by Dan Simmons
Lord Francis Douglas’s somewhat elderly mother, Lady Queensberry, as Whymper wrote, “suffered much from the idea of her son not having been found.”
In truth, it was worse than that. Lady Queensberry soon became obsessed with the morbid conviction that her young son was still alive somewhere on the Matterhorn—trapped high in an ice cave, perhaps, while surviving by eating lichens and bits of mountain goats, drinking the water that tumbled over his prison from the snows above. Perhaps—most probably Lady Queensberry thought—her beloved son Francis was injured, unable to descend on his own and even unable to find a way to signal to those so far below. Or perhaps, she told one old friend during a visit, Francis had survived the fall to the glacier—after all, he wasn’t attached by rope to those who had died so horribly—and was even now eking out a cold survival in a crevasse somewhere.
Men of honor such as Professor John Tyndall—who had almost joined Whymper on the famous first ascent—then returned to the Matterhorn to carry out systematic searches for Douglas’s remains. He wrote to Lady Queensberry and promised “to exert to the full extent of my abilities in the difficult and dangerous—but necessary for your piece of mind—task of finding and returning your brave son’s body to his native land and ancestral home.”
But Douglas’s mother wasn’t interested in someone returning her darling son Francis’s body. She knew he was alive and she wanted him found.
She went to her grave believing that Lord Francis Douglas still lived, stranded high on the north face of the Matterhorn or wandering the cold blue caverns beneath the glacier at the mountain’s foot.
So the Deacon calls a halt to our descent through the “treacherous bit,” and Jean-Claude and I stand there a few meters lower than him, both of us getting colder by the minute (the north face is in full shadow now and the wind has grown colder as it increases its howling), and—at least on my part—wondering what the hell old Richard Davis Deacon is up to. Perhaps, I think, he’s getting senile. After all, the Deacon, although physically more fit than I am at 22, is entering his dotage at age 37 (the precise age of George Mallory when he disappeared on Everest this same month).
“This is the place,” the Deacon says softly. “Precisely the place where Croz, Hadow, Hudson, and Lord Francis Douglas fell and went over that edge…” He points only 40 or 50 feet below, where the arching crest of the Matterhorn’s picturesque overhang becomes an invariably fatal drop.
“Merde,” says Jean-Claude, speaking for both of us. “Jake and I know that. You know that we know all that. Don’t tell us, Richard Davis Deacon, former schoolteacher that you are, that you brought us down this miserable route with no fixed ropes—we have a dozen or more to choose from just thirty steps to your right, and I’d be delighted to drive in a piton and clip in a fresh rope if you like—don’t tell us you brought us this way just so you could show and tell us a piece of history that everyone who loves the Alps and this mountain has known since we were in short pants. Let us quit talking and get off this fucking face.”
We do so, moving easily and confidently to our right, always aware of the emptiness below us here, until we move out onto the relatively safe slabs—a series of upturned steps was the way Whymper once described the ridge after giving up on the Italian side (downturned slabs) and trying this Swiss Ridge—and from there we unrope, and the descent becomes, despite the continued danger of rockfall or slipping on ice, “easy as eating your piece of pie,” as Jean-Claude would sometimes say.
We knew now that, barring any nasty surprise, we’d reach the Hornli Hut at 3,260 meters, almost 11,000 feet—a comfortable enough hut for one perched on a narrow ledge and wedged into the mountain itself—before full darkness fell. Two-thirds of the way down we reached an old cache of ours. (Our cache—mostly just some extra food, water, and blankets for the hut—was set almost exactly where Whymper’s people had left their rucksacks during their ascent. What must the three survivors have felt and thought on their silent descent as they lifted their dead friends’ four rucksacks and carried them down the mountain with them?)
I realize that I’m feeling morbid and depressed as hell—plus my week of climbing the Matterhorn, not to mention the many previous months with these two men, is now over. What am I going to do now? Go back to Boston and try to get a job? Literature majors tend to end up teaching literature they love to bored freshmen who couldn’t give the slightest bucket of warm spit about the material, and this thought of making my future living in the Fifth Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Academic Hell depresses me even more. Jean-Claude looks pretty miserable as well, but he has a great job to return to as a Chamonix Guide. He’s very close friends with the Deacon and obviously sorry to see the long climbing vacation—and relationship—end for now.
