Touchstone

by Laurie R. King

  Grey was still talking with the two servants when Stuyvesant tapped at the open door and put his head in. Alex instantly took his leave, looking abashed at having been caught chatting with a guest. The maid, Deedee, scurried out after him, some of Grey’s garments draped over her arm.

  “‘Secret room,’ huh?” Stuyvesant asked. Grey did not answer, merely raised his eyebrows and waited for the American to figure it out.

  The woven rug on the floor caught Stuyvesant’s eye first: The geometric design wound around and around and back and forth, some lines coming to a halt, others connecting: a maze, in blue and brown wool. And the stitching on the bed-cover? Another labyrinth, intricate and tightly detailed; it would take hours to unlock the puzzle.

  His eyes traveled across the walls, then to the bed itself. Its corner-posts were capped with flattened pyramids; one of them was at a slight angle to the others. He examined it, running his fingers up and down the post to search for the controls, but he had to go all the way to the bottom before he found the button that freed the post cap.

  The shallow space beneath the cap was empty. He replaced it, pressed down until he heard a click, then investigated the other three posts. All were empty but for a sweet-wrapper in the bottom of one.

  He returned his attention to the walls. The wallpaper here was blue and brown, in stripes similar to those in his room. He left the room and went through the corridor into the middle room, which had been converted to storage and was stacked high with chests, trunks, and folded bedding. He measured its width with his eyes, then went back into Grey’s bedroom, walking directly over to the joining wall to explore the wallpaper stripes with his finger-tips. How many walls had he searched in this fashion, he wondered, in the seven years since the Volstead Act went through?

  “The way most hidden doors get discovered is,” he said in the tone of a lecturer, “that the top cuts across the wall where there shouldn’t be a seam. But if the entire wall is made up of a series of doors, floor to picture-rail—ah.” Leaning against the wall freed the latch, revealing a built-in cupboard, two sheets of wallpaper wide. Behind this section of false wall was a chest of drawers; the next had the room’s clothes-rail. When Stuyvesant was finished, six doors, each some thirty inches wide and eight feet tall, stood ajar.

  Grey picked up his valise and put it onto a shelf in the wall, and walked down the row of doors, pressing them shut.

  “Did I find all the secrets?” Stuyvesant asked him.

  “Not quite. But I’d like some fresh air before the others arrive. Shall we go?”

  “What’s in the other rooms?”

  “The barn has seven bedrooms, no two alike. The most interesting is the one directly underneath yours, which is made up to look like a crypt, complete with a trompe l’oeil wall of skulls. Oddly popular with certain kinds of Hurleigh guests, although I didn’t take you for someone whose taste runs in that direction. Also, the room across from yours is said to have one of the country’s more impressive collections of taxidermy. Somewhat macabre, but again, a surprising number of guests like to stay there. Here, this room’s rather fun.”

  He opened the door directly across from his, and gestured the American inside.

  Stuyvesant came to a halt in the doorway. “How the hell did they get that in here?” That was a full-sized, open-topped, gilt-encrusted ceremonial coach the size of a small barge. The wheels had been removed and permanent steps added on either side, and where the seats had been, surrounded by the carvings and the gilt, was now a feather bed laid with shiny gold satin bed-clothes.

  “I believe they hoisted it into the barn and the work went on around it. You want to see the other rooms?”

  Stuyvesant raised a hand in protest and said, “I think that’s enough for right now. That fresh air you were talking about sounds good.”

  “Fine, but do not let me neglect to show you the chapel during the week-end. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Stuyvesant had never seen anything like the entire Hurleigh getup: Roman architecture; servants dressed like family; guest rooms with trees and skulls and gilt coaches; a passion for foxhounds; regular grist for the gossip rags; and, it would appear, some kind of radical political doctrine.

