The Magicians And Mrs. Quent Part 25

Had she been listening to Mr. Quent and me in the front hall that day? It could only be so. That anything in this house could be private from her was impossible. It seemed she was always around every corner or just on the other side of every door.

"Why would we go to the Wyrdwood?" I said in a light tone. She did not answer. I left the kitchen with the tray.

We did not go outside that day, or the next, or the next after that, which was a very long day, though it may as well have been a greatnight, for a fog had settled in around Heathcrest once more, turning all to gloom.

It was late on that long, dreary day when, for want of exercise, I took to exploring the manor again. Since the dawn twenty-two hours ago, we had risen, had a day's worth of activity, eaten supper, retired to our beds, and awakened again, and still true night was ten hours off. The children had not been able to stop yawning during our second breakfast of the lumenal, and I knew there was little point in resuming our studies. I sent them back to their room to amuse themselves in what quiet way they wished. And I wandered through dim halls and silent chambers, running my fingers over dusty tables, leaving behind marks like secret runes.

I soon found myself in the corridor with the locked door. I had pa.s.sed this way several times in my wanderings, and each time I had resisted trying the handle. Mrs. Darendal had said the room was forbidden to anyone but Mr. Quent. All the same, she had been in there. I wondered if he knew.

Perhaps it was a result of my recent disagreement with him, or perhaps it was the restiveness I felt, but this time I could not withstand the temptation of curiosity. I tried the handle. As before it was locked. After looking around to make sure I was alone, I knelt and peered through the keyhole. All I saw was dim green light.

Resigned that so great a curiosity could never be satisfied through so small an aperture, I rose. It was time to see to the children. However, as I started toward the stairs, a jingling drifted up from below. I was in no mood for another encounter with her. Quickly, I ducked into a room I knew to be empty and, closing the door all but a crack, peered out.

Mrs. Darendal appeared at the top of the stairs. Her hair and face were drawn up as tightly as usual; her grimness, then, was not just for the benefit of others. As I watched through the crack, the housekeeper went to the locked door. Despite all her talk of obeying the master's will, she seemed to defy it with great frequency. She glanced both ways down the corridor, then took a ring of keys from her pocket, fit one in the lock, and opened the door.

A crash sounded from below.

I winced, for I was certain I knew the source of the noise. Just before coming upstairs, I had observed Lanna in the front hall, dusting near the fireplace. As I recalled, the mantel bore several porcelain vases. Mrs. Darendal looked up, her mouth a thin line. She shut the door, twisted the key in the lock, and marched downstairs. I waited until she was gone, then stepped into the corridor.

My thought was to go to the front hall. I did not think Mrs. Darendal would scold Lanna too harshly if I was present. However, as I pa.s.sed the door where the housekeeper had stood moments before, I halted. The door was not square against the frame. I tried the handle; it was locked, but even as I touched it, the door creaked open an inch. In her haste, Mrs. Darendal had not latched the door properly before turning the key.

Not only did she transgress upon Mr. Quent's rules, she was careless with his secrets! I gripped the handle, meaning to pull the door shut, to go downstairs, and to see that Lanna was well.

The door swung open before me.

That I had pushed it rather than pulling it shut was the only possibility, but I could not recall doing it. My heart quickened. I knew I must leave, that I should close the door and go downstairs.

I stood amid wavering green light, and the door shut behind me.

It took my eyes several moments to adjust to the dimness of the room. The light filtering through the ivy-covered window was dappled and shaded, like the light in a forest.

Gradually, shapes came into focus around me. While the other rooms on this floor were filled with the flotsam and jetsam of forgotten years, all shrouded in white, the furnishings in this room were uncovered and neatly arranged. There were several handsome chairs and a table that bore an a.s.sortment of books, old coins, magnifying lenses, and polished stones. On one side of the room was a pianoforte, trimmed with gilded wood, which Lily would have given her best ribbons to be allowed to play.

