Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5)

by Marilyn Harris

  As though to demonstrate the validity of his claim, he set a brisk pace, so brisk that she hurriedly ducked her head to pass through the small opening and was forced to step quickly to keep up, and there was no time to check on the progress of Reverend Christopher.

  Once inside the inner courtyard, she discovered that it was as she'd suspected. The main thrust of the castle loomed straight ahead, next to the gigantic Keep and Close. As she hurried across the cobblestones, she kept a vigilant eye on the high thick-walled charnel house and tried not to dwell on the humanity that had suffered and died inside.

  Then, just as she was about to make it safely past those thick doors, she saw to the left another gruesome relic from the past, the thick, tar-coated whipping oak, once an enormous tree felled and transported from the woods beyond Exeter, the broad trunk stripped of all softening foliage which identified God's purpose for it and left it for man's.

  Reverend Christopher now appeared directly behind her, having successfully squeezed his girth through the narrow door in the castle wall. In fact, coming alongside her, he took her arm as though to assist her beyond the gruesome past, a touching and considerate gesture of chivalry.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered as he came alongside her. “The narrow door, I mean...”

  “Oh, yes, quite.” He nodded. “My own fault, you know — or rather the ladies with their scones and cream.”

  “What was it for? The door in the wall.”

  Bates shrugged. “I haven't the faintest. Part of the original castle, I'm sure. There are three in all, I believe, one in each wall, proof that the first Eden was a forward-thinking chap who knew that there would always be a need in such a grand place for ready and secret escape routes.”

  She smiled, finding the hushed chat a pleasant diversion from the urgency of the evening. It took her mind off what might be awaiting them up on the parapet.

  “You've never been here before?” Reverend Christopher asked, darkness masking the surprise on his face but not in his voice.

  “No,” she admitted, and wondered what possible cause could have, in the past, brought her here. “Why?” she asked further. “Am I unique in that respect?”

  “Well, yes, rather,” he hedged. “At one time, shortly after all the fancy renovations, those gates were thrown open two, sometimes three times a year, at least on every festival day. All of Mortemouth would come, and most of Ilfracombe as well, and anyone else who happened to be passing by and was in need of a roll and a roast chicken, or simply the clasp of a friendly hand.”

  They paused, having reached the bottom of the Great-Hall stairs, and gaped up. “In his good days,” Reverend Christopher concluded quietly, “there was never a more generous and gracious gentleman than John Murrey Eden.”

  She started up the stairs, seeing that Bates had already reached the top and was now fussing with the massive oak Great-Hall door.

  As she gained access to the door, she found herself confronting total blackness, not a spill or trace of light coming from any source, and she sensed an immense and oversized hall used in better times for massive public receptions.

  Using her hands like a blind man, moving them as perceptively as possible through the empty black space before her, she proceeded straight ahead for a few steps and at last realized the foolishness of her predicament.

  “I take it you have been a guest at Eden before?” The arch voice came from behind and needed no identification.

  “No,” she said quietly, stopping where she was, as the surrounding darkness was a literal blockade.

  “Then I assume you haven't the foggiest notion where you are going?” Bates inquired further.

  “No,” she confessed. “My only wish is that we might move faster.”

  “Oh, my,” Bates sneered. “We are being chastised by the woman.”

  Then training won out over breeding and a moment later she heard rigid footsteps pass very close to where she stood, heard as well the ominous command, “Follow me, if you can. I believe the only lamp left in the castle is in the library. We must have light. There is little chance of making it up to the roof without it.”

  Reasonable, though one or two questions did lodge in her mind as she tried to fall into step behind the sound of his footsteps. Why was there only one lamp in the entire castle, and why was it in the library? And second, what was that hideous odor which seemed to increase as they made their way across the Great Hall, a terrible combination of soiled linen and rotting or rotted food and something else, the smell of the dead or dying.