  It wasn’t just Hurleigh House: the Hurleighs themselves were not exactly what he’d expected of an ancient titled English family.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THEY LEFT THE BARN through a narrow door set into the western wall. Grey launched himself fearlessly down the rather shaky external stairway, but Stuyvesant took the steps more cautiously, lingering a moment at the top to survey the view. While they’d been inside, the bright spring sun of their arrival had slipped into an afternoon that held a lingering taste of winter. The sun preserved some of the winter’s low angle, which meant that portions of the opposite slope of the valley were in shade, while Hurleigh House and the river below it were dazzled in light.

  Considering the dampness that came with having running water two hundred yards from the front door, Hurleigh House’s site was surprisingly comfortable. The valley floor might be an absolute swamp after a heavy rain and that tidy little ford rendered impassible, but the ridge behind Stuyvesant rose well above the chimneypots, sheltering the house’s back from wind while its face collected all the winter sunlight in the world.

  Whoever had chosen this place for his house had paid attention to detail.

  (Although Stuyvesant wasn’t too sure what that long-dead Hurleigh would have made of his descendant’s whimsical conversion of the barn.)

  He trotted down the stairs, catching up with Grey on the foot-path that ran through the open trees.

  “Parts of the place look pretty old.”

  “The barn is Medieval, as are the Hall and parts of the kitchen. Fair bits of the east wing are Tudor. We’ll have drinks in the solar, which hasn’t changed since it was built in 1577—the date’s on the fireplace. I say, will those shoes do for hillside scrambling, or are they only good for pavements?”

  “One way to find out,” Stuyvesant answered. Fortunately, when they left the woods and entered the open grasslands, the vegetation was dry enough that he did not slither too much, and he did not drop too far behind Grey as they left the path and climbed towards the ridge top. It took concentration, though, and Stuyvesant had no opportunity to look around him until they reached what Grey had called the Peak, a knob of rock resembling a construction of wet sand dribbled from a giant child’s beach shovel.

  The Peak overlooked the stream, and was high enough that the countryside beyond stretched out, with the spires of the distant Hurleigh village church rising beyond the trees and hedgerows.

  Grey was looking, not at the valley, but at the grass hillside that dropped away on the other side; his face wore an odd, bittersweet expression. There was nothing particularly compelling about the hillside, just a long sweep of grass stretching almost to the stream below—although if Stuyvesant had been eight years old, he might have found the slope irresistible.

  Grey finally turned away and continued across the uneven surface, arms outstretched for balance, to drop with an experienced twist of the hips onto a flattish lump. Stuyvesant followed, choosing a lower but somewhat smoother rock for the seat of his own trousers.

  He sat, and he looked.

  There really wasn’t a lot to say about what he saw. How can a man comment on perfection? The house, the valley, the width of the stream, the cows grazing on the opposite hillside: simple, ancient, and unmistakably English.

  Grey heard his faint sigh, and nodded. “I used to spend hours up here. Life at home went through some difficult patches, but up here I could be free. I would sit up here, belittling my problems against three thousand years of history.”

  “We Americans usually go for the night sky when we need to feel small. With us, a thing is old when our grandfather saw it.”

  “Nearest anyone can figure, the name Hurleigh is a corruption of the Old English hohley, with hoh meaning heel or ridge, and ley a
clearing in a wood.” He stretched his left hand in the direction of the house, then moved it to encompass the higher ground behind them. “The ridge behind us is a foot-path that’s been used since before Stonehenge.” The hand moved again, back in the direction of the house; Stuyvesant noticed that Grey’s fingers seemed to feel the contour of the countryside they moved over, reading the texture of its history like a blind man reading Braille. “When the stables were built, workmen uncovered a cache of Saxon coins. And between them—you see the uneven bit of ground to the right of those three flowering trees?”

  “The boulder pushing up the grass?”

  “I think if you dug down, you’d find that boulder was a bit of Roman Britain. Some rich man’s villa, a general’s escape from the battlefield, perhaps, or a merchant who decided not to go home again.”

  “Is that what Grandpa Hurleigh dug up?”

  “No. I’m not sure anyone knows it’s there—I’ve just noticed it myself, although I must have sat and stared at that hillside for a hundred hours, over the years.”

