

“It’s very kind of you.” Lily smiled back. “As a matter of fact, we aren’t all Americans, this is the Duchess of Drewton, and Sir Harry Jones, and Mr. Igor—they’re English—and Dr. Akananda, then Miss Susan Blake and my daughter, Lady Marsdon,
we’re
the Americans.”

The guide looked faintly startled, though she knew that Americans were given to elaborate introductions. She glanced with interest at the Duchess, whom she had seen pictured in the
Illustrated London News
and wondered at her presence here. For that matter it seemed a peculiar party, with a brown-faced doctor, and a Sir Somebody, and a golden-haired youth with a queer name, and “my daughter, Lady Marsdon,” who had drawn away from the others and was staring at the stone tower with extraordinary intensity.

“Now,” said the guide shrugging, “we’ll start our tour here on the bridge, while remembering that the original fortified manor house was built by either a Cawne or a deHaut in the reign of Edward the Third, somewhere about thirteen-seventy, we think. It has not been possible to identify all the early owners, but you will find a list on the back of the leaflet. You might like to look at it before starting the tour.” The guide handed out pamphlets. “That’ll be sixpence each if you wish to keep them,” she said.

Myra declined her pamphlet graciously. “I’m afraid I’m not all that keen on crawling over old houses,” she said. “Are you, Harry?” He shook his head. “Then we’ll wait for you outside,” she added to Lily. “I’m quite fond of
gardens.
” She glanced at her diamond wrist watch, “The pubs won’t be open yet, and I could do with a gin and bitters; but we’ve got the tea flask in the car. Will you fetch it, Harry?”

Myra wandered off with her admirer. Igor also preferred to stay outside, enthusiastically snapping sunlight effects as he pranced around the edge of the moat.

“Well,” said Lily a trifle disappointed, “
we
want to see everything.” She looked at Dr. Akananda and Sue, then more carefully at Celia. “What’s the matter with
you,
dear?” she said laughing. “You act moonstruck.”

Celia jumped. She gazed hastily down at the moat. “I was watching the swans.” Two of them were gliding under the bridge amongst the flowing green weeds.

“Oh, yes,” said the guide, “the Queen herself had us sent a pair, after swan-upping day. Now this entrance tower has an interesting feature. You see the zigzag stone slit here, it’s really a device to let those inside the manor safely see anyone trying to get in. Quite ingenious. And now the courtyard, entirely enclosed by the buildings, rather small as these things go. Those stocks over there by the Great Hall were often in use for punishment.”

“Punishment?” repeated Sue, wide-eyed. “And is there a dungeon too, where they tortured people?”

“There is a dungeon,” answered the guide patiently. “Almost under the entrance tower, but we don’t show it, it’s too dark and dangerous.”

The guide led her party across the cobblestones to the eastern part of the quadrangle and unlocked a massive oaken door. “This entrance leads into the vestibule outside the Great Hall. There were structural changes made in the last century on this side of the Hall, otherwise it has remained much as you see it for five hundred years.”

Lily, Sue, Akananda and Celia filed into the Hall, which was suddenly flooded with sunshine through the tall mullioned windows to the left. The guide continued to point out features—the original oak roof timbers, the grotesquely carved fourteenth-century corbels, the Flemish tapestries.

Lily and Sue made delighted exclamations. Akananda watched Celia. Her face had flushed, her mouth opened, and her uneven breathing was audible. The doctor quietly took her arm and pushed her down on the cushioned bench below the window, noting that her pulse was pounding.

“That bit of armor over the fireplace,” said the guide impressively, “was found when they drained the moat many years ago—a Roundhead soldier the experts say. Now we’ll proceed to the old crypt, then upstairs. Is there something wrong, Lady Marsdon?” she asked as she turned. “You seem unwell—the heat perhaps?”

Celia heard the question from a vast distance, like a poor connection over a transatlantic phone. She licked her lips. “I’m all right,” she said. “I guess it’s the heat.”

Lily made an impulsive move and would have gone to her daughter. She was stopped by a small commanding shake of Akananda’s head. “I’ll take care of her, Mrs. Taylor.”

