Iron Chamber of Memory (7 page)

Henry was never sure what she saw in Manfred, who was ten years her senior, sober and intent, and seemingly nothing like her type. But the two of them had suddenly announced the date for a marriage and been planning it for months. It was delayed when the death of a remote relative allowed Manfred to inherit an ancient mansion on an island in the Channel. Henry had been shocked, a week or two later, when he learned Manfred had inherited not just the house, but a title, and the whole island as well. The letters from Manfred had grown few, and strange, and the last one had invited him here, to Sark, to the Seigneurie, to the House of Rongeur d’Os Wood.

Except it was false, all of it was false.

It was all there in his head, as clear as something from a favorite novel he’d read and re-read, the words and busy actions and the moods, passions and emotions of the characters. But not his.

It was not him.

He drew back, his hands on her white shoulders. “What do you remember?”

She rolled her enormous emerald eyes. “It always takes you longer than me. I remember everything. Just think, think back, and it will come back to you. How did we meet?”

Like a man shaking off the embers of dream, his true recollections returned to him….

Dame Sibyl Hathaway was not some remote relative. Manfred visited her a dozen times in London during his school years, often bringing Henry with him. She was a gray-haired, sprightly old woman with a twinkle in her eyes.

The two old ladies, the thin and elfin Dame Sibyl and the sour-faced Countess Margaret, had explained the labyrinthine intricacies of the laws of the estates and peerages to them. It seemed a wealthy newspaper owner named Clayton, who lived a stone’s throw from Sark on his own private island of Brecqhou, was agitating for a change in the form of government of Sark, on the grounds that it violated the European Convention on Human Rights. He wanted Sark changed from a direct Crown possession to some more democratic form of government, and joined politically with the neighboring island of Guernsey. But the marriage of two descendants of John Allaire, the 18th Seigneur of Sark, would make it more difficult for the Privy Council of the United Kingdom to enact the reforms.

Manfred had objected. Were there not three of his cousins in line for the title ahead of him? Countess Margaret dismissed his objection with a wave of her fan. “The fate of the uncooperative is not as certain as mortal men imagine,” was her cryptic reply.

Manfred had come to Hal after a particularly long evening cloistered away with his aged relatives and explained that he was being offered up as a lamb to the slaughter. Either he had to marry some sharp-tongued minx, or the house and title—or the entire Sark Island, the last slice of living history—would be lost.

A month later, Henry accompanied Manfred to a New Year’s Ball held by an association to which Dame Sybil belonged. It had been a formal party, white tie and tail. At first Henry was a bit awed, as the affair was far more elegant than any he had previously attended. Soon, however, he found himself looking through the glamour at the dreary reality. The wrappings might have been more stylish, but they clothed the same horse-faced girls who laughed too loudly and spoke too crudely with whom he rubbed shoulders every day at Oxford. The gloom of disillusionment fell over him.

As he stood nursing his second glass of champagne, Manfred strolled up to him, forbidding yet dapper in his black finery.

Inclining his head toward Henry, Manfred had murmured, “Don’t look now, but the man-killing harpy to whom Dame Sibyl is trying to hitch me just walked in. Look at the door.”

Henry looked.

Through the doorway glided a young woman, decked in her winter furs. She shrugged out of her long coat and drew off her gloves, carelessly tossing them to a footman who stood by the door without so much as a glance over her shoulder. Released from her outer garments, her curvaceous beauty put the pale and boyish charms of the other young ladies to shame. A few steps into the assembly hall, she had paused. Standing merrily aloof, with an arrow-like smile upon the bow of her lips, she surveyed the chamber like a queen reviewing her court. Something about her reminded him of the ladies of antiquity, a Nimue or Lynette, plotting how best to ensnare the wary Merlin or lead some hapless knight astray.

As she looked out at the gathered company, however, a weariness came over her face, as if she, too, had pierced the veil of the evening and discerned the banality hidden beneath the shining veneer of gaiety. The look passed over her for an instant, and then was gone. Then, she hid her ennui beneath a cloak of good cheer and sailed forth to join in the festivities.