I told myself sternly that I should go. However, the crime had already been committed; leaving now would not alter that, and Lanna's mishap would occupy Mrs. Darendal for several minutes. Knowing I would never have another opportunity, I made a quick survey of the room.

It was wrong of me; I will not try to defend myself. But my employer was so silent and such a cipher to me. If by examining the objects in the room I might come to understand him a little better, it might help to make our relationship not warmer, I thought, but perhaps less strained.

I moved through the flickering green light. A pair of portraits hung on one wall above a credenza. At once I recognized the man on the right.

It had to have been done years ago, for he appeared young in the painting. Indeed, he looked little older than I did. I could not say he was any handsomer then than now. He had the same thick, curling brown hair and the same deep-set eyes and overhanging brow. Yet he was clean shaven in the painting, and his expression, while serious, was not grim. It was, if not a comely or cheerful face, then at least a goodly one. I wondered what had altered him so over the years.

My gaze went to the hands. He had posed with his right hand resting on a book and his left hand tucked in his coat pocket. So that could not be the cause of his change.

I turned my attention to the other portrait. In the painting, a young woman stood in a garden. Her hair was gold, and her eyes were the same color as her leaf-green dress. It struck me at once that she looked akin to me. The likeness was far from perfect, of course; our faces bore a very different character. I knew mine tended to be fine and pointed. As sharp and pretty as the stroke of a pen, you once said of my looks, Father-and coming from anyone else I should have been mortified.

Her face-indeed, the whole of her-was softer and rounder than mine. Her smile was mild, I thought, and very sweet. All the same, no one would have thought twice if the two of us had stood together and presented ourselves as cousins. I wondered who she was. Her portrait hung next to Mr. Quent's, but there seemed little order to the paintings in the house. For all I knew they had lived centuries apart.

Propped up on the credenza was a smaller painting in an ebony frame. Only it wasn't a painting at all. It was too crisp, too perfectly clear for that. It was an impression, created by an illusionist by willing the image in his mind onto an engraving plate. In it, three young men posed in their regimentals, rifles in their hands and Murghese turbans on their heads. Palm fronds drooped from above. Their pale Altanian faces were peeling from sunburn, and they grinned as if they had just gotten away with something grand and improbable, arms draped around one another's shoulders. A small plaque mounted on the frame read THE THREE LORDS OF AM-ANARU.

Fascinating as the impression was, I felt my time growing short and so hastened on through the room. There were shelves of books, some of them very old, given their worn spines. I would have liked to stop and peruse them, but I had not yet explored the end of the room near the window. I glanced back at the door-still shut-and hurried to the far side of the chamber. Here I found a wooden cabinet as well as the only object in the room that was draped with a cloth. By its shape and size I supposed it to be another painting, large in size, on an easel. I dismissed it-I had seen enough dim old paintings in this house!-and directed my attention at the cabinet instead.

As I did, a queer sensation came over me. I had the feeling I had seen a similar thing before. The cabinet was narrow, about four feet high, and contained several drawers. Its spindly legs were bent, and the sides bore deep scrollwork that looked like nothing so much as s.h.a.ggy hair. The grooved trim at the top suggested a pair of sweptback horns, and the front of each of the drawers was carved with a single closed eye.

Though the cabinet was quite hideous, I found myself drawn to it. I tried the drawers, but none of them would open; nor was there a lock or latch on any of them. I examined the cabinet more closely. As I did, I again felt sure I had seen something like it before.

No-not like it. Rather, I was certain I had seen this very object at some prior time. Yet how could that be? I touched the top of the cabinet, brushing away a patina of dust. Three letters were carved into the top, surrounded by swirling lines and moons and stars.

How long I stood there frozen, I do not know. I stared at the letters until the lines around them seemed to writhe and the moons and stars revolved in orbit. That those three initials should appear here, in the house of one who had been his friend, was beyond what chance would allow.

G.O.L.

