The Map

by T. S. Learner

  The mansion was a Gothic mausoleum, a classic example of nineteenth-century aspiration reaching back towards a medieval fairy tale landscape. There were turrets, fake ramparts running between them, an arch of stone over the massive front door and grimacing gargoyles at the corners of the roof beams. A lawn, now peppered chaotically with weeds and wildflowers, stretched out before it, a broken archery target still standing at an angle like an old war veteran at the far end. August could feel the mansion – its windows glinting in the morning light like a dozen eyes – draw him toward it. Come to me, come to me, it whispered, like a petulant woman moaning from a bed. He resisted. He had to find the maze first – the house could wait.

  At the end of the lawn, the grass had become a moist sponge under his boots. He reached a low brick wall that edged the terrace and clambered down, some ten feet, to the next terrace. This was an entirely different terrain. Completely neglected, without a remnant of landscaping, it looked as if it had been derelict even when the academy was functioning, unless, August noted, the Hitler Youth were using it as a rehearsal ground for forest reconnaissance or underground resistance. Brambles had sprouted everywhere, climbing and running between young saplings that had shot up among the established birch and oak. Using a knife, August slashed his way to a small clearing and climbed on top of an old tree stump. Through the branches he glimpsed part of an old stone wall set in the far right-hand corner of the terrace.

  He fought through the rest of the brambles and found himself staring at a wall of about eight feet in height. He followed the wall around, carefully examining the base, looking for a tunnel under or a door. There didn’t appear to be one. The wall seemed to enclose a courtyard, one completely invisible from the upper terrace he’d just climbed down. It was a perfect concealment. Was it a maze? One that had been completely bricked in? He looked back into the tangled undergrowth. Near a corner of the wall was an old tree that had died and fallen against another. The felled tree was only feet from the wall. Using all his strength, August pushed it towards the wall and it fell against the stone, dislodging some of the large grey stones from the top. Using branches for footholds, he climbed up the trunk. At the top of the angled tree he swung his legs over to the top of the broad wall. Catching his breath, he gazed over. The curved edges of a maze were instantly recognisable. From where he was sitting he could see the three round stations of the left side of the Tree of Life, with their inner rings of maze encircling the centre of each sephirot: the sephirot of Geburah was immediately opposite, Binah to his left and Hod to his right. The start of the design, Malkuth or Kingdom, must be to his far right, he noted, as a way of orienting himself. He slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out Jacob’s drawing of the Tree of Life. Holding it up, he compared it to the maze before him. His calculations were right – he now knew his exact position, facing the left side of the maze. The living wall, made of woven willow, grown over with ivy, looked somehow forbiddingly impenetrable. After securing his camera around his neck, he jumped down onto the maze side of the wall.

  There was only a gap of a few feet between the maze’s topiary and the wall. August began edging around towards the start and base of the maze, to the sephirot Malkuth. He found the entrance, over which grew an arch of wild roses. He stepped into the outer ring and made his way to the centre. In this maze the centre of Malkuth was gravelled, filled in, blank, like a closed eye, August observed. Which sephirot would have its eye open to God this time? he couldn’t help wondering. He felt as if he were walking on a massive code card with some of the symbols punched out, some left blind – all he needed to do was to lay the cards over each other and together each punched-out letter would make a word. It made him think of the mathematicians the SOE had employed during the war to decode the German transmissions. He could really use one of those guys now.

  In the first maze it had been Malkuth, the lowest in the tree and the tenth sephirot, that had been planted. In the second maze Yesod, the next sephirot going up the main trunk of the Tree, had a symbolic herb growing in its centre. Therefore it would be logical to assume that the next circle up the middle – Tiphareth, or Beauty – would be planted. Or so he rationalised.

