Crystal Gardens

  Horace still did not know precisely what had happened in the maze, but he had managed to piece together most of the story from his own memories and what little Burton had told him before collapsing from the fever.

  Horace crossed the small bedroom to the dressing table. He soaked another cloth in the bowl of cold water he had placed there, squeezed out the excess moisture and went back to the bed. He removed the cloth he had placed on Burton’s hot brow a few minutes earlier and replaced it with the cool one.

  He dropped the used cloth into the bowl and went to the small chair beside the bed. He sat down with a weary sigh and remembered the harrowing events of the night.

  “Everything went wrong right from the start, Burton. But, then, how could we have known that Sebastian was able to navigate the maze, let alone that he was already inside it when we entered?”

  His recollection of what exactly had transpired inside the maze was blurry. He remembered turning around to see Sebastian standing behind him in the passageway, and then he had been overcome with waking nightmares so terrible his mind had sought refuge in unconsciousness. He had awakened some time later to find himself on the cold, damp ground of the lane, looking up at the moon. Burton was calling his name.

  “Wake up, Horace. You must wake up. I cannot carry you any farther. Something is happening to me. I feel weak and feverish. That damn energy storm affected my senses. You will have to walk the rest of the way back to the cottage.”

  Horace had stumbled to his feet, vaguely astonished to find himself alive. Burton, however, had been barely able to remain standing. Horace had pulled his brother’s arm around his own shoulders and together they had managed to stagger nearly half a mile to the end of the lane. There Burton had collapsed.

  Somehow Horace had summoned the strength to sling Burton over his shoulder and carry him the rest of the way back to the small cottage. By then, the fever was raging.

  Horace had applied cold compresses all night but there was no sign of improvement. Shortly before dawn, desperate now, he had walked into town and awakened the doctor who, for double the usual fee, had agreed to attend the sick man.

  The doctor had taken himself off very shortly thereafter, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen a fever like this” had been his parting words. “I cannot help your brother, sir.”

  He had advised continuing with the cold compresses and gave Horace a bottle of laudanum in the event that Burton showed signs of great pain. But it was clear that he did not expect the patient to recover.

  “I failed you, Burton.” Horace dropped his head into his hands. “You were always the one who looked after me, right up until the last. You carried me out of that maze and out of those damn gardens. But now you need me and there is nothing I can do.”

  Burton stirred, lost in some fever dream. He did not open his eyes.

  Twenty-one

  Lucas made love to her again there in the sparkling waters of the bath. Afterward he carried her up the steps and used his shirt as a towel to dry both of them. He was reluctant to see this night end, he thought. He would have been happy to spend another day or two or the rest of his life in this idyllic place with Evangeline. But that was not possible.

  When he finished wiping the last of the glittering droplets off of Evangeline’s soft, delightfully flushed body, he crumpled the shirt into a wet heap and set about getting dressed. Evangeline quickly donned her nightgown and wrapper and looked down the long hall toward the entrance.

  “It must be dawn by now,” she said.

  “Yes.” Lucas fastened his trousers and sat down on a stone bench to pull on his boots. “Now to find out what happened to Stone and our two uninvited guests.”

  “I do hope Mr. Stone is all right,” Evangeline said.

  “It would take a lot to kill him.”

  “Do you think that the intruders might have survived the explosion in the maze?”

  “We did,” he reminded her. He picked up the miniature lantern and took another look at it, wondering again how to work it and what it was designed to do. “But if they needed this device to navigate the maze, then it’s possible that they are still wandering around somewhere inside. If so, they’ll keep for a few more hours. I’ll deal with them after I get you back to the house.”

  “What will we do if that energy storm has not yet dissipated?” Evangeline asked.

  He contemplated the possibilities and gave her a slow smile. “If that is the case we may be obliged to spend another night here.”

  Evangeline looked alarmed. “Good grief.”

  “Is the thought so terrible?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You are teasing me again.”

  “Yes, I am.” He walked to her and kissed her brow. “Sadly, I’m afraid that the storm will have died out by now and, much as I would enjoy spending another night here with you, I strongly suspect that I will have no excuse for doing so.”

  She blushed furiously and became very busy tying the sash of her wrapper. “Yes, well, do hurry, Lucas. We must get back to the house before anyone awakens. It would not do for your aunt and your sister to see us returning from the gardens at this hour, to say nothing of the servants.” She looked at his naked chest. “Certainly not in this condition.”

  He grew serious once more. “I do not want you to be embarrassed.”

  “Then for heaven’s sake, hurry.”

  Evangeline stepped into her slippers, turned smartly on one heel and started down the hall toward the entrance of the baths. It occurred to Lucas that they had not yet talked about what must happen when they emerged. He had meant to have the discussion before they exited the maze but now did not seem to be the appropriate time. There were other priorities.

  Evangeline stopped and looked down the stone passage to the third pool chamber.

  “What is it?” Lucas asked.

  “There must be a great deal of energy inside that room,” Evangeline said. “I can sense some of it from here.”

