Castle: A Novel

by J. Robert Lennon

  I did not, however, leave the store. Instead I went to the hunting section and began to examine the archery supplies. It was still early, and few customers had yet come in, so it was not long before a salesclerk approached me.

  “Can I help you?”

  It was, unfortunately, the arrogant young man whom I had lectured on climbing safety some weeks before Luckily, his self-absorption appeared to prevent him from recognizing me. I told him that I was in the market for a bow and some arrows, that I intended to use them to hunt large game.

  Immediately the young man directed my attention to the crossbows and compound bows, with their complicated pulleys and cams. I quickly interrupted.

  “I am looking for something compact and lightweight.”

  He frowned. “Like, a shortbow?”

  “Yes,” I replied, though I didn’t know the term.

  “Hard to get close enough to a deer to kill it with a shortbow,” he said.

  “I’d like to see some.”

  With a sigh, he led me to a rack of compact, thin bows that appeared to be made of a composite of wood and fiberglass. They were precisely what I wanted.

  “These, though,” the clerk said, “you wanna get any velocity out of them, you’re practically gonna give yourself a heart attack drawing them tight enough.”

  “That’s none of your concern,” I said, hefting and stretching each bow. I settled upon the one that felt most supple without seeming to sacrifice tension. I held it up. “This one,” I said.

  “Your funeral,” the clerk said.

  I chose to ignore him. “Arrows,” I said. “I would like the arrows that would be the most lethal at low velocity.”

  This comment appeared to satisfy him, at least temporarily. He nodded. “You want something that’ll take a broadhead and fly straight,” he said. He showed me a package of four arrows tipped by a quartet of razor-sharp blades, and accompanied by a collapsible nylon quiver with a shoulder strap and reinforced floor. “You’ll get a nice, clean kill from these, if you can get close enough.” He pointed to the opposite end of the arrows. “Helix fletching, turkey feathers. They’ll fly straight and true. Aluminum shaft, nice and lightweight, and pretty easy to bend back in shape, if they get bent.”

  “Fine. I’ll take them.”

  “Great. Let me show you some sights for that thing, it’ll help you a lot. Also you’ll want some targets to practice with, and—”

  “No, thank you,” I said, and walked away.

  I was back at the house by half past nine. The sun was full and bright now, and the temperature well into the fifties. I expected that it would be over sixty by noon, and though the woods would surely be colder, I was confident that my vigorous physical activity would keep me warm.

  I was eager to embark on my mission, but first it was necessary to test my new weapon. I gathered up the bow and arrows and carried them into the yard, where I stood twenty yards back from the mound of earth where the deer was buried. The disturbed, clayey soil would be unlikely to dull the razor tips or deform the shafts. I first practiced drawing the bow and arrows from my quiver, which I had strapped over my right shoulder; next I nocked an arrow, raised and drew, then relaxed my fingers.

  The arrow flew laser-straight, driving itself into the grass in front of the doe’s grave. The next was high, and disappeared in the weeds at the treeline. But the next two struck home, burying themselves eight inches into the soil, and I knew that this new weapon would be at least as effective, for my purposes, as any firearm. Indeed, the bow felt so good in my hands—light and strong and perfectly balanced—that I retrieved the arrows and shot them all again. This time, three hit home, and one fell a few inches short. The accuracy of the equipment was impressive, and while I would never win an archery competition, I was certainly capable of defending myself against an enemy. I was surprised to discover that I was glad to have failed the background check, for, as effective and useful a weapon as a handgun was, it could not compare to the tactile immediacy and visceral satisfaction of the bow. I was, to put it mildly, a convert. With the muscles of my fingers and upper arm pleasurably stinging, I gathered up my arrows once again and went inside to suit up for my mission.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was walking along the shoulder of Lyssa Road, my pack full and tight against my back, and my quiver nestled alongside it. A light, warm breeze swept dead leaves across the empty road; the shadows of the trees swayed in sharp relief on the pavement. I reached the corner of Minerva Road and turned left, and soon I stood at the once-invisible arch of silver maples that marked the track to the rock.