  After a while, Stuyvesant took out his cigarette case, thumbing it meditatively before he opened it and offered one to his companion. Grey shook his head; Stuyvesant took one out and lit it. The line of the shadow crept into the middle of the stream now, the water all but hidden by the reeds.

  Stuyvesant glanced sideways. “You going to be okay, here?”

  By way of response, perhaps, Grey reached into his coat and drew out a decorative silver flask. He unscrewed the top and took a swallow, then held it out for Stuyvesant. The American hesitated; he could smell that booze with the explosive effect. But he accepted the flask and ventured a sip. The stuff still brought tears to his eyes. However, once the immediate vapors had dispersed, the odor of the drink did not linger. You’d hardly know Grey had been drinking.

  “So what is that made of?”

  “Mostly potatoes, I believe. The flavor comes either from a dash of petrol or a dose of rotting plums, perhaps both. As I said, I do not enquire too closely. And to answer your question, I do not know if I shall be all right. At the moment I am. With luck, I shall remain so.” He took another swig, then screwed on the top.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Stuyvesant told him. “If you don’t feel up to it, all you have to do is introduce me to your sister and we’ll turn around and get back on the train. I can take it from there, in London.”

  Grey turned the flask over and over in his hands. After a minute, he spoke in a meditative voice. “I have grown very tired of my limitations. Even before you showed up in my yard, the thought of being forever condemned to a few square miles of deserted countryside was becoming intolerable. There are times when I stand on the Beacon and the call of the sea below is nearly irresistible. If Cornwall is a home from which I can come and go, I can live there with ease; if it is a prison, I cannot.”

  “So, this is a test, coming here?”

  “An experiment, perhaps. To see precisely where my boundaries lie.”

  And, Stuyvesant thought, to see precisely what it cost to nudge them out a little. “Just so you’re not letting Carstairs get you into a corner.”

  Grey’s mouth twitched with bitter humor. “My only corner,” he said, “is the one I get into myself.”

  Stuyvesant glanced sharply at his companion, then looked away and drawled, “Well, personally, I’d have thought conversation with your neighbor Robbie would offer about as much intellectual stimulation as a fellow could take. But then I’m not an Oxford man.”

  The easy grin slid back into place. “Aow, the Robbie leaves me lampered, ee do.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you right now, thank you for doing this to help me out. I do honestly think it’s important. And if there’s anything I can do to make things easier for you, just let—”

  Grey jumped to his feet and Stuyvesant broke off, thinking for a wild moment that the man was about to enact his threatened dive off the nearest high rock. But once upright, Grey stood frozen, his eyes fixed on the other side of the valley: A car was coming down the road that led to the house.

  Without a word, Grey scrambled off the rocks and limped swiftly down the path. Before Stuyvesant reached the foot-path, Grey had disappeared into the first stand of trees. The man’s urgency was baffling, but contagious, and Stuyvesant paused only to shut the snicket latch on the gate Grey had left open, lest wandering livestock invade the gardens. He found the second gate standing open as well, closed it, and walked along the north side of Hurleigh House to the drive.

  Grey was standing forward on his toes, hands clenched in his pockets. The butler, Gallagher, came out of the house, followed by Deedee; the four of them waited.

  The clatter of a laboring engine badly in need of adjusting echoed down the valley as the motorcar climbed the road from the ford. A minute later, it came into sight, a seven-year-old Morris trailing a black haze. It cleared the hill, entering a patch of sunlight: Grey settled back on his heels and his shoulders lost their tension; a moment later, Stuyvesant realized simultaneously that this unlikely rattletrap was the Hurleigh estate’s transportation, and that the passenger briefly illuminated by a flash of sunlight was not the passenger Grey had been expecting.

  But not a stranger, either: Grey’s hands came out of his pockets, the fingers relaxed, and he glanced at Stuyvesant with a twinkle.

  “My sister,” he said.

  Whom had he been expecting?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE CAR HAD NOT COME TO A FULL STOP when its back door flew open and a diminutive blonde figure launched herself at Grey, nearly sending him head over heels into the hedge.