However, in that moment, her eyes had locked with Henry’s. In each other’s eyes, they recognized the same discontent with the offerings of this modern world, the same longing for something finer, that they both felt in their own hearts.

Henry recalled very little about the rest of the event, except for her scent, her swaying grace, her smile, the way she had felt in his arms as they waltzed.

His mind still whirling from the sensation of stepping into the Rose Crystal Chamber, Henry smiled and spoke of what he recalled. “Sibyl invited Manfred to a swank party in London, and he took me along as moral support. Margaret, the Countess of Devon, introduced you to Manfred. You wore a blue shoulderless gown with a plunging neckline with a silver choker with an opal stone and matching opal earrings. You and Manfred had disliked each other at first sight. The marriage was suggested—strongly suggested, otherwise Manfred would be cut out of the family funds, and booted from school—in order to block some sort of political shenanigans. You never loved him.”

“Yes on the plunging, no on the blue. I wore red,” Laureline said, “And this house?”

Henry said, “I remember now. Manfred first invited me here four years ago. It was beautifully furnished and appointed. His cousins lived here while Sibyl was in London. Two years ago, you were here, with Manfred, with me … and…”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders, and pulled out his little black memorandum book. There it was, written in his own handwriting, on the first page.

You are in love with Laureline du Lac, and have sworn to break the spell of forgetting that separates you, and promised to marry her.

Every weekend for two years, you have tricked or lured yourself to come to the Rose Crystal Chamber in the North Wing.

Only when you enter here, can you see and read these words.

Only when you enter here, do you remember love.

“I am yours,” Laureline murmured softly, “not his.”

“How is this possible?” Henry muttered furiously, rubbing his temples. “I mean, scientifically, how is it possible? Is there a gas in the air? Some hypnotic power in the lamp…”

She said, “Give it a moment. It will slowly come back to you. If we are careful, you and I, we can write ourselves notes to remind or trick or lure us into coming back in here. Leaving a book behind that you need for your research or something.” She drew out a notebook smaller than the palm of her hand, bound in tooled pink leather. It had the slenderest possible little pencil tucked in the spine, with an equally dainty tassel.

“See?” She held her little book up, opened a page.

Friday: Unlock the Rose Door for H; he left his Mallory in the desk. V Important!

She said, “But if I write any plain and open words, words of love, my eye cannot see them, not when I am in the Out-of-Doors World. Only here in the Inner World. We’ve experimented before, tried dozens of things. You forget the moment your heart passes over the threshold of the door or window. Yes, you tried climbing out the window once. You suddenly woke up, and found yourself clinging to the wall outside, with no memory of how you got there.”

“No, I do remember that. I was helping one of the Levrier boys clean the gutters, and the wind gusted, and the ladder fell…”

“What color was the ladder? Wood or aluminium? What happened to the boys that they did not immediately lift the ladder again? There were no boys. There was no ladder.”

He was silent.

Laureline said, “You see? The spell is very subtle. It not only sponges out memories, it covers them over with false ones. It explains away little inconsistencies. It made you forget this house entirely, this last time. Even though you have been coming here for years! Before, you were able to remember the house and the outside of the chamber. It is getting stronger, not weaker. It is an enemy, and a cunning one…”

Henry had rolled up his sleeve. He was staring in horror at the large and angular knife-scars which covered his left forearm from elbow to wrist. Two-year-old scars. The letters spelled out
I LOVE LdL
.

Henry said, “But it? It who? Some mind, some deliberate thing, must be doing this!”

“Must it? Does a deliberate mind send dreams, the little details in a dream, the color of a pair of shoes, or the words spoken by a figure we meet? Or do we do it to ourselves?”

“How can we fight this?” Henry asked angrily.

Laureline said, “We can influence ourselves subtly. The last time we were here, you wrote
The Memory Palace of Giordano Bruno
in your little memorandum book.”

He nodded. “Yes. I became fascinated with the idea of picking up books about Bruno from the library. He died in 1600, burned as a heretic. Some say he was a warlock. He was famed for having the best memory in the world, the best in all history. He developed what he called the Ancient Art of Memory, mnemonics, based on the writings of the Greeks.”

