The High House (4 page)

He gave a cry of fear as another rope flopped into the well, mistaking it at first for a water snake. A man followed the rope, descending hand over hand, his feet slipping against the slick sides. Seeing it was not Brittle, he imagined for a moment that the Bobby had overcome the butler and was coming to seize him once more. But when the figure looked down, it was the slender face of Chant. The lampman lifted the boy from the water, one-handed, with surprising strength. Still, he could not support Carter all the way up, but placed him with his legs astraddle the bucket. At his word those above raised both bucket and boy, while he supported them from below. They ascended rapidly, and once above the lip, Carter found Enoch and two other servants manning the handle, while Brittle stood beside, biting his lip.

Enoch swept the boy into his arms, and they carried him inside, where he was given new clothes and taken swiftly to bed. His last memories before he fell into a troubled sleep was of his father, bending softly over him, examining his bruises and kissing his cheek.

Several hours later, after he had roused and eaten, he was brought into the dining room, where, to his surprise, he found all the many members of the household assembled: the House Steward, the Groom of the Chambers, Brittle’s assistants, the housekeeper, housemaids, laundry maids, nanny, hall boy, the usher, even the valets and footmen. Enoch and Chant were there as well; Brittle stood by his master, still biting his lip. Lady Murmur sat imperiously in the little gold chaise; Duskin was not present.

Lord Anderson sat at the head of the dining table, the household seated down its length, Carter to his right. The silence of the room was palpable; the Master’s eyes held everyone so, with a simmering look like the fire Carter had beheld in them within the Room of Horrors, but mixed with another emotion he could not comprehend. When the lord spoke, his voice was flame and ash.

“You know what has happened. The Enemy gained entrance to the yard. He did so because the gate was left unlatched, unlocked. Whose neglect caused it?”

The company remained silent, eyes down, not in guilt, but that their master, who they loved, had been ill-served.

“Speak!” he cried, rising to his feet and striking the table a thunderous blow with his knobbed staff. All were startled, including Carter, and the maids gave little shrieks.

The fury diminished in the lord’s eyes; he sank back into his chair and rubbed his hands across his face. His voice softened. “You will forgive me if I am distraught. He is my son. I do not ask the question seeking retribution; I assure you there will be none. It is important to know. If the gate was not left open through neglect, then there is a traitor in our midst.”

Carter saw shock and horror on the servants’ faces, but his father’s blue eyes were cold now, and they stared straight at Murmur as he spoke. “I will interrogate each of you now, one by one, to see who might have passed through the gate. We must ascertain the truth of this.”

“I will speak first,” Chant said, “for I can say with certainty that the gate was locked last night after I lit the lamps. I am always careful, but yesterday evening more so; I don’t know why. A premonition was on me, as sometimes happens.”

“Very good,” the Master said. “Then it was opened between the hours of eight o’clock yesterday and ten this morning. We must see who else used it during that time.”

He questioned each of the servants, one after another, but always the answer was no; none had approached the gate, and this was little surprising, for it was seldom used, save by Chant. When all had been interrogated, he turned toward Murmur, saying, in a hard voice: “What of you, my lady?” A slight intake of breath went around the room, that the mistress of the house should be questioned.

“Am I a hired girl, to carry wash buckets beyond the yard?” she replied, her voice unnaturally jovial. “I never leave the house ”

Lord Anderson nodded. “Very well. Then I tell all of you to be watchful. The gate was left open not by accident. If you hear anything, no matter how trivial, bring it to me, or to Brittle. My son’s safety depends upon you all. You are dismissed. Carter, you will remain.”

When all the servants were gone, and the room empty except for the boy and his father, Lord Anderson drew his son to him. He held his small hand in his own two hands and spoke softly but earnestly.

“I have chosen poorly in Lady Murmur. You know that, don’t you?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued: “Duskin is my son as well; I love him equally, whatever his mother’s heart. Carter, you do not know the forces aligned against us; the Bobby was but one, the head of the Society of Anarchists, a group seeking to undermine the whole house. They wait beyond the Green Door, but I had thought to keep you safe within the Inner Chambers. I see now I cannot. Thus, I must send you away.”

