The Catswold Portal
Shirley Rousseau Murphy
FOR MOUSSE
Cat’s eyes in the face of a woman…seem to promise the most unusual and selective delights as green and seductive they glitter…The cat face is an ensemble of marvelously matched and balanced features and the total result is one to stir the heart. Where the human female is able to approach them, she becomes irresistible.
Paul Gallico, Honorable Cat
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter 1
He ran pounding through the forest, his tennis shoes snapping…
Chapter 2
Perhaps the universe tilted for an instant to allow Braden…
Chapter 3
She pressed the pony fast along the high, grassy plateau,…
Chapter 4
Braden, barefoot and wearing cutoffs, set his coffee cup on…
Chapter 5
Melissa wrote the note in a thick layer of dust…
Chapter 6
The soldiers kicked their horses to a trot, moving fast…
Chapter 7
Braden was parking the station wagon after a pointless drive…
Chapter 8
The scullery was steamy hot and noisy with the gossiping…
Chapter 9
Feeling her way down the cellar stair clutching the rail,…
Chapter 10
Uneasily Melissa approached the door of the queen’s solar, wishing…
Chapter 11
The banquet hall was noisy—laughter and drunken shouts rose over…
Chapter 12
“University of Chicago,” Olive Cleaver said, dusting cake crumbs from…
Chapter 13
Melissa slipped quickly into the king’s chamber. With any luck…
Chapter 14
From behind the draperies Melissa listened to the queen’s muffled…
Chapter 15
The torchlight guttered and hissed, sending shadows running down the…
Chapter 16
Now in the Harpy’s mirror mist clung against the buildings…
Chapter 17
The spell-light came quickly down the stair striking across barrels…
Chapter 18
The Harpy flew across the night, ducking through caverns and…
Chapter 19
Melissa woke hot and uncomfortable. The king slept sprawled across…
Chapter 20
Melissa ran, ducking branches. She was just able to glimpse…
Chapter 21
Night was drawing down over the garden, making the vast…
Chapter 22
She climbed the vine and swung onto Efil’s balcony. She…
Chapter 23
Vrech left the portal and garden quickly, heading east along…
Chapter 24
Speeding trucks made the roadbed tremble. Their hot diesel wind…
Chapter 25
Riding fast, Siddonie and her two companions galloped along the…
Chapter 26
In the Hell Pit the Harpy basked among flames, easing…
Chapter 27
Stiff-legged, the cat stalked the door, her eyes burning with…
Chapter 28
Basin Street jazz drowned the wind in the garden. The…
Chapter 29
Braden was pulled out of a deep sleep, fighting to…
Chapter 30
The Harpy sat rocking beside Mag’s wood stove, her expression…
Chapter 31
Morian carried the little cat up the garden, snuggling her,…
Chapter 32
Dawn. Melissa woke lying next to Braden deliciously warm curled…
Chapter 33
At dusk Braden made himself a drink and stood studying…
Chapter 34
She fled through the rain to the tool shed, and…
Chapter 35
The lights of the street lamps looked thin and insubstantial,…
Chapter 36
The cars racing by them, the speeding lights and the…
Chapter 37
Olive Cleaver didn’t sleep well. She thought in the night…
Chapter 38
“Get on the horse! Get on the horse now!”
Chapter 39
The Harpy and Mag and the gathered rebels watched, in…
Chapter 40
The tall Victorian house rose above the narrow street shadowed…
Chapter 41
The beautifully dressed women on San Francisco’s streets had filled…
Chapter 42
The golden tom stared under the couch at the calico,…
Chapter 43
It was dawn. The dark green of night had hardly…
Chapter 44
Braden was drinking his third cup of coffee and going…
Chapter 45
Melissa left Braden painting—already he had roughed in a canvas…
Chapter 46
Three hundred cats roamed within the fenced, wire-roofed compound in…
Chapter 47
It was the evening the calico scratched Morian that Melissa…
Chapter 48
Efil watched the compound from a nearby hill where he…
Chapter 49
The Greyhound bus smelled of cigarettes and stale food. A…
Chapter 50
“Call them forth leaping,” Olive read, “bring them careening…”
Chapter 51
Pippin sat naked in Olive’s dining room reciting Netherworld spells.
Chapter 52
Wylles reached the top of the garden filled with rage…
Chapter 53
The Harpy cupped her little mirror in her hands and…
Chapter 54
Through the open bedroom window the bay was dark under…
Chapter 55
She was afraid of taking the elevator by herself. She…
Chapter 56
The coast was ragged and wild. Waves crashed against the…
Chapter 57
The Harpy’s mirror was red with flame. In the little…
Chapter 58
The restaurant rambled along the cliff high above the sea.
