In the half-light of the hidden garden, moss lay thick, and more strange figures loomed near and far. The lack of breeze combined with the age of the statues to give me the sense that time did not pass here.
Before us and a little to the right, across a mostly unobstructed expanse of forest floor, rose the tower that leaned at a disturbing angle. Nearer to us was the sculpture of a wild boar with real vines growing over his back. A large, square basin had once contained a pool or fountain but now held only a brackish accumulation of rain-water, leaves, and fallen branches. Four identical stone women stood delicately poised, one on each corner of the basin’s rim. Each woman bore a water-jar on her hip, a slender arm curled around it. None wore a stitch of clothing, and I looked quickly away. When Grandmother moved ahead of me, I took a second, longer glance.
“That’s really awful,” she said, and I jumped, feeling my face begin to burn.
But Grandmother was talking about the tower. “For the life of me, I can’t fathom why anyone would build it that way. It makes me dizzy just to look at it, and if I go inside, I feel ill.”
“A mystery,” said a voice, and I barely held back a yelp.
It was Mr. Girandole, his face in a narrow window on the tower’s upper story. Grinning, he leaned out with his elbows on the sill. He still wore the floppy brown hat, but now his shirt was a dusky blue. “Whatever mischief the old duke was up to when he built it,” Mr. Girandole said, “it’s come in handy.”
“So, there you are.” Grandmother looked up with her typical restrained smile—a smile that seemed to look beyond the reason for smiling to the next ache or nuisance or grief, and still farther beyond that—a long telescope of foresight. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Very well, thank you, though there have been some anxieties.”
“And that one?” Grandmother lowered her voice further.
“Alive.” Mr. Girandole looked over his shoulder once, into the tower’s interior. “But not awake yet. He’s had water and tea, and a sip or two of broth, but he’s burning with fever. I think he dreams dreams.”
Grandmother laughed. “Of course he does, in that catastrophe of a house. It would drive anyone mad. If he lives, he’s likely to come out of there crawling on all fours and eating straw.”
For all her brusqueness, I thought Grandmother sounded happy. I studied the building and decided it wasn’t a tower at all, though its height gave that impression. It seemed to have only two stories, if the windows were any indication, though its flat roof had a crenellated parapet, like a castle. The rooms—of which there could conceivably be only two—must be about the size of my own bedroom in Grandmother’s cottage, but they must have very high ceilings.
“He’s in here,” said Mr. Girandole, though we’d gathered that. “Do you want to come up and see him?”
“No, you come out here,” Grandmother answered. “I know what a delirious man looks like.”
Mr. Girandole disappeared from the window, and Grandmother started up a flight of weathered stone steps that led to a terrace at the foot of the leaning house. The terrace itself was level, not leaning. There was a matching stairway at its other end, and in the spirit of adventure, I took that one. I paused before climbing to peer across the glade at the statue of a mighty elephant who held an armored warrior in his trunk, frozen in the act of dashing the man to the ground—the violence of the scene gave me a chill. Beyond the elephant a stone tortoise, broad as a table, appeared to creep from the bushes.
I hurried up to the terrace, where weeds grew in the cracks between flagstones. Grandmother mounted from the other side, grunting as she labored up the stairs. Stone benches lined the platform along every side. She chose one against the building, where she could lean back against its wall and face outward. The terrace had a mossy railing with ornamental pilasters and seven planting urns, spaced at regular intervals. Each urn now held a thicket of natural growth, leaves and vines spilling from its rim and along the railing—like pots of forest that had boiled over.
Mr. Girandole emerged from a doorway in the tower’s side and joined us. He wore no shoes, and his hoofs clicked on the stones. When he settled himself on the western bench, above the stairway Grandmother had ascended, I saw beyond his shoulder the desolate fountain of the four unclothed women.