The Deacon is grinning like an idiot. I’m not certain that I’ve ever seen Richard Davis Deacon fully grin before—smile ironically, sure, but grin like a normal human being? Much less grin like an idiot? Uh-oh. Something is very wrong with that grin. His voice, although audibly excited, is slow, almost formal in its Cambridge cadences. The Deacon is taking turns making serious eye contact with each of us as he speaks—something else he rarely does.
“Jean-Claude Clairoux,” he says softly. “Jacob William Perry. Would you care to accompany me on a fully funded expedition to climb Mount Everest in the next spring and early summer of nineteen twenty-five? It will just be the three of us as climbers and some necessary porters—including a few high-climbing Sherpas to help establish the high camps, but still just porters. We will be the three climbers—the three men attempting the summit. Only us.”
This is where Jean-Claude and I, knowing that this must be pure fantasy or mean-spirited bullshit, should be shouting, “You can’t be serious” and “Go tell it to someone who just got off the boat, Limey,” but this is the Deacon speaking, so the young French Chamonix Guide and I look at each other intently for a long few seconds, turn back to the Deacon, and say in total solemnity and almost perfect unison…
“Yes. We’ll go.”
And so it begins.
Chapter 2
So there at the center of the most beautiful 9,400 acres in the world resides a permanently broken heart and an eternally damaged mind.
T he car ride from London to the Bromley estate in Lincolnshire takes us about two hours, including a lunch stop in Sandy since we are running ahead of schedule and don’t want to arrive early, but by mid-afternoon, still a few minutes ahead of schedule, we’ve reached Stamford Junction. We are only a couple of miles from our destination, and I admit to feeling nervous almost to the point of nausea, although I’ve never been carsick before—especially not in an open touring car on a beautiful summer day with pleasant breezes smelling of farm fields and forest, astounding scenery on all sides, and a perfectly cloudless blue sky above.
A sign names Stamford Junction “Carpenter’s Lodge” in the usual British way of obfuscating everything, and we turn left down a narrow lane. A ten-foot-high solid masonry wall blocks the view on our left for all of these last two miles.
“What’s the wall for?” I ask the Deacon, who is driving.
“It encloses a small part of the Bromley estate,” says the older climber around his pipe stem. “That’s the famous Bromley Deer Park on the other side of the wall, and Lady Bromley doesn’t want her deer—tame as they are—jumping out and getting hurt.”
“Or allow the poachers to get in all that easily, I imagine,” says Jean-Claude.
The Deacon nods.
“How big is the Bromley estate?” I ask from the backseat.
“Well, let me think,” says the Deacon. “I seem to remember that the previous marquess, the late Lord Bromley, set aside about eight thousand acres for farmland—most of it usually fallow and used for hunting—about nine hundred acres of woodland, pristine forest going back to Queen Elizabeth. And I think only about five hundred acres for the deer park, gardens, and grounds, all tended year-round by a small army of foresters and gardeners.”
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br /> “Almost ten thousand acres of estate,” I say stupidly, turning to stare at the high wall as if I might suddenly be able to see through it.
“Almost,” agrees the Deacon. “In truth, it’s much larger than the ninety-four hundred acres here. The village of Stamford we passed through back there officially belongs to the Bromley estate—as did all the people living in it and in the other hundred and forty–some residences around Stamford and edges of the estate—and there are several dozen commercial properties, in and beyond Stamford, that Lady Bromley still owns and administers as part of the estate. When they said lord of the manor in the old days, they meant it.”
