China Garden

by Liz Berry

  Kevin from the House tour would be spitting tacks, Clare thought, amused.

  She said,“Mark, we’ve been working for days now and what we have could be written on one page in a Filofax. We’re not even sure that there is a connection between the Maze and the Benison.”

  She sat on the end of the table.“We know that there are legends of something incredibly holy about Ravensmere. This book here,” she hooked it out from under the pile,“definitely suggests that Ravensmere may be the resting place of King Arthur’s Holy Grail.”

  “All the old abbeys and ruins like Glastonbury are supposed to have the Grail. And if it isn’t the Grail it’s some other holy relic—a phial of the blood of Christ over at Hailes, a piece of the True Cross. They were just trying to get the last groat out of the pilgrim’s pocket,” Mark said, cynically.

  “But they didn’t have pilgrims here. The people only came for healing. And the Romans put up a temple and the Neolithic people put the stone circle on the hill. They all thought it was a sacred place for some reason. So that must mean the thing we’re looking for is something older than Christianity. The Benison is not the Holy Grail. But we haven’t found any plans, maps, or clues to where or what it might be. It’s not even mentioned. They covered up well.”

  “There must be clues somewhere. It can’t be the first time in all these centuries that the Guardian has died without passing on the information,” Mark said, frustrated.“And why is it so urgent?”

  “Mr Aylward is frantic, Mark. You can tell he is. I can hardly bear to go to see him. He just lies there looking out of his body, like a prisoner. He’s desperate to know. We’ve got to find it. We can’t be the generation of Guardians that ruins it all. We can’t.”

  “Why not?” Mark said, sardonically.“We’re the generation that’s going to destroy the last bits of the rain forest, and the whales and the dolphins and the coral reefs and the elephants and the birds and the seas. Maybe even the air.”

  Clare shuddered.“Oh, don’t. It’s not our fault We didn’t start it.”

  “The question is, are we going to stop it?”

  “We can’t do much. But we can do something about here. Our place.” Clare flushed suddenly.“I mean, your place.”

  It had occurred to her that he was responsible for all this now. All Mr Aylward’s immense fortune, Ravensmere and its treasures, the land, the farms and a good part of Stoke Raven too, and yet he looked relaxed and confident, nothing like the driven and angry young man who had lounged in the chair at Kenward Farm.

  “You were right first time. Ours. We’re married, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, shut up. How can sticking your hand through a stone mean you’re married?”

  He looked at her, his eyes dark and amused.“It was a bit more than that.”

  Clare looked away. The colour burned deeper in her face.“We’re in this together, Clare. Don’t try to wriggle away. You heard what the old man said, ‘You’re next or you die’. Just remember that—whatever you feel about me. I know you think you’re trapped, but just try to make the best of it,”

  “Mark, I-I don’t... I mean…” Clare stammered, her

  tongue wrapping itself around the words as she tried to explain.

  But he had wandered away, casually, scanning the shelves.“Maybe we should start again in a different way. Go back as far as we can go. Back to the Abbey records. Nine nuns. A few lay sisters. No fixed rules. They must have been isolated here. According to this old history, they had some unorthodox ideas. When the old Abbess died they elected a new one by dancing the Maze Dance.”

  “The Guardian,” Clare said.

  “Right.”

  Mark moved restlessly, looked out of the window, then came back and flung himself down in the Hepplewhite armchair next to the big open fire, stretching his long legs in front of him. He was wearing black jeans, a black denim shirt and heavy cycle boots. As a concession to the warmth of the room he had dumped his heavy leather jacket with its studded decoration on the floor. He looked an incongruous figure against the background of the white and gold elegance of the Library.

  “Are there any books from the early days of the Abbey here?”

  At that moment his outline blurred, the colours softened. Clare felt the shift, and for a moment there was another young man lounging there. He was thinner than Mark, with a narrow, clever face, which grinned across at her. His ruffled shirt gaped open, and his breeches were tucked into tasselled hessian boots, lifted carelessly on to the brass fender. He was holding a small, slim book with a peeling leather cover, one long finger keeping his place. He smiled at Clare again and flipped open the cover so that she could see its title: Liber Somnium Sanctus.

