The High House (18 page)

“Not usually. Chant keeps the lamps lit to the first landing, which is hundreds of steps above us, but he doesn’t go beyond it. The anarchists have extinguished the jets. For what reason? I can’t guess.”

They fell silent once more, hushed by the stillness and the obscurity, the soft footfalls on the cushioned stair, the dim light on the dusk wood, the pounding blood through their chambered hearts, the bending knees and the quiet breath. After a time of straining to peer beyond the circle of the lamplight, it seemed to Carter they walked not up, but down into cavernous depths, and only the pressure in his calves told him otherwise. He saw the lamp as a sliding serpent, eating the ebony before them, spewing it back behind, and he a rider balanced on its frame.

After what felt like many hours, though less than two by his pocket watch, he saw an indistinct shining before them, which Enoch could not discern. They approached warily and discovered the glowing blue rectangle indicating a secret doorway.

“Should we take it?” the old Hebrew asked when Carter told him what he saw.

“We haven’t seen the anarchists. If you’ve smelled no more tobacco, we should continue on the familiar way.”

They had gone only a short distance before Enoch abruptly extinguished the lantern, plunging them into darkness. Both men stood frozen on the stair, swaying slightly for balance, Carter ignorant of what his companion had seen, until he detected a pinpoint of light like a distant star, far above them. They crouched on the stair, the carpet soft beneath their hands, their eyes transfixed on the light until it became apparent it was descending. Muted voices drifted down. There was nowhere to hide.

“Back to the hidden door,” Carter whispered.

They made a creeping retreat, as swiftly but silently as possible. It became apparent, from the increasing footfalls and the growing light, that they would soon be overtaken if they did not find haven. Carter strained to locate the illumination marking the hidden door, unwilling to glance away lest he overlook it, fearful that the Word of Secret Ways had run its course. His heart fluttered like a bird’s, his breath fluttered like a fluted reed. For an instant, he despaired. And then the cold blue rectangle was there.

Still crouching, they searched the banister below the illumination for the secret catch. Carter ran his hands over the top of the wood, but discovered nothing, then felt his way to the bottom while Enoch searched the wall.

“Did you see something?” a voice above them said loudly.

“What? Where?”

“Down there! Something moves!”

The clamor of numerous feet jolted the stair. Carter felt frantically around the banister base, trying to rotate one of the balusters, but they remained unyielding. A panic seized him and for a moment he could not think. Then he realized that one of the banister-pole carvings felt slightly lower than the rest. He pulled straight up; it lifted with a firm click; the blue rectangle slid down, revealing a dark shaft lying at a ninety-degree angle from the wall. Carter crawled in quickly, knowing Enoch would never agree to enter first. The dull crack of a pistol reverberated down the stair as he squirmed into absolute ebony. For a fearful moment he held his breath, thinking Enoch had been shot, until he heard his companion following after.

His hand brushed against a short lever.

“Are you in?” he asked softly.

“I am.”

Carter pulled the lever and heard the soft sliding of the panel.

Beyond the wall, feet clambered past, then abruptly halted.

“Where are they?” someone asked. “Did you hit one?”

“I don’t see anything,” another said. “They must have descended.”

Gradually, the noise of the pursuers diminished, leaving the men to the silence and the dark. Carter crawled forward.

A fear took him then, quite apart from the fear of the anarchists. With the four walls enclosing him, narrow as a coffin, a rushing panic brought cold beads of perspiration over his whole body, and suddenly, desperately, he wanted to flail the walls until they gave way. It were as if he was in the well again, a narrower well, with water about to pour in at any moment and the Bobby waiting above to drown him. He bit his hand to keep from crying out and forced himself to push forward with precise slowness, fighting the panic.

Every inch was an agony, and when his hands at last touched empty space, he grasped the lip of the shaft and swung himself down onto a wooden floor with such force that he scraped his head against the top of the shaft.

A moment later, breathless and faint, still in darkness, he helped Enoch down, though he could scarcely stand himself. “Are you wounded?” he managed.

“For that, we were frightened?” Enoch said, close to his ear. “Those were no marksmen, missing us on that slender stair. Should I dare the lamp? I think I should.”

