Death in the Castle

  Hours later, or perhaps only minutes, he was wakened, or dreamed he was wakened, by the deep vague melancholy that he had come to know so well, preceding always the restless, throbbing pain inside his skull. Here it was again—and how to escape it? He dreaded the darkness that fell upon his mind. Light! He must find light. Where was the light? He could not breathe, he struggled to open his eyes, and then as if he were in heavy chains, he got slowly out of bed, fumbling for the light and unable to find it, then fumbling for the matches but he could not put his hand on the box.

  He remembered that behind the swinging pane he kept matches and a candle, and he groped his way to the wall. He felt for the particular spot, the center of a star in the carving of the panel. He pressed it. The wall, which no one knew was a door except himself and Wells, swung creaking away from him. He went through it and closed it again carefully. Then he felt along the wall and found the alcove and the matchbox. The first three matches would not strike for dampness but he fumbled for the bottom match and then the flame held. He lit the candle and, blind with pain, he walked down the passage to the winding stair at its end and still with a strange purposefulness, as though he were deep in sleep, he climbed to the top, two flights up to the east tower. There the passage narrowed until it barely admitted his lean figure. At the end a door filled its width, an arched door, very low. He opened it and entered an octagonal room.

  The light of the candle fell upon the thin figure of Wells, his hair in disarray and dusty with cobwebs.

  He dropped on one knee. “Good evening, Your Majesty. I’d about given you up.”

  Sir Richard put out his hand. Wells kissed it.

  “Rise, Lord Dunsten,” Sir Richard said.

  Wells rose, bowed deeply, and then as though it were a ritual long established, he took the candle from Sir Richard and set it on the table.

  “Pray be seated, Your Majesty,” he said.

  With these words, he pulled back from the table a massive oak chair. It was covered with a tattered robe of purple velvet, and this he wrapped about Sir Richard, who seated himself and waited in solemn silence while Wells went to a long narrow chest, also of oak, that stood against the wall. This chest he opened, lifting the heavy lid with effort and leaning it against the wall. From the chest he took out a large leather-bound book, fastened by silver hasps. He carried it to the table in both hands and set it before Sir Richard, who sat unmoving, his gaze downcast. Then, returning to the chest, Wells lifted from it a large scepter of heavy gold encrusted with jewels. This he carried, again in both hands, to Sir Richard, who took it in his right hand. Once more Wells went to the chest and now he took from it a crown of gold tinsel, cut into five high points, each point with a star of silver paste. This crown he took and set on Sir Richard’s head.

  Then he bowed again deeply. “Is there anything else, Your Majesty?” he asked.

  “Nothing, Lord Dunsten,” Sir Richard replied. “You may retire.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Wells said.

  He had backed only a few steps toward the door, however, when Sir Richard lifted his left hand to stop him.

  “One question, Lord Dunsten.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “As my faithful prime minister, have you put down the plot to rob me of my crown?”

  “You have nothing to fear, Your Majesty,” Wells said. He waited for what Sir Richard might say next, a look of anxious concern upon his long lean face, the shadows dark in his sunken cheeks.

  Sir Richard sighed a deep and heartbreaking sigh. “Ah, my enemies seek my end! They will put an end to all kings—you’ll see—you’ll see! They will kill Richard the Fourth as they killed other kings.”

  “No one knows you are here, Your Majesty.”

  “No one but you,” Sir Richard said.

  Wells bowed. “We are well hidden and I will never betray you, Sire.”

  Sir Richard turned his nobly shaped head, gave Wells a royal look, and held out his right hand. On the forefinger was the gold ring set with the large ruby. Wells came forward and bowing over it, he kissed it.

  Sir Richard spoke with touching dignity.

  “You deserve to be Lord Protector—I’ll make you that, one day. I know how to reward your loyalty—what you did for me once, long ago—”

  “Please, Your Majesty,” Wells broke in. He wrung his long thin hands. “We agreed that it was never to be brought up. The boy is dead.”

  Sir Richard corrected him. “The Prince is dead—and I never—never—forget.”