Chapter 59
She returned slowly to the inn. The dawn sky was…
Chapter 60
Twenty paintings hung on the white gallery walls, each with…
Chapter 61
Outdoor lights brightened the fluted borders of the museum’s tile…
Chapter 62
Braden turned the station wagon into the lane, his headlights…
Chapter 63
Braden tore at the wall with his hands, smashed his…
Chapter 64
The swinging light of the lanterns jabbed and shifted along…
Chapter 65
Melissa descended the cellar stairs among the roars of the…
Chapter 66
On a narrow ridge east of Shenndeth, Siddonie sat on…
Chapter 67
Zzadarray’s towers were airy, open to the Netherworld breezes. The…
Chapter 68
The army moved out of Zzadarray with Netherworld Catswold and…
Chapter 69
It was midnight, the battle was stilled by darkness. Siddonie…
Chapter 70
The ponies jogged along steadily behind Braden’s gray gelding. The…
Chapter 71
Melissa, riding the upperworld stallion meant for Helsa, wearing the…
Chapter 72
Pain shot through Melissa’s shoulder. She unsheathed her knife as…
Chapter 73
Siddonie stood captive, held by her own w
arriors. Melissa remembered…
Chapter 74
It was midnight. Few lights burned in Affandar Palace, though…
Chapter 75
Sun flooded through the windows of Mathew Rhain’s reception room.
Epilogue
The female figure is a time-honored theme in painting. The…
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
He ran pounding through the forest, his tennis shoes snapping dry branches as he stretched out in a long lope. Running eased the tightness, the tension. He was tall and lean, dark haired. Dodging between the broad trunks of redwood trees he headed uphill toward the mountain, swerving past deadfalls, trampling ferns that stroked his bare legs like animal paws. Strange thought, Alice’s kind of thought, animal paws. He shivered, but not from the cold. It was dusk; Alice would be cleaning up, putting away her paints, washing her brushes, thinking about dinner, wondering whether to go out or open something. She wouldn’t speak to him while he was still working, would go out to the kitchen and stand looking in the freezer.
She would have done those things. Had done them, once. The pain ran with him, he couldn’t shake it, couldn’t leave it alone.
Months after the funeral he had started to heal, to mend, the hurting began to dull, some feeling returning besides rage and grief. But now suddenly his pain was raw again, the last few days were as if her death had just happened, her body in the wrecked car…He swerved away from the ravine and ran steeply up between boulders, but at the foot of Mount Tamalpais he turned back. It was dark now within the forest, though the sky above the giant redwoods still held light. He ran downhill again for a long way before lights began to flicker between the trees from isolated houses braving the forest gloom. The chill air held the smoke of fireplaces and he could smell early suppers cooking. Alice would be saying, Let’s just get a hamburger, I don’t feel like cooking, don’t feel like getting dressed. She’d fix herself a drink, go to shower off the smell of inks and fixative, slip on a clean pair of jeans. His breath caught, seeing her body wet from the shower, little droplets on her breasts, her long pale hair beaded with water.
He was in sight of the village now; it stretched away below him, the last light of evening clinging along the street and to the roofs of the shops. He could hear a radio somewhere ahead, and the swish of cars on the damp macadam, then suddenly the streetlights burst on all at once. His feet crushed fallen branches then he hit the sidewalk and an explosion of speed took him past the library, the building’s tall windows reflecting car lights against the books. He could smell frying hamburgers from the Creek, and farther on something Italian from Anthea’s. He swerved past villagers closing up shop, and each looked up at him. “Hey, Brade!” “Evening, Braden.” He dodged the first Greyhound commuters returning from the city. “Hey there, West.” “Nice night for running.” He nodded, raised a hand, and pounded on past. His long body reflected running distortions in the shop windows. Crossing the dead-end lane to the garden where his studio stood among other houses, he glanced up the hill toward Sam’s Bar that stood at the edge of the forest, thought of stopping for a beer, but then went on.
He cooled down on the veranda, poured himself a bourbon. Pulling off his tennis shoes, sitting sprawled in the campaign chair, he stared up at the tangled garden that began at his terrace and climbed the hill above him; a communal garden shared by the six houses that circled it. It was a pleasant, informal stretch of bushes and flowers and dwarf trees creating a small jungle. Two of the three houses above were dark. The lights in the center house went off as he watched, and his neighbor came out, her dark skin hardly visible against the falling night, her white dress a bright signal. She crossed the garden to the lane with long, easy strides, waving to him. “Evening, Brade,” her voice rich as velvet. He lifted a hand, smiling, watched her slide into her convertible and turn at the dead end beside Sam’s, drive slowly down the lane and into the traffic of the busier road, heading for the city. But when a cat cried on the terraces above, he shivered, unsteady again. He could see its eyes reflected for an instant, then it was gone.
