Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(75)
Author: Anne Rice

The moon was fairly bright. He could see a little bridge now as they drew closer, and then came another turn, and they were driving along the borders of a small and peaceful lake. Far across the water stood a tower, perhaps a Norman keep. It was a sight so romantic that surely the poets of the last century had gone mad for the place, he thought. Perhaps they had even built it, and it was one of those beautiful shams which were thrown up everywhere as the recent love for the Gothic transformed architecture and style worldwide.

But as they drew closer, as they swung round and came near to the tower, Michael saw it more clearly. And realized that it was a rounded Norman tower, rather large, with perhaps three stories rising to its battlements. The windows were lighted. The lower portion of the building was shrouded by trees.

Yes, that was exactly what it was, a Norman tower—he had seen many in his student years, wandering the tourists’ roads over all England. Perhaps on some summer sabbatical which he could no longer remember he had even seen this one.

It didn’t seem so. The lake, the giant tree to the left, all of this was too nearly perfect. Now he could see the foundations of a larger structure, wandering away in crumbling lumps and pieces, worn down by rain and wind, no doubt, and further blurred by mounds of wild ivy.

They drove through a thick copse of young oaks, losing track of the building altogether, and then emerged, surprisingly close to it, and Michael could see a couple of cars parked in front of it, and two tiny electric lights flanking a very large door.

All very civilized, it seemed, livable. But how marvelously preserved it was, unmarred by any visible modern addition. Ivy crawled over the rounded and mortared stone, up above the simple arch of the doorway.

No one spoke.

The driver stopped the car finally, in a small graveled clearing.

Michael at once got out and looked around. He could see a lush and wild English garden spreading towards the lake and towards the forest, banks of flowers just coming into bloom. He knew their dim shapes, but they had closed up in the darkness, and who knew what glory would be all around when the sun rose?

Were they going to be here when the sun rose?

An enormous larch tree stood between them and the tower, a tree that was surely one of the oldest Michael had ever seen.

He walked towards its venerable trunk, realizing that he was walking away from his wife. But he couldn’t do otherwise.

And when he finally stood under the tree’s great spreading branches, he looked up at the façade of the tower, and saw a lone figure in the third window. Small head and shoulders. A woman, her hair loose or covered with a veil, he couldn’t be certain.

For one moment the entire scene overwhelmed him—the dreamy white clouds, the high light of the moon, the tower itself in all its rough grandeur.

Though he could hear the crunch of the others coming, he didn’t step out of the way, or move at all. He wanted to stand here, to see this—this serene lake, to his right, water interrupted and framed now by the delicate fruit trees with their pale, fluttering flowers. Japanese plum, most likely, the very kind of tree that bloomed all over Berkeley, California, in the springtime, sometimes making the very light in the small streets a rosy pink.

He wanted to remember all this. He wanted never to forget it. Perhaps he was still weakened by jet lag, maybe even going predictably crazy like Yuri. He didn’t know. But this, this was some image that spoke of the entire venture, of its horrors and revelations—the high tower and the promise of a princess within it.

The driver had switched off the headlamps. The others were walking past him. Rowan stood at his side. He looked one more time across the lake and then at the enormous figure of Ash walking in front of him, Ash’s hand still clamped to Stuart Gordon, and Stuart Gordon walking as if he would soon collapse—an elderly gray-haired man, the tendons of his thin neck looking woefully vulnerable as he moved into the light of the doorway.

Yes, this was the quintessential moment, he thought, and it hit him rather like somebody slamming him with a boxing glove, that a female Taltos lived in this tower, like Rapunzel, and that Ash was going to kill the man he was guiding towards the door.

Maybe the memory of this moment—these images, this soft chilly night—maybe this was all he would salvage from this experience. It was a very real possibility.

Ash wrested the key with a firm but slow gesture from Stuart Gordon, and slipped the key into a large iron lock. The door opened with modern efficiency and they entered a lower hall, electrically heated and filled with large, comfortable furnishings, massive Renaissance Revival pieces with bulbous but beautifully carved legs, claws for feet, and tapestried fabrics, worn but still very pretty, and genuinely old.

Medieval paintings hung on the walls, many with the high imperishable gloss of true egg tempera. A suit of armor stood, covered with dust. And other treasures were heaped here and there in careless luxury. This was the den of a poetic man, a man in love with England’s past, and perhaps fatally alienated from the present.

A staircase came down into the room, on their left, following the curve of the wall as it descended. Light shone down from the room above and, for all Michael knew, from the room above that.

Ash let go of Stuart Gordon. He went to the foot of the stairs. He laid his right hand on the crude newel post and began to go up.

Rowan followed him immediately.

Stuart Gordon seemed not to realize that he was free.

“Don’t hurt her,” he cried suddenly, viciously, as though it was the only thing he could think of to say. “Don’t touch her without her permission!” he pleaded. The voice, issuing from the skeletal old face, seemed the last reservoir of his masculine power. “You hurt my treasure!” he said.

Ash stopped, looking at Gordon thoughtfully, and then again he started to climb.

They all followed, finally even Gordon, who pushed past Michael rudely, and then shoved Yuri out of his way. He caught up with Ash at the head of the stairway and disappeared out of Michael’s sight.

When they finally reached the top, they found themselves in another large room as simple as the one below it, its walls the walls of the tower, except for two small rooms, skillfully built of old wood, and roofed over—bathrooms perhaps, closets, Michael couldn’t tell. They seemed to melt back into the stone behind them. The great room had its share of soft couches and sagging old chairs, scattered standup lamps with parchment shades making distinct islands in the darkness, but the center was wonderfully bare. And a single real iron chandelier, a circle of melting candles, revealing a great pool of polished floor beneath it.