Author: Anya Seton
Category: Literature
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“I daresay,” said the guide. “Never seen anything myself, but there was supposed to be a cold presence in the tower room, it was exorcised, I believe. There are other legends, armored knights, ghostly hoofbeats, a black monk with a rope around his neck, that sort of thing, but I never heard mention of the walled-up girl.” She determinedly shooed the two women back into the vestibule.
Celia remained on the window seat with Akananda. The flush had drained from her face, which was now pale and glistening with sweat drops. She slumped against the doctor’s shoulder. “I feel sick,” she whispered. “Deathly sick. Can’t breathe.”
Akananda put a firm hand on her forehead. Through mists of nausea she felt the sustaining pressure.
She straightened slowly, opening her eyes. “Where’s Mother gone?” she said. “Mother and Sue?” She spoke in a wondering little-girl voice. Her languid gaze roamed about the Hall, it passed over the niche without pausing. He saw that her pupils were so widely dilated that her eyes seemed as black as his own.
“They have gone with the guide to see the rest of this place,” he said quietly. “I think you had better come outside with me. We’ll go find the Duchess in the garden.”
“This place,” she repeated, frowning past him at the wainscoting. When she spoke again he was startled by a different inflection. Her voice sounded higher, there was no trace of American accent, yet the tonal quality was not the English that he knew either. There was an unfamiliar cadence as she said, “This is a place abhorrent. Yet I cannot flee. For I must see him. My love awaits me in secret. Jesu, forgive us!”
She crossed herself with a wavering uncertain motion.
Akananda shook his head. He guessed something of what was hidden from her or any one of the struggling souls who were blindly meshed in the results of a bygone tragedy. But since these souls had free will, he could not foresee the outcome. His thought sped to the exalted ashram in the Himalayas where he had passed some of his boyhood, under the guidance of several enlightened ones, and especially of Nanak Guru. With the yearning memory went a humble prayer for wisdom.
“Come out into the garden, my child,” he said, putting a hand on Celia’s arm, for she had started up. “You’ve had enough. Already the protective veil is torn.”
She shook his hand off. “Let me be!” she cried angrily. “Always I must go to him. I must tell him.” She stroked her belly. “It hath quickened. I felt it move this morn.”
Akananda stared at her and saw a subtle change, as though another face were shedding a wavering reflection on that of Celia Marsdon. The contours had become more oval, the lips fuller and more seductive, the brows more arched and the eyes held a passionate willful glint.
“Lady Marsdon,” he said in a calm cold tone designed to reach through to her, “do you mean that you are pregnant by Sir Richard?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Will you mock me?” she said. “I know not any Sir Richard, Stephen is my dear love . . .”
She whirled around and ran through the door. Akananda followed her close behind. She flew up the heavy Jacobean stairs. On the landing she paused, putting her hand to her lips. “I hear voices. None must know. She found us once.” Celia flattened herself into a corner.
The voices were those of the guide, Lily and Sue who were examining the window in the solar through which ladies of bygone times might discreetly watch male revelry in the Great Hall below.
“And now,” said the guide, “we go through towards the priest’s room and the Tudor chapel. That chapel is a gem. It was built in fifteen-twenty-one during the reign of Henry the Eighth; it contains priceless linenfold paneling, a painted barrel roof and part one 1968 some fine stained glass . . .” Her voice died away as the party moved on.
Celia emerged from the corner. “They are gone,” she murmured.
She walked slowly through the solar and an anteroom, while Akananda followed. She was now totally unaware of him, and talked to herself as she entered a dark passage. “Where is the door? He would not have locked it against me. Might he be at the altar? Yet not at this hour, so late at night. Though he does pray overmuch.”
She entered a small cubicle which contained a fireplace and led into the chapel. “Stephen . . .” she whispered urgently. “’Tis unkind to hide.” Suddenly she raised her head and looked up at a dark beam on the ceiling. “What’s that . . .” she whispered. “Black, hanging there . . . what’s that?”
Akananda stood rooted. Sunlight filtered through the bare empty cubicle from the chapel windows.