  It was not without excitement that I peered now into the near-dark of the forest. For the first time since I scaled the rock, I had a challenge before me, a plan with a clear objective, and my hands and feet fairly tingled with anticipation. I could feel the years falling away from me, and my senses growing more acute, reaching far out in every direction. I felt, as I once had, like the lord of my kingdom.

  I must confess, however, that my certainty was curbed somewhat by the sickness and confusion of the past week, the unexpected obstacles I had confronted, and the despair I had felt in the face of them. Was it simply that there had been a time in my life when I was able to overcome obstacles, and that time was now over? Or were these experiences merely aberrations, unexpected turns in the path to success?

  In any event, now was not the time to dwell upon such things. Whatever doubts I might harbor about my purpose in life, the goal of the moment was clear—to hunt down the man who lived in the castle, discover what he wanted from me, and force him to cease his incursions into my territory.

  I hitched my pack higher onto my shoulders and stepped once again into the woods.

  Now that I knew the way, I had no difficulty making progress toward the castle and the rock. My hiking shoes were quiet on the mossy track, and I stepped with ease over any branches blocking my path. Within ten minutes I sensed that I was growing near, and I paused to get my bearings.

  My eyes, by now, had adjusted fully to the gloom, and it was possible to detect, up ahead in the distance, the sun-drenched glow of the rock face. A roughness at its base must have been the castle. I closed my eyes and listened carefully, making sure that I was not being tracked. Hearing nothing, I turned 360 degrees, studying everything within my view. But all that could be seen was the dense foliage, and the only motion was my own. Convinced now that I had not been followed, I turned to step off the path, so that I might continue my journey under cover.

  It was there that I very nearly put a premature end to the mission, and possibly to my life. For my foot had come to rest less than two inches from the paddle of an old-fashioned iron bear trap.

  At first, I thought I must be mistaken about the object’s identity. Such things were, as far as I knew, illegal, and at any rate were no longer in regular use. But closer examination revealed that, in fact, my foot had actually fallen directly into one of the stretched-open jaws. I backed up a step and found a stout branch, which I then used to lift off the twigs and leaves that had been concealing the device. A cursory look revealed that it had not merely been lying here for years, forgotten. The iron was clean and oiled, and the ground underneath it smoothed out, to make a flat surface.

  The trap had the look of a shark’s mouth, with the jaws forming a circle in the center, and two wings of folded steel, which served as springs. The springs ended in a ring which the jaws passed through; had I pressed the center paddle with my foot, the springs would have lost their grip on the base and unfolded, forcing the jaws shut. The base, a cross of iron, was attached to a chain, which had been staked into the ground with a stout peg.

  It would not do to have this lying here, unsprung. I found a thicker branch and, after taking a moment to brace my feet, drove its end into the paddle.

  The trap jumped off the ground, scattering leaves and dirt in all directions, and the jaws slammed shut, snapping my branch in two. I was quite startled, and may have cried out. I stood there for a fe
w long seconds, gazing at this inert pile of metal, its lethality spent, and imagining what I might have done had it broken my leg as it had the branch. Nothing, I suppose. I might have been able to pull the stake from the ground and drag myself back to the road, where I supposed I would have waited for a passing vehicle. But by then, the trapper would likely have emerged from hiding to get a look at his quarry.

  Of course this gave me an idea. I stepped back into the darkness of the trees, about twenty feet from the track, and about twenty feet east of where the trap had been set. I found a spot at the base of a tree, where a very narrow sight line allowed me to peer between two other tree trunks. It was through this gap that I could watch for the trapper.

  I waited. I am experienced in remaining perfectly still for long periods of time, so this was not a problem. After half an hour, though, I decided that no one would come after all, and I stood up in order to continue on my way.

