The Stone Bull

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You’ve said that before. Do you mean for my sake or his?”

  “Maybe for both. You might as well know I never liked your sister. I didn’t like what she did—breaking up everything between Floris and Magnus.”

  “Perhaps it was already broken,” I said.

  He shook his head. “They got along all right until she came. They were used to each other. Your sister damaged everything she touched. But I don’t think you’re like that, Jenny.”

  There was a gentler note in his voice, a kindness in the gray eyes.

  “Sometimes I don’t know what I’m like,” I admitted. I had recovered from the shock of his hand on my shoulder, and I remembered that I wanted to make friends with this man who had always been close to Brendon. “Don’t forget,” I went on, “that you promised to take me around the grounds sometime. Brendon thinks no one could do it better. Will you have any free time this afternoon?”

  He considered this soberly, perhaps a little doubtfully. In spite of his avowal that I was different, he wasn’t quite sure of me yet. Then he smiled—a smile that seemed almost shy in his weathered face—and ran a hand through his white shock of hair.

  “Sure, Jenny. I’ll be free late this afternoon. Suppose I pick you up in my truck around four o’clock.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll wait for you on the arrival side of the hotel.”

  He touched his hand to his temple in a salute that suggested an acceptance of me as Brendon’s wife, and went back to the road and his truck.

  For a little while longer I stood looking at the place where Ariel had liked to come, and where she had been the day that rock had fallen. It must have been her dancer’s agility that kept her from rolling with it. She must have felt the movement beneath her feet and leaped to safety. Once more I looked down the precipice and saw that a man had just begun working at the bottom with a sledge hammer, breaking up the rock that blocked the passage. Before long the Lair would be opened to guests again, and perhaps I would walk through it, and look up from the crevice to this perch so far above.

  Out on the lake little boats dotted the water. I glanced at my watch and saw there would be time before lunch to go out again in Brendon’s boat. Rowing was physical and tranquilizing, and the calm blue lake drew me. I hurried around to the secluded place on the shore where the dinghy was beached, and in a few moments I was out on the water, pulling hard on the oars, enjoying the use of my own muscles. I felt a proper superiority to those guests who chose the little paddle boats for their excursions. I preferred real rowing.

  Somehow the thoughts that troubled me fell away, and I felt soothed and calmed by this physical effort. I must have rowed for nearly an hour before I turned back to shore and docked my boat. As soon as I started toward the hotel, however, questions swept back.

  By now, I supposed, everyone would be aware that I had been told about Ariel. I was sure to see Brendon in the dining room, if not before, and I wasn’t certain how I could face him in public, knowing that he had held back from me the fact that Ariel had come here. Even if it had been Magnus with whom she was involved, Brendon had headed the conspiracy of silence and enlisted the others. He had told them not to tell me that Ariel had been there. So there was a breach of understanding between us that must be bridged. I must try to be generous. I must give him time to tell me why he had felt such silence necessary.

  I ran down the path that led from Panther Rock while a crimson sunset stained the sky and distant mountains. I was late for dinner, so I had to hurry, though I thought it might be better if I was very late and could eat alone.

  Because all is not yet well between Brendon and me—because none of it is in the open yet. The conspiracy of silence goes on, and the fact that others think it necessary frightens me. As if they are holding back from some explosive situation that alarms them. And as if Brendon is avoiding me.

  Lunch, earlier, was an uncomfortable affair. We filled our plates at the buffet and carried them to our table. Loring was there, and Irene, who watched me anxiously, so I knew she knew I had been told. Naomi didn’t look at me at all, or speak to anyone except in monosyllables. Brendon came in last. He dropped a kiss on my cheek, pressed my shoulder in signal of his love—and obviously knew nothing about what had been revealed to me. I tried to take heart from the very fact that he could be so openly loving toward me. If there was anything really disturbing to conceal, there would surely have been indications and far less openness in his manner.