Celia moved a step nearer the fireplace. She raised her arms high, her hands fumbled over something in the air. She fell to her knees and, as she did so, gave a scream so piercing, so eerie that it shrilled through the peaceful manor rooms like an air-raid siren.
The guide came running back, with Lily and Sue. They stood for an appalled moment staring at Celia who was crumpled on the floor, with Akananda bending over her, his hand on her wrist.
“Dear Lord, what happened?” cried Lily, kissing her daughter and distractedly smoothing the brown curls.
“She has fainted,” said the Hindu, “but she’ll be all right. Perhaps we can carry her to a bed.”
“What was that terrible noise?” cried Lily. “Surely, not Celia!”
Akananda did not hesitate. There would certainly now be no escape from suffering, but he would spare the poor mother what he could. “Was there some special noise?” he asked. “I was preoccupied with Lady Marsdon.”
The guide at once showed exasperated relief. “You can depend on it, ’twas the plumbing. You’d be surprised at the whistles and bangs we get from the plumbing. These old places were never built for bathrooms.”
She went to help Akananda and the others lift Celia. “Nearest bed’ll be in the owner’s private wing,” she said. She stared at Celia. “Poor thing, does she get these spells often? I had a cousin used to have fits.”
Lily, though much alarmed, was able to say indignantly, “Celia doesn’t have fits. I never knew her to faint before. But, of course, you know young wives . . . one might expect . . .” She smiled faintly and shrugged.
The guide accepted this, as did Sue, who instantly reviewed all the things she had heard about pregnancy, and examined the unconscious Celia with awed interest.
Within twenty minutes Celia had completely recovered, and felt almost normal. She concealed from everyone that she had no idea of anything that had happened since getting out of the car at the moat bridge.
The guide showed the party out through the tower entrance, accepted the fees and her tip, then vanished.
They found Igor still snapping pictures; Myra and Harry flirting on a bench near the ornamental pool.
As the party gathered by the bridge Myra greeted them amiably. “Well, was the tour interesting? You’ve been gone scarcely an hour.”
Sue began, “Oh, it was fascinatin’ but I don’t think we saw everything because Cousin Celia—” She broke off, gaping at the lawn beyond the moat. “What’s that? It’s fabulous!”
They all gazed where Sue’s finger pointed.
Myra laughed. “That, my sweet, is a peacock, and this one’s a blasted nuisance. Name of Napoleon, or so the gardener said when we had to get help to stop the bird’s pecking at his reflection on the car door. Conceited, aggressive bird, like all males.”
She gave Harry a sideways look. He responded with an amorous chuckle and ran his finger slowly down her bare arm.
“I’ll snap Napoleon for you,” offered Igor to Sue, “but those iridescent blues and greens have been done to death. Too blatant. Still, they might suit you, Duchess. Shall I try them in a cocktail frock?”
Myra shrugged. “Thanks, dear Igor, but I don’t pay two hundred guineas for any cocktail frock, blatant or not, save your genius for the film stars.” She had almost added, “the Americans,” but even Myra’s egotism was penetrated by something odd about Mrs. Taylor and her daughter—their total silence, and on Celia’s small face a strained haunted loo
k. Myra received a singular impression—a memory of one of the crofters’ wives on her father’s estate in Cumberland, a woman Myra’s mother always referred to as “tragic,” though Myra had never known why. Anyway, the woman had drowned herself in the River Irthing, and the ten-year-old Myra had heard snatches of the adults’ pity and horror. Myra disliked uncomfortable memories and dealt with this one briskly.
“The pubs must be open by now!” she said. “Let’s go and get fortified for the journey back to Medfield!”
They grouped themselves as before in the two cars and drove to the nearby village of Ivy Hatch.
By seven o’clock they arrived at Medfield Place. Richard came out of the house to greet them. “Enjoy yourselves?” he asked cordially. He was already dressed for the evening, and looked very handsome.
Myra instantly forgot Harry and gave Richard her lazy smile. “We missed you, darling,” she drawled. “I hope you built a divine pigsty!”
