“Woodthorpe Manor, sir. The country estate of the Seventeenth Earl of Woodthorpe.” She placed the tray on the table by the window with practiced neatness. “I hope you like orange juice.”
“Yes. Thank you. Is His Earlship about at the moment?”
“His Lordship,” Mrs. Winton replied without emphasis, “left for the Continent last night. He asked me to pass on his most sincere apologies—once again—and to assure you that all expenses in respect of your motorcycle will be met.”
I fumbled a chair out from the window table, feeling awkward under her eyes. “Where’s the bike now?”
“Keenen, the head gardener, has taken it to the village garage: Scudamore’s. They’ll have it mended in a couple of days, sir.” She hesitated, then added, “Until then you may stay here as His Lordship’s guest.”
I was going to say, “That’s nice of him,” but instead I said, “Are my bags here?”
“Still downstairs, sir. I’m afraid the one containing your books burst in the accident.”
“Hey?”
“Nothing to worry about, sir. Duncan, His Lordship’s chauffeur, picked them all up.”
“Good old Duncan,” I muttered.
I started in on my eggs, but barely had the yoke running when I felt her eyes again. I looked up and Mrs. Winton cleared her throat.
“Pardon me for asking, sir, but are you Australian?”
“Guilty. What gave me away? My accent or the jars of Vegemite in my other bag?”
Mrs. Winton said nothing, only stood there as if wanting to say more but not knowing how to start. I already felt out of place here, and this wasn’t helping. I tapped the cosy on the teapot. “Sit down and pour yourself a cuppa. I won’t tell His Earlship.”
I was half surprised when she did take the seat opposite, and totally surprised when she said, “Are you a psychical researcher?”
I stared at her for a good five seconds, then remembered she’d seen my books. “Well, I have done what I like to call ‘ghost hunting’ in the past, but ...”
“Is that why you’ve come to England?”
She said it as if I’d come to extradite some fugitive antipodean apparition. I said, “Not exactly. I’m just doing the spooky tour of England, the places I’ve only read about: Borley, Cloud’s Hill, Raynham Hall, 50 Berkeley Square. You know, places like that. I am interested in the supernatural, but ... no, no more ghost hunting. I’ve found out the hard way that the occult is too unpleasant at close quarters.”
“But it must be a real experience to hunt a ghost.”
“It is. That is if that’s what you call trying to shove a cranky water elemental into a crystal geode, or facing up to a demon with all your runes round the wrong way, or nearly being strangled by a book illustration. No, no more ghost hunting for me, Mrs. Winton. Not even if you threatened me with money. From now on I’m strictly a tourist.”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed. Do you have a ghost in the house?” I got ready to run in case she said yes.
“There are no ghosts under His Lordship’s roof, sir, and that’s the plain and simple truth. It may make us look a bit out of step, what with every Manor and Lodge hereabouts sporting a haunted bedroom or a ghost’s gallery, some of which I dare say are trumped up for the tourist pound. Not that I’m a scoffer, sir. I’ve been in service since I was a lass, and know a lot more than most about the quality homes; and I can tell you, sir, that some of the best have things walking in them that aren’t right things, if you follow my meaning. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I best be about my duties. Even with the family away there’s still a lot to be done.”
Mrs. Winton left me then to my own memories of things that walked that weren’t right things. It really spoiled my breakfast.
I got lost trying to find the front door.
There was a North Wing and a South Wing, an East Front and a West Front. There were wide corridors of thick carpet and polished oak paneling, and a long gallery of ancestral portraits that glared after me as I tiptoed past.
Once through the massive columns of the East Front I struck out on the first path I found, letting it take me where it would.
At first it wound its way through the trees scattered about the southeast lawn, at one point passing a scraggly palm looking decidedly unimpressed by the English climate. On the side of a hillock was a square of trees that looked very familiar. I’m no treeologist, but these looked like fair dinkum Australian gums—the smooth, light gray/dark gray-spotted bark, the eucalyptus tang of the leaves, the little plaque saying “Australian Gum.”
