Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (11 page)

Relieved and pleased, for he was savouring the privilege of private access, he continued down the arcing avenues, taking the prescribed turns where they came, keeping his head bowed prayerfully. He had been to Hampton Court Maze once, on a school trip, and with some of his mates had gotten dizzingly
lost, nearly panicked, amid green walls much taller than any towering adult. Only the directional shouting of their very cross teacher brought them stumbling, at last, from the exit. But a labyrinth was not a maze. It was designed not for puzzlement and perplexity but for contemplation and tranquility. It had a single exit and entrance and a single path, coiled though it be and mystifying in its seeming meanders. It was life’s journey, of course—Dosh had said as much all those years ago at Chartres, though his eight-year-old mind hadn’t taken it in. The centre of the labyrinth was the goal. The centre was Jerusalem, enlightenment, Christ consciousness, Atman-Brahman, what-have-you. As you walked the leafy purlieus, you moved tantalizingly close to the centre, then suddenly you veered away, but eventually, always, you arrived at the transfiguring centre.

And then, transfigured yourself, you returned to the world.

Right? Or left? No such decisions were necessary in a labyrinth. Tom walked on, conscious now of the counterpoint of his breath, heartbeat, and scrunching steps along the path, his mind slipping ineluctably to the visitation in the night. Now, away from his stuffy bedroom, away from Eggescombe Hall and its mazy interior and moralistic carvings, in the still, fresh air of pre-dawn twilight, he felt the glimmerings of restoration—that, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

God made us for joy, had He not? And mightn’t there be a grace in an encounter, however fleeting? After all, how are we to understand our embodied existence? Mightn’t desire simply be love trying to happen?

Or was he paving the road to hell?

A soft scraping sound interrupted his thoughts, and he lifted his head again, this time towards the quadrant opposite, the apparent source. Was he really not alone? Had a living figure—no statue—been at the centre of the Labyrinth after all? Lucinda? Could it be? Is this why she had left his bed, and where she had come? The notion seemed wild, unlikely. And why would she conceal herself? Unless she shared his discomfiture. Tom pricked up his ears and pressed forward. He had skirted the Labyrinth’s centre once on his journey, glanced at the shadowy shape there; now he was doubled back, twisting away from the centre. The sound came again, closer this time. Was one of the children up early and larking about? Or both of them? Max and Miranda’s heights, though greater than the hedge’s, nevertheless made hunkering down easier, but he knew the game wouldn’t endure without one of them giggling or whispering. Only random birdsong interrupted the quietude. He moved ahead, more cautiously, alert now to irregular sounds. If there was someone bent down scuttling along the path, he would run into him or her soon enough. There was only one way out of the Labyrinth: the way you came in.

He returned to his reverie with steely resolve not to be distracted: Or, he began again, was he simply rationalising? Mightn’t there be danger, rather than grace, in his encounter with Lucinda, however fleeting?

Or—?

Another scrape, closer still, though, strangely, rather softer. Tom paused again, frowned. He was now on the arc farthest from the centre. On this soft summer morning, with the sun’s touch drawing colour from the grey, staining the horizon tender
pale pink, he sensed no sinister thing lurking in the Labyrinth’s dark green lanes. Untroubled by concern, he felt more peeved that this sweet opportunity for thought and prayer was being soured by some mischief-maker. Of course, some animal could be the source. He was outdoors, he realised that. However manicured and tamed, these hedges weren’t waxworks. As if to confirm his thought, before he could take another step forward, an extrusion of whiteness like cotton batting squeezed forth from under the foliage. A rabbit, Tom thought, with a flutter of relief, as the creature hunched on the pebbles.
Where’s your waistcoat and watch, old man?
But the light was dim by the bottom of the hedge. It wasn’t a rabbit. Those weren’t rabbit ears. It was a cat, he realised. A very fat white cat.

The cat, as if hearing Tom’s thoughts and highly offended, abruptly scampered across the pebbles and scrambled under the hedge opposite. Tom sighed, adjusted the crutch under his arm, set to continue, but, again, an unexpected noise gave him pause. No pebble scraping this time, but a rustling and thrashing, of twigs snapping and leaves tearing, somewhere on the opposite side of the Labyrinth.

A dog?

A rogue sheep?

It was then that Tom felt the first intimation of impending trouble. The crackle of disturbed foliage stopped almost as soon as it started, but the rest of nature seemed to rise up in sympathy. Protesting birds streaked noisily into the sky in a dark plume of distraction, scattering to the trees. A jackdaw sounded its high, squealing distress call. And then, as abruptly, a kind of restorative peace settled on the landscape, but a false
one, Tom felt in his bones. Something or someone had surely violated the perfection of the topiary wall. Was he to encounter another creature, a more fearsome one than a cat, on the path to the centre? Or had some more fearsome creature retreated from the Labyrinth and padded silently away? Mind arrested from his own worries, concerned now that misadventure awaited, Tom limped his way more quickly along the coiled intestine of the Labyrinth. Glancing over the top of the penultimate ring, he thought he saw a blemish in the smooth topiary wall of the outermost ring, and when at last he looped around, he saw with sinking heart a dark scattering of leaves and bits of twig along the pale path ahead. In a moment, he was in front of the vandalisation itself, an ugly, ratted gash through the leafy wall. Someone—surely no animal would do this—had burrowed below its tidy trimming to escape. Fear? Panic? A labyrinth was not a maze. There was no reason here for the claustrophobic dread some suffered at Hampton Court.

Or was it a deliberate desecration?

