Naked Once More (7 page)

“A savage place! as holy and enchanted / As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted.…” Perhaps for Kathleen the place had been haunted, by memories of joy or pain or inspiration. Had something momentous happened to her here? Why would she choose such a desolate place in which to end her life? The quiet clearing was certainly haunted now, and not only by unanswered, unanswerable questions. It had an uncanny aura. Jacqueline fought the urge to glance over her shoulder or turn, suddenly, to confront an unseen watcher, whose eyes she could almost feel upon her. Nonsense, of course. But if the dead did return—if Kathleen came back, it would be to such a place as this.

The sun dropped below the mountains, and twilight fell like a thick veil. Color drained from the sky, from the moving leaves; the starry blossoms of wild dogwood turned from white to moon-gray. The enclosing wall of trees became opaque with shadows. Behind them something moved. A twig snapped, sharp as a pistol shot.

Jacqueline was inside the car before she was conscious of moving. With the door closed and locked, sanity returned; she let out a breath of annoyed amusement and shook her head. Imagination was an excellent thing if not carried too far.

The engine caught without a stutter and the beams of her headlights showed nothing that should not have been there. She must have heard an animal, lulled by her long silence into believing she had left. A deer, or one of them b’ars. No wonder she had gotten carried away; the place had the enchantment of all remote wooded regions; it reminded her of the glade in Kathleen’s book, where Hawkscliffe had found Ara gathering herbs and talking to the animals.

In a gesture equally compounded of defiance and apology, Jacqueline rolled down the car window. The air was sweet and cold, and the breeze carried a faint, indefinable flower scent mingled with the sharp tang of pine.

“Sorry to have disturbed you,” she called to the growing dusk. “I’ll be back.”

It should have happened earlier, when she stood drenched in silence and shadows, touched by a breath of air from another, younger world. The overwhelming sense of presence was palpable as a hurricane. Even over the grumble of the engine she heard it—an echo of mocking laughter, and a vast, distant voice: “… be back… be back… back.…”

Jacqueline put the car in reverse and made a tight, impeccable three-cornered turn. Even after she had rolled up the window she could hear the sound of the wind tormenting the trees. That was the vast, impersonal voice—nature red in tooth and claw, the sudden approach of a spring thunder-storm. Clouds rushed in over the top of the mountains.

Jacqueline’s hands were perfectly steady, and she drove with the care and caution the surface required; but she didn’t draw a really deep breath until she had turned from the gravel of the secondary road onto the paved highway, now dark and slick with rain.

The brief storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. A pink haze of afterglow warmed the sky when Jacqueline approached the old inn door. Mollie was standing on the step, wringing her hands and peering anxiously into the darkness. She let out a bleat of relief when she saw Jacqueline.

“Thank goodness, there you are. I was afraid…”

“Do you lavish this motherly concern on all your guests,” Jacqueline inquired, “or do I appear particularly incompetent?”

“Oh, no! I mean—excuse me, I’m needed in the…”

She fled into the dining room. After a moment Jacqueline followed. She was ravenous, and to judge by the way the other guests were dressed, formal attire was not required. Her tailored jacket and slacks would do well enough.

She ordered a vodka martini from a waitress wearing a mobcap and long calico skirts, and settled back to study the ambience. The other diners were undistinguished—tourists, Jacqueline thought snobbishly—and the decor had nothing to commend or offend, except for an old-fashioned tavern-type bar, at which Mollie was presently presiding. She seemed to be avoiding Jacqueline’s eye. What ailed the woman? She couldn’t have known where Jacqueline intended to go.… Or could she? Where else would a visitor go? There were no historic sites or stately homes nearby. Perhaps the other “famous writers” had made their pilgrimages too. Perhaps something untoward had happened to one of them. Jacqueline contemplated a vision of Brunnhilde helplessly entwined in coils of poison ivy, gibbering in terror as unseen sprites shrieked curses at her.… No such luck, she decided sadly. It was possible that the locals had some superstitious fear of the clearing. She couldn’t blame them.

