Iron Chamber of Memory

by John C. Wright

  She was dressed like someone set to walk a sandy summer beach. The other women golfing were wearing sweaters.

  For some reason, she was wearing the expensive diamond pendant Hal had bought her as sort of a pre-wedding gift, and, against his will, his eyes were magnetized to it. The little silver dolphins nestled in the dell of her breasts, and seemed to mock him with their knowing smiles.

  She was fairly good at the game, perhaps better than he was, at least at first. By the sixth hole, he was suspicious that she was deliberately missing shots to let him win, a habit he found very girlish and very annoying. Her normal gaiety was bubbling over, and she giggled at everything, funny or not.

  The wind was coming from the cliffs, and the balls in flight during drives tended to hook north. Laurel wore her hair piled high atop her head in a Gibson, adorned by an absurd pin shaped like a golf ball, but even so the long unruly strands tended to escape the coiffeur, and fly and leap in the wind.

  As they played, his eyes were repeatedly drawn to the back of her neck, naked with her hair pinned up as it was, with a few little stray wisps showing. The clasp of the chain rested there. He kept feeling this tingling in his lips and this unexpected urge to nuzzle her there, or to nip her ear right where her dangling earring swung: earrings which annoyed him because such jewelry was utterly inappropriate for a golf course!

  It was clear she was flirting with her poor caddy as well, a freckled teenager with a thick Scottish brogue and thicker acne. She kept calling him “sweetie” and “dearie,” no doubt because she had forgotten his name, and she touched his hand whenever he handed her a club, bathing him in lingering, warm looks from beneath her half-lidded lashes.

  Why the devil was the woman wearing so much jewelry during a golf game? And why must she always contrive to be walking in front of him as they strolled from tee to tee? Between her parading herself before him and her incessant flirtations with the caddy, Hal found himself tempted to swat her across the backside with a fairway wood.

  By the eighth hole, she was insisting that Hal give her tips on her stance and swing. So naturally, he had to put his arms around her to show her how to grip the putter, his breath warm on her ear. The playful wind tossed strands of her tickling hair that caught in his mouth or fluttered over his eyes and nose. It was nearly unendurable.

  She exclaimed with equal enthusiasm over well-placed shots and abominable flops, shanks and whiffs. Whenever she did so, however, just as she turned, she would catch her breath. This tiny motion set the diamond bouncing and flashing at her cleavage, drawing his eyes and thoughts there. It was as if he could smell and taste her, as if his tongue and lips remembered the curving shape of her from some erotic dream of the night.

  He knew he should have told her no.

  On the ninth fairway, she teed off with her four iron, a picture-perfect swing. Her front leg was straight, her back leg a smooth arch of thigh and calf, with only one toe touching the grass; her torso twisted and gluteal muscles clenched, showing off the perfect lines of her legs, hips and wasp-thin waist. Her white and shapely arms were overhead. The club was over her shoulder with the shaft nearly parallel to her back leg. Her breasts jutted outward, and her swan-neck turned just so, betraying that delicate line which reaches from a woman’s ear to her clavicle.

  The wind gusted, plastering her blouse against her body, making her more naked than naked. Her wild hair strands snapped and soared like a dark pennant. Laurel froze in that pose for a moment—like a Greek goddess of white marble, contrived with emeralds for eyes and onyx locks—as the ball flew true in a smooth arc, over a hundred yards, bouncing and rolling to rest on the green within feet of the flag.

  All at once, it was like the surface ice of a winter river broke in his mind, and the rushing thoughts flowing below were exposed. The sight of her in all her graceful beauty, her confidence, her high-hearted humor, her little stabs of sly wit, her luxurious sensuality, her film-actress glamour, everything about her shattered his heart at that moment.

  She turned toward him, tossing her head in a mare-like motion to fling her hair away, her smile white and dazzling, her posture triumphant, the pendant blazing at her breast. “A stony! Well? Aren’t you going to say nice shot?”

  Hal could not speak, could not breathe.

