Dominion

by Fred Saberhagen

  “It’s really pretty here,” said Margie, almost dreamily. She was sitting relaxed in the prow, as if she had in fact come here only for the scenery.

  “Actually is,” Simon agreed. In his own mind the view upriver from Frenchman’s Bend was quite ordinary. In the far distance, a couple of miles above the town, the girders of the aging bridge had been repainted at some time and it was evidently still functional. Between the bridge and the town a scattering of tied-up boats and floating docks were visible along both shores. People from Blackhawk or elsewhere maintained riparian summer cottages along here, and farmers sometimes kept small craft tied up during ice-free weather, going fishing when they could. In the middle of a broad stretch half a mile upstream, an outboard towing a water-skier was droning in determined circles, like some huge insect magically confined.

  Change in the scenery came swiftly as soon as the Sauk curved west and south from Frenchman’s Bend. Simon, looking back now, realized that he had always understood somehow that in the downstream direction ordinariness no longer applied. Looking ahead now as the canoe moved with the current, he saw what might almost be one of Mark Twain’s rivers. It would scarcely be a surprise to hear a steamboat hooting from a couple of bends downstream, feeling for the channel. In his childhood the old people of the neighborhood had talked about how in Twain’s day a few boats had actually ventured this far up from the Mississippi, seeking cargo.

  Here, just below the bend, the Sauk ran for a time even broader than above. And here the width of the river appeared to be stretched by a flotilla of islands, all but the tiniest of them heavily wooded. Naturally being broader meant that the river here was shallower as well. With the exception of the elusive and sometimes shifting channel, vast stretches were no more than knee-deep even when the water, as now, was relatively high. This made power boating here below the Bend a very tricky proposition, and usually all the recreational boaters stayed above the town. Canoes, rowboats, and rafts, could certainly ply here without any particular trouble, and yet with the exception of the few craft owned by Frenchman’s Bend people they rarely did. No other boats were to be seen now, anywhere ahead. Nor were there any cabins along the shore, of course you wouldn’t want your cabin on a flood plain ten feet from the highway; and on the far shore the bluffs were too abrupt for cabins.

  “It’s wild, too,” Simon said, belatedly continuing his response to Margie’s comment.

  The boy, still silent behind Simon, just kept on paddling. He evidently knew the best routes among the islands as well as Simon had known them at his age. To reach the castle landing by the quickest way from the Frenchman’s Bend landing, you angled downstream between a certain large island and the small one next to it, which gave you the benefit of a slightly accelerated current; coming back upstream, if you hugged either shore you’d find yourself in slack water much of the way and have to work against the current.

  Already the great gentle bend of river behind the canoe had taken the railroad bridge and most of the distant cottages out of sight, as well as the buildings of Frenchman’s Bend itself. They were now passing between the two islands, both thickly overgrown. All of the islands here were small chunks of permanent wilderness, preserved from cottage-building by the high water that drowned them at least once a year, the spring ice jams that gouged bark from their trees and sometimes sprinkled them with kindling that had once been a boat dock or a shanty somewhere upstream. In summer the islands tended to be well populated with flies and mosquitoes, but they were visited sometimes by picnickers and fisherfolk nonetheless.

  The island now passing on the right of the canoe was large, a couple of hundred yards long. It was the one where Simon earlier had thought he’d seen a figure moving. No reason, he repeated to himself now, why someone couldn’t be there. It was just that the figure he’d seen had seemed designed to evoke things in his memory.

  No boats had been visible on either side of the island, which was the shape and he supposed about the size of a large ship, prow and stern carved narrow by the endless flow of water, maybe fifty yards across the beam amidships. In a couple of places along its shoreline, willows hung far out with their leaves trailing in the water, making under the curve of branches green dim caves in which a small boat might possibly lie tied up in concealment. Simon, gliding past, stared intently into the shadows under the willow branches, until he was sure that there could be no boat. A narrow shoreline rim of mudflat running virtually the whole length of the island was unmarked, as far as he could see, by any kind of recent human activity. At a faint splash of the canoe’s paddle the mud gave up a droning wasp, and then the blue-green drifting stiletto of a dragonfly. Simon could feel sweat trickling on his face. The middle of the island would be a green Brazilian wilderness today, with a thousand insects whining in the heat. Not a place where anyone would want to spend much time.