“Away?” Carter cried. “Away where? For how long?”

“I do not know. Perhaps for many days.”

“But why? Have I been wicked? Is it because I took the keys?”

“No. Even with the Master Keys the Bobby cannot easily enter here, not even into the garden. But the gate was left unlocked, and he was invited in. You were the target, you alone. It was not your fault that the keys are gone; you were tempted and I was not vigilant, but there are consequences: I must seek the keys now; they are too valuable. I have forces and armies at my disposal, but still I must be away often, perhaps weeks at a time; I must walk difficult, sometimes dangerous ways. With a traitor in the house, I cannot leave you unguarded; you must leave. We will tell no one where you are, save Brittle. You can always trust Brittle or Enoch. Chant as well. I will write, if I can. If the matter is not resolved, you may never see this house again, unless you become its Master.”

“But, am I not to be the Master? I’m the oldest.”

“This is not a common house. It is not for me to say who will be its lord, though you would surely be my choice; you are your mother’s son, and I see her goodness within you. If you are worthy, you will be chosen; the house itself will choose. Murmur has never understood this, though I have tried to tell her often; her hunger for power is too strong. We will speak no more of it. One week we will spend together; I can afford no more, then you must go.”

True to his father’s word, they spent the week in sport. They held picnics in the walled yard, rode horses across the wide lawns, fished in the wide pond to the west, hunted fowl in the woods to the east, though they never left the yard through the narrow southern gate. They played hide and seek through the rooms of the house and tag amidst the hedgerows. They wrestled on the lawns and threw one another, exhausted, upon the grass. And if a sudden sorrow came into the eyes of one of them, the other teased it away, and they played again. So they gave each other a going-away present.

At the midnight hour, when the week was passed, Brittle woke Carter from a sound sleep, carrying a meager lantern. “Your bags are packed, young master, except for the things you most treasure. Fetch them, for we leave within the hour.”

So Carter got his wooden soldiers, his wooden sword, and his small, framed picture of his mother, and put them all with his other things. Then he and Brittle went downstairs together, the lantern making their shadows bob.

His father met them in the drive, and clasped his son roughly to him. “Brittle will drive. You will stay with an old friend of mine. He and his wife will treat you like their own. You must always be careful; if
they
know where you are, they will seek you. Remember I will always love you.”

So saying, he kissed his son, helped him into the carriage, and nodded to Brittle. The horses trotted forward, their hooves clopping on the cobblestones. Carter’s last sight of Evenmere was the shadow of his father, standing before its great shadow, until both man and house were lost in the shadows of the night.

He would not see it again for fourteen years.

Return

The carriage rolled along the dirt lane, past stands of hawthorn and larch, rising gradually with the low hills. Monarch butterflies, big as blowing mulberry leaves, passed back and forth through the windows, heralds of Carter’s return. One stopped to rest upon his knee, and he and Mr. Hope, the lawyer seated next to him, admired it a moment before it flitted away. The grass was green; sweet william and alyssum grew beside the road; it was summer. Carter sniffed the air, fragrant with coming rain from the clouds building in the west, breathing in his own nervous excitement.

“The hills look right,” he said. “From the time I was old enough to travel I have searched for Evenmere, both while I attended Bracton College, and later, while serving as secretary to Kraighten Manor. I’ve become quite a hiker because of it. I had despaired of ever returning.”

“And your father never corresponded with you, not in all those years?” Mr. Hope asked. He was young, with a pleasant, round face, dark hair, serious gray eyes, and a short laugh like a barking dog. They had met only the day before, briefly, in the attorney’s office.

“At first he wrote often, weekly at least, but the tone of his letters became increasingly darker; he was traveling, you know, down grim paths. He was … searching for something. His last letter spoke of a Great Sea; he said he was considering crossing it, though he knew it would be foolish. It was his final correspondence.”

“There are no seas hereabouts,” Hope said. “He must have been far away.”

“Yes,” Carter said, his blue eyes fixed on the advancing storm clouds, but lost in limitless horizons beyond. “Very far.”

