Touch Not The Cat (36 page)

I suppose I could have guided him through, if I had been able to hold my mind clear. Left and next right . . . straight . . . right and next left . . . straight . . . U-turn sharp left and repeat the lot in reverse . . .

the first gate should now be beside you on your left-hand side . . .

But I didn't, and he never asked. I felt something move out of the dark like a caress, and knew he was sensing my exhaustion. I got it faintly, very faintly:
Hold up, love, I'm almost with you.

I didn't know how. He was coming. I thought about nothing else. I waited.

Either he had found James's axe, or he had been up to the farm for another. I could hear the steady, hacking sounds, and the splashes, coming gradually nearer as he approached me through the maze.

Slowly, but straight. He was cutting his way through. The hedges, overgrown and already sparse through neglect, had been further damaged by the weight of the flood and the debris it carried. I could hear the ancient stems parting, and the swish and splashing as he forced his way through. The yews that some long-dead Ashley had planted, and that had taken two hundred years or so to grow and thicken into those lovely head-high walls; and now Rob was slicing his way straight through, to me.

Rob Ashley. No one had a better right.

The crashing stopped. I heard the surging splash as he thrust through the last hedge, then he waded across the moonlit water of the clearing, and ran up the steps to the door.

Love?

Here. The south window, Rob.

The shutter went back with a slam, and his shadow blacked out the moonlight in the window. It wasn't James's axe he was holding, it was a heavy woodsman's axe from the farmyard; he had even thought to bring a dry blanket, which he wore wrapped like a burnous round his head and shoulders. He clambered through, and landed with a thud and a squelch on the flooded boards. Then he was beside me on the bed, holding me tightly and kissing me, and I was kissing him, and somehow, at some point, our soaked clothes came off and we were together under the warm rug, while the accumulated terrors and tensions of the night swelled and broke in a fierce explosion of love, and, with no more thought or reservation than two wild creatures mating in the woods, we took each other and then lay together, clasped and quiet, and outside, I swear it, the nightingale began to sing.

If anyone told me now that I could have slept like that, in all the damp and discomfort of the flooded pavilion, I would not have believed them. But, between love and exhaustion and deep happiness, sleep I did, and so did Rob, wrapped tightly together under the rug, and neither of us stirred until the early sun, reaching the window, threw such a dazzle of light from the water outside onto the ceiling mirror that it beat against our eyelids and woke us.

"It's still singing," I said sleepily.

"What is?"

"The nightingale. I told you—"

"That's a lark."

"Oh? So it is." I came awake then, to the blaze of sunlight and the morning birds and the warmth of Rob's body along mine. He was lying half on his back, eyes wide and wakeful, but with every muscle and line of his body relaxed, warm and still, into the morning's contentment. "Have you been awake long?"

"It doesn't seem like it. I suppose I woke at my usual time. Always do, even on holiday. First time I ever woke like this, though." His arm tightened, and I moved my cheek deeper into the hollow of his shoulder. "Bryony—"

"Mm?"

"What did they put the mirror on the ceiling for?"

I gave a little snort of laughter, deep into his shoulder. "I forgot all about that. It was supposed to be put up there by some loose-screw—your ancestor Wicked Nick gets the blame-so he could watch himself in bed with his lady friends. Good thing it was dark last night. Just think how off-putting if one suddenly saw oneself—"

"That's the point. One couldn't."

"But one can," I protested. "And very cozy we look, all bundled up like this."

"Aye. But then the bed isn't where it ought to be. You can see where that was by the moulding on the wall over there. The way that mirror's angled, if you were lying on the bed all you'd see was a piece of the floor hereabouts." He tilted his head back, examining it. "Is it meant to be like that, do you think?

Or have the supports gone from one side? If so, maybe we should get out from under."

"It's always been like that. Well," I said, "poor Nick's been libelled about the mirror as he has about a few other things. Ellen Makepeace, for instance."

He misunderstood me. "Oh, it was true enough about her. Funny, isn't it, to think it all started here, him and her and the garden in the moonlight, and maybe even your nightingale . . . If he cared for her, that is."

"Oh, he did. He cared very much."