Lily at once obeyed the prohibition in his eyes. She was reassured as he wished her to be, and turned back to the guide. “I can’t wait to see the rest of this fascinating place.”

“Me, too,” said Sue. “What’s the little door next to the big door on that wall? It doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Oh, that.” The guide smiled. “That’s a niche where they found the skeleton of a girl when they reconstructed this south wall in eighteen-seventy-two.”

“Skeleton!” cried Sue rapturously. “What was she doing in the wall?”

“I’m afraid she was
put
there. It’s rather disagreeable, but this happened in many old houses, centuries ago.”

“You mean she was walled up
alive?
” Sue gaped at the low empty niche. “Where’s the skeleton now?”

“Ah, that we don’t know,” said the guide, bored with a question she had so often been asked. “No doubt the bones were dispersed . . . Now, if you will kindly step this way—”

Sue was not yet satisfied. “But don’t they know
when
she was walled up, or who she was? And doesn’t her ghost do some hauntin’?”

The guide answered a trifle curtly, “It has been said that the skeleton might have been Dame Dorothy Selby, who is supposed to have warned the Parliament about the Gunpowder Plot. The Selbys lived here for three hundred years, but it can’t have been Dame Dorothy, because we have an authentic portrait of her hanging in the stairwell, and
that
shows her as an old woman. As for ghosts, I know how you Americans dote on such tales.”

“Of course we do!” Sue cried. “They’re interestin’, aren’t they, Cousin Lily!”

Lily nodded. “Most people are interested in the psychic. I’m really sorry that Medfield Place—that’s my son-in-law’s place in East Sussex—doesn’t seem to have a ghost. But I’ve heard there are a lot
here.
”

“I daresay,” said the guide. “Never seen anything myself, but there was supposed to be a cold presence in the tower room, it was exorcised, I believe. There are other legends, armored knights, ghostly hoofbeats, a black monk with a rope around his neck, that sort of thing, but I never heard mention of the walled-up girl.” She determinedly shooed the two women back into the vestibule.

Celia remained on the window seat with Akananda. The flush had drained from her face, which was now pale and glistening with sweat drops. She slumped against the doctor’s shoulder. “I feel sick,” she whispered. “Deathly sick. Can’t breathe.”

Akananda put a firm hand on her forehead. Through mists of nausea she felt the sustaining pressure.

She straightened slowly, opening her eyes. “Where’s Mother gone?” she said. “Mother and Sue?” She spoke in a wondering little-girl voice. Her languid gaze roamed about the Hall, it passed over the niche without pausing. He saw that her pupils were so widely dilated that her eyes seemed as black as his own.

“They have gone with the guide to see the rest of this place,” he said quietly. “I think you had better come outside with me. We’ll go find the Duchess in the garden.”

“This place,” she repeated, frowning past him at the wainscoting. When she spoke again he was startled by a different inflection. Her voice sounded higher, there was no trace of American accent, yet the tonal quality was not the English that he knew either. There was an unfamiliar cadence as she said, “This is a place abhorrent. Yet I cannot flee. For I must see him. My love awaits me in secret.
Jesu
, forgive us!”

She crossed herself with a wavering uncertain motion.

Akananda shook his head. He guessed something of what was hidden from her or any one of the struggling souls who were blindly meshed in the results of a bygone tragedy. But since these souls had free will, he could not foresee the outcome. His thought sped to the exalted
ashram
in the Himalayas where he had passed some of his boyhood, under the guidance of several enlightened ones, and especially of Nanak Guru. With the yearning memory went a humble prayer for wisdom.

“Come out into the garden, my child,” he said, putting a hand on Celia’s arm, for she had started up. “You’ve had enough. Already the protective veil is torn.”

She shook his hand off. “Let me be!” she cried angrily. “Always I must go to him. I must tell him.” She stroked her belly. “It hath quickened. I felt it move this morn.”