Gaustien Orandus Lockwell.

I had seen this cabinet before. My memories of that time were dim, like the paintings that hung on the walls of Heathcrest Hall. However, if I thought back, I could picture it in one of the rooms at the top of the stairs, beyond a door carved like the drawers with a single shut eye. It had been at the old house on Durrow Street, and the cabinet was yours, Father.

A memory came to me-an unusually vivid and clear recollection. I saw you, Father, in that upstairs room at Durrow Street. I must have been very small, for you seemed to tower above my vantage point. You stood in front of a cabinet-this cabinet-and I do not think you knew I was there, standing just outside the door. I watched as you touched the drawers, pressing the eye on each one- A distant boom jolted me from my recollection. It took me a moment to understand that what I had heard was the sound of the door shutting in the front hall below. I looked out the window, peering between the screen of leaves, and a coldness gripped me. Through the ivy I could just make out Jance in the courtyard, leading a ma.s.sive chestnut gelding toward the stables.

He had returned! That I must fly was my only thought. Yet even as I turned from the window, I hesitated, looking again at the cabinet. Before I could even think what I was doing, I reached out and pressed the eye carved into one of the drawers.

There was an audible click. When I withdrew my hand, the eye was open, staring outward.

Again I looked out the window, but the courtyard was empty. I listened but heard no sounds coming from outside the room. Now holding my breath, I pressed another eye, and another, my hand moving in the same order I had observed your own doing all those years ago.

As I pressed the last eye, there was a louder noise, as of some mechanism within the cabinet turning. I hesitated, then tried the topmost drawer. It slid open.

The drawer was empty. In quick succession I opened the others, only to find they were similarly devoid of contents-all except for the bottommost drawer. In it I discovered a single object: a small box of black wood that fit easily in my palm when I picked it up. Despite its small size, it was heavy. A thin line suggested a lid that could be removed, but there was no sign of a hinge or latch. A silver symbol was inlaid in the surface: an eye inscribed within a triangle.

A noise emanated from below me: a thudding, as of heavy boots. My dread was redoubled. I could not be seen coming from this room! I pushed the drawers of the cabinet shut, and as I did, the eye on each one closed with a snick. It was only when all were closed that I realized I still held the small box in my hand.

There was no time to replace it. I tucked the box into the pocket of my dress, then turned to dash across the room. However, in my haste my foot caught the end of the cloth that draped the easel. I stumbled, tugging the cloth, and with a whisper it slipped to the floor.

Dismay filled me. I could not leave it cast down like that; my presence here would be revealed. I turned to take up the cloth and throw it back over the easel.

A forest stood before me.

The painting was so large, I could have walked through it as if it were a door. And it seemed like a kind of door to me. Perhaps it was how vividly the trees had been rendered by the artist's brush-from the moss on their rough bark to the smallest crooked twig-or perhaps it was how the green light in the room seemed not so much to fall upon the painting as fall into it, flickering among the bent trunks and mottled leaves, suffusing the image with a lurid glow that mere paint could never have produced.

The trees seemed to sway back and forth in the painting of the Wyrdwood, but it was only an illusion caused by the wavering light. I took a step closer, and a certainty came over me that the painting depicted not just any stand of the ancient forest but rather the very patch that stood to the east of Heathcrest. The trees looked just the same, as did the mossy stone wall.

It occurred to me that I should go. I wanted to, but I could not turn away from the painting. The air deepened, as if a premature twilight fell, and I let out a gasp. Now that I was closer, there was no mistaking it-the trees did sway back and forth in the painting, as if tossed by a wind. It was no illusion, nor was it a hallucination brought on by fever, like that night at Lady Marsdel's. The shabby leaves trembled; the branches bent and dipped, reaching over the stone wall that bound the trees and held them back.