“Quite,” he agreed. “A sanctuary for super-sows. Celia, you seem a bit fagged, but I’m afraid the Bent-Warners’ll be here shortly.”
“Oh, yes,” she answered after a minute. “I’ll go and change.” The Bent-Warners? Who were the Bent-Warners? But, one must please Richard. There was danger in displeasing Richard.
Celia turned and mounted the steps into the house, treading very carefully as though uncertain of her balance.
Richard watched her, frowning; when they entered the house he drew Lily into his study. “Anything wrong with Celia?” he asked. “She acts very strange.”
Lily hesitated. “I don’t think so. Not really. She had a kind of fainting spell at Ightham Mote . . . but Dr. Akananda says she’s all right. I thought maybe it was . . .” She stopped, a flush sprang up on the plump, slightly rouged cheeks.
Richard’s gaze hardened. His eyebrows drew together. “You thought it was pregnancy? I assure you it’s not. Nor do I consider that Hindu an adequate medical opinion. If she’s not better when I go up, I’ll get old Foster from Lewes.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lily murmured, dismayed by his tone, and also by his leaving her so abruptly, standing on the study’s faded oriental rug. He acts that way because he loves her, Lily thought, and men can never bear illness. It was stupid to be hurt, or to magnify a fainting spell, stupid to catch some of the confused fear she now felt in her daughter. Lily shut her eyes and strove to clear her thinking. In her many religious questings she had once come across Sir Thomas Browne, and might have summed up her faith by one of his aphorisms, “Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.” She stood now, trying to feel the interior sunlight, the glowing comfort which had never before really failed her—but it did now. And being a woman of action, she mounted the great oaken stairway and knocked on Akananda’s door.
He opened the door instantly and said without surprise, “Oh, Mrs. Taylor. Come in.” He was wearing a white silk dressing gown, and his black hair glistened from a shower. Lily had the impression of extreme order and cleanliness, noting absently that the room seemed very bare. He must have removed the knickknacks, the ashtrays, even the French prints which had hung on the walls. The only ornament was a bowl full of fragrant heliotrope and red roses.
“I just wanted to . . . to ask you . . . well, about Celia . . . and Richard was rude to me. Of course that doesn’t matter . . . but he never was until today, and what really made Celia faint? Everything is suddenly so mixed up and queer.” Her blue eyes filled with tears.
Akananda looked at her sadly. But it was not the time to give her what explanations he could. “We’ll both pray,” he said. “You in your way, I in mine. All heart-prayers are heard. All incense rises toward heaven, no matter the perfume it’s composed of.”
“Oh, I believe that,” said Lily, her face clearing. “I guess I’ll go to church tomorrow morning. It always makes me feel better. But you don’t believe in Christianity, do you, Dr. Akananda?”
“Of course I do,” he said laughing. “The Lord Christ was sent from God to show the way, the truth and the life, to the western world. But there’ve been other enlightened Sons of God. Enlightened Beings who redeem mankind. The Lord Krishna was such a one, and the Lord Buddha. None of their basic teachings are incompatible with each other. Because they come from the same source. You understand this intuitively, Mrs. Taylor. And that’s all you need. I’ll gladly accompany you to that charming village church tomorrow. One can more easily touch God in appointed places of worship. Christian cathedrals, Hindu temples, in mosques and synagogues. To many souls beauty of surroundings is helpful, to some essential, and yet for those of a different temperament the spirit may more readily be felt in a bare Quaker Meeting House. It doesn’t matter.”
Lily agreed with him, now that she thought about it; as she instinctively agreed with any optimistic philosophy. She smiled and said, “Yes, you make me feel quite comforted, and I really do know that prayers are answered. I don’t know why I got upset in the study.”
“Prayers . . .” he said gravely, “are always heard. They are answered according to Divine Law. Prayers are really desires. And desires, good or bad, are fulfilled according to their strength. Good desire reaps good action. Evil also has great strength. Violent desires inevitably set the machinery in motion. This earthly plane is run by passions flaming through, and yet always part of the delusions of Maya. As long as there’s violence there will be retribution in this life or succeeding ones. I believe you understand this?”
