The Bog (16 page)

“I’ll go pull the car out in front,” David offered as he straightened his tie in the mirror and went outside.

Melanie walked into the middle of the living room. “You know, Brad, I’ve been thinking about what you said last week about the impetus Horace Walpole’s
The Castle of Otranto
gave to the gothic revival.”

Katy rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed audibly.

Melanie glanced at her daughter but continued. “The only question that remains is whether Walpole went about his task consciously or unconsciously.”

Brad shifted his weight nervously. “That’s a good question. I would imagine unconsciously, but what do you think?”

“My first guess would be unconsciously also, but Walpole was an avid collector of gothic memorabilia. He could have known what he was doing. There are several pieces of information to back this up.”

“I’ve been thinking of changing my name,” Katy announced abruptly.

“Katy, you interrupted me,” Melanie pointed out, somewhat peeved because she was in the middle of making what she considered a very clever point.

Katy ignored her. “To Natasha,” she said, looking only at Brad.

Brad grew uneasy, knowing something was going on but not knowing quite what.

“
Katy,
” Melanie repeated.

“What,
Mommmm?
” Katy sneered.

“You interrupted me.”

“Well you were only talking about some dumb old novel.”

“It doesn’t matter, you don’t just interrupt someone when they’re speaking.”

“But if I didn’t interrupt you I wouldn’t get a word in edgewise. Sometimes you don’t even come up for air.”

Melanie was mortified. “How dare you speak to me like that!” She was about to add something else when they noticed that David had come back inside.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Melanie turned to him, her face red with anger. “Katy just interrupted me.”

“Well, it can’t be that bad.” He looked at his daughter. “Katy, tell your mother you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Katy said petulantly.

“She wants to change her name,” Melanie continued, still nettled by what had just transpired.

David smiled, trying to spread oil on troubled waters. “I told her she couldn’t.”

“You told me I couldn’t unless Mom said it was okay,” Katy corrected, and David blushed, realizing he had committed that most horrendous of parental crimes, the old pass-the-buck ploy.

“And, of course, Mom won’t let me,” Katy ended unhappily.

“We’ll discuss it later,” Melanie said sharply as they stood and prepared to leave. David went back outside and Brad followed close behind. Melanie and Katy were left momentarily alone and Melanie turned resentfully toward her daughter.

“That was very rude the way you just treated me in front of Brad.”

Katy remained belligerent. “I don’t think so.”

“Katy!” Melanie cried. For several seconds they just glared at each other, Katy’s normally innocent eyes filled with an unusually mature hostility.

Finally Melanie pulled a shawl around her shoulders and started to leave.

“You’ve got a crush on Brad, don’t you,” Katy challenged suddenly as Melanie passed just an arm’s length away from her. Melanie turned and looked at her daughter with utter astonishment, and again was shaken to see that the venom in Katy’s look was disturbingly adult. And then, before she knew what she was doing, she reached out and slapped Katy very hard across the face.

“How dare you say such a thing to me!” she cried, and suddenly Katy was once again a child, blinking and looking very hurt and very stunned. She burst into tears and ran upstairs.

It took Melanie several seconds to compose herself. Of course she didn’t have a crush on Brad, she thought indignantly to herself. Why the very idea was absurd. Her hand stung and she was abruptly filled with remorse over the force with which she had just struck her daughter. She looked worriedly upstairs, but realized that she would have to deal with it later. Her thoughts still in tumult over Katy’s suggestion that she felt more than friendship for Brad, she turned and left.

As they drove to Wythen Hall, David noticed that his wife was unusually quiet, and he worried that she was getting into one of her moods again. He hoped that her spirits would improve when she was confronted with a new social situation, but he was much too preoccupied with his own thoughts to ponder over her reticence for long. Brad had also reverted to his normally silent self, and they made the remainder of the drive with hardly a word said among the three of them.