I try to imagine this. I’ve seen huge patches of privately owned land, of course. On my summer climbing trips during my years at Harvard, I’d headed out west to climb in the Rockies, and some of the ranches the train passed through probably approached or surpassed half a million acres—perhaps a million. Someone out there told me that while a cow needed a little less than an acre to graze on happily back in my home state of Massachusetts, the same cow would require more than forty acres just to stay alive in the high plains of eastern Colorado or Wyoming. Most of the huge ranches out there grew sagebrush, rabbit brush, and a few old cottonwood trees along the creeks—if the land had any creeks. Most of it did not. The Bromley estate, according to the Deacon, has 900 acres of ancient woodland used for…what? Hunting, probably. Strolling in. Shade for the tame deer when they get tired of hanging around the sunny parts of their dedicated park area.
The wall curves away to the south, we drive a bit further and turn left down a narrow and rather rutted road, and then suddenly we are passing under an ancient archway into the estate. There is a large gravel approach here—no estate house or gardens or anything of interest visible all the way to the green, hilly horizon—and the Deacon parks our touring car in the shade and leads us to a carriage, complete with mustachioed driver and two white horses, waiting near a narrow asphalted road winding away into the green depths of the estate. The carriage is so ornately bedecked with badges and doodads along the sides and back that it looks as if it might have been designed for Queen Victoria’s coronation parade.
The driver hops down and opens the topless carriage’s door for us. He looks old enough that he, too, might have taken part in Queen Victoria’s parade. I admire his long, pure-white twin mustaches, which make him look a bit like a very tall, very thin walrus.
“Welcome back, Master Richard,” the old man says to the Deacon as he shuts the door. “If I may be allowed to say so, sir, you look very fit indeed.”
“Thank you, Benson,” says the Deacon. “You do as well. I’m delighted that you’re still livery master.”
“Oh, only in charge of the entrance carriage now, Master Richard.” The old man spryly hops up to his place in front and takes the reins and whip in hand.
As we roll out onto the lane, the sound of the carriage wheels—iron, not rubber—on the asphalt surface and the clop-clop of the huge horses’ hooves make it probable that anything we say in a normal tone of voice won’t be heard by Mr. Benson. Still, we speak with heads leaning close and just above a whisper.
Jean-Claude: “Master Richard? You’ve been here before, mon ami.”
“I was ten years old the last time I was here,” says the Deacon. “And spanked by one of the butlers for punching young Lord Percival on his prominent snout. He cheated in some game we were playing.”
I keep turning my head, trying to take in as much as I can of the perfectly mowed and manicured hills, trees, bushes—a lake of some acres sends light flashes toward us as the wind ruffles it into low waves—while far off to the south I believe I can see the beginning of formal gardens and the hint of a tall building on the horizon. But it’s far too broad and expansive to be a single building—even for Bromley House—so it must be a village of sorts.
“You were—are—a social equal to the Bromleys?” I whisper. It’s a rude question, but I ask it out of surprise and slight shock. The Deacon had insisted that I go to his tailor at Savile Row to get a bespoke suit for this meeting—I’ve never owned one that fit so well or felt so good on me—and he insisted on paying for it, but I had been certain from the months together in Europe that the Deacon had no great reservoir of funds to fall back on. Now I’m wondering if the next 9,000-acre estate beyond Stamford is called Deacon House.
The Deacon shakes his head, puts away his pipe, and smiles ruefully. “My family has an old name and no money left for its final disappointment of a scion…me. It’s not legal now to surrender one’s hereditary title, but if it were, I would do so in a heartbeat. As it is, I have attempted to avoid all use of and reference to it since I returned from the War. But way back in another century, I occasionally came here to play with Charles Bromley, who was about my age, and his younger brother Percy—who had no real friends or playmates for reasons you’ll discover soon enough. That all ended on the day I punched Percival in the nose. After that, Charles came to visit me instead.”
I knew that the Deacon had been born in the same year as George Leigh Mallory—1886—but because of his still-dark hair and superb physical condition, surpassing (as I believe I’ve mentioned) both Jean-Claude’s and mine in most aspects of climbing, ice and snow work, and stamina, I never really thought of Richard Davis Deacon having lived fourteen years of his life in the previous century…fifteen years under Queen Victoria!
We clop onward.
“Do all visitors park their cars at the gate and take carriages to the house?” J.C. loudly asks Benson, the driver.