Akananda stared at her and saw a subtle change, as though another face were shedding a wavering reflection on that of Celia Marsdon. The contours had become more oval, the lips fuller and more seductive, the brows more arched and the eyes held a passionate willful glint.

“Lady Marsdon,” he said in a calm cold tone designed to reach through to her, “do you mean that you are pregnant by Sir Richard?”

She made an impatient gesture. “Will you mock me?” she said. “I know not any Sir Richard, Stephen is my dear love . . .”

She whirled around and ran through the door. Akananda followed her close behind. She flew up the heavy Jacobean stairs. On the landing she paused, putting her hand to her lips. “I hear voices. None must know.
She
found us once.” Celia flattened herself into a corner.

The voices were those of the guide, Lily and Sue who were examining the window in the solar through which ladies of bygone times might discreetly watch male revelry in the Great Hall below.

“And now,” said the guide, “we go through towards the priest’s room and the Tudor chapel. That chapel is a gem. It was built in fifteen-twenty-one during the reign of Henry the Eighth; it contains priceless linenfold paneling, a painted barrel roof and part one 1968 some fine stained glass . . .” Her voice died away as the party moved on.

Celia emerged from the corner. “They are gone,” she murmured.

She walked slowly through the solar and an anteroom, while Akananda followed. She was now totally unaware of him, and talked to herself as she entered a dark passage. “Where is the door? He would not have locked it against me. Might he be at the altar? Yet not at this hour, so late at night. Though he
does
pray overmuch.”

She entered a small cubicle which contained a fireplace and led into the chapel. “Stephen . . .” she whispered urgently. “’Tis unkind to hide.” Suddenly she raised her head and looked up at a dark beam on the ceiling. “What’s that . . .” she whispered. “Black, hanging there . . . what’s that?”

Akananda stood rooted. Sunlight filtered through the bare empty cubicle from the chapel windows.

Celia moved a step nearer the fireplace. She raised her arms high, her hands fumbled over something in the air. She fell to her knees and, as she did so, gave a scream so piercing, so eerie that it shrilled through the peaceful manor rooms like an air-raid siren.

The guide came running back, with Lily and Sue. They stood for an appalled moment staring at Celia who was crumpled on the floor, with Akananda bending over her, his hand on her wrist.

“Dear Lord, what happened?” cried Lily, kissing her daughter and distractedly smoothing the brown curls.

“She has fainted,” said the Hindu, “but she’ll be all right. Perhaps we can carry her to a bed.”

“What was that terrible noise?” cried Lily. “Surely, not
Celia!
”

Akananda did not hesitate. There would certainly now be no escape from suffering, but he would spare the poor mother what he could. “Was there some special noise?” he asked. “I was preoccupied with Lady Marsdon.”

The guide at once showed exasperated relief. “You can depend on it, ’twas the plumbing. You’d be surprised at the whistles and bangs we get from the plumbing. These old places were never built for bathrooms.”

She went to help Akananda and the others lift Celia. “Nearest bed’ll be in the owner’s private wing,” she said. She stared at Celia. “Poor thing, does she get these spells often? I had a cousin used to have fits.”

Lily, though much alarmed, was able to say indignantly, “Celia doesn’t have
fits.
I never knew her to faint before. But, of course, you know young wives . . . one might expect . . .” She smiled faintly and shrugged.

The guide accepted this, as did Sue, who instantly reviewed all the things she had heard about pregnancy, and examined the unconscious Celia with awed interest.

Within twenty minutes Celia had completely recovered, and felt almost normal. She concealed from everyone that she had no idea of anything that had happened since getting out of the car at the moat bridge.

The guide showed the party out through the tower entrance, accepted the fees and her tip, then vanished.

They found Igor still snapping pictures; Myra and Harry flirting on a bench near the ornamental pool.

As the party gathered by the bridge Myra greeted them amiably. “Well, was the tour interesting? You’ve been gone scarcely an hour.”

Sue began, “Oh, it was fascinatin’ but I don’t think we saw everything because Cousin Celia—” She broke off, gaping at the lawn beyond the moat. “What’s
that?
It’s fabulous!”