  “You’re no doubt picking up the currents of the energy gate that bars the entrance. It’s very powerful. As far as I know, Uncle Chester never found a way through it, although he was obsessed with getting into that room.”

  “Why?”

  “According to the old records it is the strongest of the three pools. Very few people have ever been able to enter the chamber.”

  Evangeline changed course and went along the passage. Lucas followed her to the door of the chamber.

  “The door is new.”

  “Chester installed it. But the real barrier is the energy storm on the other side.”

  Evangeline flattened her hand on the door. “The energy behind it feels old.”

  “It is. That storm gate was in place when Uncle Chester bought the property.”

  Evangeline took her hand away from the door and looked at him with haunted eyes. “I think there is something important hidden in this chamber, but I have no idea what it is. It may be simply the raw power of the pool in that room.”

  “We do not have time to deal with it now. We will come back some other time.”

  Evangeline studied the door. “Soon, Lucas.”

  “Soon.”

  He took her hand and drew her away from the Vision Pool chamber.

  Once through the veil of energy he discovered that dawn had, indeed, arrived. In fact, the sun was already well above the horizon. The disorienting effects of the energy in the baths, combined with the broken pocket watch, had caused him to miscalculate the hour, he thought.

  But that excuse did not hold. He smiled to himself, aware that he had no one but himself to blame for the delayed departure. He had been unable to resist making love to Evangeline one last time.

  The Night Garden was a different place by day. The phosphorescent effect was almost imperceptible unless he raised his talent a few degrees. The night-blooming flowers had folded their petals against the sun. They would not open again until full night had descended. But the dark, ominous currents of energy that seethed in the at
mosphere were still there, lurking just below the surface.

  “Be careful,” Lucas warned. “Just because things look safer in daylight, it doesn’t mean that they are. If anything, this place is actually more dangerous by day precisely because the hazards are less obvious to the senses.”

  Evangeline gave a cluster of orchids a wary look. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to pick any flowers to take back and press between the pages of a book of poetry.”

  “Have you ever in your life pressed any posies between the leaves of a book of poetry?”

  “Well, no,” she admitted. “But the heroine in my novel does so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the villain, whom I had intended to make the hero, gave her flowers after a stolen embrace. She thinks she will never see him again so she preserves one of the roses in the book of poetry that he also gave her. But recently I realized I had picked the wrong man for the hero.”

  “You got the hero and villain of your own story mixed up?”

  “Things like that happen to a writer,” she said. “All part of the creative process.”

  “I see.”

  “Luckily I got matters sorted out before I finished chapter four. That is the problem when one writes for the newspapers, you see: One is always stuck with the facts as they were set down in the previous chapters. There is no going back and revising because the earlier chapters are already in print.”

  “It sounds stressful,” Lucas said.

  “Not nearly as stressful as almost getting murdered at the top of a staircase.”

  He smiled. “Good point.”

  The energy storm in the maze had receded. The currents of power were still disorienting but they felt normal once again. Lucas led the way back through the labyrinth to the corridor where the explosion had occurred.

  Evangeline looked around apprehensively. “I don’t see any bodies. Surely the vegetation in this place could not have been able to consume two people by now.”

  “No. It takes two or three days to digest a creature the size of a rat. It would require a longer period of time for two bodies to vanish. Either the intruders are still blundering around somewhere inside this place or they escaped.”

  “You rendered the shorter man unconscious. He would not have awakened in time to flee.”

  “The other man could have carried him away from the scene,” Lucas said.

  “Wouldn’t he have been overcome by the effects of the explosion as you were?”

  “Yes, but perhaps not immediately. You will recall that I managed to make it to the bathhouse.”

  “But that was as far as you could go,” she said. “I cannot imagine the tall man could have gotten more than a short distance away from the gardens, especially if he was carrying his companion.”

  “In which case, we may find one or both men somewhere nearby, perhaps still on the grounds.”

  They emerged from the maze a short time later. There were no bodies near the entrance. There was, however, a sizable crowd milling around on the terrace. Stone, Florence, Beth, Molly and a large number of Molly’s Gillingham relatives had gathered, many of them armed with picks, axes and scythes.

  Molly saw them first. Relief lit up her face. “Mr. Sebastian, Miss Ames. You’re alive.”

  Stone turned swiftly. His dour expression lightened. “Mr. Sebastian.”

  “Lucas,” Florence exclaimed. “Thank heavens you are both safe. I feared the worst.”

  “I did not,” Beth said. She smiled at Lucas. “I knew that you would emerge safely and that you would bring Miss Ames with you. I told everyone that you would wait until the sun was up before you attempted to leave the Night Garden. But Stone wanted to be prepared to go in after you if you didn’t show up.”

  Lucas studied the crowd. “What were you intending to do? Tear apart the maze?”

  “It was either that or try to burn it down and I didn’t think we could get much of a blaze going in that solid mass of greenery,” Stone said.