I heard the footsteps again, just outside the room now. The sound of a deep, m.u.f.fled voice pa.s.sed through the door. Still, I could not turn away from the painting. There was something caught among the branches of the trees. It was pale and fluttering, like a piece of gauze that had been carried upward by a wind and had caught in the twisted branches. I leaned closer.

My breathing ceased. A rushing noise filled my head. It was not a piece of cloth in the trees.

She wore a white dress. Dark branches wove a coc.o.o.n around the woman, cradling her high above the ground, coiling around her arms and legs, caressing her white skin. Leaves tangled in her fair hair. I bent so close that my face nearly touched the painting. But would it indeed encounter canvas if I moved forward another inch? Or would I find myself in the wood, like her, caught among the branches of the trees?

In the painting, the woman turned her head toward me. I caught the edge of a black smile and the glint of green eyes.

Pain stabbed at my head. The rushing noise was my own blood surging violently through my brain. The emerald light pressed in all around, filling my eyes, my nose, my mouth, suffocating me. Through the roaring I heard the sound of a door being thrown open and a stern voice calling out.

There was a distant noise, and I knew it was the sound of my own body striking the floor. For a moment all was a haze of green light.

Then, darkness.

W HEN I OPENED my eyes again, the green light was gone. The only illumination came from a single candle. I sat up and found myself on a sofa in the front hall. A dark shape hulked nearby: one of the hunting trophies, I supposed-a s.h.a.ggy brown bear.

The shape moved toward me.

I had little time to feel fear, for as the figure stepped into the circle of light I saw that it was not a bear. Still, the comparison was not unfitting, for there was an ursine quality to his curling brown mane and to his heavy, rounded shoulders and the weight of his step.

"Mr. Quent," I said. My voice was faint.

"Miss Lockwell," came his rumbling reply.

Now fear did come over me, nor was it a fanciful dread of shadows. I remembered the secret room, and the painting, and the suffocating green light. I remembered falling and then, just as the darkness came, a pair of strong arms bearing me up off the floor.

"Mr. Quent," I said again. It was wrong of me to go into the room. I do not know what possessed me. I can offer no defense. I can say only that I promise to never return there.

But I could not draw in the breath these words required. My heart fluttered in my chest like a bird in a cage.

"Perhaps you should lie back down, Miss Lockwell. I do not believe you are fit to rise yet."

His voice was low and measured, and I wondered at it. Why did he not berate me for my transgression? I knew him to be capable of the harshest words of reproof. Why did he not use them upon me now? Certainly this time I deserved them!

Astonished, I could only do as he suggested and lie back down on the sofa. The light of the candle grew and shrank by turns.

For several minutes I lay there, motionless. Stunned, really. All the while he stood just on the edge of the light. He might have made for a foreboding figure, only somehow he wasn't. It was as if his form was a solid column, a b.u.t.tress that held the darkness back. At last the throbbing in my head receded and the candle's flame burned more steadily.

Alarm cut through the dullness in my brain, and I sat back up. "The children! I left them alone. I must see to them at once."

"There is no need for that," he said. "Mrs. Darendal gave them their supper, and I have put them in their beds."

"You!" I gasped.

"You seem very surprised. I do not know why. They are quite easy to carry. Easier than yourself, Miss Lockwell. You seem small enough, yet you are something of a burden to bear."

I shrank back against the sofa, mortified. Of course he had carried me. How else could I have gotten down here?

"How poorly you must regard me," I said at last. I looked down at my hands in my lap. "But know it is no more poorly than I regard myself. I cannot explain. I don't know what I was thinking. But I wasn't thinking. I had been exploring the house, as I sometimes do." I realized belatedly that admitting to snooping was not likely to help my cause. "It's what I do for exercise, you see, when I cannot take the children outside. Perhaps the long confinement indoors has had an effect upon my nerves. It must have been so. And the light in the room was so strange! It was all green, coming through the leaves. When I saw the painting of the wood, it seemed to-"

I halted. There was no need for him to think me weak of mind as well as weak of character.