  Nevertheless, it was a nervous meal for everyone except Brendon and Loring. I sensed wry amusement in Loring, though he betrayed nothing. Irene seemed so jittery that Brendon commented on her state, and she blushed miserably. Naomi surfaced only for baleful glances in my direction, but there was tension in her every move. I suspect that Irene had commanded her silence, or it might have been she who would have brought everything into the open.

  When I could get away from the dining room, I escaped to our bedroom upstairs, locked the door and lay on the bed. Lately it seemed that I could always fall asleep, as though something in me sought the safety and escape of the unconscious state. Now I rested until it was time to get up and meet Keir. At least no one had sought me out, and I was allowed privacy when I wanted it.

  When I’d brushed my hair, letting it hang free and long down my back, I went downstairs. Again I had the feeling that I must play this by ear. Keir, too, might be a source of information for me, but he was a man I must be careful not to offend, or he would shut up like a clam.

  He was waiting for me in the truck with the panther emblem on the door, and I climbed into the high seat beside him. As we set off up a road that led away from the lake, I found him more friendly than before, a little easier with me. Perhaps he was coming to accept me, just a little.

  I’d brought my sketching things along again, only regretful that it wasn’t spring, when many more flowers would be blooming. Still, the early fall varieties had their own interest, and white snakeroot grew plentifully on either side of the road.

  We followed a trail that led up the cliff on the opposite side of the lake from High Tower, and Keir said Panther Rock was our goal. When we neared the top, he parked the truck by the roadside and we both got out.

  “I’d like you to meet a frind of mine,” he said, and we climbed a steep hillside, where masses of Queen Anne’s lace grew in profusion. Quietly he put a hand on my arm. “Look—over there,” he said softly.

  The doe and her two fawns were beautiful, their movements leisurely and unalarmed as they fed off shoots and the tender branches of fallen trees. Once the mother looked around at us calmly, but did not take flight, apparently accustomed to the sight of Keir. Without hurry they moved on, until a branch fell in the nearby woods, startling them, and they took off in a flash, showing us their white tails.

  “How beautiful they are,” I said. “I’m glad I saw them.”

  He nodded approval of my response, and we moved on until he stopped me again and started to make a curious gobbling sound. In a moment a wild turkey emerged from a thicket and came toward us, his wattles aquiver. Keir took a packet of corn from his pocket, poured some into his palm and knelt to hold out his hand.

  “I brought you something special today,” he said. “Help yourself.”

  With delicate good manners the bird pecked at the kernels and listened courteously to the flow of words addressed to him. I kept very still and he paid no attention to me. When the corn was gone, Keir introduced us.

  “This is my friend Hilly-Billy. I think he has a wife back in the woods, but she’s timid and I haven’t met her yet.”

  When Keir had taken leave of his friend, we started up through the trees again, following a rough path.

  “The road curves around below this rise,” he told me. “But when we get to the top you can see everything at once—as you can’t from the road.”

  In a short distance the trees thinned as we came onto a rocky outcropping from which the land dropped away on all sides. At the top of t
he rise a great stone figure waited for us, and I knew this was Magnus’ work again. Almost a part of its natural setting, the granite panther crouched, one paw outstretched, the head alert and watchful, the long tail almost whipping into life. One knew at once that it scented danger and was waiting to pounce. Here was Laurel Mountain’s logo in person!

  “He’s perfect for this place,” I said.

  The man beside me shrugged. “Maybe. I like the idea of real ones better. They used to come here long ago, you know.”

  I walked around the stone beast, sensing once more the flow of power Magnus was able to uncover in inanimate rock, as though sinew and muscle lay beneath the surface stone. Yet here again there seemed a sense of threat—power to be unleashed—that I had already seen in his bull. At least there was natural beauty here, unlike that dreadful head I had glimpsed in his workshed.

  “It’s the view I brought you here to see.” Keir sounded impatient with my interest in a stone panther, and I went to stand beside him.