I heard the smile in his voice. "You might just be prejudiced."

"Maybe I am. But he did. I know he did."

I said no more. There would be time later to tell him what I had found out about Nick and Ellen Ashley, and what had happened in the cottage last night. Time to tell him about my narrow escape from the trap under this very floor. Time to find out what had happened to my cousins, and where they had gone. Time for all the things that the immediate future must hold; and after that, time for the real future, ours, Rob Ashley's and mine. But for the moment, let it go, let it go. Let us keep, while we could, our own island world of joy.
It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark.

"What's the time, Rob?"

"Don't know. I forgot to wind my watch, I can't think why. . . . Not much more'n half past five, I'd guess."

I gave a little sigh, and relaxed again. "Lots of time, then, before anyone comes this way and sees the water and starts looking for us . . . What is it, love?" This as Rob sat up and began to unwind himself from me and the blanket. It felt cold without him. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere. But I'm going to move this bed back to its proper place."

"I told you, the mirror's quite safe."

"I dare say," he said, laying hold of the bed, and running it back with a powerful screech of wood against the wall. "But I'd sooner be out of range."

"Why?"

"This is why," he said, getting back on the bed, and pulling the blanket once more over the pair of us.

When I woke again Rob was not beside me, but as I turned over I saw him, fully dressed and kneeling on the floor near the foot of the bed.

The sun had moved appreciably higher, and now the mirror's light fell, like a spotlight or a burning glass, straight to the boards between the window and the foot of the bed, where the trapdoor lay. Where the water had washed over it last night was an irregular patch of damp, already beginning to steam dry in the warmth. The flood had scoured the dust of years from this section of the floor, and now, quite distinct in the clean floorboards, could be seen the sawn edges of the trap, with, midway along one edge, what looked like a knothole in the wood. In this Rob had inserted a finger. As I sat up to watch, he gave a heave, and the trapdoor came up from its bed. He carried it to the wall and propped it there. Then he dropped to his knees at the trap's edge, peering downwards.

I opened my mouth to tell him about my experience of last night, when something about his expression stopped me. The light, reflected upwards from whatever water still lay below the pavilion, lit him sharply, and showed his eyes, narrowed against the dazzle, intent on something below. Without looking up he made a beckoning gesture, and nodded downwards. "Bryony. Look here."

His voice held discovery, and a kind of awe. I swallowed what I had been going to say, and instead twisted round on the bed till I could lie prone, peering down over the foot of it, into my prison.

The force of last night's flood had swept through and then subsided, leaving the debris piled up against the walls and supports where the whirlpool had flung it, and scouring the center clean. Water still lay there, a sheet of clear glass a few inches deep, lighted fiercely from above, where the angled mirror threw the sunlight down.

It lit a picture, or rather, part of a larger picture; the head of a leopard, snarling, with one paw upraised, the claws out and ready. The eyes were huge and brilliant, done in some lustrous shell-like stone which caught and threw back the light; the teeth gleamed white and sharp, and the yellow fur with the black spots, washed clean by the rush of the flood, shone as brightly as on the day the mosaic was laid and hammered down to make the floor of some Roman's home.

We looked at it for some time in silence. A stray draft of air moved the water, and the upraised paw stirred. The eyes glared, and the yellow fur ruffled; a young leopard, rousing, as vivid and alive as when, all those wild centuries ago, some Roman took and built over this quiet corner between river and hill, and brought his artisans from Italy to make this mar vellous thing.

"That's mosaic work, isn't it?" asked Rob. "Looks like part of a floor or something; a big one, too. It must be pretty old to have been buried clear under the maze."

"I wouldn't really know, but I'd have said it was Roman."

"Roman? As old as that?"

"I think so. There were Romans here, a long time ago, and there was a tile kiln not far off."

"Yeah, I know. At Tiler's Hatch, where the flooded pits are. Do you suppose there's more of it?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. Perhaps when William Ashley cleared the ground for his pavilion he found this, and so—"

"'The cat, it's the cat on the pavement,'" quoted Rob, very softly.

