‘Then she induced my father to belly-bump himself into his grave.’
He heard sounds of movement again.
‘She robbed both him and me.’
And I understand you now, all too well.
John’s zig-zag path into the centre of the hexagon and out again was taking him in a circle. But there must be gaps, or else escape would be impossible.
But what if there is no way out? What if she had never meant for me to follow and find her after all? There is no escape from temporal hell, after all.
Was that the message of this otherworld she had built? That grotto might contradict his sea.
His next right turn brought him closer to Wentworth’s voice, but he had to test one rule to the fullest before trying another.
‘Did she tell you about the one who came after my father? That degenerate boy. Master Parsley, a rare putto, a puss pleaser, and with a fortune almost as great as my father’s. I’ve no doubt my young stepmother cuckolded my poor father before she killed him. If she mourns anyone, it’s that boy. You must ask her about him. He helped her lay waste to my father’s money by building this devilish place. Did you know that? Our present confusion is the fruit of their evil union.’
John found the corner. Felt around it.
Empty space. Wide enough to pass through. The first gap. He scratched a cross on the floor by the centre post he had just left so that he would know if he doubled back on himself. He looked around the corner and saw what he had always seen, himself, entire, at angles, moving in contradictory directions all at once. He repeated the entire pattern of moves and found himself beside another post, with no cross on the floor.
‘Who do you think will help her spend your fortune?’
Don’t let his words in! But he felt a red pressure inside his eyeballs, as if they would burst.
‘He followed my father into her bed.’
Don’t listen to him!
‘…even more swiftly than my father followed you, who was simple enough to trust him, and her.’
They were suddenly no more than a few feet apart with no walls between.
The shock of the man’s nearness matched the force of the sudden return of reason. He was no longer a demonic voice but a half-familiar set of jaw and ears. A scarlet coat soaked black at the armpits. The animal stink of high emotion came off him in hot waves.
The pressure inside John’s eyeballs eased. ‘Your father was my friend,’ he said quietly.
‘That harmless old duffer who abused your hospitality for so many years?’ Wentworth answered at last, in a more conversational tone. ‘Let me tell you, no man is harmless until he’s dead. Nor woman neither!’
‘Why are you here spewing poison? Is that the service you offered me?’
Wentworth smiled. ‘Let me replace my father as your friend. A truer one than he ever was. He betrayed both of us as much as she did. I offer you our revenge.’
The multitude of Johns drew their swords. His hair prickled like a dry thistle. ‘How do you mean to do that?’
‘It’s already done.’
86
Behind the thick door, Zeal could not hear whether Wentworth had followed her. He might be standing outside, waiting for her to venture out. He might have let himself out again through the workman’s door with Paroli’s key.
Was Jonas Stubbs the traitor?
Stay calm, she told herself.
She felt her way in the darkness to the shelf on the wall. Her fingers found the candle, then Lamb’s match. Then the rough striking stone. She had only one chance. If she bodged the stroke, or if the match failed, she must wait in darkness to either live or die.
She steadied herself and struck the match across the stone. A fragile flame blossomed. She held it to the wick. She set the candleholder on the floor and sat beside it.
She faced Lamb’s triple portrait, which leaned against the wall. In the dim light, her face and John’s and the child’s all grew animated. Their eyes seemed to move.
I want to live, she thought. Whatever other confusions remain about John’s return, I know I must live to try to sort them out.
She got up and pushed on the door. She still disbelieved that she had closed it irrevocably on herself. She did not let herself push again. If she did, she would lose control and begin to fling herself against it and tear at it with her hands.
She put on John’s coat and sat on the floor again. Pulling the coat around her, she tried to imagine that he occupied it, not she. That her head was his head thinking her thoughts.
I have asked too much of him. He will see that I am mad, and stop his search. What if he finds my mappa mundi merely laughable? What if he no longer loves me enough to persevere?
She wondered where Wentworth would come upon him.
I may never know what happens when they meet.
John went cold. ‘You killed her?’
‘When magistrates and judges are made fools, someone must do their work for them. She was guilty!’
He felt too weak to lift his sword. ‘Do you mean that she has been tried and acquitted of whatever charges were made against her?’
Wentworth stepped backwards and was swallowed by the mirrors. ‘By blind men dizzied by her whorish scent.’
‘How did you keep such clear sight?’ Around the next mirror edge.
‘By the grace of God and some experience in the world, I know a scheming cunny when I meet one.’ Wentworth’s fractured figure retreated in all directions.
John turned the next corner, shifted his sword to his right hand, and lunged at the shape in front of him. His blade struck hard glass and nearly jumped from his hand. A blade slashed past his shoulder, from behind.
He spun round to see scarlet fragments scatter and vanish.
‘Don’t turn murderer to save a stinking pole-cat!’ shouted Wentworth.
‘It’s not murder to kill a murderer.’
‘Oh, she’s not dead yet. I confess, I tried. But matters have worked out more neatly than I had planned. God stayed my hand and saved me from the stain of murder.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Please do attack me again. I would welcome the need to defend myself.’
