Herald of the Hidden (15 page)

‘Is it heading for us?’ I muttered, grimly.

There was a brief pause, then Ralph replied: ‘I don’t know. But I know where it isn’t.’

And he quickly strode towards the ornamental arched bridge, with me closely following. A few steps took us to the little island, and we balanced rather precariously on this. Ralph shone his torch on the mound of stone at its centre, and ran his hand around a shallow hollow of compacted earth, where the crushed weeds glistened palely. I heard him groan lowly.

Anxiously, I cast the torchlight across the black lake and into the dark slopes beyond, on edge in case I should see again some swooping denseness of air. I was relieved when Ralph finished his inspection, but only momentarily—for he showed no signs of halting the vigil in the garden.

We moved carefully away from the island and followed the shoreline, curving away to the farther sides. When we were perhaps fifty paces forward, I seemed to sense a shadow behind us glide across the glistening water and return to rest on the island. It was as if I had caught this movement out of some unknown corner of my consciousness, for I did not see it directly, and the only sound was the faintest stirring. I hesitated, and Ralph noticed my indecision. Turning, he shielded his torch and simply said, ‘Leave it.’

I was perfectly content to do so, but I could not resist one final glance back at the island. It may have been my over-stretched nerves at fault, but I thought there
was
more to the island than there had been before.

Slowly, and not without some stumbling and sinking into softer ground, we made our way around the rest of the garden, until we began to approach again the narrow path which led to the Summer-house. It took some moments to register that the stream which had been so stagnant before, now sounded in full spate—we could hear its tumbling commotion as we drew near. Yet there had been no rain, so how could it have been refreshed so soon? Was this another of the heritage people’s improvements? Ralph stopped, listening intently. The rush of natural running water is always soothing, and I was soon quite enraptured by its gentle rhythm, so reminiscent of leaping footfalls, with whispers and murmurs, eager and excited. Ralph moved cautiously forward and, leaning over the brim, held a hand over the cascade. Instantly, the sounds subsided, leaving a hollowness and a pitiful trickling noise. I heard my friend sigh sharply. He withdrew his hand, but the tumult did not resume. Frowning, he simply reported—‘Dry’—and then walked briskly away.

We did not remain in the garden much longer, completing a circular tour by passing around the lake again close to the obelisk, which reared up solemnly and made me think of war memorials because of its sentinel-like and sombre form. At last we saw the gateway again, and seemed within reach of less disturbing terrain. Yet even then we could not be entirely sure of ourselves, for there glinted for the merest moment yellow light as of candle-glow on each side of the two tall pillars: but by the time we came level with them, the flickering light had vanished.

**

Ralph
spent
most
of the next day on a visit to a university library in a neighbouring county, but despite this diligence, I began to feel that the case was petering out. Every researcher into curious and unaccountable matters comes upon some incidents or claims that cannot be resolved, and this seemed to be one of those. None of the impressions we had received last night was completely clear, and, even taken together, they did not add up to very much. So I was agreeably surprised when Ralph called in on his return to ask me to stop by at his flat in the evening: his mood was quite cheery. He added that he had received a note from his client, James Ethelred, asking for a progress report, and the developer would be joining us later.

When my friend greeted me, however, he did not dwell very much upon his day’s investigations, saying that he would keep his ideas until Ethelred arrived. But he was keen to tell me about a board-game he had discovered, which was new to both of us, although it was our mutual hobby to try out all the ancient variations we could find. This fresh Far Eastern example was most intriguing and we were immersed in trying to reconstruct some of its nuances, and its relationship to other games, when the dull clunk in the hallway announced the arrival of our client.

‘Getting anywhere, Tyler?’ he demanded, as soon as he was inside.

‘Oh yes, thanks,’ returned Ralph.

‘Well?’

‘Mmmm? Oh. Well, the fact is, Mr Ethelred, that Marlestone House had—I suppose, has—a most interesting garden. It was designed last century by Arthur Raynesbury, a great scholar and a friend of the then owner, Sir Nathaniel Horne. We are fortunate that it has survived so well, it is such a fine example. There were plans to turn it into some kind of grotto years ago, but they came to nothing when the house was destroyed.’