  She’d thought to ask all these questions, but at that moment something skittered between her feet, something solid, of substance, that caught briefly on the hem of her dress and caused her to jump nervously to one side, her hands clawing frantically at her skirts for fear the scurrying thing had attached itself, and all the while her eyes searched blindly in the blackness for a clue.

  “No need to be alarmed,” Bates called back, having heard her frightened movements and rightly interpreting them. “Undoubtedly it was just a member of the large and ever-growing rat population of Eden Castle.”

  She stood trembling, her hands still clutching her skirts, and thought how peculiarly uncomforting the truth was, almost always, without exception.

  “I say, are you all right?” came Reverend Christopher’s concerned voice in the dark. “I mean, it didn’t nip you or anything?”

  “N-no,” she stammered, afraid to move in any direction.

  “Yes, it’s rats,” confirmed Mr. Bates. “Contrary to popular myth, they didn’t move into this ship in great numbers until it started to sink, some two or three years ago.”

  In the dark she heard a skeletal laugh, like dry bones. Moving again, she tried to relax, and at the same time she placed one hand over her nose in an attempt to diminish the awful smell. “I still don’t understand,” she confessed bluntly, feeling that words would help both the odor and her fear. “Why do you hate him so?”

  For a moment there was no response, only the slow steady clack of footsteps resumed.

  “Because,” she heard him say, to her amazement, “he possesses that mixture of folly and evil which often makes what is good an offense and what is offensive appear to be good.”

  Suddenly all three stopped, as though their respective muscles were being controlled by one mind.

  “And because,” the disembodied voice went on in the dark, “he has ruined every life he has ever touched. He is a soul-murderer.” This voice seemed not to belong to Bates. This voice was echoing and measured and spoke with that finality of absolute experience.

  Having had the last word in this manner, Bates proceeded on across the Great Hall, and now to her amazement Susan discovered that she could see him, only vaguely and in outline, but it was enough and helped to keep Bates in her sights. She decided there must be a light coming from someplace and was grateful for it.

  He possesses that mixture of folly and evil which often makes what is good seem offensive and what is offensive seem good.

  “This way,” she heard Bates call out, and saw him even more clearly, as though they were approaching the invisible light source. Also at this point she noticed the Great Hall narrow into a single corridor and observed to her left a great black shading which might be a staircase.

  “Wait here,” she heard Bates command, and observed before them a large cavity. Door frame? Door opened, she saw a deeper darkness on the other side. The library, she speculated, clasping her hand more firmly over her nose in weak defense against the noxious odor which seemed to be yet increasing.

  As they had been ordered to wait, both she and Reverend Christopher did so, though under the enforced idleness he paced nervously back and forth in the narrow corridor and, just as she was about to speak in an attempt to ease the tension, she heard coming from deep within the darkened room a sudden crash followed immediately by a long curse which ultimately dissolved into angry sputtering. Obviously Bates had collided with something.

 
“Are you... all right?” Reverend Christopher called shyly in. “You will let us know if you need — ?”

  “Nothing,” came the offended voice on a gasp.

  Suddenly she saw the first flicker of light out of the corner of her eyes, like a timid flash of lightning. Yet when she turned on it, it was gone, the black of the library merely black again.

  Reverend Christopher obviously had seen it as well. “Bates, I say, I take it you found - ”

  “A lamp, yes,” came the toneless reply.

  “Do you need...?”

  “Help, no. Oil, yes. It's empty.”

  Disappointed, Susan leaned heavily against the door frame and tried not to think about what was happening on the parapet. She feared that it had resolved itself one way or the other. And yet they were gaining ground. If only...

  Then she saw the light again and held her breath as the spark grew.

  “Bravo!” called out Reverend Christopher. “Bates, well done!”

  Susan added her thanks mixed with new urgency. “Now we can move with greater speed, can't we, Mr. Bates? We really must...”

  The old man did not respond in any way and stood at the far end of the room and fiddled endlessly with the wick and windguard, adjusting everything with maddening thoroughness. He moved at a snail's pace through what in the dim light appeared to be a clutter of furniture, some shrouded by dull gray canvases, others stripped and pushed awry, the foul odor which she'd detected out in the corridor even stronger here.