“Well, yes,” said Lily, “in a way.” Though she wondered what a grave speech about violence had to do with a little fainting spell, or the unexpected sharpness of a son-in-law. “I read somewhere lately,” she said thoughtfully, “that this generation of hippies, the flower children who want to drop out from the whole social structure, the article said they were all reincarnations of those who were killed young in the last war. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Quite possible,” he answered smiling. “At least in part. And their demonstrations against war, hatred and greed, though often misguided, are signs of spiritual progress. However, dear lady, the forces threatening us here in Medfield Place originated further back in the past than the last war and are of singular personal intensity.” He might have continued trying to prepare and strengthen her, as he had her daughter, but Lily started.
“Heavens!” she said, “I heard a car on the drive. Must be those Warners. I’ll be late.” She smiled at him and hurried to her room.
Celia’s vagueness and look of strain had vanished when Richard came upstairs to her bedroom saying, “I hear you fainted at Ightham Mote, what happened?”
She was sitting at her dressing table, brushing green iridescent eye shadow on her lids, brown mascara on her already thick lashes. “Nothing special happened,” she said with a cool smile. Far away and closed off by an iron door, something stirred. Hostility to Richard. She still had no memory of Ightham Mote, and very little of the ride home; but she was aware of a shift in feeling.
Richard stared. That chill remoteness, instead of her usual eager warmth. “Well, I’m glad you’re all right again,” he said uncertainly. “You didn’t look it when you got back. I was worried.”
She turned around on the stool. Her gray eyes, now made much longer by the make-up, examined him quietly. “Were you, Richard? Were you really?” She rouged her lips a deep cherry red, which further astonished him. She had always worn the fashionably pale lipsticks. She stood up in her brief lacy slip, went to her closet and took out a simple tangerine chiffon sheath. She dropped it over her head.
“Zip me up, please!” He obeyed clumsily, and when his fingers touched her soft tanned back, she shuddered and drew away.
She brushed her curly dark hair into a high pile on her head, clipped on earrings as big as golf balls, made of masses of crystal chunks. There was a matching heavy crystal bracelet. The crystals had a grayish sparkle, like dull diamonds, and gave her a strange, exotic look.
“I thought you didn’t li
ke wearing heavy stuff like that,” he said frowning.
“Not my ‘image’?” asked Celia sweetly. “Igor brought them as a guest gift. He says they represent a ‘mass of petrified tears.’ I think that rather suits me.”
“Good God, Celia. What a bloody morbid remark! What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing at all,” she said, opening a sealed bottle of Shalimar and rubbing some on her wrists and neck. The perfume had been an untouched Christmas present, for she used only the lightest floral scents. “I think,” she added, “that I’ll seduce Harry, be fun to take him from Myra.”
If she had suddenly hit him in the face he could not have been more shocked. Flippancy, though unlike her, might be understood. So might teasing, which had once been part of their love-making when they were close. Had been close. His face darkened. Mrs. Taylor had thought Celia pregnant. But he hadn’t touched her in—well—a long time. Why not? Because he hadn’t wanted to. Because sex had suddenly grown repugnant. You should not have married! He heard the words in his head.
“The seating arrangements tonight,” said Celia, pulling a stack of gold-rimmed cards towards her on the desk. “I’ll write them fast. Twelve is a nuisance since it won’t come out even. Ah . . .” she added, seeing his face, “you thought I’d forgotten this little detail, didn’t you? Despite my lowly American background I do occasionally remember my social duties. I shall put Harry beside me, and remove Myra.”
Richard swallowed. “If you’re being so childish as to try and make me jealous, the effort’s wasted.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. Their eyes met for a moment in anger. That behind the anger was fear they neither of them perceived.
They all sat down to dinner at nine. Medfield’s great dining room was always gloomy, the Victorian baronet had papered it with purple brocade, and painted the original oak woodwork a mud brown. He had also put in floral carpeting, snaky tendrils and blossoms of what might have been water lilies once but now also merged into mottled mud brown. It had worn all too well, and Richard did not want it replaced.