  August turned so that he faced the top of the maze, directly opposite the entrance. He was now looking down the middle path, one that should lead to Yesod. Checking Jacob’s map, he realised it was marked as path thirty-two. Jacob had explained that each path had a spiritual meaning, symbolic of the emotional and psychological transformation the devotee would undergo through taking that path – another step towards enlightenment and to Kether, the Crown or the top of the Tree. What path should he take? he pondered. Had he already triggered some psychological transformation in himself by stumbling blindly down these paths before? It was an intriguing thought. He started down the path, the hedgerow thick and towering on either side. It led directly into the outer ring of the next sephirot, Yesod. The centre of the sephirot, as he suspected, although open to the sky, was unplanted, a bare, scrubby patch of gravel. After winding his way back to the outer ring of Yesod, on a whim August took the left path. This led to an opening in the hedge and beyond that the complexity of Hod. The centre of this sephirot too was unplanted. Radiating from this sephirot were five paths (including the one he had used to get there). Visualising the design, he took the fourth path along, planted with thistle and orchids. To his immense satisfaction, it led to the centre sephirot – Tiphareth. Finally, in the centre of this sephirot were planted two simple bushes – one of laurel and one of bay, ringed by a group of stones that looked ancient. He plucked a small twig from each of the bushes then made his way to the edge of the sephirot. He looked across at the path opposite that he knew would lead to the top of the maze, the Crown of the Tree of Life – Kether – and noticed something glittering in the sunlight now filtering in from above. He checked the number of the path from the map – nineteen. After slipping the sprigs into his pocket, he started up the path. Halfway along he discovered a flat stone flecked with flint set into the path and set into this stone was the clear imprint of a set of footprints of naked feet – as if a man had once stood there. Scratched under the footsteps was the inscription:

  Dominic Baptise 31.10.1709.

  Amazed, August dropped to his knees, running his hands across the surface of the worn stone. The imprints were a geological impossibility. It was as if the young monk had stood there, perhaps naked, and somehow marked the rock for centuries with just the touch of his bare feet. It was then that August noticed something buried in the gravel by the inscription and the edge of the stone: a tiny white head. Digging carefully, he scraped away at the surrounding gravel and pulled free a miniature statuette of an angel, wings unfurled, a primitive almost demoniac depiction. The whitish clay it had been modelled from looked familiar. August realised with a shock where he knew it from – it was made of the same material as the statuette that had been thrust into the mouth of Copps’s corpse. Bone, human bone.

  Horrified, he dropped it on the path. I’ve got to get out, I have to. Panic flooding through him as swiftly as nausea, his vision darkening, he found himself back in the Spanish forest with Charlie, walking into the clearing he’d visited alone the night before, a place he had chosen for its isolation and soft soil easy to dig into. The trees had opened up above them and there was the moon; that thin pockmarked crescent looking down at him that now seemed to mock him, August’s heart roaring its pounding fear in his head and there was Charlie as real as ever, turning and smiling.

  ‘Look at me, Gus, look at me. I’m about to be freed,’ he tells him, and skips, no, dances into the centre of the clearing and, as August’s fingers tighten around the hidden revolver, begins to spin in the faint moonlight, his face tipped up to the loud stars that pour down on him, and he is beautiful, his tall thin figure a whirling dervish, and August is aiming his gun, is aiming for the heart …

  August came to. He was crouching against the foot of the wall of hedgerow. Keep a grip, stay in the her
e and now. All else is an illusion, August, an illusion. Cradling his head in his hands, feeling disorientated, he allowed the blood to rush back into his brain before standing. Then he brushed himself off and, using Jacob’s map, navigated as fast as he could back to the place where he had climbed over the wall and into the maze.

  He studied the wall before him. He had to cover ten feet to reach the top, where the trunk still rested. The wall was worn and there were a few potential footholds. He picked a loose rock from the ground and chipped away at the footholds until there was space for him to slip a toe in. Then he hoisted himself up, his left foot resting precariously in the first foothold until he swung his leg up the wall and found another gap for his right toe. He was close enough to reach the top of the wall with one hand now. In seconds he had climbed to the top and sat astride the wall. Looking back over the maze, he realised he didn’t have enough height to take an aerial photograph. He turned back to look at the upper terraces and the mansion. It was then he noticed the turrets.