‘All very interesting, Ralph. Good background material. We can use this. And don’t worry. We’re keeping the garden just as it is, tidied up of course. I respect its past. The only exception is that old obelisk. It’s such a great eye-catcher, I want it in front of the house, on the lawn. Don’t worry . . .’ there was a perceptible stirring from Ralph, ‘. . . we’ve taken good care of it. I had the workmen winch it down with the utmost care. And what do you think? It was pointed at the base as well, almost half as long as the column above ground: and there was more writing underneath, even though it was completely buried, though we can’t quite make it out yet. I tell you, it’s a fascinating monument. . . .’

He trailed off as Ralph Tyler started to his feet and bundled on a drab, baggy jacket.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, staring at Ralph’s grim expression. ‘We can easily replace it with a replica, surely . . . ?’

‘You have your car here?’ requested Ralph tersely.

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘Let’s go.’

‘What on earth?’

‘Not on earth,’ said Ralph, bleakly. ‘That’s the point.’

Shaking his head, but by now convinced of my friend’s seriousness, James Ethelred led us rapidly to his waiting vehicle.

As the car swept to a halt on the crackling gravel of the drive, we saw at once a swollen glow of pale yellow pulsing above the hollow of the garden. Ralph flung open his door and raced in that direction, and I followed as rapidly as I could. A palpable shock of dull warmth rose up to us as we neared the sombre portal. There was a glowing mist licking up the shelving sides and darting towards the gate. In its wraith-like wreathing it was like the mist that rises from rivers and fields at dawn, yet this had a sulphurous quality, and every droplet seemed tinged with a sickly ochre. It seemed to flow outward in ever-encroaching tides, so that as we advanced down to the dark pool, it rose and absorbed us. I soon lost sight of Ralph, ahead of me, in that jaundice-sheened fog. My head was filled with a rushing, roaring noise: it seemed as if all the leaves of the trees, and their limbs too, were quivering in motion with the rippling mist, setting up a great hissing and grating as in a fierce storm. Bewildered by all this, I missed my footing and made the rest of the descent at a rapid pace, sliding and stumbling all the way.

As I landed, I felt my flesh scorched by a blaze of burning heat, and I scrambled in a panic back up the slope, on hands and knees. Breathing heavily of the harsh, cutting air, I turned to see what had leapt up at me. And there below, there shuddered out of the ground a lunging golden plume of fire, sending out its incandescence into the mist. Sharper bursts of metallic blue flame could also be seen flicking up from the earth, and it even seemed that some scarlet and some purple strands hung in the glowing veil for many moments.

I was half fearful and half fascinated at the sight of these strange pyrotechnics, but my awed gaze was abruptly broken by another great burst of fire, arcing outward like some volcanic eruption. I covered my eyes with one arm, and kicked and scrabbled at the grass bank to get further back, away from the tearing heat. And all the while my mind was working furiously away to deny the painful probability that Ralph was somewhere in that living furnace—had he gone full tilt into its maw?

I tried hard to make sense of what I was seeing and to account for it by what we had learnt of the site in the last few days, but in the torrent and turmoil of the moment, nothing coherent or coldly logical came to me at all. I began to feel dazed and drained by the clammy yellow cloud clinging to me like the burst yolk of some vast egg, and by the withering breath of the churning cauldron below. My thoughts wandered feverishly and I seemed to suddenly cling to the remembrance of the joyful tumbling, gurgling stream of yesternight, which we had briefly heard but could not find.