  Again she covered her nose and saw that Bates was moving toward them, bringing the lamp with him as well as a bizarre invitation. “Would either of you care to see the inner graveyard of Eden Castle?” he asked with suspect ease.

  The macabre words seemed to approach very slowly in the semidarkness.

  “Down here,” came Bates's voice again.

  She saw Reverend Christopher with a massive questioning look on his face. As for herself, she stepped all the way into the musty room, the better to see precisely what was going on at the far end, and saw a strange sight, the lamp burning well now, a stable pool of light in a dark sea, while a black silhouette lit what appeared to be two massive candelabra spaced an equal distance apart.

  “Mr. Bates?”

  “The inner graveyard is what I said,” the old man repeated, and his voice sounded breathless, as though under the duress of exertion. “Step forward, both of you,” he commanded, and simultaneously the candles flared and joined the limited illumination of the lamp, and at last the far end of the library was illuminated. She saw a mussed sheet-enshrouded chaise, a low table cluttered with what appeared to be mugs, dishes, cutlery, an overturned chair draped unceremoniously with shirtwaists, a crude area which recently had served as living quarters for someone.

  But most mysterious of all was what appeared to be an enormous painting, the focal point of the flanking candles as well as of the entire room.

  Susan found herself turning first in one direction, then the other, trying to take it all in, trying hard to understand the man who had inhabited such chaos for the last several years. She drew near to the bright circle of light enhanced by candles and observed how the mussed couch had been dragged into perfect alignment with the large painting, which was not hung but merely rested precariously on a large standard.

  To one side of the painting stood Bates, a pointer in hand which he'd found somewhere during his search for oil. “Can you see?” he called out as she came to a halt directly before the painting.

  She nodded and was aware of Reverend Christopher coming to a halt just behind her. But a moment later she was aware of nothing except the painting itself and its subject matter, which she saw clearly as Bates lifted the lamp and held it close, a mobile sun which illuminated a most dazzling array of rainbow colors in the shapes of four gossamer gowns, the four women themselves arranged precariously on the edge of a high marble parapet, four very different yet seductive beauties gazing out over a blue sea, their attention focused on a spot just beyond the frame of the painting, one a pale fair beauty more girl than woman, and next to her a more aggressive yet physically smaller and older woman, and next to her a dark exotic woman, Indian-appearing, or so it seemed in the flickering light, and last, the most beautiful of all, a young classic face with streaming fair hair, frankly sexual, portrayed with that dewy silkiness of a pampered woman's flesh.

  Who they were, she had no idea, but together they formed a spectacular harem, so diverse and yet so united in their focus as though, despite their differences, they were waiting for someone under a communal tension.

  “Who are they?'' she asked quietly, somewhat intimidated by such collective beauty. She'd been cursed all her life with what Miss Nightingale had, with Christian generosity, dubbed “a good English face” and “vast hidden qualities.” Natural beauty impressed her.

  “Oh, I knew them all,” she heard Reverend Christopher boast. “Knew most of them firsthand. That there is Miss Elizabeth, truly a good soul, almost despite herself...”

  As Susan searched the four for the reluctant Christian named Elizabeth, she saw Bates nod.

  “Elizabeth Eden,” he confirmed, and stood back and, with the tip of his pointer, indicated the older woman. “The nearest thing to a mother that Mr. Eden ever possessed. In fact, many thought she was his mother, as she had been the constant and devoted companion of his father, Edward Eden. But I have it on good authority that she was not his blood mother, though she raised him and loved him and forgave him more than anyone else.”

  “Where is she now?” Susan asked, quickly praying that this proud beauty was not the lifeless cargo in Mr. Eden's arms up on the parapet.

  “Dead,” came Bates's flat reply, followed by a halfhearted resurrection, “probably...”