I perched beside Grandmother. Between our feet and Mr. Girandole’s, a tiny brown lizard skittered for cover. I sprang up and followed it to see where it would go. Reaching the platform’s back edge, past the corner of the house where the open doorway yawned, the lizard raced over the brink and straight down the block wall to the ground, not caring that the stone beneath its twiggy feet was vertical. I lost sight of it then.
Raising my eyes, I found myself facing another great stand of matted bushes and close-set trees, which blocked another large swath of the garden behind the leaning house. But another archway led onward in a gap, as strangely clear of undergrowth as the one through which we’d come.
Then I saw, in a patch of such deep shade that I’d missed it at first, a statue stained black with moisture or mold. It was the image of an angel, but not the sort I’d ever seen in a church. This angel’s long hair and robes blew back in what seemed a fierce wind. The face made me draw a frightened breath, for its mouth was a line of unyielding purpose, and its eyes seemed colder and darker than the stone of which they were carved. In one hand the angel held a ring of keys, and in the other a chain, which looped down to cross and re-cross the square base on which the angel stood—as if the chains held that base bound against the earth.
I backed away and returned quickly to the bench.
“So, you heard those planes,” Grandmother said, “and knew they’d seen the parachute.”
Mr. Girandole nodded. “It was too far to take the man to my cave—too hard on him, even if I could have managed it; so I brought him here. Had to drag him most of the way on my coat, then sweep up the worst of the drag-marks.”
“Resourceful,” said Grandmother. “And clever thinking, I’m sure; though I doubt it did him much good to be dragged up all these steps.”
Mr. Girandole nodded ruefully. “I was as gentle as possible.”
“But didn’t the soldiers come here, too?” I asked.
“Yes, they came,” he said. “They gawked at the monsters, prodded the bushes, and inspected this listing house. But what I’d hoped came to pass.”
Grandmother had a knowing gleam in her eye.
“What came to pass?” I asked, looking up at the colorless wall. Two windows gaped without glass or shutter, one above the other.
Mr. Girandole bent close and spoke behind his hand. “They didn’t find the secret space, where the man and I were hiding.”
I know my eyes brightened at the mention of a secret space. “Can I see it?”
“Yes,” said Grandmother, pulling me back into my seat, “he’ll show you presently.” She waited for Mr. Girandole to continue his story.
“Then I collected the tools and washed the canvas in the stream, as I promised. I knew it would take the soldiers time to get here, so I worked deliberately. I smoothed out the mound we made, brought water here in the bucket, and washed the blood from these steps.”
“He was still bleeding?” asked Grandmother.
“No, not really. I think it was from his clothes, and my poor coat, too. I fear it may be time for a new one.”
“I expect so,” said Grandmother, “when the excitement dies down.”
“Yes, yes, there’s no hurry.”
It occurred to me then that Mr. Girandole must depend on my grandmother for things such as clothes; he couldn’t walk into the village on those back-bending legs of his and shop for his own. But Grandmother, I supposed, could buy second-hand men’s clothing “for the buttons” or “for quilting.”
How lonely Mr. Girandole’s life must be, I thought. He had no person to talk to but G
randmother; and for the more than thirty years of her marriage, he’d had no one at all. But maybe time passed differently for ageless fauns. Or maybe here in the sacred woods where time itself seemed an unproven fancy, the waiting had not been so bad.
I thought of my own two friends from home and imagined the fun we might have exploring this garden. Our letters had tapered off. I’d tried to describe the village to them, but they’d never seen such a place, and now our lives were entirely different—theirs so full of chores and anxiety, and everything rationed. They had no time for letters. And now there was so much I couldn’t write about. I felt like the statues here, grown deep into a world of shade and silence, isolated and concealed. I hoped the letters from my parents wouldn’t stop coming.
There was a long, comfortable quietness then, during which we sat on our benches and gazed out at images the world had forgotten. Without getting up, I could see the pool, Neptune on his throne, our first archway, the boar, the dragon’s head, the sea serpent, the elephant, and of course Heracles, wading in the bushes like a man at the green sea’s edge.