‘What have you done?’
‘All I need do is to detain you here. One crippling blow will do. The rest will take care of itself.’
Zeal’s thoughts flew like bats. Wentworth had killed John. They had left together and were sharing a jug of ale, toasting John’s escape.
She was a witch but did not know it. Three men dead. Two babes. And now she had put John in danger.
And I may never know what happened.
The air was growing thick in her lungs. She thought that the candle flame dwindled.
Time doubled upon itself, slipped, stretched, suddenly condensed. She had been there for an hour, for four, for less than half an hour. A night. Perhaps it was already the next morning.
If he survived Wentworth, John would not be able to guess the secret of the lock.
John glared at the wild man blocking his way. He smashed the face with the hilt of his sword. His reflection shattered. The leads holding the mirrors snapped. The crystal shards tinkled to the floor. He swung to his left and broke the second wall of mirror. He had to pound four times to break through both faces of the wall. At last, he looked through the empty frame. The horizon leapt a few feet farther away. Some of his many selves retreated.
He stood panting, tight with thought.
Zeal was close ahead of me at the start, so Wentworth must already have been waiting for her. If he had followed after her, I would surely have heard him ahead of me. Therefore he most likely came in by a different route. A secret entrance.
He listened for Wentworth’s boots as he tried to think straight.
The workmen. This place had been constructed by masons and joiners, like any other building. They must have used a way in and out through the wings.
The wall to his left smashed into fragments as a sword struck it. We
ntworth had circled round and attacked from behind.
John put the nearest corner between them. ‘What’s the secret of this place?’ he called.
‘You won’t need to know.’ Wentworth stepped into view, or appeared to do so. ‘I’ve never before tried to kill a man who did not dare to kill me.’
‘Where is she? How do I find her?’
Wentworth vanished. His coat flickered on all sides of John. He reappeared, in the flesh. His sword stirred a breeze near John’s ear. ‘That’s just to let you know that I can find you any time. I have visited before.’ He vanished again.
‘Who gave you the key?’
‘What if I said that it was your sweet lady herself? That she whispered it into my ear as I fondled her naked breast? Like father, like son, you see.’
John smashed the nearest wall with his sword hilt. Stepped through the frame over the sharp edges that remained and smashed the next wall of the hexagon.
Wentworth turned in surprise as the top half of the mirror between them crumbled. ‘Give it up, Nightingale. She’s as good as dead already.’
‘If you bedded her, I want only to die.’ John held out his arms to the side and dropped his sword. Wentworth might overlook the ocular evidence and mistake him for a gentleman.
With a triumphant cry, Wentworth lunged with his sword, overreached, staggered. John took a step back, ready to grab Wentworth’s sleeve. He placed his other hand on his concealed dagger. Wentworth tried to step over the half wall of glass between them. Swung one leg across. His boot slipped on the broken glass on the floor on the far side, slid from under him. He screamed as he landed.
‘Who let you in?’ John squatted and peered at the top of Wentworth’s leg where the glass had sliced it.
‘Get help!’ gasped Wentworth. ‘I’m bleeding to death.’
‘How do I get out? How do I find her?’
‘The door…’ Wentworth pointed, but his eyes were fixed on the dark flood that was soaking his breeches. ‘The master mason had a key. Need the key to get out again…’
‘Where is she?’
Wentworth shook his head. ‘For the love of God, fetch help!’ He took hold of John’s sleeve. ‘Don’t let me slip!’ He lay back onto the floor.
John propped Wentworth up again against the pillar. He took off the man’s scarf, made it into a ball and placed the pad over the pumping wound, with Wentworth’s hand on top. He pressed down. ‘Can you hold that in place?’ He bent close in the dim light to try to read the man’s face. ‘Where did you leave her?’
Wentworth’s eyelids fluttered.
John quickly searched Wentworth’s clothing for the key, then stood up with an oath. He crashed into a wall. Unbuttoned his shirt, pulled out the tail and wrapped his bleeding hand. With this slight protection, he began to smash all the mirrors, one after the other, to clear a straight line, find an outside wall. Then he would beat his way around it until he found the door. Kick it down, if need be. The basket guard of his cutlass began to buckle under the repeated hammering. He squinted and turned his head aside with each blow. Glass flew into his beard, his belt, caught in his collar. Impatiently, he removed the largest shards and began smashing again.
Was Zeal, too, bleeding to death? Suffocating in a locked chest? Lying face down in water?
He thought of going back to ask Wentworth how long he had in which to find her. Instead he smashed through another wall. He could now see far enough to spy a break in the beehive pattern of hexagons. He thought he saw a ladder. He stepped forwards. The ladder disappeared. He stepped back and changed direction. Two turnings took him from reflection to reality. He had found the heart of the maze.
It was empty. No reward awaited the successful pilgrim. No wine or sweetmeats. No maiden at the heart. No Zeal. Just a spiral wooden ladder fixed to the floor, its spokes twisting upward around the central post like those of the potence in the dovecote. It led up through a hole in the ceiling. Daylight fell dimly from the floor above.
