The Gates of Sleep

On her left, the hill dropped steeply away from the lane, giving her an unparalleled view of the countryside. The top of the hedge along the edge of that field was actually level with her ankle, the slope dropping off steeply at the very edge of the lane and continuing that way for yards. The hills and valley spread out below her in a snow- covered panorama, ending in distant, misty hills, higher than the rest, blue-gray and fading into the clouds on the horizon, that might be the edge of Exmoor.

Now, it was to be admitted that no one traveled from across the world—or even across England—to see the views of Devon countryside. There was nothing spectacular here in front of her, no snow-covered peaks, no wild cliffs and crashing waves, no great canyons, wilderness valleys. But spectacle was not always what the heart craved, although the soul might feast on it. Sometimes you don’t want a feast. Sometimes you just want a cozy tea in front of the fire.

She rested her eyes on the fields below, irregularly-shaped patches of white bordered by the dark gray lines of the leafless hedges, like fuzzy charcoal lines on a pristine sheet of paper. The wavering lines were sometimes joined, and sometimes broken, by coppices of trees, the nearer looking exactly like Uncle Sebastian’s pencil- sketches of winter trees, the farther blurred by distance into patches of gray haze, containing the occasional green lance-head of a conifer. Some of those white patches of ground held tiny red-brown cattle, scarcely seeming to move; presumably some held sheep, although it was difficult to make out the white-on-white blobs at any distance. Sheep on the high ground, cattle on the low, that was the rule. Farmhouses rose up out of the snow, shielded Protectively by more trees, looking for all the world, with their thatched roofs covered in snow, and their walls of pale cob or gray stone, as if they had grown up out of the landscape. Thin trails of white smoke rose in the air from chimneys, and in the far distance, barely discernible, was the village, a set of miniature toy-buildings identifiable by the square Gothic tower of St. Peter’s rising in their midst.

There was a faint scent of wood smoke from those far-off hearth fires; a biting chill to the air that warned of colder winds to come and a scent of ice that suggested she might want to be indoors by nightfall. The blazing sun of early morning was gone; muted by high mare’s-tail clouds with lower, puffier clouds moving in on the wind.

Jackdaws shouted metallically at one another from two coppices, and a male starling somewhere nearby pretended it was spring with an outpouring of mimicked song. So had this valley looked for the last two hundred years. So, probably, would it look for the next hundred, with only minor additions.

It slumbered now, beneath its coverlet of snow, but Marina did not need to close her eyes to know how it would look in the spring when it came to vivid life. Green—green and honey-brown, but mostly green—would be the colors of the landscape. The vivid green of the fields would be bisected by the dark-green lines of the hedges; the farmhouses would disappear altogether behind their screening of trees—or would, at most, look like mounds of old hay left behind after harvest beneath the graying thatch. When walls showed at all, the cob would glow with the sunlight, the stone pick up the same mellow warmth. The hillside fields would be dotted with the white puffs of sheep, the valley fields holding the red-brown shapes of cattle moving through the knee-deep grass, heads down, intent on browsing as though the grass were going to vanish in the next instant. And everywhere would be the song of water.

For although there were few lakes, and fewer rivers, this was a land of a thousand little streams, all gone silent now under the snow, but ready to burst out as soon as spring came. They burbled up out of the hills, they babbled their way across meadows, they chuckled along the lanes and laughed on their way to join the great rivers, the Tamar, the Taw, the Torridge, the Okement, the Exe.

And over and around the sound of the waters would be the songs of the birds—starling and lark, crow and wren, jackdaw and robin, bluetit and sparrow, nightingale, thrush—all of them daring each other to come encroach on a territory, shouting out love for a mate or desire for one. Between the songs of the waters and the birds would be the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and all the little homely sounds of farm and land made soft by distance.

The sky would be an impossible blue, gentle and misty, with white clouds fluffy as newly-washed fleeces sailing over the hills on their way to the next valley.