  As the full sweep of valley and mountains came into view, I caught my breath. Across a valley to my right the two winged mountains that I had seen before seemed to thrust themselves into space, while around to my left a tree-filled chasm dropped away in talus to the foot of Laurel Mountain. We were very close to the great mound of stone that held High Tower, and across the chasm the tower itself rose dramatically into the sky above us. Beyond winged mountains on one hand and the tower on the other, the land dropped away into a fertile, apple-growing valley that spread out for miles.

  When I’d looked my fill at the tremendous view, I glanced at the white-haired man beside me, his attention caught and held by a scene he knew well. I sensed that he belonged to this place as much as the deer or the turkey or the mountain itself. He must have grown up here, as Magnus’ panther had not.

  After a moment he remembered me, and when he turned his head to smile I felt a warm rush of satisfaction because he was beginning to accept me, to like me—as perhaps he had never liked or accepted my sister.

  “Have you always lived here at Laurel?” I asked.

  “Most of my life. I was born down there in the valley in a farmhouse you can see from here. But I came to work and lived at Laurel Mountain when I was a kid. Geoffrey McClain took a fancy to me, and I did most of my growing up here.”

  “Geoffrey was Brendon’s grandfather?”

  “Right. I worked for the old man, and Bruce and I grew up together. Brendon’s father. I guess you might say I helped to raise Brendon. I can remember this place when the trains came to Kings Landing on the river, and guests drove up the mountain in carriages. Some of those carriages are still preserved down in the Red Barn.”

  “I know. I sat in one of them this morning.”

  He went on, his eyes on the tower. “There have been too many changes. Not all for the good. Geoffrey McClain meant to have all these thousands of acres preserved in their wild state, and that’s what we’ve tried to do. Brendon will hold it the way it should be. We can count on him.”

  “What about Irene? Does she listen to Loring?”

  “Irene’s changed,” he said. “She’s gone too much under Loring’s thumb. Now maybe you can weigh things in the other direction. Influence her. If she likes you. Does she?”

  The question was point-blank and I faltered. “I—I hope she does. She has welcomed me warmly, and she’s been more than kind.”

  “She’s a kind woman. She was kind to your sister too—even when she didn’t deserve it. But she can be pushed too far. I’ve seen her get angry once or twice.”

  I wanted to ask point-blank questions myself, but somehow I didn’t dare. Keir was a little like his own wild friends, and too direct an approach might frighten him off. It was better to encourage him to talk in his own way.

  “The mountain and the tower are dramatic from this view,” I said. “All that rock—as though it had been carved into that round shape, bare and empty right down to the base, with trees still green and thick below the talus. Some of them are beginning to turn. The color will be breath-taking in a little while.”

  “It’s always beautiful around here. In autumn, of course, and in the spring when the mountain laurel blooms around the lake and the shadbushes turn white. And wait till you see the rhododendrons! But it’s beautiful in summer green too, and again when there’s snow everywhere. I hate ice storms because of the damage they do, but there’s hardly anything more beautiful than the woods after an ice storm. You’ll come to know all this, Jenny.” He paused, his eyes upon me, keen and searching, and his words startled me. “I’m glad your sister never came back. I’m glad you’ve come in her stead.”

  I held out my hand gravely. “Thank you. I’ve wanted you to approve of me. But I didn’t come in her stead—I came on my own, for myself.”

  He nodded agreement as he took my hand in his big one. “Stay and fight,” he said strangely. “There’s plenty worth fighting for here. But don’t go near Magnus. Don’t ever go near Magnus again.”

  “Fight? What do you mean? And what is the matter with Magnus?”

  “He fell in love with that woman—that ballet dancer. He isn’t over her yet. He could get the notion that she’s come back to him in you. So let him stay up there with his rock carving. That’s something I’ve never understood. Me—I like to let the rocks stay as they are—the way nature carved them.”

  “But his stone bull is marvelous, and so is this panther. You have to admit that.”

  “Pagan—that bull,” he said. “Bull worship’s not for me. Or for you, either. Magnus can be dangerous. Brendon doesn’t like him. As Brendon’s wife, you’d better remember that.”