  “No,” Lucas said. Relief whispered through him. It was a very good thing Stone and the others had not tried to burn down the maze or hack it to pieces. The foliage had far too many ways of protecting itself. He looked at Molly and the rest of the Gillinghams. “I thank all of you for coming out to rescue us. I’m glad for everyone’s sake that it was not necessary to try to destroy the maze, but I will not forget that you were willing to take on the task. I am fortunate to have such fine neighbors. Please know that if I can repay any of you in any way you have only to ask.”

  There was a round of “Think nothing of it, Mr. Sebastian,” and “Happy to be of service” and “Glad you and the lady are both safe.”

  And then an awkward hush fell on the crowd. Lucas realized they were all trying very hard not to stare at Evangeline who stood beside him in her nightclothes.

  Florence reacted first. “Beth, you will take Miss Ames up to her room. I’m sure she is quite exhausted.”

  “Yes, of course.” Beth gave Evangeline a sympathetic smile. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Thank you,” Evangeline said.

  Clearly relieved at the prospect of escape, she started to walk toward the house with Beth.

  “Yes,” Lucas said, raising his voice just enough to make certain that all of the Gillinghams could hear him. “My fiancée has been through an ordeal, as I’m sure you can imagine. Please see to it that she is properly taken care of. She’ll be wanting tea and some rest.”

  For an instant everyone, including Evangeline, froze. She was the first one to break free of the trance. She whirled and looked at Lucas as though he had just pronounced her doom.

  “What have you done?” she said softly.

  She whirled and fled toward the house as if all of the hounds of hell were at her heels.

  Twenty-two

  I failed you, Mr. Sebastian.” Stone stood stiffly in front of the library desk. “You assigned me to keep watch last night and instead I let those bastards put me to sleep like a baby.”

  “Not quite like a baby.” Lucas picked up the small lantern and held it to the light of the gas lamp that hung over the desk. “This weapon generates paranormal radiation of some sort. You had no way to shield yourself from the effects of the currents.”

  Stone scowled at the device. “It was just a bloody lantern. I remember that the light was greenish. But when I looked directly at it, I suddenly couldn’t move. And that’s the last thing I remember.”

  “The light was generated by this crystal.” Lucas opened the small glass door of the lantern and took a closer look at the dull gray crystal inside. “I can sense the power in it but I’m not sure how to activate it. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to run proper experiments. We have priorities at the moment. Identifying the intruders is at the top of the list.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lucas set the lantern aside. He waved at a nearby chair. “Sit down and tell me everything you can remember about what happened last night.”

  “Yes, sir.” Stone sat awkwardly on one of the chairs and frowned in concentration. “I was making my rounds, keeping an eye out for signs of intruders, listening for voices and the small sounds that everyone makes when they move about.”

  Lucas walked to the vine-shrouded window. “Go on.”

  “I remember hearing a bit of rustling in the shadows on the other side of the wall near the old gate. I think I saw a small flash of light. Then I heard the grating of the hinges.”

  Lucas turned his head to look at Stone. “They got through the gate?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Huh. I thought the lock was impregnable.”

  “It sounded like they used a key. I heard it turn in the lock.”

  “Interesting. Continue.”

  “Not much more to tell.” Stone hunched his massive shoulders and slumped dejectedly in his chair. “I went to see about the open gate. I got there in time to catch two men slipping onto the grounds. I’m very sure they didn’t hear me coming, not until I challenged
them.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The smaller man got very nervous when he saw me.” Stone closed one big hand into a fist and glared at the small lantern. “I think he would have tried to flee if the taller one hadn’t stopped him.”

  “Which one used the lantern on you?”

  “The tall one. He grabbed it out of the other man’s hands and aimed it at me like it was a pistol. I saw the light beam and the next thing I knew I was waking up just before dawn. I went in search of you straight off. When I couldn’t find you or Miss Ames I feared the worst. Figured you were trapped inside the Night Garden. By that time, Molly had arrived to cook breakfast. She had one of her cousins with her. The cousin ran for help and I roused your aunt and your sister. You know the rest.”

  “Yes.”

  Curiosity stirred in Stone’s expression. “D’ya think we could have hacked and chopped our way into the Night Garden?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “It’s safer during the day but those plants have a lot of unknown properties. At the very least it would have taken days to get through the foliage, and the process would have been extremely dangerous for everyone who came in contact with the greenery.”

  “Like I told ye, I thought about setting fire to the maze, but I wasn’t sure it would burn properly.”

  “You were right. Furthermore, a fire might well have triggered an explosion of paranormal energy that could have proved hazardous for people in the vicinity.”

  Stone’s brow furrowed. “If you can’t chop down the gardens and you can’t burn ’em down, how will you destroy them?”

  “Damned if I know.” Lucas went back to the desk. “But first things first. We learned a couple of important facts last night.”

  “What facts?”

  “The intruders were treasure hunters who were after some Roman gold that is said to be concealed in the Night Garden. They were not the first who have trespassed in search of the hoard. But these two got a lot farther than most because of their psychical abilities, that little lantern and a key to the gate.”

  “Yes, sir.” Stone’s frown darkened. “What else did ye learn?”