by Mary Stewart
‘What’s the time, Rob?’
‘Don’t know. I forgot to wind my watch, I can’t think why . . . Not much more’n half past five, I’d guess.’
I gave a little sigh, and relaxed again. ‘Lots of time, then, before anyone comes this way and sees the water and starts looking for us . . . What is it, love?’ This as Rob sat up and began to unwind himself from me and the blanket. It felt cold without him. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Nowhere. But I’m going to move this bed back to its proper place.’
‘I told you, the mirror’s quite safe.’
‘I dare say,’ he said, laying hold of the bed, and running it back with a powerful screech of wood against the wall. ‘But I’d sooner be out of range.’
‘Why?’
‘This is why,’ he said, getting back on the bed, and pulling the blanket once more over the pair of us.
When I woke again Rob was not beside me, but as I turned over I saw him, fully dressed and kneeling on the floor near the foot of the bed.
The sun had moved appreciably higher, and now the mirror’s light fell, like a spotlight or a burning-glass, straight to the boards between the window and the foot of the bed, where the trapdoor lay. Where the water had washed over it last night was an irregular patch of damp, already beginning to steam dry in the warmth. The flood had scoured the dust of years from this section of the floor, and now, quite distinct in the clean floorboards, could be seen the sawn edges of the trap, with, midway along one edge, what looked like a knot-hole in the wood. In this Rob had inserted a finger. As I sat up to watch, he gave a heave, and the trapdoor came up from its bed. He carried it to the wall and propped it there. Then he dropped to his knees at the trap’s edge, peering downwards.
I opened my mouth to tell him about my experience of last night, when something about his expression stopped me. The light, reflected upwards from whatever water still lay below the pavilion, lit him sharply, and showed his eyes, narrowed against the dazzle, intent on something below. Without looking up he made a beckoning gesture, and nodded downwards. ‘Bryony. Look here.’
His voice held discovery, and a kind of awe. I swallowed what I had been going to say, and instead twisted round on the bed till I could lie prone, peering down over the foot of it, into my prison.
The force of last night’s flood had swept through and then subsided, leaving the debris piled up against the walls and supports where the whirlpool had flung it, and scouring the centre clean. Water still lay there, a sheet of clear glass a few inches deep, lighted fiercely from above, where the angled mirror threw the sunlight down.
It lit a picture, or rather, part of a larger picture; the head of a leopard, snarling, with one paw upraised, the claws out and ready. The eyes were huge and brilliant, done in some lustrous shell-like stone which caught and threw back the light; the teeth gleamed white and sharp, and the yellow fur with the black spots, washed clean by the rush of the flood, shone as brightly as on the day the mosaic was laid and hammered down to make the floor of some Roman’s home.
We looked at it for some time in silence. A stray draught of air moved the water, and the upraised paw stirred. The eyes glared, and the yellow fur ruffled; a young leopard, rousing, as vivid and alive as when, all those wild centuries ago, some Roman took and built over this quiet corner between river and hill, and brought his artisans from Italy to make this marvellous thing.
‘That’s mosaic work, isn’t it?’ asked Rob. ‘Looks like part of a floor or something; a big one, too. It must be pretty old to have been buried clear under the maze.’
‘I wouldn’t really know, but I’d have said it was Roman.’
‘Roman? As old as that?’
‘I think so. There were Romans here, a long time ago, and there was a tile kiln not far off.’
‘Yeah, I know. At Tiler’s Hatch, where the flooded pits are. Do you suppose there’s more of it?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps when William Ashley cleared the ground for his pavilion he found this, and so—’
‘“It’s the cat – the cat on the pavement”,’ quoted Rob, very softly. I sat back abruptly. I could feel my eyes dilated with the fierce, reflected light, as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. ‘Of course! Of course!’ I looked up at the wall above the bed-head, where the wildcat ramped in the centre of the plaster maze. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? The old crest was the leopard, but through time people forgot why. Then poor doting William borrowed Julia’s wildcat and her motto, and then, when he found this, he drew the maze round them for a coat of arms. But how do you suppose my father found out about the mosaic?’
