Walking the Labyrinth (12 page)

“God,” Molly said. “What if they tore out the part about Emily and Harrison? What if we never find out what happened?”

SIX

Emily Wethers, Continued

A
nd I should not have done what I did to you, Lady Dorothy. True, it was all meant for the best, but that is a feeble excuse when one considers the consequences. My children were right.

Once again I will have to pass over a good many years, and so come to 1910. This was thirty years after Harrison first introduced me to the Order, and over twenty-five after Dorothy had begun to leave her house and come to our meetings. My two children were grown, and Henry had even married and had fathered children of his own.

The membership of the Order had changed greatly over the years. Most of the original group had been driven away by the scandal surrounding Harrison and myself, our Bohemian way of living. Augustus Binder, Mary Frances, and Jack Frederick had stayed on, but our meetings now consisted mostly of writers and labourers, artists and artisans, freethinking men and women, and what used to be called “women of easy virtue.” (Among this last, of course, I would have to include myself.)

The day our troubles started we had travelled up from London to Tantilly, Dorothy’s splendid house. The sun was shining through the Capricorn window, my window, and as always I smiled a little at Dorothy’s pun on wethers and sheep. I remembered sitting for that window so many years ago, being sketched by that artist who was so famous, remembered too when the man had stopped visiting poor Lady Dorothy because, he said, the scandal had become too much for him. And I felt again the wonder and delight we had experienced when the windows had finally gone up and we had been showered in fantastic golds and greens and reds.

On the day of which I speak we were all present for what Dorothy insisted on calling a seance. Evening fell, drawing the brilliant colours from the windows. As always we sketched the pentagram, burned the herbs, lit the candles. We held hands, and as always Dorothy asked about her husband.

I closed my eyes and began to speak. Her husband was happy, I said, and sent his love. I had been practicing this deception for so long that it had become second nature to me.

I must say in my defence that my fictions seemed to have done her some good. Lady Dorothy had long ago left her house: she rode her horses, managed her estate, even sat on committees for charities. Still, I should not have done what I did.

My son Henry spoke next, telling us about a friend of his who had died this past week. Mary Frances said, “Your friend’s death is the will of the powers that guide the Labyrinth. He was ready to explore the last turning of the maze.”

“But is he happy?” Henry asked. “Has he a message for me?”

Mary looked at me. My mind was on something very different from the question he had asked. It shames me to confess it, but I was thinking of the sumptuous supper Lady Dorothy usually laid out for us after our meetings, the roasts and trifles and wines, the silver forks and cut-crystal goblets. I did not even wonder which friend it was who had died, and why I had heard nothing of this from my son before.

“Your friend is happy,” I said, almost automatically. “He sends you his love.”

“What is his name?” Henry asked.

“What?” I said, surprised.

“What is his name?”

I looked sharply at my son, and at that moment I saw many things. There was no dead friend. Henry was testing me, trying to catch me out, for reasons I did not understand. How different he was from his father Harrison, who would never seek to cause anyone embarrassment.

I looked at his sister Florence. She gazed back at me, her expression level. What were she and her brother playing at?

“His name is Bobo,” I said. Bobo was a dog Henry had been fond of as a child. I stood rapidly, not giving anyone time to remark on such a ridiculous name, and said, “Arton has no more messages.”

We ate supper and then retired upstairs. I followed Henry into his room. “What were you and Florence thinking of?” I asked angrily.

“Florence had nothing to do with it,” Henry said. “It was all my idea.”

“Really? And why, pray tell, did you ask such a stupid question?”

He smiled, showing the gap between his teeth. “Perhaps you need to explore a further turning of the Labyrinth,” he said.

Rage rose within me, so strongly that I wanted to slap him. But he was a man now, over twenty-five. I could barely speak for anger. “You—you would ruin everything!” I said. “Don’t forget that you and Florence are bastards, that you have no legal rights, no standing whatsoever. Everything we have we owe to Harrison’s charity, and everything Harrison has depends on the Order.”

“Does it?” Henry asked.