They moved away from the shaft and after some fumbling, managed to light the lantern. They stood in a narrow room, with a wrought-iron, spiral stair winding its way to the floor above. Finding no other exit, they ascended quickly; a thin film of red rust darkened Carter’s hand where he held the railing. Enoch popped his head up to the next floor, glanced around, then mounted to the top. Carter followed after, into a narrow room with a short passage that turned a corner to the right. Pursuing this, they found another corridor, just wide enough for two to walk abreast. Judging by the feel of the air currents, Carter supposed it to be quite lengthy, though their lamplight did not penetrate ten feet. The floor sloped steeply upward and they labored as if climbing a hill. The carpet, unraveling at its edges, was the dull brown of sand. Patches of plaster had fallen from the walls and ceiling.

“Enoch, are we above the main stair?”

“You must be correct. Why else would it slope? We are following the rising of the steps. All the years I walked the stair, there was another way just overhead. Who would have thought? Not I. But is it safe?”

“I doubt the anarchists know of it. That was a close thing down there. You seem unshaken.”

“Inside I still tremble. No one has shot at me in a long time.”

They fell into listening silence, hearing nothing but their own soft footfalls; even the rain did not reach to this passage, a fact Carter found curious since they were now closer to the roof. Its timelessness awed him, as he might have been awed by a desert plain with the stars shining all around, or a forest glade unexplored by man; it was the lure of the desolate places—surely no one had walked this corridor for many years, perhaps many lifetimes—yet it remained, unmoved by its own emptiness. In his wonder at such solitude, his fear of being pursued and of being trapped in the shaft faded. He suddenly felt very young, embarked on the greatest of all adventures.

The monotony of the continual passage and the quiet soon brought his mind to another state, however, lulling him until he forgot himself, and thought he was once again the small boy following his old comrade down the great passages, with all the summers of childhood before them. Carter remembered that Enoch used to sometimes whittle when they walked, and had made him whistles and tops, and even the wooden soldiers now standing on the dresser in his room. When such a relationship between a man and a youth is forged, it is not easily changed, and though Enoch now called him Master, the Windkeep’s words still warmed Carter like sunshine and warm honey, and he thought him wise as any oracle.

So he asked Enoch if he remembered their walks and the man chuckled softly and said yes.

“I suppose I was a great deal of bother,” Carter said.

“No, you weren’t, for you asked good questions and you didn’t talk too much. You were company for me. I enjoyed it. I have had many good walks in my long life.”

The brown carpet in the shadowed hall, the dim flame on the plaster walls, the slow tread and the slow breaths—there was nothing else.

“Enoch, did you mean it when you said you use to walk with God, long ago?” Carter inquired sheepishly, thinking it a boy’s question, for he believed the man had spoken figuratively. Yet, this was a strange house …

“Yes,” he said. “Those were good walks as well.”

“What did He look like? What did you discuss?”

Enoch was silent so long Carter thought he had not heard the question, but at last the Windkeep said, “What did He look like? The truth. I can’t remember. His face was like our faces, I think, but when you looked at Him, it was as if our faces weren’t faces at all, but only masks, as if we had never had faces and only His face was real. Would I call it a good face? That says nothing at all. Or wise? Or kind? No. It was goodness and wisdom and kindness. From the day I met Him, I always wanted a face like that. I don’t believe we can truly meet Him face-to-face until we have such faces.

“What did He say? It was of clouds and wind and rain, of grass and hills and the wide places between the stars. It was a time before science when men thought the trees had voices, and the rocks and every other thing, so I didn’t ask Him the questions a modern man might, such as how the universe was shaped, or how hot the sun was, or if the world was round, for I thought it wasn’t. I told Him I thought His mountains were nice, and that I liked the taste of His fish. And I asked Him foolish things like if it would rain that day, or if the wind would blow. Sometimes I asked His help with my grandchildren. He always said He would see what He could do, but that He had made them with their own opinions to make the decisions they thought best. He spoke of simple things as I would speak to a child, because any others would have been beyond my understanding. I liked Him! I thought Him splendid. And sometimes I long to see Him more than anything, and there is no loneliness like the loneliness for Him. I think He liked me, too. Why? I don’t know, except He is that sort of person, for I was foolish in His presence, though it never seemed so at the time.”