  Clare closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them Mark was there again, watching her carefully.“What is it?”

  She shook her head, trying to breathe properly.

  “Tell me.”

  “A man, sitting where you are, holding a book, grinning at me.” She tried to laugh.“Your age. A Regency rake. This place is haunted. Do you think I’m going crazy, Mark?”

  He looked at her.“What was the book called?”

  She stared back.“The Liber… ” In a second she was on her feet, racing to the small room off the Library that contained the chained library. Mark followed her curiously.

  “The oldest books are here,” Clare said.“The Liber Somnium Sanctus is very valuable. Roger Fletcher was trying to sell it to a book collector from London. It must be here somewhere.” She trailed her hand along the chains hanging from the books, setting them swinging.

  Some of the books were very large, but her hand stopped of its own accord at a small slim volume bound in peeling brown leather squashed almost out of sight between two larger volumes. It opened easily when she took it from the shelf and Clare was looking at a most beautiful, handwritten illuminated manuscript, glittering with gold and jewel-like colours. The black letter script was as dark as the day it was written, a thousand years before.

  There was no doubt it was the same book. The title was on the first page, opposite a maze-like pattern, with a small figure dancing happily on the top. There were letters underneath.

  “‘Rosamunde daughter of Cynward made me’,” Clare read aloud.

  “Try pronouncing it as a K,” Mark said, looking over her shoulder.

  “Kynward? Kenward!” Clare gave a yelp of pleasure.“She must have painted it herself.”

  On each page there were borders of intricate interlaced spirals in gold and blue, with tiny flowers, birds and beasts peering saucily around them.

  “It’s in Latin,” Clare said, disappointed.“Did you do Latin at your posh school?”

  “Only enough to read the title—Book of the Sacred Dream.”

  They turned the pages. Every few pages half the space was taken up by an elaborate gold capital letter. Inset in the centre of each was a small picture.

  The first showed a collection of stone buildings—a farm, perhaps, half-way up a hill.

  “That looks a bit like Kenwards,” Mark said.

  The second showed a tiny hamlet of wooden houses nestling in a valley, followed a few pages later by a picture of two trackways crossing by a great mottled stone.

  “The Leper Stone!” Clare exclaimed.“These are all pictures of Stoke Raven.”

  “Right. And look,” Mark turned another page,“Here’s Barrow Beacon Hill.” The hill was crowned with a stone circle.

  “So there was a circle there once,” Clare said.“Why did they bury the stones?”

  “To stop them being destroyed maybe? Or moved?”

  The next scene was Barrow Beacon Hill again, but at night. The sky was alive with stars and the moon reflected in a pool curling around its base.

  Finally there was a figure bent double beneath a heavy load, in what looked like a landscape of tumbled rocks.

  “It could be Christ carrying the cross,” Mark said doubtfully,“Or somebody burying something? Clare, if you had something ve
ry valuable to hide in bad times, where would you hide it?”

  Clare thought aloud.“Probably not in the House. It would have been searched too many times. They must have had a fit when King Henry’s men came, and later in the Civil War.”

  She looked at the painting of Barrow Beacon Hill and a memory stirred.“Kevin said the archaeologists thought there might be caves there.”

  “Why not? It’s limestone. There’s a twenty-mile system over at Wookey. But I never heard of any here.”

  They stared at each other.

  Then Mark slammed his fist on the table.“If it’s there, it’s no bloody good. We’ll never find the Benison. I’ve done some caving, Clare. Big caves, small caves, above, below, next to each other. Fissures, cracks, tunnels, underground rivers, rock falls ...”

  Clare said,“Mr Aylward’s grandfather found bone fragments scratched with drawings of dancing women. Beneath a stalagmite. Where do you find stalagmites?”

  He stared at her, and then groaned.“That’s it then. And it’s hopeless. The Benison could be anywhere. And where the hell is the entrance, anyway?”

