“What is it, Si?”
“Did you hear anything?”
Margie turned her head, seemingly sniffing the air. “No.”
“It was nothing, I guess.” And now a dog, a real dog, was barking frantically; but very far away, no doubt on one of the nearby farms. Simon stared upward at the gray walls again.
“What were you going to say about their grandfather?”
“There was some kind of fire or explosion here one night and he was killed. That was before I was born, I think.”
And he led the way on up. Now the path, working its way across a hillside grown stony, almost a cliff, grew steep enough to require very careful footwork in a couple of places. Anyone not reasonably agile and confident might feel better clambering on all fours at these spots, and even an athlete might reach for a nearby branch or treetrunk as an aid to steadiness. At the trickiest climbing turn, a wooden handrail that Simon remembered had now disappeared. Only the wooden roots of it were barely visible, like decayed tooth-stumps in the rich mossy soil.
And here in places the limestone bones of the earth stuck out, their naturally squarish shapes serving the climber briefly as stairs. He’d once hurt a toe on one of them, Simon remembered… but right now he didn’t want to dwell on that previous ascent; that whole mysterious day. Right now he and Margie were here as workers with a job to do. It was probably the only way he could ever have brought himself to come back here at all; and he had long wanted to come back, to face certain things again, to try to rediscover them… Simon was in good physical shape, he took pains to stay that way, but still his breath had quickened with the climb… as he’d felt it quicken on that other, mysterious day…
When the path bent in it’s fourth switchback Simon looked down again toward the landing. He wanted to make sure that the canoe was still there. The screen of intervening greenery was now much thicker, but he could still see glints of aluminum. And the kid…
For just a moment, when the breeze stirred intervening branches in the proper way, Simon caught a glimpse of dark human hair, tanned human skin. For just a moment he saw clearly, though only partially, the figure he had glimpsed on the island, beckoning. It was Vivian, naked, waiting for him.
Margie was looking down too, doubtless trying to see what had so interested Simon. He moved back a step to stand for a moment with closed eyes. He swore to himself with silent savagery that he was not going to let his eyes or his mind or whatever it was play tricks on him. Never again. Could there be something about this place, this physical location, something chemical or atmospheric that brought on hallucinations, at least in certain susceptible people? How was he ever going to be able to sort out the truth, the fantasy, the dream, about his last days here if even now he was still subject to—
Simon opened his eyes. Margie was watching him with curiosity, but all she said was: “Looks like our guide’s still waiting for us.”
“I couldn’t see too well through all the branches. What did you—?”
Still her eyes probed at Simon. “He’s still sitting there reading. That’s about all I could make out.”
“Ah.” Simon nodded, and faced uphill again, and climbed. Toward a real meeting with Vivian. Just as on that unforgettable day when he’d climbed alone. All he could really think about, then or now, was her. He wondered now if anything about that damned crazy experience had been real. Damn her, damn her anyway. He was suddenly angry at Vivian, angrier than he had ever suspected he might become at this late date. Whatever had really happened to him on that day fifteen years ago, it was a wonder that it hadn’t done him permanent psychological damage.
And maybe it had. Simon knew a sudden chilled feeling deep in his gut. Maybe it had. Could it have anything to do with his being still unmarried?
Of course there were a lot of people, no more damaged than anyone else, who for one reason or another just didn’t want to get married. Margie was one. Simon deliberately fell back a step to watch her climb ahead of him, her trim body moving smoothly in jeans and longsleeved shirt. Her evening’s costume, along with a few other items that might be useful, was in her shoulder bag.
They had reached the fifth, penultimate switchback of the path. Here just as it approached the turn the path sloped briefly downward. Looking up from here you could see the tall hedge, almost as impenetrable as a wall, that marked off the rear of the castle grounds proper from the surrounding woods. From this angle the hedge was tall enough to block sight of the forbidding stone walls beyond it. At the tip of the switchback loop Simon halted momentarily. From this point a branching path, even fainter than the one they followed, went off on a level course to the right. After going a few yards in that direction it curved around a protruding limestone shoulder of the bluff and vanished completely. Not, Simon realized, that the branching path was still really visible at all; it was just that he knew that it was there.
He glanced round quickly. As far as he could tell, Margie and he were still utterly alone. Then he quickly led her along the unseen trail to the right. Not only had grass and weeds completely overgrown the way during the last fifteen years, but now the new branches of small trees had to be put aside. And here in the deeper shade were more mosquitoes.
Simon moved around a second limestone shoulder, perhaps thirty yards from the place where the pathways had branched. And came to a stop. At least he knew now that he hadn’t dreamed or imagined this part. Before them was the grotto, and the cave.
Within and against the natural limestone face of the cliff, the two concentric arches of the grotto had been constructed so that a natural small cave was at their center. It had all been done in the time of Grandfather Littlewood, of course, along with the rest of the construction. A knee-high rustic wall of stone surrounded the small area paved with flagstones before the grotto, an area centered on a stone construction that Simon in his earlier childhood had taken for a simple picnic table. He couldn’t remember the first time that he had seen it; but he couldn’t forget the last. He approached this central tabular structure now and stood staring down at it, for the moment oblivious to all else. It was a little less than waist high, built solidly of stones that on second glance were not quite the same in color and texture as the flags below, or the castle walls of which one corner was now partially visible through greenery above. The top of the table was flat, circular, and perhaps eight feet across. In its center, as if to provide the only reason for its existence, was mounted an ancient-looking sundial, a spherical cage of green-patinaed metal; probably copper, thought Simon now. An all but completely illegible inscription ran round the sundial’s metal base.
Simon didn’t look long at the dial or its inscription, though. On the flat stones of the tabletop faint brownish stains were visible. There was no telling how old the stains were or what had made them.
“What weird statues, Si.”
He looked up; he had actually managed to forget the statues, along with piled clamshells and much else. There were six or eight pieces, mostly life size, cast concrete or carved marble, disposed on pedestals made for them around the little paved court before the grotto. Staring at a crude, figleafed imitation of Michaelangelo’s David, he said: “The story goes that there was an artists’ colony of some kind in the woods near here, when Old Man Littlewood was putting up his house. He just about bought out their stock of things they’d done for practice, stuff that was heavy and hard to move and that no one else wanted to buy. He didn’t want it in the house, evidently, but it was good enough for decoration out here in this… whatever this is… out here in the woods.”
“They’re weird.”