I sat that way for a minute or more, and he said nothing. At last I forced myself to look up at him. I knew my cause was lost-that when it was day again I must take my bags and leave. So what more harm could it cause to ask the one question on my mind?

"The woman in the painting," I said to him. "The portrait that hung next to yours. Who is she?"

I saw his left hand stir in his coat pocket. "It is Mrs. Quent in that picture. My wife, that is."

I should have felt fear at my imminent dismissal. Instead, I felt sorrow. I would go, but he would still be here, alone in this echoing house. Nor could there be any hope she would join him; now that I knew she had existed, the evidence of her absence was everywhere around us, in all the shadows, in all the empty silences.

I made myself look at his face. "When did she pa.s.s?"

"Years ago," he said, and that was all.

For a time we were silent. At last, feeling stronger, I pushed myself up from the sofa and found I could stand, if just.

"Miss Lockwell," he addressed me in a somber tone. "I think-"

There was no need for him to speak the words. "I understand perfectly, Mr. Quent. You will not get any argument from me." I gave a rueful smile. "Nor from Mrs. Darendal, I would think. And though you owe me nothing, all the same I will ask you for something-that you allow me to be the one to tell the children."

The lines in his brow deepened. "To tell them what?"

My mind was indeed dull! Had I muttered the words instead of spoken clearly? "To tell them that I have been dismissed from your service. Is that not what you intend?"

"What I intend, Miss Lockwell," he said with a serious look, "is to find you a better source of exercise."

And I sat back down on the sofa.

T HREE DAYS LATER, when I was recovered from the incident in the upstairs room, Mr. Quent went to the village with Jance. When they returned two hours later, Jance was leading a gray mare.

Mr. Quent called me outside; I went eagerly, leaving the children with instructions to continue their reading. The mare was a pretty little thing, with a muzzle like twilight velvet.

"Mr. Quent," I said at last, trying to contain my delight. "This is too much."

"Do you know how to ride, Miss Lockwell?"

I could only confess that I did not.

"You need not fear," he said. "She is a gentle creature."

Before I could say anything more, he had lifted me into the saddle. This seemed barely an effort for him. Despite his words that day, it could only have been an easy thing for him to carry me downstairs. My cheeks burned, and I felt fresh shame at what I had done, but I bent my head under the guise of stroking the mare's silvery mane.

"Hold them like this," he said, putting the reins in my hands-an action that required both of his own. His fingers were rough but not ungentle, and the dexterity of his left hand appeared little reduced by the lack of the fourth and fifth fingers. Once he was done showing me how to hold the reins, that hand was quickly returned to his coat pocket.

Those first few times I rode, I went at a slow walk, with Jance leading the mare by the bridle. However, she was such a docile creature there could be no chance of my falling. It was not long before I was able to ride on my own and even urge her into a trot if I felt brave.

Soon I looked forward to those rare hours when I could send the children to play or rest quietly in their room. Jance always seemed to know when I would need her saddled, and within moments of leaving the house I would be riding out from Heathcrest, over moor and down, reveling in the feel of the wind against my face. Sometimes I felt I could ride all the way to Invarel. It was a foolish notion, but when I was riding I forgot the confining dimness, the stifling silence that dwelled within Heathcrest.

"You are getting very freckled," Mrs. Darendal said to me one night as she brought a plate of parsnips into the dining room. Since my collapse she had been all but silent in my presence, but it seemed the urge to direct me had overcome her reticence. "You should not go riding so much."

I smiled, determined to be pleasant. "I wear my bonnet."

"A bonnet cannot protect you from the wind. It will ruin your complexion. It is already hardened, I can see."

"I see no such thing," Mr. Quent said. Whatever his business was, it had not called him away of late, and he had dined with us more frequently. "In fact, I would say I have never seen her look so well."

The housekeeper treated him to a look I was glad not to have received myself. Mr. Quent, however, seemed not to notice, and Mrs. Darendal retreated.