‘Well, you said he’d been studying the books. It was all in the poetry, wasn’t it? I reckon,’ said Rob comfortably, ‘that if you’d taken enough time over them, you’d have found it out for yourself. “What palace then was this?” Remember?’
‘Of course,’ I said again. I drew a long breath. He was right, it had all been there, carefully riddled down in the little verses for anyone who knew; the spotted catamountain, the leopard from the sun, even the glass mirroring another flood: ‘“But where the gentle waters, straying, move, See! Dionysus’ creature here enskied”.’ I lay down again, peering at the exposed mosaic. ‘No sign of Bacchus and the lesser godlings. They must have covered them up again, and just kept the Cat. No wonder the Survey never traced the Roman site. What d’you bet, Rob, that if we cleared the maze away, we’d find the rest of the villa?’
‘You might say I made a start at it last night. I wasn’t thinking about much, except getting through to you. But I doubt if the maze could ever have been put right again even if you wanted to.’ He added, slowly: ‘I suppose that you couldn’t put a value on a thing like this?’
‘Not really.’ I knew what he was thinking; that here was something which could save Ashley – the part of it that I loved – from the bulldozers of the contractors, and make it worth someone’s while to clear the gardens and expose this magnificent find for people to see. There were societies and trusts and generous individuals who would join the local Archaeological Society to work on the site and preserve what was found there. Whatever the future might bring, it was certain that no builders would be allowed to touch this part of Ashley.
I bent again over the trap. The leopard flexed his claws, and his eyes glimmered. I had certainly been too close to him, last night, down there in his secret lair. It was easy to imagine that the scratches on my body were not just from the flotsam of the storm, but from those cruel claws. ‘Touch Me Who Dares.’ Yes, the Cat had been here before the Ashleys ever came, and he would outstay them.
Rob got to his feet, and pulled me into his arms, blanket and all. ‘Time we got out of here, I’m afraid. And time you put your things on. You’re getting cold. Here they are, they’re dry now.’ As I obeyed him, he carried the trapdoor and began lowering it carefully into place. ‘Well, and so what do we do about it? Keep quiet, like William?’
I laughed, belting my housecoat round me. Neither it, nor the pretty nightdress from Funchal, would ever be the same again. ‘Old Scrooge that he was, he seems never to have told a soul. He doesn’t even seem to have told Nick, just hugged it all to himself, and put it down in those little poems. No wonder he died of a heart seizure when he heard that Nick was using the place as a love-nest.’
‘And then Nick got the blame for the mirror, too. Eh, well . . .’ The trapdoor was firmly in place. He straightened. ‘Well, that’s it. And now, the day’s got to start. It won’t be a good one, that’s for sure, but at least we can face it together, and the mystery’s almost over.’
‘“Almost?”’
‘I meant we’ve just about found out all your Dad was trying to tell you. All but the last bit.’
‘I know that, too,’ I said.
‘Well, then?’ asked Rob.
I shook my head. ‘Not now. I’ll tell you the whole thing later . . . After breakfast.’
‘Breakfast!’ He stretched luxuriously, giving me
that wide, warm smile of his. ‘You’re dead right; that comes first! Your kitchen’ll be flooded, but we might find some bacon and eggs in mine. Coming?’
We went out onto the pavilion steps. Now we could see how far the water had gone down; below us in the clearing it was not much more than seven or eight inches deep. In the windless morning air it lay still as glass, and under it, like a garden set in crystal, the glass and flowers stood straight, held by the lucid water as perfectly as if it were the air. Inside that gentle mirror the turf stood green and springy, with above it the buttercups floating, wide open to the sun, each petal supporting and supported by the weight of clear water. A shoal of heartsease stared up with violet faces, like underwater creatures watching the light. Even the pale speedwell was held in its frail perfection, not a petal torn. The lilies-of-the-valley stood motionless, wax and ivory, flowers in a Clichy paperweight. A small rudd, lost from the moat, flicked by through the daisies with red fins winking.