Tom looked over the hedge towards Eggescombe’s park, misting faintly as the sun, now half a crimson ball, stirred heat into the air. Here, at the farthest point from the entrance, the Labyrinth revealed its purchase on a soft mound that sloped gently to the lawn below, to the ha-ha, and to the purpled silhouette of majestic trees in the middle distance piercing the shimmering grey sky. Nearer, his eyes settled on an ancient oak the mighty limbs of which embraced a marvellous white tree house that glowed softly in the new light. And nearer still, the pinnacled bulk of Eggescombe Hall, mullions turning to glittering diamonds. It was as magnificently timeless as it had
been yesterday. Only unpeopled. Utterly unpeopled. No sound, no motion suggested anyone but himself in this arcadian landscape.

With new concern, he shifted awkwardly on his crutch. Though he had yet again swung to the farthest reaches of the eleven circuits, he had come a good distance. In a few short turns, he knew, he would be ushered into the Labyrinth’s sacred heart, where, presumably—according to the most ardent fans of such things—he would experience a kind of rebirth, though the fanciful notion that a minotaur, half man, half beast, lay in waiting crept into his mind. He snorted at the absurdity. The sound was preternaturally loud in his ears. He continued on down the path, alert to other breaches to the peace of the Lord’s day, but none came, for which he was grateful.

Around the last bend, the path straightened, resolving into a short corridor into the Labyrinth’s green nucleus. A pale silhouette emerged from the black bath of shadow. The head’s fine features and slim neck—more discernible now as he pushed forwards—seemed to drink in the dawn light and gleam gently, as if lit from within. The marble face wore none of the mournful piety typical of such statues; the posture suggested nothing of the torment to come. The sculptor—Roberto, presumably—had rendered, with sublime skill, the sweetness of mother and child bound in love. The chubby-limbed child fairly gurgled with bliss; the slim mother, her youthful body draped in classic modesty, rejoiced at her son. Her upturned mouth, her delicate nose, her large, wide-set eyes were so finely rendered that she seemed less a symbolic representation of the feminine than a highly individuated woman, captured
in a moment of pure maternal joy. He sighed a little, earlier trepidation vanished, affected not only by the loveliness of this exquisite representation of Madonna and Child, but by a stinging of his own loss. Mary had been his first adoptive mother’s name. Had she ever held him like that? And what of his natural mother? Had she? Or had he been torn from her minutes after his birth? Liverpool: Marguerite had slipped him a clue to his natural parentage. Liverpool. How … odd.

He put the thought aside and glanced past the statue to the bordering hedge, deeply scalloped here, each cool shadowy lunation embracing a rounded wooden bench, suited to rest after the journey, and to contemplation. He had thought centres of labyrinths ought best be holy absences, places to fill with one’s own thoughts, and wondered a little at Lord Fairhaven’s conspicuous expression of his Roman Catholicism. Was it even a good marketing strategy in a nation of nominal Protestants? But the sculpture held an irresistible power he was sure others felt. He turned his thoughts to Morning Prayer, the General Confession slipping easily onto his tongue:

Tom paused in his recitation, the last words sinking like stones into his soul.
“And we have done those things which we ought not to have done,”
he intoned again, his voice this time fallen to a murmur. He shifted his weight on his crutch and continued:

Tom paused again, the severity of the avowal
—there is no health in us
—reminding him, with a ridiculous literalness, of his ankle. Twenty minutes of hobbling with crutches was wearing. He would sit to finish Morning Prayers.

He made to twist around to move to the nearest bench, one behind him, which sat in the deepest shadow. Six lunations, he counted as his eyes circled past, a rosette pattern. What delightful symmetry! His eyes fell first on a torch left on the ground, switched on still, its feeble light casting a pallid arc no match for the rising sun’s. And then his gaze travelled to what seemed at first glance a large grey heap marring the perfection of the scene. Puzzled, fears rekindled that some creature had indeed penetrated the Labyrinth by defiling its boundary, he moved closer, steeling himself for some sort of unpleasant confrontation, and peered into the gloom at the base of the bench. It was no animal, but a man. Oliver, he realised with a shock when he peered closer, noting the rumple of red hair, the idiosyncratic needlework at the neck of his
shirt. One arm was wedged against the base of the bench, the other flopped forwards, the kufi hat just beyond the reach of clawed fingers. Tom gazed upon the sight unbelievingly for the time it took another jackdaw to sound his alarm, battling a wave of nausea. Oliver fforde-Beckett, seventh Marquess of Morborne, wasn’t sacked out, sleeping off some night of drunken debauchery. No snores, no guttural snorts, competed with the bird’s call. Lord Morborne wasn’t asleep at all.

“
J
ane!”

“ ’Morning, Tom!” Lady Kirkbride’s arm lifted in a cheery wave as she jogged along the lawn, Bonzo loping in her wake.

“Jane!” Tom shouted again, urgently. She had disappeared behind a grove of trees and would soon vanish down the road to the Gatehouse and the village if she were not diverted. “Would you come over here?”

For a second he thought she hadn’t heard, or was ignoring him, but she rounded the trees in short order and continued her run across the grass towards the Labyrinth.

“You’re up early,” she called, stopping near the Labyrinth gate, gasping a little as she caught her breath. Even at fifty feet, Tom could see her cheeks pink with exertion.

“Jane, there’s been a …” He hesitated. He needed to raise his voice to be heard, but he feared frightening anyone unnecessarily
in the Hall, though sound had little chance against Eggescombe’s thick walls.

“… an accident.”

“An …? Oh, God. Are you all right, Tom?”

“It isn’t me. It’s—” He glanced again towards the Hall. “You’d better come here. But leave Bonzo outside the gate,” he added as an afterthought. “And close it behind you.”