The path sloped, then forked farther along. The left-hand path led me to a lawn surrounding a marble structure I could only think of as a summer house with delusions of grandeur: open-sided, circular and gleaming white, its steps splaying out from three openings in its half walls, mock-Grecian columns, scrolled and fluted, supporting a domed roof.
Chiseled over one of the openings was THE SECOND PAVILION, below that ANNO DOMINI 1827. There were stone seats running along the inside wall and a circular slab raised at its center. Nothing I didn’t expect ... except, there was this arrow scratched into the stonework between two of the columns. It was pointing to nothing but the tops of distant trees somewhere in the lower part of the grounds to the northwest. I started walking in that direction. I had no idea what I might be walking to, but it gave me time to think.
Here I was in the proverbial English country garden. To my left were outbuildings I took to be stables or garages, and the glittering glass of a greenhouse where the Earl probably grew his prize-winning marrows. To my right were ponds and grass and trees, what amounted to a private wood. Private. The word made me pause, to wonder, not exactly for the first time—What was I doing here?
Of course the Earl felt responsible for the accident and all, but ...
I put myself in his place. A grand, ancient home crammed with paintings, silverware, jewelry, antiques, history; and into this he allows not only a stranger but a “colonial” of dubious social standing. Wouldn’t it have been safer, as far as the Earl was concerned, to simply put me up at the nearest hotel until the bike was fixed?
Something wasn’t quite kosher here. In fact the more I thought on it the more that uncomfortable out-of-place feeling increased.
It was a maze.
I somehow knew this even before I reached the ivy-crept stone wall. Possibly it was the wrought iron gate and the roofless walls I could see beyond it. The gate looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, and in fact there were rust marks showing it’d been chained shut until very recently. But when I pushed the gate it opened with a shiver and a screech, so I edged in.
The walls were all weatherstained and mossy, in some places even cracked and pitted. It was cold. Quiet, too. So quiet that I found myself stepping softly to lessen the echo of my footsteps in the stone paved alleys.
Every now and then I stopped to scrape dirt into piles against the walls as markers. The alley I followed had began to fork and twist fantastically, and the prospect of getting lost had become real, perhaps even dangerous.
Sometimes the path crossed another, making me wonder if I wasn’t going round and round and round. Farther in, the alleys widened occasionally into little gardens, all dead from long neglect, oblongs of dust and empty flower beds. And every time I found one I found more of the same coldness and a sense of sadness that the sun, sitting on the east-facing walls, couldn’t burn away. All I could see of the world was the sky holding one small cloud. It was just enough to show me that I was spiraling in toward the center. So I pushed on, now noticing a slight downwardness as I passed other oblong boxes of once-was gardens and the craters of dry pools with dry ruts leading in and out.
Small statues stood guard at random places, and there was even the occasional stone bench. It was while passing one of these that I thought I heard slow footsteps in the next alley. I stood up on the bench, but the wall was still too high. So I yelled, “Hello! Is anybody there?” For a
long time I listened for an answer, hearing nothing, yet sure there was someone or something behind that wall. The silence grew, and I was wishing now I hadn’t called out. Then a wind leaped up with an almost human cry, stinging my face and hands with dirt. Something winked across the sun and was gone, leaving silence again, and an odd impression of dry heat and vast distances that passed as quickly as it’d come.
The alley was still, and for a long time I sat on the bench, wondering if it mightn’t be wiser to search my way out. No, I’d come too far to turn back just because a bird had startled me. And the wind? A freak gust. So I told myself, and so I continued on.
The alleys were still cold but had less shadow in them by the time I saw tree tops looming over the walls ahead. Not long after that I hit a path running beside a curving wall that these trees grew behind. I guessed they were the trees I’d seen from “The Second Pavilion.” But this curving wall, this inner circle, was beyond guessing. Following it round I came to a gate.
This was not like the one at the entrance. This inner gate was big, solid and sported a padlock perhaps a century old or more. It was as good as any Keep Out sign. Above the gate was a piece of stonework that had the look of being tacked on as an afterthought. On it was carved RETINE QUOD AQUA COERCETUR.