  This was no mere admiration for his best friend’s wife-to-be. This was deep, erotic, raw passion, but, paradoxically, also tender, spiritual, and pure and selfless. He both wanted to cherish her like a saint in worship and to take her here and now on the grass in the blustery wind, and damnation to the caddy if he saw too much.

  It was love.

  He suddenly remembered why he had bought that necklace. He had not known why at the time. It was not in apology for some imagined wrong. No; it was a token of his love. The matter was as simple as that.

  The only thing he wanted in life, the only thing that would make him truly happy, belonged to another man, a man whose friendship meant more than life to him. A man he could not betray nor even wound.

  Manfred had everything. And that left him with nothing.

  Simple.

  In a black mood, his face dark, he drove his ball over the cliffs into the sea, threw his club into the grass, and stalked back toward the clubhouse without a word. The caddy stared in shock and silence at his retreating back, and Laurel called out to him, at first in confusion, then in wrath.

  He left the keys to his sportscar with the manager, telling him to give them to Miss du Lac when she came in, and then he called a taxi.

  6. Wolfhound and Cunning Woman

  Talk at the Inn

  It was later that week. Hal was sitting at a table in the dark corner of the pub occupying what had once been the stable when the Stocks Inn had been a farmhouse, back before his nation was born. He was seated facing the fire, separated from the next table by a wall of stone that might once have been part of a stall. The half-melted candle on his table was unlit.

  Hal had spent his days and nights before this leafing through volumes in libraries and, when he could get permission, private collections, gathering material for his paper. It astonished him how many records were still on microfiche, not digitized, or crumbling in the poorly preserved originals. It was depressing; it was a whole world of forgotten words.

  He worked in a haze of distraction, wasting hours staring at a single document without reading it, chain-smoking enough to fill his rented room with ash and smog, and then taking long walks to clear his head. The room he was renting was from an old widower named Drake who ran a tobacco shop downstairs. Not only did the landlord not mind the smell, nor Hal ever run short of cigarettes, but the rich and delicious scent from downstairs would wake the craving in him at all hours. Not that the landlord approved of cigarettes. At the landlord’s avuncular urging, Hal was developing a taste for fine cigars. One more expensive habit he could not afford.

  Hal had blown out the candle on the table here, so that he would not be tempted to pull out a smoke and light up. And it was easier to brood when sitting here, staring at the leaping flames of the wide fireplace that occupied the rear of the tavern opposite the bar.

  He loved Laurel. That was the simple and terrible thing.

  It was fortunate that she had no idea. All her thoughts were absorbed in Manfred, whom she loved and whose love she deserved. She would never guess, she must never be permitted to guess, his true feelings.

  This meant he had to act normal, act natural, and neither arrive too early nor too late at the weekly dinners he had arranged with Manfred. But, of course (so the frantic squirrel of his thought ran and ran, as if on a treadmill) he could not always arrive exactly on time, because that might seem suspicious, too.

  Hal heard the clomping of boots, then the rustling and shuffling of a trio of local men gathered into the booth behind him, smelling of hay and sheep and honest sweat. Hal smiled in surprise to hear them toast the Queen with a clink of noggins, before seating themselves for some serious drinking. It seemed the sort of thing th
at real men with deep roots did.

  Manfred had once told him that the islanders with stubborn loyalty still toasted to “Le Duc”—the Duke of Normandy—who ruled the Channel Islands until the Fall of Rouen in 1206. Perhaps these were modern, forward-looking youths, who had caught up to the Sixteenth Century. Hal smiled, now straining to listen for other amusing or time-defying oddities.

  The Sarkmen spoke in a patois of French, called Sercquiais. Manfred had insisted it was not a dialect, but its own language, and claimed, (but for what reason, he did not say) that this language could never be written down. Be that as it may, it was close enough to French to let Hal puzzle out their meaning.

  After a round of coarse jokes, complaints about the market and the health and safety regulations, or other idle matters, the three lads dropped their voices to murmurs.

  The first voice was raspy. “…from a penniless student studying old books, to the Lord of the Manor in a single forenoon? It’s not right…”

  The second voice was sullen and thin, like that of an older man: “What old books, is my wondering. Who knows what the old heathens wrote down, back before the dark time?”