  It was then that I saw him.

  He did not, as I had hoped, expose himself on the overgrown track. Instead, he appeared to have been doing exactly what I had been doing—sitting twenty feet back from the other side, and waiting. I could see little of him through the trees, and what I could make out seemed little more than a pale blur against the forest gloom, a suggestion of movement, a specter. I believed I could make out a narrow frame, and long arms, as he moved out of the shadows. But then he entered a shaft of sun that had wandered down through the canopy, and in an instant he was gone, subsumed by the light.

  I blinked, but my eyes had not deceived me. He was there, and now he had disappeared.

  My disappointment at the failure of my ruse was now compounded by profound unease. If this was Doctor Stiles, his expertise with these woods was even more advanced than I had imagined, and his powers in them almost supernatural. Furthermore, I had revealed myself before I even reached the castle, and thus any advantage I might have enjoyed was now lost. He would be expecting me now, and would be prepared. And what of the bear trap? There could be more—or another pit, or some other danger beyond imagining. I would have to move more carefully now, calculating the likely safety of any possible route. In addition, I had to outwit and outmaneuver a once-celebrated psychologist, beating the old man at his own game.

  Well, I did have the advantage of relative youth, and while I possessed no advanced degrees, I was nevertheless adept at second-guessing an enemy. It was likely that the Doctor had not anticipated this particular series of events—my almost, but not quite, falling into his trap, then springing it intentionally and spying on him—and so had planned according to other possibilities. Most likely, he would have planted his traps along the easiest route, assuming that I would fall prey to them if I missed the first. If so, he didn’t know me as well as he liked to think. My own experience with stealth, and evasive maneuvering, was considerable.

  I decided to proceed as I had been about to when I found the trap. Carefully, I continued southwest for some fifty yards, poking the ground in front of me with a branch and examining the forest floor for signs of recent activity. Several times I stopped and cleared a patch of ground, convinced I had come upon another trap or pit. But each time I was mistaken. It was better, I told myself, to be safe than sorry.

  Eventually I arrived at the southeast corner of the rock—the “toe” that had given me access to the summit, some days before. I peered at it from the cover of the woods, waiting to see if the Doctor, or anyone else, would pass by. Ten minutes later, no one had. The sunshine was bright and warm—I could feel the warm air rolling off the rock and into the trees—but I resisted its call. Instead, I continued to skirt the edge of the rock from deep within the forest, never letting it entirely out of my sight, but never revealing myself to whomever might be waiting in the clearing that surrounded it. It took me a good half hour to make my way clockwise to the northeast corner, and in that time I found no traps, and saw no sign of the Doctor.

  I was facing, from my vantage point just behind the treeline, the back of the rock’s “ankle.” Just to the east stood the castle’s northwest tower—one of the two lowest, and the most damaged by time and weather. The north curtain wall led farther off to the east, while the western wall hugged the nearly vertical cliff of the “ankle.”

  I say “hugged,” but in fact there was a narrow gap between the rock and the wall, owing to the natural unevenness of the cliff. This gap was approximately fifteen feet away from where I now stood. It was midafternoon, however, and the sun had sunk low enough so that the shadows of the trees covered the clearing. If I were to make for that gap, I would be exposed for the two seconds it would take me to cross the ten feet between the trees and the wall. But owing to the shadows, and my camouflage clothing, I believed I could make it without being detected. And since the figure I’d spied fleeing the scene of the foiled trap had been moving in a direction that would have taken him to this very spot, it was the last place from which he might be anticipating my approach. I decided to take the risk. Slowly, quietly, I moved close to the edge of the clearing; from behind a tall pine I surveyed the tower, the high cliff edge, the curtain wall. And then I ran.

  Nothing happened. I reached the gap and wedged myself into it, the quiver containing my bow and arrows chafing against my back. The gap was even wider than I had assumed it to be, and, after moving several feet into the darkness, I rested comfortably there for a moment, catching my breath.