Then I saw the figure of my friend limned in fire, a fragile silhouette framed against the raging blaze below. I shouted hoarsely and uselessly. He seemed to be shivering violently, despite the heat, and clinging fiercely to a stick or stave he held out. As I watched, he recoiled backwards, there was a deep, cavernous rumbling, and a great spurting ichor of white fire, which yet also seemed to drip dank slime, erupted from the earth. I clenched my eyes against the blinding glare, but kept blinking them open and shut, to catch glimpses of what was happening to Ralph. I saw his head sink down before the rearing form, then he seemed to tense, fling back an arm and thrust the staff he held with full force at the bulging pillar of sheer fire. The slender paling stabbed deep into the earth, and Ralph gripped it with both fists. As I saw the scene, flickering on and off, first vividly alive, then etched on my eyelids when the glare forced them shut, there froze for a fraction of a second a single startling image: the crackling coil of pure flame seemed to gape wide open, then shudder and slither down into the depths, swallowing within itself all the fiery tendrils it had issued forth. As the obscurity cleared, I stared from sore eyes at the sight of Ralph, face grimed with glistening black, clothes sodden, clutching at the curious spear from which, I could now see, paper tassels wafted gently, incongruously.

‘Most Japanese gardens in Britain,’ began Ralph, slumped in his armchair and still somewhat dishevelled an hour or so later, ‘are purely ornamental. Their creators failed to realise that in their native country, these gardens have a sacramental quality. They are
places
for meditation, prayer, and wonder—even for sorcery. Each feature, each object has a symbolic name and nature which is of high significance. Now Arthur Raynesbury
did
know this. He had stayed in Japan for some years and his learning is credited in the acknowledgements to one of the first Western studies,
Ancient Spirits
—
Faiths in the Far East.
So I began to consider that his garden was also imbued with the same sanctity and potency as the originals. All that remained then was to piece together the meaning—and purpose—of its features.

‘That would have been impossible at this distance of time, since there seem to be no written records about the garden. But all authentic Japanese gardens are designed in accordance with certain immemorial and immutable principles. The likelihood was that Raynesbury would not have departed from these. So I researched at great length—studying Hearn and Diosy and Conder and Treves and Abercrombie and all manner of obscurer writers on the Far East. Many of them favour us with charming and exquisite evocations of the gardens they saw, and little by little I began to piece together what each feature in the garden must be.

‘What seemed to us a mere Summer-house,’ Ralph continued, ‘was, it quickly became clear, a shrine. Its placing by the stream helped to strengthen that identification. For the peace and piety of this simple temple was to enhance, and be enhanced by, the flowing water, which is seen allegorically as a spiritual outpouring too. Such waterfalls are called, as near as we can catch the meaning, “The Play of Young Souls”. It is usual for them to be kept free from the taint of grosser mortals, which explains why the ethereal glimpse we caught was withdrawn at once when I pried too closely. But there is no denying the spiritual purity preserved in the idea, and it at once made me recognise that Raynesbury was indeed deeply versed in his subject.

‘Thus far, we had nothing to fear—rather the reverse. But when I traced an equivalent to the island in the pool, I became less sanguine. It is a cormorant rock. The sea raven ever has been, even in the West, a bird of ill-omen. It is not malevolent in itself but it is a harbinger of doom. And I knew at once that this was what we had briefly seen last night in the garden.

‘And so we come to the obelisk. Its colour, its scale, the placing of the inscriptions, and its site by land and water, mirrored
only
one
of
the monuments mentioned by the travellers whose works I consulted: and this, though it gave a drawing, was a rather light-hearted piece. The caption read: “The Tomb of the White Dragon”.

‘I think you can guess the rest. Raynesbury, through ignorance or more probably intention, had conjured into the garden a raw force of landscape alchemy. It was properly fettered by the obelisk—but what if that were removed? Was that his way of guarding the garden for all time against later depredations? If so, it worked only too well fifty or so years ago when the house was consumed by fire. I suspect there was an attempt then to drain the garden, for the water too is essential to the imprisonment of the elemental force below. The little conflagration we have witnessed would have spread just as far if it had not been halted. I sprinkled my clothes as far as I could with the dregs of the stream and it seemed that as I did so I was drenched too in some more intangible protection. Then I seized the pole propped in the doorway of the thatched shrine—not, as it at first seemed, a piece of debris, but in fact a
gohei
, a sacred wand. I had seen it described several times in the studies I read. This potent object has something, still, of the vital power of The Play of Young Souls and I trusted that it would take the place, temporarily at least, of the obelisk. I am glad to say that this instinct worked. By
plying
the
gohei
, I was able at last to still the energies released when the obelisk was removed.’