  Hal froze, not daring to breathe. What was that? Had he heard that word correctly? The Sarks’ patois added a dr sound to some of their word endings. Had the farmer said noir ans (dark years) or n’ouidr un (not a yes)?

  The third voice was more melodic, but dripped with sarcasm, “Lord Manfred’s not killed his aunts and cousins. He’d need to fear of the ghosts of the house.”

  Hal was flabbergasted. Were grown men of this day and age taking about ghosts? He must have misheard. The patois was throwing him off. The word for spectacle or spectrum was nearly the same as the word for specters. Perhaps the farmboy only meant Manfred would fear the sight of the house, or the extent of the house?

  The sullen second voice said, “He’s a studying one, reading the old ways from the old books. He knows the words to open and close. Coalblack dare not turn to the dogs…”

  Hal was not sure what that meant. The word might have been a name: Colby rather than Coalblack. But what was that last part? Turn to the dogs? Turn away the dog? Turn into a dog?

  The sullen voice: “…shots from the House on feast day of Joachim and Anne. Man’s gun.”

  The raspy voice: “A bad day for our kind! The day of the Grandparents of the White Child is ill of star and stuck with frowning planets, for the older ghosts walk then.”

  Older sights? No. The word was definitely ghosts this time.

  “And what has become of Nightenthrope?” This seemed to be a fourth voice than had spoken before, a deeper voice. “He has not been seen since&hellip.. The new lord killed him dead, killed young Nightenthrope, just as he killed the old Dame…the Countess said she was one of us.”

  But it was impossible. From the sounds, there had only been three who stepped into the booth, Hal was sure. Maybe one of the three men had simply lowered his pitch, or cleared his throat with a strong drink, or was doing a voice impersonation, or…or they were talking on a speakerphone, here on the island with no phone service! There had to be a reasonable explanation.

  The smell from the booth seemed to be changing. Someone had brought in a big dog, perhaps. But there had been no sound of claws scrabbling on the floorboards. The stench of dog was unmistakable.

  The fourth voice said, “Nightinthrope must have seen somewhat too much, or heard.”

  The sneering voice said, “He was always the peeking and prying sort. Peering here and there. Stuck his nose in too far this time, is all. Better off without him.”

  The fourth voice, the deep one, spoke. “I say the new Lord is a murderer and kinslayer. Killed his own blood, that's what. The thing is, what are we to do about it? No outsider will help us, no Englishmen.”

  What would Hal see if he stood up and peered over the partition separating the booths? A wild, irrational fear took hold of him, and he feared that he would see shapes no longer human slumped over their drinks, hairy-faced things, fanged things, with pointed ears poking out from under their caps.

  The raspy voice said, “No. Wrong you are. The new one would not soil his hands. He is quality, he is. Too fine by half. The American did it. He has the killing look in his eye. I’ve seen those who come back from war. They have the look. Sure, there is a sword in his cane. Or a gun barrel. Why else carry it? Who carries a cane? He has no limp.”

  The fourth voice said, “We must deal with the American first. The empty cave will tell us how. We will heed the empty cave.”

  Hal felt cold sweat tickling him. Was he hearing men plan his own murder? It seemed impossible, something from a dark film with a sadistic director.

  Empty caves? He must have heard wrong.

  Cave was grotte. Maybe the thickly accented voice had said grot or gueux, which was slang for a wretch, a ragamuffin, or a beggar.

  But that made less sense. Why would an empty beggar give them orders? On the other hand, cruex could also mean sunken, or gaunt, or vain. So these men who smelled like dog fur were getting advice from either a sunken cave, a gaunt wretch, or a vain ragamuffin.

  Hal’s thoughts rattled in his head like dice in a cup. What was real? Perhaps he was hallucinating. It ran in his family, after all.

  The sneering voice uttered a breathless sort of wheezing laugh, “It’s all in your bad dreaming, boys. Listen to your talk! Were the new Master a killer, why is he so open handed with his money? Mother Dove to cook his meals he hired. Those damned and rowdy Wolfhounds, got work up at the Wrongerwood House weeding and planting. Open the old gardens. Why them?”