  His chin sank upon his breast for an instant and his eyes closed. The pain, the pain! He struggled against losing himself. He was sinking into darkness, into death, alive only to pain. He made great effort and felt himself rising up again. Suddenly he gave a start, lifted his head, drew the candlestick near, opened the book and began to read. Wells watched him for a moment, then backed silently to the door. There he stood for yet another moment. The candlelight fell upon the figure in the purple robe, upon the handsome aging profile, upon the crown and sceptre, and upon the high back of the chair.

  It was a throne.

  … Deep in the dungeon beneath the castle a sound reverberated with an echoing roar. Kate looked up, alarmed, her hand shielding the candle.

  “What’s that, my lady?”

  Lady Mary continued her careful search of the crannied wall. “A door banging,” she said absently.

  “It sounded like the lid of a coffin,” Kate said.

  “Nonsense,” Lady Mary retorted. She found a stone loose, a small stone in a crack between two large blocks and she worked it free and peered inside. “There’s something here,” she exclaimed. She felt inside the aperture and brought out a crooked spoon of silver, green with age.

  “Nothing else,” she said. “Some poor prisoner, I suppose, hiding his spoon so that he needn’t eat with his fingers.”

  Far above their heads they heard now a sudden clatter of metal. Kate cried out, “My lady, don’t tell me that sounds like nothing!”

  Lady Mary listened. “It sounds like gold pieces,” she exclaimed. Her face lighted with excitement, and lifting her head she called.

  “Whoever you are, wherever you are—where do I go?”

  They listened, waiting, motionless, Kate believing, almost, that Lady Mary would be given an answer. But there was none. The silence deepened and suddenly the air in the dungeon that was thick with mildew and dust seemed too heavy to breathe. Kate, borne up by excitement until now, was suddenly depressed and frightened. She looked at Lady Mary. Her face was ashen and her blue eyes had faded in the candlelight to a pale gray.

  “My lady,” Kate cried, “we must go back! The air is deathly here—poisonous, my lady! We’ll be suffocated—Ah now, don’t faint! What did I tell you?”

  Lady Mary did indeed seem on the edge of fainting away. She leaned on Kate’s shoulder, gasping for breath

  “Let me open that door yonder,” Kate cried and with one arm supporting Lady Mary and the other holding the candle, she led the way to a door opposite the stairway and, setting the candle on a jutting ledge of rough rock, she tried to force the door open. It would not open, however she pushed against it. The latch was old and rusted and did not yield.”

  “There’s nothing for it,” she declared swiftly. “We’ll have to go up the stair again. Cling to me, my lady, we’ll make it somehow. … This way, dear. The stones are smoother here, where some poor prisoner paced back and forth perhaps until he died. … I blame myself that I let you come here at all. I should have known better.”

  Painfully they climbed the stone steps until they were at the top. A stone ledge stood under a window so high and narrow that it was no more than a gash in the wall.

  “Sit down for a bit, my lady,” Kate said. “I’ll run for my grandfather to help us. … Dare I leave you?”

  “I shall be quite all right,” Lady Mary said faintly but with resolution.

  “And I’ll be back immediately,” Kate said, “and then you must ge
t in bed again and have a cup of nice hot tea.”

  She kissed Lady Mary’s cheek impulsively and ran through the corridors and passages to her grandfather’s room.

  Left alone Lady Mary continued to sit on the stone ledge in the wall. She clasped her hands on her lap, not together, but one hand laid in the other, palm up, like a bowl, waiting to receive. She gathered her strength, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the familiar long dark tunnel and upon the silver spot of light at its end.

  “I give myself up,” she said in a low clear voice. “I am empty. I am waiting—waiting—waiting—”

  She lifted her head to listen, she opened her eyes. There was a voice—yes, distinctly there was a voice—no, two voices, somewhere far above her. To the left? No, the right—difficult to tell! They echoed strangely beyond and above and—everywhere. She could not hear the words—not quite. Then she heard almost clearly—“Your Majesty—” She felt suddenly faint. Then it was true. She had not only imagined. It was more than the wind in the ivy clinging to the walls. Others did live here in the castle.