  His words disturbed and puzzled me, but I knew I must ask him no more questions. He was silent for a time, looking out across the farming land of the valley, where puffs of cloud shadow made patterns of light and shade. I tried to speak to him of his own world.

  “This is good healthy forest at Laurel,” I said. “The growth is diversified enough so it should resist pests.”

  “Right. And we keep it that way without spraying. A healthy tree is more apt to be resistant.” He broke off suddenly, his attention on the rocky cliff that dropped away at our feet. “Look, Jenny—down there!”

  I saw the great soaring bird in the canyon below us, and as we watched it dropped like a dive bomber after some small prey, snatching it in midair with incredible speed and disappearing onto a rocky ledge out of sight below us.

  “That was a falcon!” I cried. “A peregrine falcon! But it’s not possible. They’re practically extinct here in the East.”

  “They were,” he said, pleased with my recognition. “That’s a young one. It’s been close to twenty years since we’ve seen them here. Chemicals and DDT got to them through their food. The strain that used to populate the East is completely gone—because men killed them off. But they’re still found in the Arctic and a few other places. A man at the State University in New Paltz has learned how to breed them in captivity, and Cornell’s ornithology lab has started raising young birds. They brought us three young ones this summer and installed them in a nest box down there on the cliff. Students stood guard over them till they were old enough to fly and hunt their own food. They’ll be migrating south for the winter soon.”

  The bird was out on the air again, following the currents with wide-spread wings, rising above us now in unbelievable grace.

  “I’m glad I saw that,” I said. “Thank you for the deer and the turkey and the falcon.”

  He nodded, pleased, and we followed the path to where it dipped down in a steep drop to the road.

  “It’s time for me to go back,” he said. “You can stay, if you like. You’ll be all right if you just follow the road down there. It circles Panther Rock, and then goes back to the hotel.”

  I watched him striding off toward his truck, and then I climbed down to the road and crossed to another of the little gazebos perched on a rock. When I’d sat down on the bench, I took out my sketc
hing things.

  For some time I worked almost contentedly, duplicating on paper the details of tiny snakeroot flowers. The sort of work I did had to be meticulous—each little flower drawn in detail and with great precision. I was more botanist than artist and it was the art created in nature that interested me. If my drawings and paintings were beautiful, it was because my reproduction of nature was exact and had to be beautiful in turn. Perhaps someday they might be used in a classroom. The flowers themselves weren’t always available, but in this way I could provide their counterpart for those who wished to study them.

  As I worked, I put from my mind Magnus’ lack of comment on my sketches. I had wanted him to approve, yet his silence had told me that he didn’t, and I wasn’t sure why. Most people liked my little paintings. But Magnus was an artist, and praise from him would have pleased me. No matter—I’d never pretended to be more than I was.

  I worked in deep concentration until I realized that a rosy glow lay over the land and distant mountains, tinting my paper. The sun was dipping toward the western Catskills and I would have to hurry back to the hotel. For a little while, as I worked with my sketching, I’d experienced the surcease from concern that such activity always gave me. As the wild flowers themselves were serene, so I became serene when I was reproducing them in my sketchbook. But as soon as I put my equipment away in my carrying box, all that was disturbing swept back to engulf me.

  What had Keir meant when he’d said “Stay and fight”? Of course I would stay. But whom was I to fight? The words meant nothing. The moment I ceased to distract myself, worry took over and grew stronger.

  Ariel had spoiled everything. There was no way in which I could put the thought of her entirely from me. Wherever I walked, her light feet had been there before mine. Whatever beauty I looked upon, her eyes had already seen. Had she come to this very spot with Brendon, perhaps? Had he found time for her when she’d stayed here?

  But I mustn’t think of that. It couldn’t be. Magnus was the man who had attracted her, and I could see very well, knowing her, how that could have happened. Magnus was like his own stone bull—all male power and aggressiveness. The very traits Ariel would respond to. She was always Europa, waiting to be violated by Zeus in the guise of a bull.