It was all Greek to me, or rather Latin, though the third word was obviously water. I noted the words down on a parking ticket I’d gotten in Oxfordshire, then set off following the rest of the wall. It took me a few minutes to get back to the gate. I’d found only that one gate in my circuit of the wall, though at one point I thought I heard something like tinkling bells coming from somewhere.
By now I was beginning to feel hungry and more than a little thirsty. Great Britain isn’t known for its deaths by dehydration, so, not wanting to start a trend, I tried to recall the paths that had led me in.
There was no pattern to the maze, no every-third-gap-on-the-left-continues-the-path sort of thing. I just had to do my best in following memory and my little markers of heaped up dirt. Between them I wound up in more dead ends than there are in any two cemeteries. But I persevered, and what with finding dirty marks that I hoped were my earlier footprints, I eventually worked my way out.
There was a small truck in the drive by the steps of the East Front. There was an oil stain and a piece of mirror among the plant cuttings and soil in its tray. Keenen the gardener, I presumed, had returned from taking the Norton to the garage.
I slunk in through the great marble columns, half expecting to be turfed out by some snotty-nosed butler. I was coming down bad with doses of class consciousness and culture shock, an easy frame of mind to fall into with these imposing surroundings. So, gathering all my nerve, I pushed open the door and strode in as if I owned the place. Truth to tell, I felt less like “Lord Ernie” than “Ernie Pine, lower class interloper,” and I couldn’t help looking around to make sure no one saw me.
There was no one in sight, but muffled voices, raised as if in argument, were coming from behind the grand staircase.
A gray-haired man wearing a bib-and-brace stood in the doorway of what I supposed was the housekeeper’s under-the-stairs office. He was almost back to me, and as I approached I recognized Mrs. Winton’s voice coming from within.
“But he’s a gift.”
“But he ain’t black,” said the man. “And any road, if His Lordship—”
“Who ain’t black?” I asked.
The man turned sharply, and for several seconds just stared at me as though I’d committed some unforgivable social blunder. Mrs. Winton leaned out through the door and smiled.
“Mr. Pine, we were beginning to wonder if you’d lost yourself in the maze. You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Aye, not the first,” echoed the old man, looking away.
I muttered something about it being formidable, though there were other adjectives that came to mind more readily—weird, for instance. I was introduced to the grayhaired man, the Manor’s head gardener, Keenen (“Keenen, sir, just Keenen”).
“About the bike,” I said.
“Took your machine into town first thing, I did,” said Keenen, “and Scudamore’s workshop they be onto it promptly.”
“Meanwhile, Mr. Pine is welcome to stay here,” said Mrs. Winton.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
Mrs. Winton fluttered her hands. “Think no more of it. It’s only right that we should put you up while you’re off the road. Isn’t that so, Keenen?” But before he could answer, she continued, “And you won’t be the only stranger at the Manor soon as there’ll be outside contractors coming in tomorrow to see to the grounds. Now, sir, what did you think of our maze?”
“A quiet place, isn’t it,” I said, trying to think of something nice to say about it. “Why is the center closed off? What’s in there?”
Keenen and Mrs. Winton glanced at each other like parents desperately trying to put off explaining the facts of life to their pregnant daughter.
“Well ... it was built like that,” said Keenen lamely, at last.
“The inner gate was locked and probably had been for a long time.”
“It shouldn’t have been,” said Mrs. Winton, and I caught her funny look at the gardener. “You were some time in the maze, Mr. Pine. Nothing happened, did it? That is, did you lose your way?”
“Only a couple of thousand times.”
“No singing?” said Keenen, looking down.
“Pardon?”
“I think there’s a diagram of the maze in the library,” said Mrs. Winton. “Perhaps you’d like to have another go tomorrow?”
“Isn’t there rain forecast for tomorrow?”
“Not until the evening. Well, I think it’s about lunch time. You must be starved, Mr. Pine. Afterward we’ll see if we can find the diagram of the maze.”
While Mrs. Winton cut bread in the kitchen, I asked, “By the way, what does this mean,” and I read slowly from the back of the parking ticket: “ ‘Retine quod aqua coercetur’?”
“It means ‘Keep that which is bound by water,’ ” she replied without a moment’s hesitation, as if the phrase had been in her thoughts all along.