  Her head drooped upon her breast. Her hands grew limp and her eyes closed.

  … “Grandfather!” Kate called.

  There was no answer. She flung open the door. The room was dim in the approaching dawn. She entered and looked behind the curtains at the old-fashioned bed where Wells slept. He was not there.

  “Whatever!” Kate muttered to herself. “He can’t have gone to the kitchens so early as this.”

  She ran out of the room again and had scarcely gone twenty feet when she heard a loud shout from the direction of the Duke’s room. The bell rang violently and she heard a door flung open.

  “What the devil!” John Blayne roared.

  “Wait,” she cried. “I’m coming.”

  She made haste in the direction of the Duke’s room. John stood there in the doorway. She put back her hair and tied the sash of her dressing gown more tightly about her waist.

  “What is it, please?” she asked, and could not but notice how his crimson satin dressing gown became him, and how young he looked, his hair every which way and his face fresh with sleep.

  He tried to laugh. “Idiotic—but I saw a sort of floating head going by the window! Somebody is playing jokes.”

  “You were dreaming,” she said.

  He rubbed his hands through his hair and lifted his eyebrows. “Dreaming? Maybe. I am. Where did you come from, for example?”

  “I am looking for my grandfather. Have you seen him?”

  “At this hour? No … Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean? You don’t know? Is someone ill?”

  “I don’t think so but—”

  “You’re ill!”

  He stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re shivering—yes, you are! Why are you wandering about at this time of night if you aren’t ill? Or frightened?”

  He had her hands now and was chafing them.

  “Perhaps I am frightened—a little,” she confessed.

  “Which I can fully understand,” he went on, “for I’ll confess now, to you, that at this hour of the night your castle gives me the creeps. I don’t believe a word of what Lady Mary says, mind you—but I have the creeps, nevertheless. I don’t believe I saw a head without a body floating past my window, but I did. How in the devil have you lived here all your life and stayed what you are?”

  She was smiling into his eyes, drinking in what he was saying. “How do you know what I am? You never saw me until yesterday!”

  “I know a rose when I see one,” he said, half teasing. “And a rose by any other name than yours is not as sweet, Shakespeare notwithstanding.”

  She was trembling now and not with cold. She must stop this at once, this impossible talk, this—this absurd way she felt—this melting and dissolving inside herself.

  “Oh,” she cried softly, “what am I doing? I’ve forgotten Lady Mary!”

  She pulled her hands away and fled.

  … She disappeared so quickly that he could almost have believed that she sank through the floor except that it was stone, or slid through an unseen door, except that there was no door. The winding corridors hid her instantly, but he ran after her nevertheless, and found himself in a tangle of passages. It was no use. He could not find her and wandering indefinitely in the dim light before dawn, he could only be lost in the end. Indeed he was already lost. Which was his door? He had left it ajar but a cold wind blew through the corridors and no doors were open.

  “What the devil is going on?” he muttered as he went this way and that.

  And speaking of devils, he thought, where was Wells? He was reminded of the fellow now by a long, frayed bell rope that hung meaninglessly against a wall. He pulled it and heard a distant high jangle, but no one came. He pulled again, this time with force, and the velvet rope fell from the groined ceiling and wound about his shoulders like a snake. He threw it on the floor in disgust. There was nothing for it but to find his way back by wandering. There must be an end somewhere to this corridor.

  He walked for several minutes, then the corridor made a sharp right-angle turn. He paused and looked straight ahead for fifty feet or more. The passage was windowless but at the end he saw a tall motionless figure, vague in the darkness.

  “Wells!”

  There was no answer. The man stood motionless. He went forward uncertainly until he was near enough to put out his hand. He felt cold steel. The man was a coat of armor—no more, no less! He burst into laughter and at himself.

  “I am getting as crazy as you are, my good man,” he muttered. His voice echoed strangely between the stone walls and he tried to laugh again and found he could not.