At length, they passed through the huge and rusted wrought-iron gates that marked the perimeter of the Marquis’s estate, and against the jagged backdrop of the hills, Wythen Hall came into sight. As he had first observed from the hill overlooking the bog, the facade of the old manor house was late Elizabethan, but the crenallated tower and several of its wings dated at least from the Middle Ages. As he might have expected, the dark and imposing granite walls of the structure were weatherbeaten and deeply eroded by wind and time, and the casements of the windows were almost completely concealed by a vast sea of leather-green ivy. What he had not expected, however, was the well-manicured appearance of the lawn. Beneath the canopy of the great oaks and firs that filled the grounds it was as smooth and velvet green as the green baize of a gaming table, and through this fairy-tale glen of emerald and jade, the black waters of the bog lake beyond seemed restful and even strangely beautiful.

They pulled up to the front of the ancient edifice and parked the car. As they approached the door, David noted that it was so roughly hewn and weathered that it had to date from at least the fifteenth century. Each of the two massive sections composing it was divided into four quadrangles, and they peaked in a high Gothic arch over their heads. He hoisted up the immense black iron knocker in the right-hand panel of the door and let it fall back loudly. A deep and resonant thud echoed throughout the unknown spaces beyond.

After several minutes they heard the sound of shuffling footsteps, and the door creaked open. There stood a gaunt and baggily liveried butler of typical Fenchurch St. Jude stock.

“Good evening, sirs, mi’ lady,” he greeted, glancing briefly at them before he respectfully returned his gaze to the floor. “Please come in. The Marquis is expecting you.”

He stepped back and allowed them to enter. Inside was a vast entrance hall, sparsely furnished and dimly lit. High above them a square, balustraded gallery ran around the top of the huge and shadowy enclosure, and opening off this were other faintly visible doorways and corridors. The place was filled with the smells of an ancient dwelling, a faint background of mustiness overlaid with subtle resonances of cool stone, fine woods, and the smell of polish and torch smoke.

David also noticed something else. At first he thought it was a wind, a faint susurration moving across the floor stones, but as he looked to the side of the corridor it occurred to him that it was less a sound and more a sensation. He looked first at Melanie and then at Brad, but neither of them seemed cognizant of the movement. Still, as he glanced around, he half expected to see a dust devil flailing cobwebs in its wake, save that his every tool of perception told him that the air in the cavernous entrance hall was deathly still.

Finally they reached a door at the end of the hall, and the butler pushed it open for them and motioned for them to go in. They entered and David gasped silently at the sight beyond.

Before them was an immense drawing room, refulgently aglow with the light of uncountable lamps, flaring torches on the walls, numerous sconces, and a great and kingly fireplace crackling and roaring at one end. The walls of the room were opulently paneled in deep walnut and superbly appointed with rich old tapestries and large wall hangings of lush red damask. The furniture and carpets were also all befitting the home of a Marquis, and various candelabra here and there added still more light to the already intense atmosphere of the place. Most startling of all, however, was the Marquis’s sizable collection of ancient Sumerian and Babylonian art, and his curious array of exotic animals, both caged and stuffed.

Here and there on the walls were the heads of okapi, impala, and other exotic antelope with long, stiletto horns curving upward. In various cages around the room were bright-colored finches and other tropical birds that David did not recognize, with flowing and iridescent tails hanging lazily out of their wicker prisons, and in a large golden pagoda of a cage at one end of the room, a strange and melancholy monkey with haunting and blood-red eyes.

The art was equally exotic. David recognized bas-reliefs of bird-headed deities from Ashumasirpal, stone statues of Mesopotamian demons; Chaldean votives of goats and lion-bodied gods; horn-shaped cups of Scythian gold; bronze dragons, and statues of a host of other Babylonian creatures of the night. Most impressive of all was a huge stone stele hanging over the fireplace, an ancient calendar, as far as David could determine, inscribed with the Babylonian version of the signs of the zodiac and a great deal of accompanying text written in cuneiform.

Sitting in a chair near one of the Babylonian idols was the Marquis, and standing at the fireplace was one of the most distractingly beautiful women David had ever seen. The Marquis stood.

“Professor Macauley, I believe,” he said, extending his hand.

“Please, call me David.”

“And you must call me Grenville,” the Marquis returned graciously. Indeed, the Marquis now behaved with such cordiality that David looked him over once again to make sure that he was the same distinguished and handsomely silver-gray gentleman who had conducted himself so rudely when they had first met at the excavations.