  Now, for a minute or two, all the works of humanity save for the canoe and what was in it, had completely vanished.

  Trickle of water from the paddle, and a drab hum of insects. And then there on the shoreline was some broken glass, and this was after all not the Amazon. A moment later the canoe had emerged from between islands, and now it was again possible to see a stretch of highway running close along what was now the farther bank. A car was passing a grumbling semitrailer, only a quarter of a mile away.

  To Simon’s left, on the small island he had not been studying, something now moved slightly but suddenly in the bushes, and once more a crow flapped up with raucous noise. Simon turned his head sharply. Under the crow’s racket he heard a half-note of something that was almost music—from insect, bird, or human throat? It had reminded him of laughter … but now there was nothing to be seen by the near-jungle quiet in the heat.

  The canoe was now aimed more directly toward the southeastern shore. Ahead Simon thought he could make out the place where the castle’s floating boat-dock had once been moored. He was not surprised to see that it was gone. All the better for his plans if there were no regular landings here. But the girl had asked him at once if they were going to the castle; that certainly suggested that others had recently come this route.

  He turned his head to speak to the boy. “Do you carry many passengers this way?”

  “Nope.” The youth didn’t seem to think anything of the question one way or another.

  “Have you taken anyone before us?”

  “Unh-unh.” Inflected to mean no.

  “Your sister just seemed to assume this was where we were going. I wondered. By the way, are you twins?”

  “Yep.”

  As they drew near the landing place, now simply a narrow spot of sandy beach, Simon could detect no sign that other boats had recently come to shore. When the canoe grated on bottom, he edged past Marge, hopped ashore, than reached back to give her a hand. Then he turned to the boy, who was watching them uncertainly. “Just wait for us, okay? It could be as long as a couple of hours, but it could be just a few minutes. I’ll pay for your time. I’ll throw in a five dollar bonus. Will you wait?”

  “Yeah,” said the boy. He got out of the canoe and with Simon’s help pulled it far enough out of the water to keep it from drifting. Then he pulled a paperback book out of the hip pocket of his jeans and sat down crosslegged on the sand, as if prepared for a lengthy wait.

  Margie had her bag slung on one shoulder and looked ready for whatever came next. Simon smiled at her and led the way. In the narrow strip of riparian grass the path was less defined than he remembered it, in fact it was almost completely overgrown. All to the good. The new heirs were evidently no longer river people. They certainly must have more expensive toys now than canoes, and they could seek out more inviting waterways than this. They’d probably forgotten this part of their domain.

  As there was almost no flat land at all along the shore, the path had no choice but to immediately angle up the bluff. The first tall trees closed in around it, and as soon as he entered shade the first mosquito whined in Simon’s ear. Good thing h
e’d remembered to have them both use repellent. He led the way on up, with Marge following in the narrow path.

  Here what was left of the trail became somewhat more visible. Along most of its course the path was not as steep as the slope it climbed; it looped its way upward in sharp switchbacks with long legs of gentle ascent in between. At the second switchback Simon paused briefly to look down. Through a fragmentary screen of branches he could see that their guide had changed his position slightly, to sit now with his feet in the cooling water, his dark head bowed over the white pages of the book.

  “He’s going to talk to people, isn’t he?” murmured Margie, who had come to a halt at Simon’s side. “About ferrying us over here.”

  “I suppose he will. But not until the show’s over, I hope. I can promise him another five, and five for his sister, if they’ll keep quiet about it until tomorrow at least.”

  “Last of the big spenders,” Margie murmured.