Enoch paused and looked up at the ceiling, then chuckled softly. “Have I told you anything? No. But it is all I can say.”

They traveled another hour in silence, listening always for sounds of their enemies. At last the ceiling veered down toward them and the corridor ended in an alcove containing another spiral stair leading down. To the men’s surprise, a pentagonal window adorned the ceiling, inviting a soft column of light to rest, like a will-o’-the-wisp, on the worn carpet.

Carter examined the window and found a brass latch, but did not try it; it had probably never been opened and the drops of rain on the glass dissuaded him from making the effort.

“A fine place for lunch,” Enoch said. “It’s good to see light, even if through clouds.”

From their packs they produced bread and cheese and a slab of roast beef, and Enoch even made tea, warming it by the heat of his lamp. During their walk Carter had little noticed the damp and cool of the air, but he did now as the hot tea and the good bread warmed and filled him. They sat on the floor together, around the small patch of light, as if it might cheer them, and Carter felt quite content, as if there were no danger at all, and they were simply having a picnic. And looking upon the old leather face of his companion, he suddenly found tears at the corners of his eyes, feeling he had truly returned to the innocent days of his past, and that they might, if they wished, curl up on the carpet after lunch and take a solemn nap. And he knew then that Enoch had raised him as much as his father, and perhaps he had been with the old Hebrew more.

They had just finished packing their things, when they heard a noise from the bottom of the spiral stair, a loud clang and then a curse. Both men were on their feet at once, listening.

“Be silent back there,” a voice commanded softly. “We may encounter them at any time. Be diligent.”

Carter and Enoch exchanged glances; somehow the anarchists had found their way into the passages. If the companions remained to fight, they might become trapped, but retreat would only take them farther from the Towers, perhaps into the hands of their enemies.

Carter grasped the brass latch on the overhead window. At first it withstood him, until Enoch added his own strength. It unhooked with a thud, and the window creaked open. Enoch gave Carter a boost, and he had to squeeze his shoulders together to penetrate the narrow opening. Once through, he gave his companion a hand. Enoch scrambled up with amazing spryness. Carter pulled the window shut, but there was no way to latch it from the outside. It would leave the anarchists a clear trail.

Looking about, he beheld a breathless panoply of skyline, festooned with legions of assorted towers, more than could possibly belong only to Evenmere. Battlements and bastions, crags and crannies, the roof ridges and the roofs of slate, spires like spears aimed at the heavens, the long balconies, the deep quadrangles, the gables and domes, the summits and the inclines—their shapes seeming to form before the eyes, popping out from amidst the conglomerate stones like boiling cloud banks, presenting the faces of the stone gargoyles, goblins, angels, and friars, views forever changed by the slightest tilt of the head. And across it all, a path of paving stones, ocher and gold, leading from the window, like a breadcrumb trail through the masonry forest.

They set off at once across the hills and valleys of that insurmountable heap; the stones were slick from the rain, the roofs were sometimes flat but often sloping, with fountained courts or walled gardens sleeping far below and a single treacherous footfall between. They quickly lost themselves amidst the towers, and when Carter glanced back he could not even discern the roof of the pentagonal window; every movement shifted that vast landscape. Were it not for the path, no pursuer could have followed them, yet it was only by it that they hoped to find their way.

They slowed their furious pace to a more cautious stride as they approached a narrow bridge between two ridges, lying at the bottom of a sloping roof made treacherous by the rain. Enoch went first, sliding down on his back, but the slippery surface carried him more swiftly than Carter thought possible. He tilted toward the bridge pole, missed it by a hands-breadth, and disappeared beyond the ridgeline.

With a cry of terror Carter followed after, standing upright but leaning far back, even as a noise whizzed by his ear. Hearing but not heeding, he slid down to the bridge, caught the railing in both hands, and came to a stop on his knees, fearing to see his friend’s crumpled form lying on the flagstones below. Instead, he found Enoch clutching a metal stanchion a foot below the roof, his legs dangling in space.