David introduced Brad and Melanie, and then it was the Marquis’s turn. He reached out his hand toward the beautiful woman and she slowly stepped forward.

“This,” said the Marquis, “is Julia Honaria “How do you do,” the woman said, speaking for the first time, and her eyes caught David’s. She was, he thought, one of the most breathtaking creatures he had ever encountered. Her hair was a luxuriant raven black and cascaded down her bare white shoulders in a way that was at once faultlessly coiffed and yet suggestively erotic. Her features were perfectly formed, like some exquisite porcelain doll’s, and her smoldering dark eyes were wide and flashed with suggestive fire. Her lips too were full and poisonously scarlet, and her complexion as pale and flawless as a piece of Italian marble. Contrasted against the perfection of her features, her attire seemed almost unimportant, save that it too was spectacular. She wore a black gown that looked as if it must have cost at least a thousand dollars and across her large full breast was a splay of rubies and diamonds that, although dazzling, still only ran a close second to her beauty.

It was only after he had taken in all the details of the woman before him that he noticed the portrait over the fireplace behind her. It was a large and moldering family oil, and from the style looked to be late eighteenth century. In it was depicted a man, a tall man, aristocratically dressed, with a hunting dog beside him. The scenery framing him was relatively nondescript and could have been any wooded glade in the valley, or for that matter, in any other part of England. But what caught his eye, what froze his attention for several long moments, was the fact that the man’s face was totally concealed by a little muslin curtain suspended on gold cord and draped across the front of the painting.

David looked bewilderedly at the Marquis and could tell that the older man had noticed his reaction to the veiled portrait, but he offered no explanation.

“Please, won’t you sit down,” he invited, gesturing toward the various sofas and chairs encircling the fireplace. “Would you like something to drink?”

As if on silent cue the butler once again appeared and took their requests.

Then Grenville turned and directed his attention toward David. “May I begin by apologizing for my unseemly behavior toward you at our first meeting.”

“Quite all right,” David said, accepting his apology.

“You see, this land has been owned by the de L’Isle name for quite some time now, and it has become, in a sense, a part of my flesh. When I first became aware of the intrusion of your digging, I couldn’t have been more shocked and pained than if you had taken a scalpel and sliced into my arm. I was livid. Now, of course, I have calmed down and realized that you were in the right and I was in the wrong. I do hope we can overlook my former rudeness and arrive at some sort of
rapprochement
“I think we already have,” David said politely. “I mean, with you renting us the hunter’s cottage for such a reasonable amount.”

“My pleasure,” Grenville said, smiling. He lifted his drink. “May I propose a toast to your lovely wife.”

“Oh, why thank you,” Melanie said, blushing slightly and clearly touched by Grenville’s gallantry. They all toasted.

“This is quite a collection of statuary you have here,” David complimented. “I had no idea you had such an interest in antiquities.”

“Thank you,” Grenville replied. “I’ve gathered it all myself over the years.”

“Have you studied ancient Near Eastern art?”

“Oh, my goodness no, at least not in the academic sense. I’m really just a dilettante. Do you have any expertise on the subject?”

“Only cursorily,” David returned. “I took a few graduate courses on the subject and have attended a seminar here and there, but it’s really not my area of expertise.”

“What about you, Mr. Hollister?”

“I know a little,” Brad stammered, surprised that he had been brought into the conversation.

Grenville stood and retrieved one of the horn-shaped cups of Scythian gold. “What do you think of this?” He handed the cup to Brad.

The younger man turned it over in his hands, scrutinizing it carefully. “I think it’s extraordinary. It must be worth a fortune.”

“Really,” Grenville purred with a faint lack of interest. “I must remember that if ever I need the money.” He strolled over to the mantelpiece. “This is really my prize possession,” he said, motioning toward the huge cuneiform calendar. “You know, the Babylonians were really very fine astronomers. They had the lunar month worked out to an incredibly precise decimal point, Astrology was everything to them. They didn’t do anything without consulting the stars. Everything was cycles. They wouldn’t crown a king or even bury their dead unless it was favorable to the stars.”