  Simon winked at her, and, turning, climbed on. The path now ran through the full thickness of the woods. The tall tree trunks were not quite vertical, compromising with gravity and the steep angle of the land. After twenty yards or so, at the next switchback, Simon paused again, this time looking up. He took Marge by the arm and pointed. Now, indistinctly through a haze of summer growth, they had their first partial glimpse of the castle itself. Its gray stone walls, magnified ominously by their position, towered almost directly above them.

  “It’s huge!”

  “Well, yeah. Actually small for a castle, I suppose. It was a real castle once, in France. Somewhere in Brittany. Part of it dated from the tenth century or so, I seem to remember being told. Old Man Littlewood, Vivian’s and Saul’s grandfather, bought it and had it shipped over here, on barges I guess. He was caught—” Simon paused. He had been distracted by a snuffling noise; it was faint and distant and something about it struck him as very odd. Somehow his mind couldn’t simply dismiss it as a noise made by a dog. He thought of bears, which of course were not a reasonable possibility in Illinois.

  “What is it, Si?”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  Margie turned her head, seemingly sniffing the air. “No.”

  “It was nothing, I guess.” And now a dog, a real dog, was barking frantically; but very far away, no doubt on one of the nearby farms. Simon stared upward at the gray walls again.

  “What were you going to say about their grandfather?”

  “There was some kind of fire or explosion here one night and he was killed. That was before I was born, I think.”

  And he led the way on up. Now the path, working its way across a hillside grown stony, almost a cliff, grew steep enough to require very careful footwork in a couple of places. Anyone not reasonably agile and confident might feel better clambering on all fours at these spots, and even an athlete might reach for a nearby branch or treetrunk as an aid to steadiness. At the trickiest climbing turn, a wooden handrail that Simon remembered had now disappeared. Only the wooden roots of it were barely visible, like decayed tooth-stumps in the rich mossy soil.

  And here in places the limestone bones of the earth stuck out, their naturally squarish shapes serving the climber briefly as stairs. He’d once hurt a toe on one of them, Simon remembered … but right now he didn’t want to dwell on that previous ascent; that whole mysterious day. Right now he and Marge were here as workers with a job to do. It was probably the only way he could ever have brought himself to come back here at all; and he had long wanted to come back, to face certain things again, to try to

  rediscover them … Simon was in good physical shape, he took pains to stay that way, but still his breath had quickened with the climb … as he’d felt it quicken on that other, mysterious day…

  When the path bent in it’s fourth switchback Simon looked down again toward the landing. He wanted to make sure that the canoe was still there. The screen of intervening greenery was now much thicker, but he could still see glints of aluminum. And the kid…

  For just a moment, when the breeze stirred intervening branches in the proper way, Simon caught a glimpse of dark human hair, tanned human skin. For just a moment he saw clearly, though only partially, the figure he had glimpsed on the island, beckoning. It was Vivian, naked, waiting for him.

  Marge was looking down too, doubtless trying to see what had so interested Simon. He moved back a step to stand for a moment with closed eyes. He swore to himself with silent savagery that he was not going to let his eyes or his mind or whatever it was play tricks on him. Never again. Could there be something about this place, this physical location, something chemical or atmospheric that brought on hallucinations, at least in certain susceptible people? How was he ever going to be able to sort out the truth, the fantasy, the dream, about his last days here if even now he was still subject to—

  Simon opened his eyes. Marge was watching him with curiosity, but all she said was: “Looks like our guide’s still waiting for us.”

  “I couldn’t see too well through all the branches. What did you—?”

  Still her eyes probed at Simon. “He’s still sitting there reading. That’s about all I could make out.”

  “Ah.” Simon nodded, and faced uphill again, and climbed. Toward a real meeting with Vivian. Just as on that unforgettable day when he’d climbed alone. All he could really think about, then or now, was her. He wondered now if anything about that damned crazy experience had been real. Damn her, damn her anyway. He was suddenly angry at Vivian, angrier than he had ever suspected he might become at this late date. Whatever had really happened to him on that day fifteen years ago, it was a wonder that it hadn’t done him permanent psychological damage.

  And maybe it had. Simon knew a sudden chilled feeling deep in his gut. Maybe it had. Could it have anything to do with his being still unmarried?