I could not trust myself to speak. I left his room, slamming the door behind me.

A few days later Harrison and I returned to London. King Edward had died a month before, and many of the people on the street still wore the crepe bands of mourning. It was not all heaviness and solemnity, though; Harrison and I went to the Savoy Theatre for light opera, to the Adelphi to see Conan Doyle’s
The Speckled Band
.

We held several meetings at our London house and I paid close attention to my children, but neither of them asked any further questions. In the course of time we travelled back to Tantilly.

At our meeting there I spoke the usual comforting messages from Dorothy’s husband. I felt alert, aware; something was about to happen.

There was silence when I had finished. Then Henry said, “I have a message. A message from Arton.”

I looked at him sharply. Only Mary and I received messages from Arton; Henry had shown no trace of the Gift—though in some of our family, I knew, the Gift appeared late.

“The message is from someone named—I can’t hear it. Arton says—he says the initials are L.S.”

L.S. Lydia Sanderson, whose name had not been mentioned at these meetings for nigh on twenty-five years. Old Augustus looked up, his face shining with interest. “Lydia!” Dorothy said. “What does she say?”

“She says—No, I can’t make it out. Oak? Or woke? No, it’s gone.”

He must stop,
I thought.
He must.
I could hear nothing but his voice, the rustle of his clothing, the loud ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. Harrison looked at me, shocked out of his impassivity.

Henry sat back. “No,” he said. “That’s all. Perhaps next time it will be clearer.”

There would be no next time, I thought angrily. I would make certain of that. I stood, signalling that the meeting was at an end.

Lady Dorothy went to the kitchen. Augustus turned to speak to Henry. I cut him off. “We need to talk,” I said to my son.

“You mean you need to talk,” Henry said. “And I need to listen.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean,” I said, but Henry smiled and moved toward the door. I hurried after him.

He made his way down the corridor. He was not running, but he was younger and faster than I was, and unencumbered by high heels. “Henry!” I called. “Listen!” He turned once and smiled again.

Finally he stopped at a door and pulled it open. I knew it well; he was heading toward the Labyrinth. I hurried after him down the stairs. “Henry!” I shouted, running into the maze. “Henry!”

A light shone from somewhere, but I could not see my son at all. I turned into a room and caught my breath. A woman and a man sat at a table; between them on the table were jewels, coin pieces, chains, goblets, rings, all piled so high that the two could hardly see each other.

I had travelled the Labyrinth many times, of course, but I could not remember ever seeing this room. I hurried away. Corridors seemed to melt and flow around me; I found myself in a room where a woman lay unmoving on the bed. Her long red hair fanned out like the reflection of the sun setting on the ocean. No, I have promised to be honest in this, my testimony to you, Dorothy, and so I will say what I saw at the time. It seemed to me that her hair was a pool of blood. I ran toward the door, nearly stumbling in my haste.

I do not know how long I traversed the Labyrinth, coming upon one sight and then another, each more dreadful than the last. The feeling of power growing and focusing around me had gone. I understood that there was someone stronger than I in the maze now, that I was following the course he had laid out for me. My son Henry.

Once I thought I had found the first room again, but as I drew closer I saw that the woman and man were now skeletons, their clothes rotting on their frames. The riches lay undisturbed between them.

In the next room I nearly fell over someone crouching by the door. I stepped back, trying not to cry out. The man stood; it was Colonel Augustus Binder.

“What the devil are you doing here?” I asked.

He put his hand in his waistcoat pocket. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said. “I saw you run into the Labyrinth and I presumed to follow you. What a place this is! It’s changed enormously since my initiation, become a cave of wonders. Was this always here, and I blinded to it by my ignorance? Have I reached the next grade in the Order?”

His babble maddened me. He would not reach any grade if we did not find a way out; we would become two more skeletons, an enigmatic tableau for the next visitor to the maze.

Someone called out and I hurried towards the sound of the voice, certain it was Henry. “Where are you?” I shouted. The voice came again.

“Is this a test?” Augustus asked me, quivering with excitement.