  Clare turned the pages of the Liber again, and sat looking into space. There was no further doubt in her mind. She had seen these scenes before, Kenward Farm, the village, the Leper Stone, the circle on Barrow Beacon Hill, all framed in the Moon Gates in the China Garden—and all exactly in the right order. The Second Gate had showed Kenwards. The Third Gate, the village. The Fourth Gate, the Leper Stone. The Fifth Gate, Barrow Beacon Hill.

  All the Moon Gates were open now—except for the Sixth Moon Gate.

  There might still be a way of finding the Benison. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

  Chapter 27

  They sped across the deer park, Clare and Tabitha, two swift silver shadows. The air was clear and cold after the recent rain, the night sky brilliant with stars. The grass was frosted with moonlight so deep that Clare felt she was wading through it.

  The China Garden seemed to shimmer with an extra brilliance. For a moment she hesitated, afraid and reluctant. Since she had seen Brandon’s crash, she had avoided the Maze. And there was this other fear—a forewarning which shivered through her, and made the sweat stand out on her forehead. But there was no alternative. They had to find the Benison. The Maze Dance came so easily now that she did not need to look at the pattern. Her body turned and swayed, instinctively, following the pattern in her mind. Tonight the music was very clear.

  The return unwound her dizzily to the Sixth Moon Gate, blocked by the rock pool masonry. But now it was open, and she saw without surprise that it was framing a picture of the Temple of Demeter on its island, the dome gleaming above dark close-clustering trees, a mirror image in the moonlit water surrounding it.

  The moon slipped behind a cloud. She took a deep breath, stepped through the Gate and began to run down the grassy slope.

  She skirted the Great Lake, went unhesitatingly across the Elysium Bridge by the Great Cascade, took the Eleusinian Way, through the frightening darkness of the sunken path, with its overhanging rocks and trees and smell of decayed vegetation, and emerged into the open where the statue of Ariadne pointed across the Moon Lake to the Temple.

  The island seemed to be floating in silver light like a great swan. She stood on the bank, longing to cross the water. The Temple was there, waiting for her. Why had she been so frightened of coming? Almost she expected a boat to be there for her, but there was only the shimmering path that the moon had laid across the water, a bar of silver so solid she felt she could walk across it.

  Could she wade to the island? Perhaps the water was not as deep as it looked.

  She slipped off her trainers and holding them, stepped forward cautiously. The water was almost warm, and to her surprise she felt smooth stone, not mud, under her feet. She saw then that it was a causeway, built up beneath the surface of the water with large flat stones—a secret pathway.

  She followed the silver path without difficulty to the other bank and the water never rose above her ankles.

  There was an overgrown track between the trees winding up to the Temple, set on a mound, its pillars and dome luminous, rising like a dream above her into the dark sky shot with stars.

  Flitcroft’s Triumph, Clare thought, and there were its guardian statues, almost alive in the flooding moonlight. There was no sound or movement, not even the usual night sounds. Everything seemed to be frozen into stillness.

  She climbed the steps to the tall double doors, carved with ravens in roundels, and pushed them open. The moonlight flowed ahead of her across the marble floor to the steps leading down to the Sanctuary where she knew the beautiful statue of Demeter bent forward gracefully, arms outstretched, welcoming Persephone back through the waterfall from the Underworld.

  “I am here,” Clare said.“I have opened the Moon Gates and the Temple.”

  For a second nothing happened, and then she felt a strange sensation, a flow of energy, as if she was being lifted up and spun like a snowflake. She struggled to regain her balance, feeling exhilarated, but scared too because it was so strange and unexpected.

  There was a rushing sound in her head like a huge wave about to break. She staggered and fell, banging her knee painfully on the rough pile of masonry blocking the Sixth Moon Gate in the China Garden.

  The next morning, looking for Mark, Clare found a portrait of the young man who had grinned at her from the library chair. Edmund Edward Aylward (1784-1856). The son of the Revolutionary Earl, husband of the feminist Rosamond who had treated smallpox in Bristol. He was leaning on a table looking inscrutable and surprisingly neat, with an uncomfortably high cravat. Under his elbow were the architectural plans for his new Library and a familiar, small leather book with a peeling cover.