Given what had gone before, the ladder felt too simple.
Circling warily, he looked for signs of another trick. He tested a rung with his foot, then began to climb. Contrary to his expectation, the ladder was just what it seemed.
He emerged into a small antechamber lit only by a narrow window at one end, facing a solid door. Locked. From the window, he could look up the valley of the Shir. He was at the front corner of the house, some way above ground. The only way out was back down the ladder, or through the locked door. He did not think that Wentworth had had time to take her elsewhere and return to the maze.
‘Zeal!’
He set his ear to the door. It was too thick to hear whether she replied. But he felt certain that she was behind that door. He tried the lock again, then pounded with his fists. Felt, rather than heard, an answer.
Still alive.
Unless he had imagined that faint vibration of the wood.
He drew a breath. Of course the ladder had been too simple. She had always confounded expectation. And I loved that cussedness, he thought. Still would, if matters weren’t so urgent.
He quieted himself and reached for her with his thoughts. Imagined that he felt an answering stillness, a delicate pressure in his mind. Holding him steady.
I know you’re there, he told her. Don’t fear. Have patience. I will reach you. I’m too close to give up now. But a little help would be useful.
Then he saw an inscription above the door. Hard to read in the dim light.
‘I am come out of Egypt, out of the narrow place, into the nothingness. I am no longer where I was, but I have not yet arrived where I am going.’
He thought. Read the inscription again, carefully, fighting disappointment. Could find no secret meaning or instruction in the words.
He searched the little room for a hidden key, a secret panel, a loose floorboard. The walls were plain. No enigmatic images to probe for their secrets. He examined the ceiling. He knelt and studied the lock. It was a beautiful thing, intricately wrought in brass, full of puzzling corners and knobs. And it hid its secrets. It suited her entirely.
He probed it. Pulled. Then hit it.
He settled back on his heels, trying not to give way to terror. The key could be anywhere. It could be of any shape. He pounded on the door again and again imagined a response.
Why make the game quite so hard? he asked her. Surely, if I have followed you this far…Tell me what I must do!
He leaned against the wall and stared at the door. His bloodied hand had begun to throb.
I managed to reach the centre, he told himself. What have I learned on the way? What have you been telling me?
His mind flashed back to the passage through the upside down sea. The world is topsy-turvy. But all will nevertheless be well.
I must start there. Believing that you understood my letter and feel the same. That you have therefore arranged for all to be well, so long as I chose to follow you.
But you could not have allowed for the interference of Roger Went worth when you had the passage made.
He made himself breathe slowly. Tried to slow his heart. He looked up at the inscription again. ‘Into the nothingness.’ You as well as I, it seems. But I know where I’m going now. I just don’t know how to get there.
He suddenly wondered if she had enough air, and felt his own breathing speed up again.
Or are you bleeding to death, like Wentworth?
He closed his eyes and tried to think. Went back to the moment he had stepped into her place. Deception. All the way. Nothing as it seemed. Sometimes lovely, sometimes terrifying. But always a deception.
Except for that passage. No tricks there, only the need to keep your feet under you. And decide which way was up.
He stared at the door.
Nothing is as it seems.
He stood and searched the wall around the door, inch by inch for the true, hidden door that he suddenly knew must be there. Did not find it. Sat down again.
After a few more moment
s, he examined the floor again, this time for any sign of a concealed opening. He began to imagine that he must climb out of the window and somehow traverse the outer wall. He opened the window and put out his head. There was no window in the wall where the room must be.
He sat again, still staring at the door.
Nothing is as it seems.
So far you have not knowingly asked me to do anything dangerous, or even very difficult, except for the plunge into darkness. That was the only true test, to follow you through darkness.
What if there is no way in? he suddenly thought. If you never meant for me to reach you after all? Do you mean to stay in nothingness?
No, he told the door. Even at your most contrary, you would never spend such effort to no purpose. From what I have seen so far, your spirit has not been so broken. Something has gone terribly wrong.
He rubbed cold fingertips against his mouth and tried to remember how he had felt while swimming in Paradise.
Nothing is as it seems.
He blinked, arrested in the poised, intense stillness of spirit that accompanies sudden understanding.
And you, my love, never do the obvious.
He stood up and walked to the door. Ignoring the lock, he pushed against the door near the hinges. Felt it shift under his shoulder.
Stop believing in appearances and you walk right in.
She was waiting just behind the door wrapped in one of his old coats. The joy on her face answered any last questions he might have had.
‘I’m back,’ he said.
87
As instructed, Zeal and John waited on the new bridge, in Lamb’s little pavilion for elevated reflection. The sun had just vanished at the western end of the river valley.
‘Shepherd’s delight,’ said Zeal happily, looking at the red-pink sky. ‘Too bad he has no sheep left.’
‘I expect you’ll find some,’ said John. ‘One way or another.’ He was gripping her hand as if to keep her from being snatched away again.
With her free hand, she touched his hair, then the corner of his jaw. Then slid her hand down the solid reality of his sleeve.
The Memory Palace Page 43