  Of course there were a lot of people, no more damaged than anyone else, who for one reason or another just didn’t want to get married. Marge was one. Simon deliberately fell back a step to watch her climb ahead of him, her trim body moving smoothly in jeans and long-sleeved shirt. Her evening’s costume, along with a few other items that might be useful, was in her shoulder bag.

  They had reached the fifth, penultimate switchback of the path. Here just as it approached the turn the path sloped briefly downward. Looking up from here you could see the tall hedge, almost as impenetrable as a wall, that marked off the rear of the castle grounds proper from the surrounding woods. From this angle the hedge was tall enough to block sight of the forbidding stone walls beyond it. At the tip of the switchback loop Simon halted momentarily. From this point a branching path, even fainter than the one they followed, went off on a level course to the right. After going a few yards in that direction it curved around a protruding limestone shoulder of the bluff and vanished completely. Not, Simon realized, that the branching path was still really visible at all; it was just that he knew that it was there.

  He glanced round quickly. As far as he could tell, Margie and he were still utterly alone. Then he quickly led her along the unseen trail to the right. Not only had grass and weeds completely overgrown the way during the last fifteen years, but now the new branches of small trees had to be put aside. And here in the deeper shade were more mosquitoes.

  Simon moved around a second limestone shoulder, perhaps thirty yards from the place where the pathways had branched. And came to a stop. At least he knew now that he hadn’t dreamed or imagined this part. Before them was the grotto, and the cave.

  Within and against the natural limestone face of the cliff, the two concentric arches of the grotto had been constructed so that a natural small cave was at their center. It had all been done in the time of Grandfather Littlewood, of course, along with the rest of the construction. A knee-high rustic wall of stone surrounded the small area paved with flagstones before the grotto, an area centered on a stone construction that Simon in his earlier childhood had taken for a simple picnic table. He couldn’t remember the first time tha
t he had seen it; but he couldn’t forget the last. He approached this central tabular structure now and stood staring down at it, for the moment oblivious to all else. It was a little less than waist high, built solidly of stones that on second glance were not quite the same in color and texture as the flags below, or the castle walls of which one corner was now partially visible through greenery above. The top of the table was flat, circular, and perhaps eight feet across. In its center, as if to provide the only reason for its existence, was mounted an ancient-looking sundial, a spherical cage of green-patinaed metal; probably copper, thought Simon now. An all but completely illegible inscription ran round the sundial’s metal base.

  Simon didn’t look long at the dial or its inscription, though. On the flat stones of the tabletop faint brownish stains were visible. There was no telling how old the stains were or what had made them.

  “What weird statues, Si.”

  He looked up; he had actually managed to forget the statues, along with piled clamshells and much else. There were six or eight pieces, mostly life size, cast concrete or carved marble, disposed on pedestals made for them around the little paved court before the grotto. Staring at a crude, fig-leafed imitation of Michaelangelo’s David , he said: “The story goes that there was an artists’ colony of some kind in the woods near here, when Old Man Littlewood was putting up his house. He just about bought out their stock of things they’d done for practice, stuff that was heavy and hard to move and that no one else wanted to buy. He didn’t want it in the house, evidently, but it was good enough for decoration out here in this … whatever this is … out here in the woods.”

  “They’re weird.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get to work.” The grotto at the cliff face was about ten feet deep, if you were to have measured it from the outer of its two concentric arches to the heavy iron grillwork, like a jail door, that closed off the twisted mouth of the natural cave. The cave mouth was almost too small for an adult to enter anyway, and when looked at from the outside gave no indication of being any bigger farther in. The grillwork door was guarded on each side by a piece of fantastic statuary. When Simon moved up to the door for a close look it was obvious that no one had opened it for some time, and he muttered his satisfaction. The chain and small padlock holding it shut were both rusted, probably enough so that he could have broken them with relative ease. He pulled on the door, tentatively, swinging it through the few inches of play given it by the chain, creating a small aperture through which his adult body could never be made to pass. Then he decided on a more subtle way than breakage.