  Ivy had run into the windows and threaded its way across the old parquet wall like hungry fingers. August had climbed in through a large shuttered window that had fallen in on the ground floor. To his surprise light streamed in from an open hole in the roof at the top of a grand central stone staircase that dominated the entrance hall. The boys had assembled here, probably every morning, August imagined. The remnants of a shredded banner still fluttered from its pole at the top of the stairs. He saw them all standing there saluting the swastika, unquestioningly, shiny in their enthusiasm. He shook the vision off and looked around. To his right through a huge oak door that hung off its hinges he could see into the banqueting hall where there were still rows of long wooden tables, some with battered tin mugs on them. The walls were peppered with gunshot. To his left, through another set of half-opened doors, there appeared to be an office, with a typewriter still sat on the desk, pieces of paper, curling and brown, scattered across the floor, intermingling with dead leaves and ivy. It was unquestionably creepy. A strange smell permeated the air – mould, rotting wood and something faintly metallic August couldn’t quite place but was convinced he had smelled before, in battle. It unnerved him.

  Determined to put the postman’s stories of ghostly singing out of his mind, he stepped onto the staircase and a board cracked with a loud resonating snap under his weight. He froze. His entrance had been silent until that point and he liked to think of himself as an invisible observer, undetected by the dormant house and its ghosts; now he had been betrayed. Moving quickly, August climbed the rest of the stairs and made his way through the upper corridors. The ceiling was lower here and he was sure he would find a door to the ramparts and a turret. Yet he felt the growing awareness of something other than him. It was like he was being watched. It wasn’t just the old portraits, hanging from the walls (many of them defaced and torn) but the dark recesses around each half-closed door and entrance he came across. Instinct told him he wasn’t alone. It was a sickening sensation and he held his gun low and ready by his hip. In an enclosed space like this he was an easy target.

  The walls of the corridors were marked with graffiti – Elvis Presley Regein! Die Briten können unsere Frauen nehmen, aber sie brachten uns bunte taschentuche! Klaus liebt Birgit – local poetry from teenagers who must have broken in, August assumed. At the end of the corridor he found a door with the key still in the lock. To his surprise it still turned. He stepped out onto the ramparts, the sun now high in the sky and the morning brightening up. In the distance stretched the river, the two lower terraces clearly visible. He leaned over to get a clearer view of the overgrown terrace with the maze in the far corner. He could just about see the faint rings of the sephiroth set out in that distinctive design he now knew so well, but he still wasn’t quite high enough to get a good photograph. He looked back down the ramparts. The turret was set at the end and looked to be at least ten feet higher than where he was standing. Just then there was the noise of scuttling. He jumped back and flattened himself against the ramparts ready for an attack. Two doves, obviously disturbed from their nests, flew past missing him by inches. Relieved, he made his way to the turret.

  The turret was a perfect stone miniature tower, a nineteenth-century imitation of a Saxon rampart. August wondered at the nature of the rich burgher who must have commissioned the building – why had he left the maze intact? Was it possible he was a direct descendant of the merchant who had helped Shimon? August stepped up into the stone arch, open to just a foot above the turret floor, and looked down over the terraces. Now he could see the maze completely from above, the centre sephirot Tiphareth clearly a green circle against the nine other empty ones. He lifted his camera out of the bag, removed the top of the case and the lens cap, and began carefully lining up the image in the viewfinder.

  He heard a rush of air and felt an arrow shoot past his left shoulder, catching the fabric of his jacket. He ducked and, still crouching, scrambled down from the arch, then, to his greater shock, found himself thrown to the floor by someone who had jumped from above. He lay winded for a second, pinned down. The man on top of him, at least he thought it was a man, was hooded and smaller than him, but surprisingly strong. He hauled August to his feet and then pushed him backwards hard towards the arch in the turret wall, where August tottered for a second, almost losing his balance as the back of his legs hit the low wall below the arch, the dizzying sight of the ground fifty feet below snapping into focus over his shoulder. His attacker came forward again, to apply the final push, but August managed to find his feet and wrestled the man to the floor of the turret, where they rolled in a tangle of struggling limbs. August, assuming he was fighting a youth, was shocked at his strength. Although slight, the attacker was surprisingly muscular and well balanced, regaining some purchase on the flagstone floor and pushing August back once again towards the open arch and certain death below, when another arrow thudded into the assailant’s side through the open arch on the other side of the tower. The youth fell into August’s arms. Another arrow flew just over their heads and August lowered him to the floor hurriedly. He pushed the hood back and was shocked to see the face beneath was that of a woman – and one he knew.