She was frowning, biting her thumbnail delicately, staring at the floor. “How does it work? How can that help us?”

“The idea was to build an imaginary house in your mind, a palace of memory, so that every room and bit of furniture is just so. You use rhymes and colors and figures from astrology or myth to help keep things in order. In each room, you fix an image to remind you of what you want to remember. For example, I can never remember the taxonomic classifications, so in the den, beneath the stuffed heads of a leopard, lion, and a she-wolf, I imagined a chessboard made of reddish-purple glass and I have a crowned king in an ermine-lined robe playing a game. I can remember
Kings Play Chess on Fuchsia Glass Surfaces
. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genre, species.”

“So?”

“These led to other books on memory and memory-binding. I came across the theory of state-related memory. You know drunks who wake sober on Monday, and forget the whole weekend of what they did. The surprising thing is next time they’re plastered, the forgotten memories can return. The same with certain states of mind, drugs, hypnosis, altered states, or even returning to an old place. Memory retrieval is most efficient when a man is in the same state of consciousness as he was when the memory was formed.”

“What does it mean?” she asked softly, searching his face with her eyes.

“Something in this chamber is changing our state of consciousness.”

“And what does
that
mean?”

He looked bewildered. “I–but I don’t know what it means. It is a start. If we can think of a solution, solve the puzzle…”

Laureline sighed scornfully. “You know we will forget the answer the moment we step out of this chamber, and the puzzle too. What is worse is that if I subconsciously influence myself, my out-of-doors self, to call off the wedding, then I will lose you too! Manfred owns the house and the Rose Crystal Chamber.”

She pulled away from him now, and went and sat on a purple divan, and put her face in her hands.

“Only here, in this chamber, am I am alive. Out there, I am a sleepwalker.” A broken sigh came from her. “I am so very weary of this! For two years we’ve been trying to make our Outer Selves remember, to let the truth out! But don’t you see what’s happened? What is happening to me? I’ve turned into a shameless flirt!”

Henry said gallantly, “I don’t know what you mean!”

She raised her face from her hands, and her eyes were like two green rays boring into him scornfully. “So you did not notice how many times outside me contrived to press up against you this evening, to take your hand, to fall into your arms? I do not know which is more shameful: being a shameless hoyden or one who is so amateurish that the efforts go unnoticed!”

“No, Outside Me thinks you are very attractive indeed,” said Henry. “He is just not going to hurt his friends by—wait a minute! Why am I apologizing for him? I mean, for me? In any case, you are not a flirt. All that was happening was that you subconsciously were aware of your true self. Your true heart. The real you was pushing you into my arms. You should be happy! It means we can beat this thing! Break it! My love, my darling, nothing can keep us apart!”

“But something is. The marriage is two months from now. Something, something we cannot understand, cannot put a name to, has kept us apart for two years. Six hundred days and counting we have been separated. Sixty days remain. The nothing that keeps us apart is amnesia. It is time for firmer steps.”

Henry’s face darkened. “Don’t bring this up again.”

“I tell you—there is only one way to break a spell in a fairy tale like this. Sleeping Beauty was not just kissed, you know. Prince Charming needed a deeper intimacy to wake his love. The Brothers Grimm just cleaned the story up. Here is a roomy purple couch. We can light a fire in the rose-red marble fireplace to warm us. Sit with me! Take me in your arms!”

She tugged on his hand, urging him to lower himself. Henry shook his head.

Laureline said, “But everyone does it these days!”

“Everyone can go to the devil. All we need do is bring a parson in here, have us perform the ceremony.”

Her green eyes flashed scornfully. “And then what? After the Honeymoon, once the nuptials are over, and we’ve consummated the wedding, as soon as I walk downstairs, I will be unwed again, and marry Manfred, an adulteress in my own house? A different husband for every floor of the manor? I can go back and forth between this chamber and the master bedroom on cold nights, when one or the other of you grows tired. That will be a new scandal, even for England.”