As he rose to go in, he felt for a split second the warmth of anticipation. His eager mood burst suddenly: Alice wasn’t there. Alice was dead. The loneliness hit him like a blow, and he turned back and poured another whiskey.
Evening was the worst. They had liked to sit on the terrace after a day’s work, unwinding, watching the garden darken, watching the stars come spilling above the redwood forest that crowned the hill above the upper houses. In the evenings they had shared little things, random thoughts, coming together in a new way after working all day side by side in the studio, seldom talking, just being near each other. In the evenings Alice came alive in a different way from her deeply concentrating, working self, as if the night stirred a wild streak in her. Sometimes she would rise from the terrace and, carrying her drink, would walk up the garden to stand looking at the tool shed door.
And now suddenly Alice’s death hit him as if it had just happened—his frenzy as he tore at the jammed car door, as he beat at the window. Alice lay twisted inside, her hair tangled in the steering wheel, blood running down her face. The rescue squad tried to cut the door away with gas torches, but he had fought them, crazy with fear that they’d burn her.
For forty-five minutes she was trapped, maybe dying, while the wrecking crew cut at the car slowly and methodically. The cops tried to pull him away; he kept fighting to get to her. When the door was wrenched open at last, he shoved the medics away, and her body spilled out into his arms, limp, sending a shock of sickness through him that had never, since, left him.
Her portfolio had been on the car seat beside her and she had a box in the back seat packed with ice, chilling two lobsters and a bottle of chablis. Later, when a police officer handed him the box, he’d thrown it hurtling down the cliff into the bay. He tried to kill the driver who had hit her. His plumbing truck lay on its side against a light post; it had crossed the meridian, plowing into her car. The driver was unhurt. He had grabbed the thin, pale-haired man and pounded him until the cops pulled him off.
Sometime before he left the scene a policeman had lifted her portfolio out of her car, wiped off the blood, and put it in his station wagon. Days later he brought it into the studio and shoved it out of sight in the map chest where she kept her work.
Three weeks after her death he had taken her lithographs and etchings off the walls of the studio, stripped her part of the work space, giving away everything—litho stones, etching plates, inks, handmade papers. He sent most of her work over to her gallery in the city. If he cleared away every reminder maybe he wouldn’t keep seeing her there in the studio working on a drawing or a print, her long, pale hair bound back, her smock hanging crooked, her tongue tipping out as she concentrated. Maybe he wouldn’t see her look up at him as she wiped charcoal off her hands, wanting a cup of tea, wanting to talk for a minute.
Fourteen months after she died he remembered the portfolio. He had taken it out of the map drawer and spread the drawings across his work table, searching for answers to the question that had begun to wake him at night.
The drawings were of the garden door.
The low oak door cut into the terraced hill like the door of an old-fashioned root cellar, though the small earthen room into which it opened had been built not for roots but to house gardening equipment: wheelbarrow, rake, ladder, pruning shears, sprinklers. The beautifully carved door was far too ornate to close a tool room, it belonged in medieval Europe closing away things exotic that rustled in the dark. It was made of thick, polished oak planks nearly black with age, rounded at the top beneath a thick, curved oak lintel, and carved in deep relief with cats’ faces.
Nine rows of cats’ heads protruded from the door, nine faces to a row. They were life-sized cats carved in such deep relief that two-thirds of each head
thrust out of the wood. They were so real that one’s first impression was of live cats looking out—dark furred, handsome. The cats in the top three rows seemed to be smiling with some inscrutable feline glee. Those in the center rows looked secretive. The cats in the bottom three rows screamed open mouthed with rage, their ears laid flat, their eyes slitted, their little oak teeth sharp as daggers. Each cat was so alive that no matter how many times one saw the door, the effect was always startling. As if the cats thrust their heads through some aperture in time or dimension from another place.
And after Alice’s death, as he shuffled through her drawings looking at the individual cat faces, he felt his spine go cold for no reason. He had put the drawings away, filled with the unreasonable idea that the cats had caused her death. He had not, in succeeding months, been able to shake that thought.
He knew she had intended, on the day she died, to go to the Museum of History and try to trace the door’s origin. That was why she had the drawings with her. Maybe she’d gone there, maybe she hadn’t. Strangely, he hadn’t wanted to find out.
When Alice was small and her aunt owned the house that was now their studio—that had been their studio—Alice had believed the door of the cats was magic. Though she’d outgrown that idea, she had never outgrown her fascination with its medieval aspects and with the cats themselves.
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