  The other voices mumbled and grunted, but did not contradict the sneering voice.

  The voice continued: “Burt and Liam Wolfhound are the worst farmhands on the island! The Wolfhounds? Eh, think of that? Why them?”

  But no, he was not saying Wolfhound. Manfred had mentioned hiring a man named Liam Levrier to do gardening and keep the grounds. Hal realized his ears had misled him. Levrier meant “wolfhound” or “greyhound”, but it was also a proper name. It was if a non-English speaker were to have overheard talk about a man named Smith and think the conversation concerned shooing horses or mending pots.

  “The Levriers? Eh, think of that? Why them? ’Cause the folks is poor and wanting, what with their mother in hospital and all. Lord Hathaway is taking up here, on Sark, not away in London like the Dame.”

  At that moment, the barkeep came bustling up to refill drinks and swap gossip, and the talk turned to hat day at school, or the visiting historian from St Ouen in Jersey who was writing a book on Commandant Lanz during the war years.

  There was a commotion at the door as two of the local women came in, one of them calling crossly for her husband. Hal heard the farmhands saunter to the door to expostulate, excuse, and explain. He was not sure if there were three or four sets of footsteps, and an inner voice warned him not to be seen. A few feet from him, with a wall between it and the rest of the room, was a side door. It led him past the larder, wine cabinet, and privy and then out into the bright late-afternoon sunshine.

  Here his fears evaporated, suddenly revealed as irrational indeed. There were no hairy monsters plotting, but there clearly was trouble among the locals, and evil suspicions to be allayed. He would have to warn Manfred. He almost turned back to see who those farmhands were, discover their names, and see if they had been four or three. But then the need to arrive on time without being early or late pricked him, and he strode up Rade Street, twirling his walking stick.

  Before he entered the forest, Hal took out his memorandum book and made a note to himself. His memory had been rather spotty, and he was afraid of forgetting even simple things.

  Warn Wolfhounds about the Talking Animals! The Gaunt Man has landed on Sark. His stronghold is in the sunken caves.

  He chuckled at his outlandish wording. Phrasing it that way would certainly fix it in memory.

  Better yet, Hal took a moment to shut his eyes and picture the talking anima
ls gathered at the doors and windows of his memory mansion, fangs bared and claws upraised, carrying torches and clubs. For some reason, there was also an image of Laurel diving into the fish pond behind the house. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit of sealskin leather, very dark and shiny, and did not seem worried about the talking animals gathered at the front. The diamond necklace like a circle of cold fire was around her kissable neck.

  What had he meant that to remind him of?

  Mnemonic devices did no good if you could not remember them.

  Wrongerwood by Daylight

  This was his first time seeing the Seigneurie House by day. Before going in, he took the opportunity to walk around the main house, retracing more or less his footsteps of the first visit, when he had broken in.

  The great house looked smaller in the sunlight, but not any less impressive. The craftsmanship of architecture was astonishing, and the artistry of images in stone corbels or stained glass windows. Each detail was impregnated with the weight of time.

  The simple and masculine lines of the South Wing with its chapel and signal tower betrayed an Edwardian influence; the romantic flourishes and eccentricities of ornament of the North Wing were Victorian; the classical portico of the West Wing and many brick chimneys betrayed Georgian tastes; the square and austere Main Wing to the East was Stuart; the uppermost dome was intricately Gothic, a phantasmagoric display of flying buttresses and leaning drainpipes shaped as gargoyles; the Cloister tower beneath it was Anglo-Saxon in its sparse stone dignity.

  Thunderstruck, Hal realized that this house was the memory mansion of England. Each period of history back to the Battle of Hastings was represented here.

  And who knew what earlier and older things might be buried beneath, from the age of Arthur, or Caesar, or the prehistoric Picts who raised massive monoliths and henges in high places or dark vales and danced and sacrificed and committed abominations to wild and maddened beast-masked gods whose names no scholar can unearth?