  “An empty shell of a man, that’s what you are,” he said loudly, “and that’s what we’ll all be if we stay here much longer.” He turned and strode back in the direction in which he had come.

  He had not gone far, however, when he heard a low deep groan that ended in a choking gasp. He stopped. The noise came from behind a door some twenty feet ahead of him. He went to it and knocked. No one replied. He tried the door softly and it opened. A candle burned on a table beside a heavily curtained bed. From behind the curtains the groan broke forth again, ending in the choking gurgling gasp. He tiptoed across the floor and drew aside the worn red satin curtains. There under a tattered silken coverlet Webster lay sleeping, flat upon his back, his rough beard upthrust. The groan and gurgle gathered in his throat again, ready to explode.

  He drew the curtains hastily together upon the hideous sight. Let Webster sleep, if he could—if anyone could in this ghostly dwelling place! He would get back to his own room somehow although he might be more lost than he imagined, in this Jules Verne sort of bewilderment, a relapse of time, a confusion of centuries. Though why Jules Verne, when Einstein himself in this modern age had declared the eternity of time? History repeating itself was a truism, simple enough until Einstein made his portentous discoveries. What if time were indeed a circle, a never-ending merry-go-round, repeating again and again the identical? What if all this were merely a remnant of time, a sort of neutrino, an ash of what had happened long ago?

  Stop it, he said to himself. Get hold of yourself, stop these antics of your brain! This was the sort of thinking a brain did at night when the conscious will was sleeping at the controls. Nightmares!

  He broke off his self-admonishment. He saw beneath his feet a broad white line encircling Webster’s bed. He took up the candle and followed it. It was a line drawn unevenly upon the ancient floor, a chalk line, marked here and there by crude crosses. He walked its length and then returned to put the candle on the table. A chalk line—and crosses! Where had he heard that ancient superstition? In Ireland, of course, in the last summer of his mother’s life! She had wanted to see the green isle again and he had taken her to County Wicklow and they had spent a fortnight there, walking over the dark hills and picnicking beside a deep tarn in some love
ly valley. A farmer’s wife had told him one night in a thatched-roofed farmhouse where he and his mother had taken shelter in a sudden storm, that though spirits walked the hillside and even came into the house, “they can’t touch you, sir, if you’ll but draw a white chalk line around the bed you sleep on, and put in plenty of crosses.”

  So Webster was Irish! Ah yes, that explained it, and what was this on the table? A bottle of water blessed by some priest, no doubt, and therefore holy. The floor was patterned dustily with stains of the water—yes, and here was a Bible and upon it, cautious man, this Webster had placed a small pearl-handled pistol of ancient design, a relic, doubtless, that be had found somewhere in the castle and had appropriated for the night.

  He smiled grimly to himself. Brave Webster, pretending a mighty courage when he was with others, a high skepticism, but when alone, resorting to most ancient protection! He lifted the silver snuffer on the table and extinguished the candle. Then he felt his way to the door. When he tried to close it softly, however, one of those gusts of unexplained wind snatched it from his grasp. It slammed shut with an ear-cracking bang. He heard a loud yell from within. Webster had wakened. He opened the door again to explain and was met by a splash of cold water in his face. He gasped and stepped back.

  “Webster!” he shouted. “What are you doing? It’s I—John Blayne!”

  “Heaven save us—” he heard Webster mutter. A match was struck and a moment later the candle flared. Webster stood by the bed, staring at him.

  “What are you doing here, man—at this time of the night?”

  “It’s not night any more,” he retorted. “It’s near dawn, as you would see if you hadn’t sealed yourself with chalk marks and Bibles and pistols and so on—not to mention this bath of water you’ve dashed in my face!”

  “Holy water never hurt anyone,” Webster retorted, “and if you can stop laughing, tell me why you are up and wandering about the castle? I’m sure you don’t get up at dawn any more than I do.”

  “I had a nightmare, if you must know the truth,” John Blayne said. He was wiping the water from his face and neck with his handkerchief.