We held hands and walked down the wooden steps into the lovely shallow glass of the maze. I led Rob through, and up past the wreck of the Lower Sluice, where the fishing cat, tumbled in the mud at the foot of the water-stair, bore witness to the rashness of the men who had meddled there.
There was debris everywhere, but the moat was back in its borders, and the swans guddled happily in the Pool, with their grey flotilla alongside. The old house dreamed above its reflection, with nothing but a tide mark to show how high the water had risen last night. On the mud of the drive, under the lime trees, stood a rusty-looking Volkswagen. And on the main bridge, gazing around him, was my cousin Francis.
The other Ashley. Fair hair and grey eyes and elegant bones, and the same sweet line to his mouth that my father had had. My gentle cousin, the poet. He was surveying the wrecked garden, the mud lying on the bridge, the water-logged avenue, with a contemplative expression that held no more than a suggestion of dismay.
He looked up and saw us approaching him. If he noticed anything strange about Rob’s crumpled clothes, or my nightdress and bedraggled housecoat and bare feet, his expression gave no hint of it.
‘Bryony!’ he said, his face lighting. ‘Rob, nice to see you! What on earth’s been going on here? It must have been some storm last night, to leave a mess like this. I would have thought the High Sluice would stand even a cloudburst.’
‘It would, if it hadn’t been meddled with,’ said Rob, flatly. Then, as my cousin’s eyes widened: ‘Aye, it’s more of a mess than you think, Francis. We’ve a lot to tell you, and it’s not good hearing, but I’m afraid it won’t wait.’
My cousin glanced from one to the other of us, and for the first time seemed to notice something odd about our appearance. ‘All right, then. Tell me.’
Rob looked at me, and nodded. ‘It’s your story, love. Go ahead.’
So I told it, right from the beginning on that steep Bavarian road, leaving out nothing but the parts of it that were Rob’s and my own. I said nothing, either, of the secret of William’s Brooke; that was something I would have to tell Rob when we were alone. When I got to last night’s scene in my cottage with Emory and James I hesitated, wondering how to gloss over Leslie Oker’s telephone call, and the reason for Emory’s sudden, murderous decision. But I need not have worried. Rob’s growing anger at the scene I was describing was blinding him to everything but his own fury. To this day I am not sure whether his explosion of rage over Emory’s attack on me was in words, or whether it burst straight from his mind into mine with the force of an armour-piercing shell. By the time he had got hold of himself, the tricky part was past, and the tale was told.
After I had finished there was silence. Rob sat down on the parapet of the bridge beside me, slid an arm round me, and drew me to him. I could still feel the ebbing shock-wave of anger and protective love. Outside and beyond it, like something barely relevant, I was conscious of the tremor running through his arm. He kept silent.
The sun was really warm now, and the light skimmed glancing off the water below us. I half shut my eyes and leaned back against Rob’s arm. Francis stood with his back to us. At some point in the story he had turned away to take a couple of paces across the bridge, and he stood there by the other parapet, looking down at the water.
We had been lucky, I thought, that the first herald, so to speak, of the daylight world, had been the one man who could share its burdens with us. I knew that Rob, running parallel with my drifting thoughts, was, like me, thinking ahead, trying to come to terms with that world and what the night’s work would mean, not only to Ashley and my family, but to our own future.
