Margie whimpered.
“Softly,” the deep voice commanded. “Calm yourself; for the moment you are safe. Tell me who you are. My name is Talisman.”
NINE
Thunder was grumbling in the distance as Simon walked out through the French doors into the courtyard that held the pool. This was a stone-paved expanse, containing an island or two of tended grass and nascent flowerbeds, and surrounded on three sides by the sprawling bulk of the castle. On the fourth side there was more lawn, then a tennis court, and beyond that a tall, thick hedge. Through the hedge a driveway came curving into the grounds, from a public road that could not be seen from here. And through it, also, an even more private and unmarked path led down to riverbank and grotto.
With the flow of clouds above, sunlight came and went across the water of the pool, which was near the doors through which Simon had emerged into the courtyard. From its irregular shape it was clear that the original plan had been to suggest a moat. The last time that Simon could remember standing on this spot, fifteen years ago, the pool had been drained and dry, the bottom littered with dust and dead leaves, the dry sides marked with broken and discolored tiles. The stone gargoyles round the rim, that now pumped circulating water into the blue depths from their stone throats had then been gaping, dry-throated monsters, eerily discolored too. But recently the pool, like almost everything else about the castle, had been almost perfectly refurbished. A dozen deck chairs had been arranged round it in the shade of modern patio umbrellas. At a white painted table of wrought iron on the far side of the pool there sat a gray, elderly couple wearing conservative swim suits and dark glasses. They looked rather, Simon thought, like uncertain guests at some posh hotel.
The dark glasses made it impossible to tell whether the couple had taken notice of him or not. He decided to delay approaching them until after his first good plunge; on a day like this cold water might be a tonic to clear the mind. The diving board was new and resilient. Simon’s first dive took him deep, and he prolonged it into an underwater swim across almost the full diagonal of the pool.
As he came up, shaking water from his long hair, his eye fell on a small group of young workers, dressed in antique garb like Gregory’s, who were unloading something from a van parked at the edge of the drive. Among them Simon could recognize the teenaged girl from the antique shop. His dream came back to him, but distantly, without impact. She and her brother were probably distant relatives of some kind, his own as well as his hosts’, Collines or Littlewoods or Picards; people living in or near Frenchman’s Bend were more likely than not to be some kind of kin to each other. The two kids might well be talking about their boating customers of the day. Well, it was too late to worry about that now. And Simon had bigger things to worry about, like being unable to remember the return boat trip at all.
Right now he had to think about being a guest, which was evidently one of the things for which he was being paid. He pulled himself up out of the water, retrieved his towel, and approached the gray-haired couple in their poolside chairs, meanwhile determinedly sticking out his hand. “Hello, I’m Simon Hill.”
The man jumped up at once, obviously glad to have the ice broken. “My name’s Jim Wallis—spelled with an eye-ess on the end. And this’s Emily.”
Emily, somehow conveying an impression of bright friendly eyes without removing her glasses, lifted herself halfway out of her chair to shake Simon’s hand. “Pleased to meet another guest. I bet you’re the fella who’s going to do the tricks tonight.”
“That’s me.”
And, having said that, Simon forgot that he was supposed to be having a conversation. Even Margie in her hidden passageway was for the moment forgotten, as was the act.
A female figure in a bikini had just appeared, framed in the French doors on the far side of the pool. It was Vivian, and she was still only fifteen years old.
For half a breath the illusion was utterly convincing. Vivian was no imaginative vision, but solid reality, and looked not a bit older than she had fifteen years ago. And then she moved, stepping to one side of the doors to speak quietly for a moment with one of the servants. When she moved, changes in her were immediately apparent, in her expression and manner if nothing else, and Simon could see that she was after all a very youthful thirty. In the same moment it passed through his mind, on some level devoted to irrelevancies, that her bikini today was yellow, not green as it had been on that day when he saw her last.
Now, finished with her instructions to the worker, and ready to enjoy her own party, Vivian moved to the edge of the pool prepared to dive.
At that moment a shrill scream sounded. It came from somewhere in the distance, down the bluff perhaps, in what sounded like a young girl’s voice. Kids horsing around somewhere, thought Simon absently. He couldn’t take his eyes or his thoughts from Vivian.
As if she too had been momentarily distracted by the sound, Vivian hesitated briefly on the brink of her dive. A faint smile crossed her face, and her eyes looked to one side. Then she plunged in smoothly, swimming straight across to him.
Simon, as if by prearrangement, bent to give her a hand out. There was electricity in the touch of her hand. Pulling her from the water was surprisingly easy, as if she hadn’t gained a pound in fifteen years.
“Thank you,” Vivian said brightly, bounding up lightly to her feet. Her voice was different, more mature. Her fingers retained a grip on Simon’s. “And you’re Simon the Great, of course. Sorry I wasn’t on hand to greet you when you arrived. I’m Vivian Littlewood.” And then, before Simon could find the words he was groping for, she added: “I’ve watched you perform, you know.” There was no faintest hint in Vivian’s eyes or in her voice that she knew who Simon really was, who he had been. No trace of acknowledgment of the fact that a hundred and eighty months ago, or thereabouts, she had once held his straining body clamped between those finely muscled thighs…
“And where was that?” asked Simon, with what he felt was a good imitation of cool detachment. He had wondered how strongly the old magic would work on him again. He needn’t have wondered. It was all he could do to pull his eyes away from the small breasts inside the little strip of yellow fabric. For a moment the dream he had just had, a very strange dream indeed, echoed in his mind.
Vivian named a dinner theater in one of the more fashionable northern suburbs. No reason why she couldn’t have seen him there, he’d worked the place a couple of times. He could remember quite well his last time there, in the preceding fall; it had been something of a disappointment, like most of the rest of his career to date. Every time he seemed to be on his way, some setback came. Now magic was gaining popularity again, and he still couldn’t make a breakthrough. He found himself yearning to tell Vivian his troubles.
But before he could speak again, she said “Excuse me,” and turned and plunged back into the pool. On the far side, Gregory, brown-garbed seneschal, knelt at the edge with a worried expression, waiting. For some reason he had put on a wide-brimmed hat for this brief outdoor appearance. Something Saul had once said about Gregory, years ago, came and went in Simon’s memory before he could quite be sure of what it was. Maybe the man was allergic to the sun, Simon thought vaguely. He’d heard of cases. Though right now there was hardly any sunlight left.
The subject under discussion over there on the other side of the pool must have been serious, for Gregory’s distinguished face was grim, and on hearing the first words of whatever it was Vivian pulled herself rapidly out of the water and skipped straight into the house. Her servant followed with quick strides.
Another couple were coming out through the French doors just as Gregory hurried in. These two were wearing beach clogs on their feet, and expensive T-shirts damp and rumpled over swimsuits. After studying the man for a few moments Simon felt reasonably sure that it was Saul; if so, he now looked older than his sister. The young woman on Saul’s arm was a very pale blond, short and rather stocky, though not fat. She was somewhat given to freckles, and pretty in her own fashion, which was a long way from Vivian’s.
Saul shot a distracted glance after Vivian and Gregory as they hurried into the house, then exchanged a few words with his blond companion. Then the two of them started walking around the pool, obviously coming to mingle with the guests.
“Don’t worry about it now,” Simon heard the fair one reply to Saul. “Whatever it is, Vivian will want to handle it anyway.”
They joined the small group standing at poolside, and introductions went round. Saul’s wife was named Hildy,