And the air would be soft with damp, full of the scent of green growing things, of moss and fern, and the sweet fragrance of fresh-cut grass and spring flowers. It would touch the cheek in a caress that would negate the knife-flick of winter’s wind, the unkindly wind that knew no softness but that of snow.

Marina heard all of these things in her memory, as she saw them in her mind’s eye, as she felt them, as sure as the ground beneath her horse’s hooves, his muscular, warm neck under her gloved hand. In all seasons, under all weathers, she knew this land, not so different from the place where she had grown up, after all—its waters flowed in her blood, its stones called to her bones. Not sudden, but slow and powerful, she felt that call, and the answer within her, to protect, to serve, and above all, to cleanse.

Not that this land needed any cleansing.

Unbidden, the answer to that thought came immediately.

Yet.

For there was a girl poisoned, polluted, lying sick in a room not a quarter mile from here, representative of how many others? And worse, of how much poison pouring into the air, the water, and the soil? And where was that blight? It couldn’t be far; if Ellen was a charity patient, the relative who had brought her to Andrew Pike must be poor as well, and unable to afford an extended journey. Would it spread? How could it not? Disease, cancer, poison—all of them spread, inexorably; it was in their nature to spread. Some day, the poison would touch this place.

She clenched her jaw, angry at her aunt, at all of the shortsighted fools who couldn’t see, wouldn’t see, that what poisoned the land came, eventually, to poison them. What was wrong with them? Did they think, in their arrogance, that their money would keep them isolated from the filth they poured out every day? Was their greed such that the cost didn’t matter so long as it was hidden? Or were they willfully not believing, pretending that the poison was somehow harmless, or even beneficial? She’d seen for herself how some people had eagerly bought the copper-tailings from the mines and the smelters to spread on their garden paths because what was left in the processed ore was so poisonous that no weed could grow in it. It never occurred to them that the same gravel was poisonous enough to kill birds that picked bits of it up—or babies that stuck pieces of it in their mouths to suck. Willful ignorance, or just stupidity? In the end, it didn’t matter, for the damage was done.

But it wasn’t difficult to keep land and water and air clean! Any housewife knew that—if you just took proper care—and took it all the time.

But the people responsible for Ellen’s condition didn’t care for the wisdom of the housewife; that much was clear enough. Theirs was the wisdom of the accounting book, the figures on the proper side of the ledger, and never mind a cost that could not be reckoned in pounds and pence.

For a moment, her heart sank, but her resolve strengthened. I will do what I can, she vowed silently, though to what, she wasn’t sure. I will do all that I can. Because I must.

If anything answered, there were no dramatic signs, yet she felt as if something had heard her vow, found it good, and accepted it. And she turned her horse’s head away, down the hill, and toward Briareley, determined to begin that endless task with one single girl.

There was no stableman at Briareley, no servant arrived to hold her horse and take it away when she rode up the drive toward the imposing front entrance—Georgian, she thought, with four huge columns holding up the porch roof—at the top of a long staircase of native stone made smooth as marble. A Georgian front, Tudor wings? and heaven only knew what else behind them. And no servants for all of this pile.

This, however, was not unexpected; from Sally, she had heard that the doctor cut as many corners as possible, and keeping a stablehand about just to care for a horse and two ponies was a great waste of wages when a man-of-all-work was what was really needed. So Marina sat up in her saddle and looked carefully at the drive; saw the wheel-ruts leading off to the side of the house, and followed them. As she expected, they led her to a wide doorway into a square courtyard open to the sky. Along two sides were stalls for horses, along two were bays for carriages and other vehicles. There was, thank heavens, a mounting-block in the center.

She made use of it, then led the horse to an unoccupied stall. It was also utterly bare; she couldn’t do much about the lack of straw on the ground, but she did take off his bridle, throw a blanket over him, and leave him a bucket of water. He’d had his breakfast before she rode out, and if Dr. Pike was as careful with money as he seemed to be, she didn’t want to pilfer oats or hay without permission.

She considered going around to the kitchen entrance—but this was a formal visit, after all, and she wasn’t an