“Oh, no, sir,” replies the old man without turning his head in our direction. “When there is a party or reception at Bromley House or Bromley Park—although there are precious few of those these days, the Lord knows—chauffeured guests may ride in their motorcars directly to the house. The same applies to our most esteemed visitors, including the former queens and His current Majesty.”
“King George the Fifth has visited Bromley House?” I say, hearing the awestruck provincial quality and American twang in my own voice.
“Oh, yes, sir,” Benson says brightly, tapping the slower of the two white horses on the rump with a light touch of the whip.
All I knew about the current British king was that he’d changed his family name from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more English-sounding House of Windsor during the Great War, in an effort to renounce all his close connections to Germany. Still, the Kaiser had been George V’s cousin, and it was said that they’d been affectionate. They certainly looked very much alike. If they had swapped medals and uniforms on one of their many visits to see each other, I almost believe each could have ruled the other’s kingdom without anyone noticing.
I’d once asked the Deacon about the current king and all he said was, “I’m afraid he divides his time between shooting animals and sticking stamps in albums, Jacob old boy. If George—His Majesty—has a third passion or ability, we, his loyal and loving subjects, have yet to learn about it.”
“Has other British royalty visited Bromley House?” asks Jean-Claude in a voice loud enough for Benson, our driver, to hear.
“Oh, my, yes,” says the driver, glancing back over his black-liveried shoulder this time. “Almost every royal has visited and stayed at Bromley House since construction of the home began in fifteen fifty-seven, the year before Elizabeth came to the throne. Queen Elizabeth had apartments here which have never been used by guests other than royal. The so-called George Rooms were used as a vacation suite by Queen Victoria for several months in eighteen forty-four—and she returned to them many times. It is said that Her Majesty especially enjoyed the ceilings painted by Antonio Verrio.”
We clop along in relative silence for another minute.
“Yes, many of our kings and queens and Princes of Wales and other royals have enjoyed parties, overnight stays, and long vacations at Bromley House,” adds Benson. “But in recent years the royal visits have dropped off. Lord Bromley—the fourth marqu
ess, you know—died ten years ago, and His current Majesty may have more pressing things to do than visit widows…if you don’t mind me saying so, sir.”
“Isn’t there an older son still living, big brother to the Percy Bromley who disappeared on Everest?” I whisper to the Deacon. “The fifth Marquess of Lexeter?”
“Yes. Charles. I know him well. He was gassed during the War, was invalided out but never really recovered. He’s been virtually a prisoner in his room and attended to by nurses for some years now. Everyone had been suspecting that the end was near for Charles and that Percy would take up the mantle as the sixth Marquess of Lexeter sometime later this year.”
“How, gassed?” whispers Jean-Claude. “Where in the British Army does one put a Lord?”
“Charles was an army major and had survived much of the worst fighting, but in the last year of the War, he and other important personages from government and the army were part of a Red Cross delegation, visiting forward positions to make a report to the agency,” the Deacon says quietly. “A three-hour cease-fire had been arranged between the British section of the Front there and the Germans, but something went wrong and there was an artillery barrage almost on their positions…mustard gas. And most of the delegation’s members had forgone carrying gas masks with them. It did not matter for Charles, since his worst wounds weren’t in his lungs but were the result of actual mustard powder from the shells spilling onto his flesh. Some wounds, you see—especially being exposed to mustard gas powder—literally never heal. They must be dressed anew every day and the pain never ceases.”
“Damned boches,” hisses Jean-Claude. “Never to be trusted.”
The Deacon smiles grimly. “They were British artillery firing. English mustard gas that fell a bit short. Someone didn’t get the cease-fire notice.” Then, after a short interval filled only by the sound of the carriage wheels and the clop of the huge horses’ hooves, the Deacon adds, “Actually, it was the artillery unit that George Leigh Mallory was in charge of that killed half a dozen Red Cross important personages and turned poor Charles Bromley into an invalid, but I’ve heard that Mallory wasn’t there at the time…was back in Blighty nursing his own wound or illness of some sort.”