  “What are you looking at?” Mark was standing behind her. He put his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her head.

  “The man who was sitting in the chair in the Library.” Clare ducked and twisted away from him.

  “Listen, Mark. Last night I opened the Sixth Moon Gate. I know where the Benison is. It’s behind the waterfall in the Sanctuary in the Temple. The entrance to the Underworld.”

  Mark was silent, thinking.“It’s possible.”

  “Clever old James Edward. I expect there’s some sort of tunnel. In his letter he said they were ‘working through rocks more obdurate than the Alps’. That’s why he needed his son. He couldn’t let even Sam Kenward know where he was putting the Benison. He had to do the final digging himself.”

  “One problem. No waterfall.”

  “But there must be.”

  He shook his head.“Not now. The water dried up or maybe the mechanism has gone.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Of course I have. I swam out from the bank one night when I was about thirteen. I biked over from Roddy’s place. I don’t know why. Ravensmere was always an obsession. They couldn’t keep me away from the place.” He grinned wryly.

  “And?”

  “Overgrown. Needs repair. Oh, all right, it’s kind of ... eerie. There’s an odd feeling. I can’t explain. Something big, like when you walk into a cathedral. It spooked me. I cleared off pretty quick.

  “Tom Longman, the Gamekeeper, caught me on the bank and gave me the worst thrashing of my life. I never tried it again.” He stopped suddenly.“Tom Longman. He must have known something.”

  “They all know something. All the village people. It’s a giant conspiracy to protect the Benison.”

  “We’ll go this afternoon,” Mark decided.“Get it over with.”

  Clare felt her heart seem to stop beating and then start again twice as heavily. She felt sick.

  “We’ll need to prepare.”

  “A couple of hours. Compass, rope, food, hot drinks, first aid stuff, thick sweaters. It may not all be necessary but we’ll go prepared.”

  “What about lights?”

  “I’ve got a couple of really powerful flashlights over at the fa
rm. They last for hours, and we’ll take extra batteries. There may be some of those flare things we had for a barbecue. Will you try and find the keys? I bet the place is all locked up.”

  “Mark ... couldn’t we leave it a while?”

  He put his arm around her.“We don’t know why it’s so urgent. Grandfather isn’t the kind of man to panic for no reason. Besides, we promised.”

  They had promised, accepted the responsibility. Clare only knew it was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done.

  The keys were on Mr Aylward’s key-ring lying forgotten on a side table. She waited until Frances had left the room, and held the keys up for his permission to take them.

  She said,“We’re going to the Temple, Mr Aylward.” And saw the blaze of hope in his eyes. She nodded. The heavy eyelids sank down, and tears ran along his cheek. She wiped them away with a tissue, and kissed his hand.

  “Wish us luck.” And felt a faint pressure from his fingers in hers.

  Chapter 28

  It was late in the afternoon before everything was assembled, and they were ready to start out. They found the causeway in the Moon Lake, invisible in the daylight under the surface of the water and the waterlilies, exactly in line with Ariadne’s pointing finger, and waded across to the island.

  Clare could hardly believe she was really there at last. The Temple glowed above the flowering trees and rambling roses, alive with bees in the late afternoon sun, and they climbed the overgrown path to its entrance where the four guardian gods of healing and nature looked down, as Clare had always known.

  Inside, the Temple was circular, paved in pink and white marble tiles. Tall pillars divided the walls and arched upwards into a painted dome. Opposite the door, a flight of curved white marble steps led downwards to the Sanctuary. There was a protective iron grille with double gates, patterned with spirals, and beyond the grille Clare saw the white marble statue of Demeter, bending forward lovingly, her draperies carved so delicately they looked as though they were fluttering free, just as she had seen her in her vision. But there was no shallow pool of water in front of her. No concealing and protecting waterfall. Persephone could be seen clearly, gleaming white in the dark grotto beyond, arms outstretched, smiling joyously as she climbed from the Underworld into new life, Spring reborn again.