Some of it could be guessed at. Even if Emory eventually recovered (which, from Rob’s account of his apparent injuries, seemed unlikely), the twins would never come back to Ashley, either to make a claim or to fight one. With Rob’s claim hanging over it, the land was unsaleable, and therefore profitless to them. And any threat to Rob or to myself had been voided by last night’s action; once Mr Emerson and the police knew the whole story, Emory and James might count themselves lucky if they could keep clear of us. I would make sure of it, I thought. I would write down the story of the last few days, fact for fact, and lodge it, with photostats of the relevant papers, as surety for the future. Further than that, out of mercy for the twins’ sick father, and for Francis himself, we surely need not go? Under English law, unless Rob and I chose to press charges, there were none that could be made. The hit-and-run accident in Bavaria was another matter; however relieved I was to know that it had indeed been an accident, I could not forgive Emory’s subsequent act of brutal self-interest; but I was still not prepared to add to his father’s troubles by giving information to the Bavarian police. I would telephone Herr Gothard as soon as I could, and ask him to send the photograph back for my files. As for the debts the twins had incurred, William’s Brooke, as well as endowing the Court, would take care of those, and set their father’s mind at rest. Then, presumably, the twins – or James, the survivor – would settle in whatever haven was left to them. South America? Mexico? Wherever it was, they would have to start again from nothing, and James, if left to his own devices, would fare no better than he deserved . . . I could not find it in me to care, one way or the other, so long as I never saw them again. All I would ever grieve over would be, not the evil man and the weak man who had been here last night, but the two charming and wilful boys who had lived here with us, so long ago.
Francis turned and came back to us. He was grave, and rather pale, but otherwise gave no sign of emotion. It was like him that, when he began to speak, it was about my bereavement (which had been news to him), and my unexpected marriage, and not about last night’s near-tragedy.
He was interrupted. Somewhere down the avenue, beyond the trees, a car door slammed. There was the sound of voices. Three men, two of them in police uniform, appeared round the bend of the avenue, and after them, hurrying to join them the Vicar. They paused when they saw us on the bridge, and Mr Bryanston raised a hand in a gesture conveying both relief and greeting. Even at that distance it had something about it, too, of a blessing.
‘. . . If we could just tell them the bare outline now, and let Emerson handle the rest?’ It was Francis speaking again, rapidly, an eye on the approaching men. ‘He’ll have to know it all, of course, then he can advise us. What I’m most immediately concerned with is what I’m to tell my father.’
‘It seems to me—’ Rob, his anger gone, sounded his old calm, practical self— ‘that there’ll be no need to add to your Dad’s troubles by telling him what your brothers were after last night. We’ll think up some story for him, just as soon as we know where we stand with the law. The truth can wait till he’s well enough to hear it . . . If he has to hear it at all.’
He paused, glancing at me. I don’t know what he read there, but he nodded as if answered, and spoke again, quickly, to Francis. ‘Something else I’d better say. I don’t think, saving your presence, that your brothers will be in any hurry to come back, so it looks as i
f this lot’s going to land on you. Now, we’d had plans, Bryony and me, to emigrate. That will have to wait a bit. We couldn’t walk out and leave you in a mess like this, so if you want us to, we’ll stay around, and help you get things straight. I don’t know much about the sort of discovery we made this morning, but Bryony thinks that, given a push in the right direction, the place might even start to pay its way. So we’ll help you push it, mate, and then it’s all yours.’ He slanted another look down at me. ‘Eh, love?’
‘Yes, Rob.’ I looked around me at the shining water, at the grassy banks sloping straight into their own intense and clear reflections, at the tops of the orchard trees beyond, where the thrush’s song, no doubt, still echoed in the blossoming bell-tower of the pear tree. Then I looked again at the heir to all this, with all that it owed to the past, and the load of questions that was its future.
If he chose to stay here, to push the Court back onto the map in whatever guise – National Trust monument, market garden, farmstead, building site – I would help him do it. If he chose to claim it for himself, and stay here for the rest of our lives, I would do that, too. But if he chose in the end to leave the care of the place to Francis, who loved it . . .
Yes, that would be it. When I had told him everything, I knew that he would still say, with that tranquil expression, and the dark eyes fixed on his own, our own, far horizon:
‘Francis Ashley, mate, it’s all yours.’
About the Author
Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk? was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.