The library, like everything else in and about Woodthorpe Manor, daunted me. It wasn’t that it was large (in fact it was much smaller than the average public library), it was that all of these volumes—five thousand, Mrs. Winton told me, and some of them incredibly old and rare—were a private collection.
And there was that word again: Private. And here was I. It didn’t add up.
Mrs. Winton made straight for one of the glass cabinets lining the walls, unlocked it and after a moment’s search took from between two books a leather wallet. In this was the plan of the maze with its convoluted paths, its statuary, brooks, and miniature gardens all plotted out. The middle, however, was blank.
“What’s in there?” I remembered asking this before without getting an answer.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Mrs. Winton said. “It’s been closed for many a year.”
I thought it odd that in all her time at the Manor she’d never once been curious enough to find out what was behind the wall and trees in the center of the maze. Perhaps she had no interest in things outside her own sphere. Perhaps she had asked once and had been rebuffed. Perhaps she was lying.
“If you wish to make a copy, there are pens, pencils and a sheaf of quarto in that drawer.” She indicated a nearby writing desk. “Unfortunately the photocopying machine is in the town being repaired.”
“Duncan ran it over, too, did he?”
“Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Pine, I’d best be about my duties.”
I was glad I didn’t have to “dress” for dinner, being as it was in the servants’ hall. Wearing a tie is against my religion as a confirmed slouch.
There were just Mrs. Winton, Keenen, and myself at table. The only other people on the estate at this time were those who lived in the lodge, the gatekeeper and his wife, and their two sons who served as groundsmen d
uring the night.
The talk got around (rather quickly, I thought) to the maze: Yes, I copied out the diagram ... Perhaps I’ll have another go at the maze tomorrow if it doesn’t rain ... Well, yes, I think it will rain tomorrow, Mrs. Winton. I can smell it ...
Keenen kept pretty quiet during the meal, just picking at his food, though drinking steadily, making casualties of two bottles of rough red. “Drinking with a purpose” was a phrase that came to mind. I got the impression he was sulking, probably after an argument with Mrs. Winton which probably had me in it somewhere. This line of thought seemed to be confirmed when, during a lapse in the housekeeper’s conversation about the various notables who had dined and slept at the Manor over the centuries, Keenen muttered, “And you’re only the second Australian we’ve—”
He jolted as though kicked. He glared at Mrs. Winton in a half focused way. She continued her dinner as if nothing had happened. I would hate to have played poker with her.
I excused myself not long after that and wandered upstairs to the library. I paused halfway up, listening for the explosion I thought must erupt in the servants’ hall. But all remained quiet. They probably were at each other again, but in a restrained way, which befitted this stately home.
I’d noticed that the library had been catalogued on the Dewey decimal system and that the cabinet where the maze diagram was shelved was labeled 133, the listing for books on occult matters. I guessed it was a Woodthorpe family joke as “occult” can also mean “hidden.”
Luckily the cabinet was still unlocked. That afternoon I’d seen a first edition of Elliot O’Donnell’s Screaming Skulls with which I hoped to read myself to sleep. While looking for the O’Donnell, I came across a folder bound in red buckram that had the appearance of a scrapbook or diary. Conscience and curiosity tugged me in opposite directions. Curiosity won.
The date on the first page was 26th July, 1823. The handwriting was crabbed, and for the most part illegible; a sure sign, my conscience took glee in reminding me, that it’d been meant for the writer’s eyes only. I leafed over the pages, pausing here and there to attempt to decipher a passage, a sentence, or even just a word, usually without any luck. But partway down the second page was a word beginning with K, followed by something like Birdfellow. Whoever or whatever this may have been, both names were referred to several times throughout the diary. Another name that was repeated, though only in the last few pages, was “Mother Gwynne.” She seemed somehow to be associated with that Latin phrase about being bound by water, as it was referred to (in semilegible printing) on two separate pages immediately following her name. Around the middle of the diary I managed: “The Ground Keepers have communicated their distress in that there are Shapes abroad.” Nowhere was the writer identified.
The Year's Best Horror Stories 21 Page 6