The next surprise she had that evening was entirely pleasant. The food was superb, from the chestnut soup to the delicate white-chocolate mousse. She was about to send her compliments to the chef when he appeared, his cap set at an angle that suggested caricature; and at the sight of him Jacqueline almost dropped her dessert spoon. That hard, sulky mouth and chiseled nose, those thick black brows straight as a bar of metal, those cheekbones.… It was Hawkscliffe, the virile hero of
Naked in the Ice.
Even the absurd chef’s cap couldn’t spoil the image.

He moved from table to table, accepting the compliments of the guests with not a crack in the unsmiling smoothness of his face, until he reached Jacqueline. “Mrs. Kirby, I presume?”

Jacqueline gave him her hand. “Why aren’t you running a restaurant in D. C. or New York?”

That pleased him. The corners of his mouth deepened in Hawkscliffe’s smile. “If you’re good enough, people will come to you. You don’t have to go to them.”

“You’re good enough,” Jacqueline said. And arrogant as an emperor, she added silently.

“But why here?” she asked.

The answer was as unexpected as it was prompt. “Luke fifteen: twenty-three. Good night, Mrs. Kirby.”

Jacqueline thought she could guess the meaning of the reference, and a quick look into the inevitable Gideon Bible, which she found in the drawer of the dressing table after she had returned to her room, confirmed her hunch. “And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again.”

The Prodigal Son, returned home, not in repentance but in triumph. He must have known Kathleen. In which sense of the word?

Later, after Jacqueline had prepared for bed, she turned out the lights and opened the French doors. A waning moon dipped low over the dark outlines of the mountains, and the sable sky blazed with stars. There was no artificial light visible; she had been given the room with the best view, overlooking the meadows and hills. The leaves of heavy shrubbery rustled below her—lilacs, filling the night air with their overpowering sweetness. Jacqueline inhaled deeply. She was moved almost to song by the beauty of it all, but fortunately for the other guests she could not remember the musical setting to Whitman’s poem, so she contented herself with mumbling, “When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d, / And the great star early droop’d in the western sky… / I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn…”

No, that was too depressing. She was about to retreat to the canopied bed when something occurred to her. That was what she had smelled in the clearing; the elusive flower scent had been the scent of lilacs. But lilacs were cultivated plants. They did not grow wild in the woods.

They were, however, Kathleen Darcy’s favorite flowers.

“The cold sweat of fear bathed Ara’s limbs, and her heart stumbled like a limping man as she…”

Jacqueline frowned. Ara knew nothing about the function of the heart; she lived in a prehistoric culture. Jacqueline had blandly arranged for her first heroine to discover copper (and how to smelt it) when her plot required the use of an anachronistic weapon, but she couldn’t pull an outrageous stunt like that twice. Not with Kathleen’s characters, at any rate.

Her heart was not stumbling, but her pulse was quick with anticipation as she drove toward the house Kathleen had called Gondal. She wasn’t worried about the impression she would make. She could behave properly when she had to, and, as she had assured her mirrored image that morning, she looked absolutely divine. The roses in her cheeks were a soft ladylike pink and her hair was a glowing auburn clear down to the roots. Her skirt covered her knees; her suit was a tasteful compromise between competence (the tailoring) and femininity (the pale green-and-gold tweed). The hat… well, Jacqueline admitted the hat might be a little much. Maybe she should have removed a few of the silk roses, or the veil, or… But it too looked divine.

Kathleen’s family had lived in the old house on the outskirts of Pine Grove for generations, but neither the house nor the family was of aristocratic lineage. The Darcys had been farmers and craftsmen; the house was a simple stone cube, unpretentious and solid. One might have expected that when Kathleen struck it rich she would have moved to a grander house, in town or elsewhere. Instead she had chosen to enlarge and improve the family home, adding a modern kitchen and several baths and building a separate wing for her mother’s use. As her fame increased and visitors sought her out, she had surrounded the grounds with a fence and a heavy gate; and on the gate, in ornate wrought-iron letters, she had placed the name she had chosen.

The letters had once been brave with gilt. Now most of the paint had worn off and some of the metal shapes leaned drunkenly to one side or the other. Jacqueline had no difficulty in reading them, however. What an ironic contrast it was, between the neglected gate and overgrown entrance, and the name’s original: Gondal, brave kingdom of heroes and princesses, castles and palaces.