  For an instant, England stood still for Harris Stuyvesant, as his mind shouted, Helen! But the message came up against a wall of self control, because of course this was not Helen, it was a stranger, with the wrong hair and green eyes where they should have been blue. He shoved the escaping remnants of memory into their box and nailed down the top.

  He watched Grey swing the blonde creature around and felt as if he’d had a sharp kick in the gut. The girl laughed into her brother’s beaming face, and Stuyvesant found himself grinning at her exuberance. Even Gallagher and Deedee looked on with fondness until they remembered themselves and bent to the task of the luggage.

  Grey set his sister down and, his arm draped across her shoulders, turned to Stuyvesant. “Stuy—” He broke off. “What is it?”

  The American just raised a pair of innocent eyebrows. Grey frowned, but got the message, and went on. “Stuyvesant, this is my sister, Sarah. Sal, this is Harris Stuyvesant.”

  “Ma’am,” he said, raising his hat.

  She planted a hand on her own absurdly tiny headgear and tipped her head to look up at him: pale yellow hair, wind-blown from the motorcar’s open window; dancing green eyes, the exact color of her brother’s, with the first crinkles of laugh-lines at their corners; a delicious spray of freckles decorating her slightly upturned nose and the V of skin left exposed by her frock. Nothing like Helen, he was relieved to see.

  “An American!” she declared.

  Stuyvesant wasn’t sure what had given him away, his dress, manner, or the one syllable he had spoken, but he nodded, feeling remarkably large and clumsy. “That’s right.”

  “I adore Americans. They always make me want to run out and buy a pair of cowboy boots.”

  “You’d look charming in them, I’m sure, Miss Grey.” It was hard going to keep his eyes away from the freckles in the hollow of her throat, which had to be just about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

  “Oh, Bennett, this is just too clever of you, to bring me an American to make me laugh. Where on earth did you find him?”

  “He found me. I was minding my own business one day a couple of summers ago, digging my potatoes and thinking my thoughts, when this figure appeared up the lane with a rucksack, stick, and walking boots. Frankly, I think he’d taken a wrong turn on the way to Land’s End, but being an immensely competent sort of chap generally, he’d neve
r admit to being lost. He works for the Ford company—although I’m sorry to have to tell you that he’s sold out from his working-class beginnings and wears a white collar now. When I heard he was going to be over here, teaching the natives how to sell the American product, I thought I’d bring him to you.”

  “Like a dog bringing a dug-up bone,” Stuyvesant added, reaching out to wrap his oversized mitt around the small hand Sarah Grey was offering.

  She laughed—a surprisingly deep, rich laugh, not the giggle her appearance led one to expect—and let her cool fingers rest in his for a moment before turning to her brother. “I say, Bennett, I know it’s far too early to expect drinks chez Hurleigh, but really, your little sister is feeling a little moldy after that pig of a journey, and she could use just a tiny bit of a jolt. Can you possibly summon a G and T?”

  Grey raised his eyes to consult the butler. “I shall bring ice straightaway, sir. Miss Grey, Lady Laura suggested that you be given the Blue Room, if that is acceptable?”

  “No, I’ll have a room in the barn, and leave the house for the family.”

  Gallagher’s face kept its control at this suggestion, but only just. “Miss, there is a sufficiency of rooms in the house for all, I should think—”

  “My dear Mr. Gallagher, I’ve been coming here since I was in pigtails. At that time, I stayed in the house because it wouldn’t have been proper not to. But this is 1926 and I’m grown up enough to choose for myself. I’ll be perfectly all right in the barn. My brother will act as chaperone.” The authority in her voice was unexpected but nicely judged, and it silenced the butler. Before Gallagher could come up with a decisive counter-argument, she asked, “Has anyone claimed the wave room yet?”

  The butler cast a pleading look at the rebel’s brother, who shook his head to say that Gallagher was on his own. The man sighed. “The wave room is free, Miss. The wave room,” he commanded the other two, and they split up, Deedee and the driver heading towards the barn with Sarah’s bags, Gallagher to the house, disapproval in every thread of his black coat.