“Not much has changed,” Grandmother said. At first, I didn’t know what she meant. “The bushes are wilder now. More paths are overgrown, and more is hidden.”
Mr. Girandole nodded, looking around thoughtfully, and I figured out they were remembering the garden as it had looked years and years ago, when Grandmother was my age.
“More is broken down and rounded off,” Mr. Girandole said. “The mermaid is the worse for wear, and the vine roots are not kind. It’s hard to hold back a forest that’s so eager and full of life, but I’ve done what I can to keep the main pathways open.”
Now I understood why the archways were free of vegetation. Mr. Girandole cared for the garden, trimming back the bushes when it became necessary. But he’d been discreet; he’d let the woods grow wild enough that no casual visitor would suspect the intervention of a caretaker. Branches were left to decay where they fell. The forest made its choices.
“Mermaid?” I asked, remembering that Grandmother had spoken of seeing a mermaid first of all the monsters.
“There’s another half to the garden,” Mr. Girandole said. “Behind you, through the second set of arches. That’s the upper part, and this is the lower.”
Grandmother was still thinking of the past. “This is where we met, isn’t it, Girandole? On this very terrace. You were reading a book.”
He chuckled. “One of those books I brought back with me from my foray into the world of the mortal folk. I still remember which one it was, and the page and the place I was reading when I looked up and there you were. I nearly jumped over the rail—no one else has ever sneaked up on me—no one else before or since. I wondered who this could be, to walk so silently!”
“Could never do it now,” Grandmother said. “You’d hear me huffing on the bottom step, and my joints creaking.”
“You were very small, but you gave me quite a fright.”
Grandmother blinked languidly. “I wasn’t afraid of you, and you had goat feet.”
“You’ve never been afraid, M ——. Not of your world, and not of the other.”
“What good does it do to be afraid?”
They had forgotten all about me, but I didn’t mind. It was good to hear them talking this way, their voices warm and soft and worn as old leather. I wandered to the rail and peered out across the bottom of the garden. In my head I tried to picture Grandmother as a young girl, gliding soundless across the carpets of leaves.
The deep glade was not in absolute shadow. The most delicate beams of sunlight pierced intermittently, making brilliant flecks no bigger than coins on the moss.
After another long silence, Grandmother suggested I go with Mr. Girandole to see how R —— was doing. “And we’d better take the brush knife home, at least. It will need sharpening.”
No mention was made of Mr. Girandole’s not having come to our house the previous night. We understood that for him to visit us would only risk danger for us all. And he had his hands full caring for the patient.
“Don’t forget to leave the provisions we brought,” Grandmother said, pointing to the carpet bag. “If R —— can’t eat them, then you can, Girandole.”
Mr. Girandole thanked her and stood, and I followed him to the doorway. It had no door and was forever open.
The coolness of ancient stone washed over us. Beyond the threshold lay exactly the sort of chamber I had expected: absolutely bare, its floor strewn with dead leaves. As Grandmother had said, the building’s tilt was much more disturbing inside. At once I felt a weariness in my ankles, since they had to bend to keep me upright. Dampness streaked the walls. Immediately to our left, a short stairway descended into a low annex like Grandmother’s summer kitchen. Ahead of us, an enclosed corner of the room housed a dim, winding stairway. Mr. Girandole led me upward. Enough light filtered in from above and below that I could make out the footing.
There seemed too few steps for the space they had to climb. To compensate, each step leaped high above the preceding one; this fact and the stairwell’s tilt made the going difficult. “Be careful not to fall,” Mr. Girandole said gently. “It’s rather more like a ladder than a stair.”
“A ladder on a sinking ship,” I answered.
I also noticed at once that the risers between steps all bore numbers, one number on each vertical plane. But the numbers were all out of order and made no sense that I could see. Four and nine gave way to two and eleven and fourteen: moreover, some of the numbers were carved upside down. “What do these mean?” I whispered.