I sat back abruptly. I could feel my eyes dilated with the fierce, reflected light, as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. "Of course!
Of course!"
I looked up at the wall above the bedhead, where the wildcat ramped in the center of the plaster maze. "That's it, isn't it? The old crest was the leopard, but through time people forgot why. Then poor doting William borrowed Julia's wildcat and her motto, and then, when he found this, he drew the maze round them for a coat of arms. But how do you suppose my father found out about the mosaic?"

"Well, you said he'd been studying the books. It was all in the poetry, wasn't it? I reckon," said Rob comfortably, "that if you'd taken enough time over them, you'd have found it out for yourself. 'What palace then was this?' Remember?"

"Of course," I said again. I drew a long breath. He was right, it had all been there, carefully riddled down in the little verses for anyone who knew; the spotted catamountain, the leopard from the sun, even the glass mirroring another flood: "But where the gentle waters, straying, move, See! Dionysus' creature here enskied. . . . " I lay down again, peering at the exposed mosaic. "No sign of Bacchus and the lesser godlings. They must have covered them up again, and just kept the Cat. No wonder the Survey never traced the Roman site. What d'you bet, Rob, that if we cleared the maze away, we'd find the rest of the villa?"

"You might say I made a start at it last night. I wasn't thinking about much, except getting through to you. But I doubt if the maze could ever have been put right again even if you wanted to." He added, slowly: "I suppose that you couldn't put a value on a thing like this?"

"Not really." I knew what he was thinking; that here was something which could save Ashley—the part of it that I loved—from the bulldozers of the contractors, and make it worth someone's while to clear the gardens and expose this magnificent find for people to see. There were societies and trusts and generous individuals who would join the local Archaeological Society to work on the site and preserve what was found there. Whatever the future might bring, it was certain that no builders would be allowed to touch this part of Ashley.

I bent again over the trap. The leopard flexed his claws, and his eyes glimmered. I had certainly been too close to him, last night, down there in his secret lair. It was easy to imagine that the scratches on my body were not just from the flotsam of the storm, but from those cruel claws. "Touch Me Who Dares." Yes, the Cat had been here before the Ashleys ever came, and he would outstay them.

Rob got to his feet, and pulled me into his arms, blanket and all. "Time we got out of here, I'm afraid. And time you put your things on. You're getting cold. Here they are, they're dry now." As I obeyed him, he carried the trapdoor over and began lowering it carefully into place. "Well, and so what do we do about it? Keep quiet, like William?"

I laughed, belting my housecoat round me. Neither it, nor the pretty nightdress from Funchal, would ever be the same again. "Old Scrooge that he was, he seems never to have told a soul. He doesn't even seem to have told Nick, just hugged it all to himself, and put it down in those little poems. No wonder he died of a heart seizure when he heard that Nick was using the place as a love nest."

"And then Nick got the blame for the mirror, too. Eh, well . . ." The trapdoor was firmly in place. He straightened. "Well, that's it. And now, the day's got to start. It won't be a good one, that's for sure, but at least we can face it together, and the mystery's almost over."

"'Almost'?"

"I meant we've just about found out all your dad was trying to tell you. All but the last bit."

"I know that, too," I said.

"Well, then?" asked Rob.

I shook my head. "Not now. I'll tell you the whole thing later . . . after breakfast."

"Breakfast!" He stretched luxuriously, giving me that wide, warm smile of his. "You're dead right; that comes first! Your kitchen'll be flooded, but we might find some bacon and eggs in mine. Coming?"

We went out onto the pavilion steps. Now we could see how far the water had gone down; below us in the clearing it was not much more than seven or eight inches deep. In the windless morning air it lay still as glass, and under it, like a garden set in crystal, the grass and flowers stood straight, held by the lucid water as perfectly as if it were the air. Inside that gentle mirror the turf stood green and springy, with above it the buttercups floating, wide open to the sun, each petal supporting and supported by the weight of clear water. A shoal of heartsease stared up with violet faces, like underwater creatures watching the light. Even the pale speedwell was held in its frail perfection, not a petal torn. The lilies of the valley stood motionless, wax and ivory, flowers in a Clichy paperweight. A small rudd, lost from the moat, flicked by through the daisies with red fins winking.