  It was cold in the gap, with a strong smell of fungus and dead leaves. The ground beneath my feet was spongy, and the rock face felt massive and comforting behind me. I looked up at the strip of sky overhead. A hawk crossed it, circling. The only sound was that of my own breaths.

  My original plan had been to wait here for my quarry to reveal himself. But some impulse, fueled by instinct or memory, caused me to move further into the gap. The cliffside was as irregular as it had appeared from the clearing, but it was obvious now that a man could move all the way to the southwest tower from here without much difficulty. And now, as my eyes adjusted to the dim, I realized that, in fact, a man had, and did. The spongy ground was quite clean and even, covered by a bed of pine needles; a faint depression ran down the center of it, as though it was frequently tamped down by human feet. The castle wall was impressively straight, and tilted slightly inward; I assumed it must be thicker at the base than at the top, assuring that it could not be breached from the ground. I entertained, briefly, the notion that I might be able to scale the wall by pressing my back against the rock and “walking” up, but I could see this was impossible: the gap at the top might have been as wide as five feet.

  I pressed on, toward the center of the wall. A cloudbank had rolled in, and was now covering up the gap with a uniform gray; the light dimmed. It was then that I made an interesting discovery.

  I had just inched around a bulge in the rock face, and found that the gap just beyond it widened considerably, for a length of perhaps six feet. The ground here was well worn, particularly right at the foot of the wall.

  The key detail, however, was the wall itself. Its impenetrable mortared stone face was interrupted, at knee height, by what appeared to be a block of wood, snugly inserted in place of a single stone. It was approximately eighteen inches high by two feet wide, was depressed about two inches into the rock face, and bore a large iron handle, right in the center, fastened to its surface by large bolts.

  Of course. I immediately recognized the block as the way in. I crouched down and gripped the handle with both of my hands, bracing myself for a great deal of exertion. But when I pulled, the block slid smoothly toward me a full inch, spilling a bit of debris, crumbs of mortar and pine needles, to the ground at my feet.

  At this point I paused, considering. I had acted with the utmost care so far today, in spite of which I had nearly lost my leg. There was every reason to expect that someone, Doctor Avery Stiles himself, perhaps, now stood on the opposite side of this very wall, with one of his homemade poisoned arrows aimed at the hole. Even if he was not, he do
ubtless lurked somewhere in the compound, and would soon know that it had been breached. I had to proceed with care. I looked up once again at the lip of the curtain wall, then both ways down the length of the gap. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I slowly slid the block out of the wall and set it on the ground at my feet.

  The block was very heavy, about eight inches thick, with a handle on the inside identical in design, but less damaged by the elements. The reason was clear: as I had predicted, the wall was very thick at its foot, sheltering the handle from harm. Indeed, I discovered, hazarding a peek inside the opening, that it was at least four feet thick—so thick that it must have been difficult to detect, from inside, whether someone had moved the block.

  The hole—a tunnel, really—was smooth and even, and had obviously been part of the wall’s original design, rather than an afterthought dug out after construction. It was as neatly mortared as the exterior of the wall, and was more than wide enough to admit an adult male in good physical condition.

  There was no need to wait. I removed my pack and quiver, ducked down, and climbed inside. I moved forward slowly, making as little noise as possible; the air grew cold as the wall closed in around me. I was reminded of my trip to the cellar of my house, and breathed deeply and evenly, in an effort to dispel my fear.

  My head had soon reached the end, even as my ankles dangled out into the gap. I was looking out into a sheltered corner of the main courtyard that I had seen from the summit of the rock. A large piece of shrubbery grew directly before me, and I was reassured by the cover it offered. To the left was another wall, part of the large hall or dwelling I also remembered from before; the pieces of play or exercise equipment I remembered were also here, off to the right. I lay there for several minutes, looking and listening, and I detected no human presence besides my own.