Crawling up the stairs above me, Mr. Girandole shook his head. “Another mystery of the garden.”
Grandmother had said there was a riddle to this place, a puzzle. I began to understand that she meant more than just the gathering of fantastical statues and architecture.
The room at the top of the stairs was of the oddest construction I’d yet seen. Though the ceiling and walls closely resembled those of the chamber below, the floor had two levels. Its front half, on the side of the house above the terrace, was even with the threshold where we now stood. But between us and that farther section of floor lay a sunken half, into which a short stairway descended. It reminded me of a swimming pool with all the water drained. A narrow ledge, just wide enough to walk upon, ran from our feet in both directions to join the upper half of the floor. There across from us was the window through which Mr. Girandole had been looking out. I also noticed a stone ladder built right into the wall in the rear corner straight opposite our doorway; presumably, the closed hatchway at its top led to the roof.
Down in the sunken well was the pilot, R ——. Flat on his back, he occupied a pallet made from Grandmother’s canvas and a bed of grasses and leafy branches; I saw ends of these sticking out from beneath him. A stoneware cup, a tea kettle, and some rags were arrayed around him, along with our bucket and pan, the brush knife, and the unlit lantern. There was also a pile of rumpled blankets that must have come from Mr. Girandole’s house, and in a corner lay the long coat, now badly stained and tattered.
R ——’s face looked terrible—deathly pale with a slight bluish cast, and shiny with sweat. His breath came out in hisses and moans.
“You see, he’s quite bad off,” said Mr. Girandole, trotting down the steps into the well. With the equipment and blankets, there was scarcely room for him to crouch beside the man. “I don’t know whether to keep him covered or not. He kicks the blankets off.” He looked up at me with bleak eyes. “This anguish, this inevitable approach of Death,” he said, “it’s such a distressing part of the human world.”
I nodded, understanding enough of his big words to agree with him.
“But what’s secret about this room?” I asked. “Why didn’t the soldiers find you?”
“Ah. Watch this.” Mr. Girandole seemed glad for the distraction. He stooped and spread his hands on
the wall of that lower space, the wall beneath the higher half of the floor.
I noticed now that the surface was pitted with hundreds of tiny, regular holes in rows, each hole about the size of a fingertip and connected to those surrounding it by faint grooves.
Finding the precise place he was seeking, Mr. Girandole stuck his thumb into one hole and his longest finger into another. I heard a loud, mechanical click, and the upper floor jerked, sliding by a fraction. Half of the floor was a moving slab!
Mr. Girandole grinned, reached up, and pulled it toward him, over his head. It rumbled, crossing the chamber, shutting Mr. Girandole and R —— into a hidden compartment, now completely gone from sight. Where the moving floor had been at first was a second well, a twin to the first, with another stairway leading down into it. To look out the window over the terrace now, a person would have to stand on the ribbon of ledge that remained there.
Mr. Girandole’s voice rose, muffled, through the stone. “You can walk across above us. This is still the solid floor.”
I did so, marveling at how well it fit in its new position, having perfectly concealed the first well to reveal the second. The stone ladder to the roof seemed more naturally placed now, rising above this floor rather than above a pit.
“It must be pitch-black for you down there,” I said.
“Yes. But I can find the latch again by feel.”
I couldn’t help smiling. It was such a nonsensical and delightful thing to build, like the entire leaning house. Was this whole house, then, meant to be nothing more than a magic trick-box? The sunken wells partly explained the odd height of the structure: it needed some extra space between the first and second stories.
On the floor of the newly opened well I saw an engraving that startled me. It was a giant face drawn by lines carved into the smooth stone. Roughly human, the face had round eyes and a gaping mouth, as if it were screaming. In a long arc above it was an inscription. I recognized our language but in a style so old I had trouble making out the words.
A Green and Ancient Light Page 7