minutes, he heard the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves and the clump of a wagon. He was hoisted again in one graceful maneuver and set down in what felt like a dogcart. He could tell that Schelling was beside him by the scent of the witch hazel. Reins jingled. The cart rattled off on a rutted, hard-packed road.
They rode for perhaps twenty minutes. When the blindfold at last came off, and Lloyd’s eyes had got used to seeing again, he saw that they had come to a dismal clearing back off from the river, set on a cliff. A forbidding wall of pines ringed the lumpy open ground, which was studded with shapes that brought to mind his chapel cove back in Zanesville.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“A slave cemetery,” Schelling answered. “At least, it appears to be.”
He stepped down out of the dogcart and helped the boy to the ground. With his eyes growing more alert, Lloyd saw that the moonlight rained down across a field of primitive graves-rock markers, splintered wooden crosses, and iron bars. The eerie call of a screech owl echoed through the trees.
“Why are we here?” the boy asked, feeling a ghostly presence rising like mist from the stumps and stones.
The antiquarian did not respond but instead looked around the perimeter of pines, listening hard. Then he lit a lucifer match and held it above his head. In the still, soft air it glowed white-gold for a few seconds before he shook it out. A moment later, a flicker of light answered back from the cliff side and a whip-poor-will called from a tangle of rosemary to the west.
“All right,” Schelling decided, and directed the boy toward a grave marked by a slab of granite that in the glare of the moon Lloyd saw had gouged into its surface the words HIC JACET. With unexpected agility and strength, Schelling bent down and heaved the slab to one side, revealing a sturdy wooden ladder descending into the blackness beneath the burial ground.
Lloyd was alarmed at this discovery, but intrigued.
“Wait a moment,” Schelling commanded, and disappeared down the ladder.
Lloyd heard another match crack and saw a faint flare from below. There was the clunk of a chain, then a lock clicking, and a door being pried open. Schelling’s head reappeared out of the ground. “Come,” he whispered.
Pale light streamed to meet them now, and Lloyd followed the man down ten rungs into what he took to be a crypt but which smelled like some kind of root cellar. As soon as he stepped off the ladder and had his feet planted, he saw that this “cellar” opened up into what looked like a gallery of natural catacombs, only the first of which was lit by a lantern. The air was cool but surprisingly dry. As his eyes became adjusted to the shadows, Lloyd saw that the chambers stretching into the distance were filled with paintings and statues, row upon row of shelves lined with leather-bound books, stuffed animals, skeletons, weapons, scientific instruments, and unidentified machines.
“High ground,” Schelling announced. “Part of a cave system that the river can’t reach. It has been used for many purposes in the past, but now it serves as our hiding place.”
“Who are you hiding from? And what… is… all this?” Lloyd asked.
“It’s but a Main Street museum of anatomy compared to what it was,” Schelling answered somberly.
“Where… where did all the things come from?”
“Europe, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia. Massachusetts. All over the world.”
“Are they yours?” the boy asked.
“I am the custodian and cataloguer, but the collection belongs to the Spirosians. Mother Tongue will explain. Are you ready to meet her?”
“I… guess… so,” Lloyd answered. Up to now he had supposed Mother Tongue to be some senile member of the Illumination Society. What if she was something else?
Schelling lit a hurricane lantern and steered him past a Chippendale cabinet on which perched a dented conquistador’s helmet. A curve in the rock wall brought them to a flight of steps hacked into the clay stone. The humped man motioned for the boy to follow.
The stairs led down to a landing that was flooded with the light from a golden candelabrum that took the shape of a tall, full tree. On each branch burned a thick green candle, and between the spitting and dripping of the wax Lloyd heard the gentle lap of water below. Outside the aura of the tapers, the cave ceiling opened up like a tunnel that had been blasted to make way for a train, and then narrowed to a tight stricture on the other side of a large obsidian-dark pool. Floating in the water before him was a small ornate steamboat stained with moss and algae. All its windows were dark except one. A black man dressed as a coachwhip stood beside a gangplank that led from the landing to the riverboat, holding an oil lamp.
“Mother Tongue is expecting you,” Schelling told him. “Blazon will be your escort. I will wait for you here.”
Lloyd was gripped with such a blend of apprehension and excitement that he could barely move, but move he did, into the black man’s lamplight and over the gangplank, half thinking that the weird boat would evaporate the moment he stepped foot on board. It did not, but it looked as if it might well sink-or had sunk and been raised from the depths of the river. In the stillness of the cave, Lloyd imagined that he could hear the very nails aching in the swollen planks.
The man called Blazon remained stone-silent but led him straight to the central parlor on the main deck where the lamp shone. Then, just as he was opening the weather-beaten wooden door, the most miraculous thing Lloyd had ever seen in his life happened. Everything around him burst alight, so suddenly that he thought the boat was in flames. He let out a giant gasp, which seemed to please Blazon. The boat was not on fire but shimmering with tiny prisms that looked as if they were made of isinglass and filled with lightning. By what means the prisms came to life Lloyd could only guess, but as instantly as they had ignited they expired and he found himself blinking hard. He heard Blazon close the door behind him, then his own heartbeat.
A single glass oil lamp with extended wick stood on a walnut table beside an old cane plantation chair and a ladder-back rocking chair made of pine. Seated in the cane monstrosity was the oldest woman Lloyd had ever seen. Her hair was pure white and thick. Her face, which was the color of blancmange, was fantastically wrinkled, yet she sat upright without a hint of palsy, dressed in a cool-looking long white dress, like a southern lady about to serve tea. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a weary haircloth sofa on which a mangy coonhound was fast asleep.
“Come,” the old woman called to him, indicating the ladder-back.
“The lights…” Lloyd said, but he couldn’t complete his question.
He found himself meandering toward the rocking chair as if in a trance and, once seated, was startled when one of the runners pressed down on the tail of a cat-but not like any cat he had ever encountered. It was hairless. Sleek of body, its skin was rose-pink, becoming the color of pencil lead on its paws, with a face that reminded Lloyd of a mask, and remarkable slitted eyes that were as green as his own.
“Curiosity!” the old woman commanded, and the cat leaped into her lap. “You are always putting yourself in harm’s way.”
Lloyd tried to ease himself back into the chair, glad that the hound hadn’t stirred. When he managed to settle, he was again shaken by the old woman’s eyes. He had noticed from across the room that she wore no spectacles, which had surprised him, given her obvious age, but he was surprised still further to find her now looking straight at him with eyes as green as the cat’s-and his, too. As green as absinthe, but clear.
The room was silent but for the purring of the feline and what he imagined to be the trip-hammer of his heart. He wanted to know about the lights… what he was doing there. He tried to remain still. The old coonhound slept on.
At first the woman’s green eyes stabbed at him like darning needles, but gradually the intensity of her scrutiny eased. There was no decaying odor of ravaged flesh or incontinence about her, as he had experienced with the older Zanesville biddies; rather, a clean simple scent of lemon verbena. Despite the alien surroundings and the circumstances that had brought him there, he began to feel reassured. Until the ancient lady spoke.
“You’ve already been with a woman, haven’t you? A grown woman.”
“How did you know that?” Lloyd cried. “Can you read minds?”
“I’ve heard that you can,” the woman answered, and her face assumed an inscrutable smile. “Can you guess how old I am?”
“Eighty?” Lloyd tried, afraid that he might offend her.
“Fiddlesticks!” She laughed.
“One hundred, then.”
“Oh, I’m every bit of that.” She sighed. “Every bit and then some.”
“I think you’re the oldest person I’ve ever seen,” Lloyd admitted.