The Brontëan elements in Kathleen’s work had been pointed out, discussed, analyzed, dissected and debated. The names and personalities of some of her major characters had come, not from the best-known novels of Emily and Charlotte, but from the great body of stories and poems produced during their youth. Marooned on the dour moors of Yorkshire, the four young Brontës had turned for amusement to the creation of imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte and Branwell had composed the chronicles of Angria; Emily and Anne wrote endless poems, tragedies and histories of Gondal and the rival island of Gaaldine. Not the faintest touch of humor enlivened these juvenile outpourings. The women were all beautiful and tragic; sometimes they died of a broken heart, occasionally they were betrayed and murdered. The heroes brooded and plotted; languished in dank dungeons; invaded and were besieged by foes; died gloriously on the field of battle, or were stabbed to death by traitors. A modern psychologist would probably have recommended intensive counseling for all four Brontës.

Kathleen had drawn from a number of other sources. Yet there were recurring parallels between her life and work, and that of the two greatest of the Brontës. In physical appearance Kathleen bore a striking resemblance to Charlotte; both were small and slight, demure and sweet-faced. But she had named her house after Emily’s imaginary kingdom, not Charlotte’s; and, like Emily, she had died at the age of thirty.

None of these fascinating literary considerations affected the judgment of Kathleen’s neighbors, who had been baffled and mildly offended by her choice of a name. If she wanted to call the house something fancy, why didn’t she choose Pleasant View or Darcy Manor, or like that?

Even in its present form the house was no stately manor. But the view was pleasant enough; the green mountains formed a backdrop for fields and lawns. As Jacqueline drove toward the house, she saw a number of men raking, digging and scattering unknown substances abroad. They all stopped whatever they were doing and stared interestedly at the car, leaning for support on their various implements.

Unperturbed by their notice, Jacqueline got out of the car and climbed the porch steps, which glistened with fresh paint. A program of renovation and repair was obviously in progress. High time, too. Paid for by frugal savings, or by new credit? She was no longer nervous, only entertained and interested. It was like approaching the door of the Dark Tower, or some other legendary castle. Who—or what—would answer her knock?

It was who, not what—a middle-aged woman wearing a print apron and a formidable scowl. She glared at Jacqueline. “How does he expect a body to get a meal cooked when she’s got to come running every time there’s a knock on the door?”

“It seems most unreasonable to me,” Jacqueline said sympathetically. “I’m terribly sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

“It ain’t your fault” was the magnanimous reply. “They’re all in there. You go on in. I’m supposed to announce you or some fool thing, but the hell with that, my soup’s gonna burn if I don’t get back to it.”

She marched off, rigid with righteous indignation, and Jacqueline started toward the door she had indicated. Before she could decide whether to knock or fling the portal wide, it opened.

“Marjorie, how many times have I told you—Oh. Excuse me.”

The princess had started to kiss the frog, and chickened out. The transformation was only half complete. The man’s wide, lipless mouth was Batrachian, and so were his eyes—small and protuberant, set back in a sloping forehead. His sleek shining black hair looked like a satin skullcap. His figure was upright but frog-shaped; even the skillful tailoring of his navy blazer and gray slacks could not conceal a barrel-shaped torso and short, stubby limbs. But what a foppish, gentlemanly froggy he was, with a paisley silk scarf at his throat and a carnation in his buttonhole. The photographs Jacqueline had seen were old ones, but she recognized him at once. The intervening years had not improved his looks.

He recovered himself and approached her, extending his hand. “Mrs. Kirby! Welcome. I am St. John Darcy.”

He pronounced the name Sinjun, virtually swallowing the vowels in a rather pathetic attempt at a British accent.

Jacqueline gave him her hand, which he took in both of his. His palms were smooth as a baby’s, and slightly damp. “I was afraid Marjorie had not bothered to answer the door,” he explained. “It is impossible to teach her proper manners, but she is a devoted old family retainer, and one can hardly… But here I am, keeping you standing in the hall. Come in, come in. We’ve been so anxious to meet you.”