  ‘The arrow, it’s silver-tipped,’ Olivia murmured, struggling to raise herself, staring up at August.

  ‘Keep still, I’ll get help.’ His mind whirled as he tried to remember who she was – London, Oxford? Spain, even? But he couldn’t quite place the features.

  ‘It’s no good, silver kills me. I am to die. At least I saved you.’ A thin streak of blood ran from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘We’ve been watching you for years. You have an extraordinary talent, pity you waste it in the flat world.’

  ‘The flat world?’

  She was now fighting for breath, her hands involuntarily jerking.

  ‘The mazes are an anagram. They tell of a shortcut – a shortcut to enlightenment.’

  She was dying. It was obvious to August, holding her hand. He wondered whether she was still lucid. Or was she hallucinating?

  ‘Did you kill Professor Copps?’

  ‘Julian?’ she whispered, and something passed across her features, softening her pained expression. ‘We were lovers once. I’m not sure you could call it murder, as much as seduction …’ Her voice was failing. She tried to pull him closer, her hand clawing at his jacket. ‘Listen to me, the chronicle …’

  ‘The chronicle, you are after the chronicle?’

  ‘The chronicle is sacred. Shimon’s message must remain unspoken.’

  ‘You’re working with Damien Tyson?’

  ‘Once, not now. But he is a Magus, the most powerful, and Wicca, as we are.’

  ‘We?’

  The woman managed to smile and suddenly August recognised the face – from years before, from his student days, from those hours he’d spent in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, studying the tribal masks and ritual objects. She was the curator of his favourite
exhibition room in the museum – ‘Magic, ritual, religion and belief’.

  ‘Olivia Henries?’

  She nodded and another arrow flew inches from August’s head to ricochet against the wall behind him. Olivia reached up, her bloodstained hand clawing at his jacket.

  ‘You must go, he will be here soon. He will kill you.’

  ‘Tyson?’

  ‘He turned, like the sun, to dust, such power …’ Her hand fell to her side. She was fading fast. ‘Take my pendant and put it between my lips so I may die with the name of the Goddess as my last word. Hurry,’ she whispered.

  ‘Olivia, I have to know, what happened to the priest, what happened to Dominic Baptise?’ But now her skin was ashen and her lips had started to darken. He reached down and from under her jacket pulled out the pendant she was wearing, one etched with the same symbol as on the pendant Jimmy had given him, ripped from the throat of his attacker in the Paris catacombs.

  ‘The other assassin who attacked van Peters, she was —’

  ‘My lover. Shimon never understood the power of Elazar’s gift, but you could. He was a fool, idealistic,’ Olivia murmured, her eyes now rolling back. Her breath was laboured; he had seconds.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  She smiled – an amusement that shimmered under the pain. ‘Because I was there.’

  He stared at her, remembering the description of the woman Shimon had written about in the diary, the woman who had betrayed his family to the Inquisition, who had mysteriously appeared in Avignon. As if reading his thoughts, she nodded slightly, then her head fell back, lifeless. August held onto her body for a moment. That last look of hers had almost been one of affection. How could she have known so much about him and yet he had barely been aware of her existence?

  He placed the copper medallion between her blue lips and lowered her body to the floor. Keeping his head down, he began to inch his way out of the turret and along the ramparts. He peered over the top. Below, the deserted driveway looked surprisingly tranquil – a blackbird hopped across the sparse blades of grass that had shot up between the gravel, its head cocked quizzically up at August as if it intuited his gaze. Apart from the bird, he could see nothing moving.