“Shortly after that, he must have vanished,” the lawyer said. “According to my instructions, he has been gone just over a decade. As I said in my office, I was informed by correspondence to deliver you, along with your father’s will, to the house. Nothing more was made clear. It is somewhat irregular.”

Carter gave a grim smile. “I have discovered, living outside of Evenmere, that much which occurred there was irregular, perhaps impossible. As a child I accepted the amazing as commonplace. Sometimes I think it was all a dream.”

“So your guardians never brought you here?”

“Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald were old friends of the family. I think my father must have saved his life at some time, though I’m not certain. They were kind; I love them dearly, but they never spoke of Evenmere, nor even admitted knowing its location.”

The road gradually narrowed as old Ransom, who had been Lord Anderson’s driver when Carter was small, coaxed the horses up a long hill. Although the countryside appeared familiar, nothing else stirred Carter’s memories; truly he had never before
approached
Evenmere, but only left it. So, as they crested the incline, curving round it to the left, passing through a narrow belt of Corsican pine trees, he drew a sharp breath at the sight of the house, standing in the midst of a long heath, surrounded by monstrous oak, poplar, and willow, with birds flying everywhere between the branches and the rooftops, and trains of ivy sweeping up the walls. Tears sprang unbidden to his eyes as he looked upon the skyline of turrets, gables, and stacks, the chimney-breasts and bay windows, the twin mulberry trees beside the front doors, the single lamppost beyond the drive. As they rode, the house unfolded before him, in his mind large as a faerie castle. Time had not diminished its splendor as he had supposed; if anything he saw it with the appreciative eyes of an adult. For the first time he realized it was a truly beautiful pile of building, all masonry, oak, and deep golden brick, a unique blend of styles—Elizabethan and Jacobean fused with Baroque—an irregular jumble balancing the heavy spired tower and main living quarters on the western side with the long span flowing to the graceful L of the servants’ block to the east. Innumerable windows, parapets, and protrusions clustered like happy children, showing in their diversity the mark of countless renovations. Upon the balustrades and turrets stood carved lions, knights, gnomes, and pinecones; iron crows faced outward at the four corners. The Elizabethan entrance, the centerpiece of the manor, was framed by gargantuan gate piers and pavilions, combining Baroque outlines with Jacobean ornamentation.

He stepped out of the carriage before it had gone all the way up the drive, so he might approach the manor more slowly. At the main entrance stood the tall, gray marble sculpture of a figure dressed in the robe of a monk, his hood thrown back from his face, his long locks rippling over his shoulders, eyes to the sky, his muscled arms held before him as if he faced a great northern storm, more like a god of thunder, despite the cross hanging from his neck, than a pious pilgrim. Green tiger beetles meandered along the powerful shoulders. Goldenrods grew at his feet. Overhead, the clouds swept across the westering sun.

Returning to himself, he realized the carriage had reached the porte cochere at the main entrance, where a familiar figure stood beside the horses. Removing his hat, Carter hurried toward him, barely containing his urge to run and shout. Neither could he resist throwing his arms around the smiling Brittle, and suddenly bursting into tears. Only Mr. Hope saw the butler squinting hard against the light wind to hold back his own emotions. Patting Carter on the back he said hoarsely, “Now, now, young master. Proper decorum. But it is good to have you home. The boys will take your things.”

Carter drew away, slightly embarrassed, but Brittle smiled. “You have grown into a handsome man. I see both your father and mother in you. Come along. You must be tired. If you and Mr. Hope will follow me?”

They walked beneath the cool shadows of the porte cochere, up the marble steps, to the tall, rounded, oak doors. Carter drank in everything—the eight fluted pillars, deep gold as butter, set in pairs; the rough stones and the four smooth steps; the red rose in the blue-stained glass in the fenestra by the doors—yet it was not enough. He could not take it all in. He saw the iron lion-head knockers; the polished, white stone; the glint of a cobweb beside the threshold. They passed into the entrance hall, paneled in mahogany, where Brittle took their hats, then through archways leading to the right, down the transverse corridor lined with flying buttresses with kittens carved upon them, through double doors into the drawing room.