  “No!” Reverend Christopher protested with something less than complete conviction.

  “I said ‘probably,’” Bates snapped. “She was the last to leave some years ago and was on her way to Paris to join her good friends in the revolution of the Female Communes.”

  “Why did she leave?” Susan asked, her imagination performing cruel feats, seeing the lovely Elizabeth bloodied in the distant conflict across the channel.

  “Why else?” Bates smiled, enjoying his role as authority at least where the women of Eden were concerned. He told her to leave, Mr. Eden did, told her to get out. He didn't want her here, and blamed her for everything.”

  Again Susan heard a shocked protest coming from Reverend Christopher, who moved a step ahead of her. “Not true,” he grieved. “Surely not true. She was... so good, so loving. I can't believe...”

  “No,” Susan agreed quickly, “and I'm sure that Bates doesn't know for certain either. Perhaps she is...” Suddenly she glanced behind her into the deeper darkness of the room, thinking she had heard something. “Mr. Bates, I feel that we must - ”

  “Only a moment, miss,” he scolded, “and I beg you to use your head. This painting is the map to the man. The only way to gain knowledge of John Murrey Eden is through these dead beauties.”

  “Dead,” she tried to repeat, shocked. “Surely not all...”

  “As good as.” Bates nodded and stepped back to the painting. Wielding the pointer, he started at the left edge of the canvas and tapped his way across a sad roll call.

  “Young Lady Lila Harrington, unfortunate enough to have served as Mrs. John Murrey Eden for a short duration, though long enough to conceive and deliver two sons and die.”

  Susan had heard the rumor once that there were Eden sons. But she'd never believed it, for where was the wife? Dead, apparently.

  “And this lovely creature,” Bates went on, “was Mr. Eden's Indian mistress, Dhari, brought back from the ashes of Delhi by Mr. Eden as one might bring back a wild boar after a successful hunt.”

  “Dead, too?” Susan asked weakly.

  Bates shrugged. “Who knows? She had no tongue, you know. She lost it when she betrayed her own people. Mr. Eden used to say she was the ideal woman, cooperative
and silent.”

  The old man laughed, and Susan heard a rattling in his lungs and knew what it meant. Still, she resented the laugh, especially following such a grim announcement.

  She had no tongue, you know.

  Suddenly, coming from someplace above her, she heard that great and intolerable wail. Reflexively she moved rapidly back through the clutter of furnishings, past the striking and tragic women of Eden. Whatever the nature of their grief, it would have to wait for the greater grief which still pursued her, that single animal howl of such duration and substance that she felt literally as though it were running her to ground.

  “Miss, wait! You don't know the way,” Bates shouted over the ungodly sound.

  “Then show me, and quickly,” she shouted back, stumbling once in the darkened end of the library, trying to find the door in the dim spill of light from Bates's single lamp.

  “You must wait,” Bates called out, and she looked back over her shoulder to see the two men in faltering pursuit. Directly ahead she saw a darkened cavity which she trusted was the door, and without pausing, she hurried through it and found herself in a new darkness, the cry overhead still raining down upon her, and she thought: nothing human could sustain it this long.

  “To the right,” she heard a begrudging voice instruct from behind. “Back into the Great Hall, then keep sharply to the left...”

  To the right first, he had said, then sharply left around the Great-Hall arcade. Using the wall for support as well as guidance, she found herself feeling the way and felt the dampness of stone and shivered.

  She lived long enough to conceive and deliver two sons and die.

  Where were they now, those hapless children, while their father...

  “Keep sharply left,” Bates barked, “or else you'll end up two floors below in the kitchen court.”

  Still using the arcade wall for guidance, she pondered on his last instruction and sensed an intersection coming up and saw first in the dim light from Bates's hobbling lamp the massive outline of what appeared to be an equally massive staircase, flanked on either side by lesser arteries, smaller ascents, the one on the left cutting sharply away from the larger one, the one on the right appearing to lead straight into the Heart of the castle.