“Quiet,” I said. I listened for my son but he said nothing more. I made a guess as to where I had heard him last and reached out with my Gift. The wall in front of us collapsed.

“What!” Augustus said. “How did—how did—”

“Quiet,” I said again.

I walked over the rubble. The next wall fell back, and the next. I pushed out at one more wall, and then I knew where Henry was. I stepped through a doorway and saw my son.

“What have you learned?” Henry asked.

I did not understand him. He said nothing more, but went through the entrance room and climbed the stairs in silence. I followed, puzzled and angry, as he led the way to Lady Dorothy’s panelled dining room. The servants had already begun serving the first course. Henry turned towards Dorothy. “You’ll have to send more builders into the labyrinth,” he told her. He was smiling again. “I’m afraid a few of the walls were knocked down.”

Augustus drew something from his waistcoat pocket. He looked disgusted, and I knew that he had stolen what he thought was a jewel from the Labyrinth. “We give power to the places we live in,” my grandmother had said. Henry had added lustre to the jewel, but away from the Labyrinth it had become just an ordinary stone.

I refused to allow Henry, his wife Edwina, or his sister Florence to attend any more of our meetings. I did not know what my son had in mind with these outrageous interruptions, but I would not allow him to jeopardize everything I had worked for.

When we returned to London I tried to continue as before. I took care of the household for Harrison, read more of the books he had recommended as part of my education, entertained visitors, went to operas and flower shows. I hired a new maid, though I knew she was pregnant; I remembered my own plight so long ago, and how I would not have survived without Harrison’s kindness.

One grim overcast day in June I left the house to have tea with Lady Dorothy, who had ventured to London for the first time in many years. It was difficult to make my way through the noise and crush of carriages and motorized vehicles and safety bicycles, all the impedimenta of this dreadful modern world. I could well understand why Dorothy preferred to stay safe at home.

I thought of Henry and his recent behaviour. He had not been to visit me since we had come back to London, and I missed him deeply. I remembered him as a small boy, his curiosity and laughter. I wondered why he had turned away from me.

I crossed the street to the tea shop. A horse-drawn bus hurried past, spraying my shoes with mud from the recent rains.

Lady Dorothy was waiting for me at the tea shop. I sat at her table and said something light about the dreadful London streets. I knew she must be feeling distressed at the dirt, the crowds, the pervasive smells of coal smoke and factory smoke and horse dung, and I wanted to put her at ease.

We ordered our tea and cakes. “Augustus said something very odd to me the other day,” she said, patting her white hair and fiddling with her spectacles. “He said that you were the one who knocked down the walls in the Labyrinth. Well, I said. She hardly seems strong enough. I’m certain old Gus did it himself, but I don’t understand why he would put the blame on you. It’s not as if I can’t repair it.”

Our tea and cakes came, and I sipped so as not to have to answer. “He’s furious about something,” Dorothy said. “I don’t know what it is exactly. He seems to think that we’re hiding things from him, that he’s due to reach another grade. He says you worked magic down in the Labyrinth, and he wants to know how you did it.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Well. I said that I knew you had powers, and that we would all learn your secrets in our own good time. That we’ll advance to a higher grade when you find us ready, and not before. I hope I did the right thing.”

I nodded. “And then?”

“He became angrier. He said that he had been promised these secrets since joining the Order, thirty years ago. That he had been given nothing in all that time. That he had been ready to leave the Order but had recently seen proof of your magic, and now he wants to learn more. He even went so far as to threaten us with a lawsuit. Well, I told him. The Order must be kept secret. You wouldn’t dare break the oaths you swore to us all those years ago, I said.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He laughed. Not a very pleasant laugh, either. He asked me where Lydia was. I repeated what you and Harrison had said, that she had lost interest in the Order. He laughed again. ‘Then why did Arton bring us a message from her?’ he asked. Here, you’ve gone quite pale. Let me pour you some more tea.”

“I don’t know that we did receive a message from Arton,” I said finally. “My son’s been very strange lately.”