gray/dark gray-spotted bark, the eucalyptus tang of the leaves, the little plaque saying “Australian Gum.”
The path sloped, then forked farther along. The left-hand path led me to a lawn surrounding a marble structure I could only think of as a summer house with delusions of grandeur: open-sided, circular and gleaming white, its steps splaying out from three openings in its half walls, mock-Grecian columns, scrolled and fluted, supporting a domed roof.
Chiseled over one of the openings was THE SECOND PAVILION, below that ANNO DOMINI 1827. There were stone seats running along the inside wall and a circular slab raised at its center. Nothing I didn’t expect… except, there was this arrow scratched into the stonework between two of the columns. It was pointing to nothing but the tops of distant trees somewhere in the lower part of the grounds to the northwest. I started walking in that direction. I had no idea what I might be walking to, but it gave me time to think.
Here I was in the proverbial English country garden. To my left were outbuildings I took to be stables or garages, and the glittering glass of a greenhouse where the Earl probably grew his prize-winning marrows. To my right were ponds and grass and trees, what amounted to a private wood. Private. The word made me pause, to wonder, not exactly for the first time—What was I doing here?
Of course the Earl felt responsible for the accident and all, but…
I put myself in his place. A grand, ancient home crammed with paintings, silverware, jewelry, antiques, history; and into this he allows not only a stranger but a “colonial” of dubious social standing. Wouldn’t it have been safer, as far as the Earl was concerned, to simply put me up at the nearest hotel until the bike was fixed?
Something wasn’t quite kosher here. In fact the more I thought on it the more that uncomfortable out-of- place feeling increased.
It was a maze.
I somehow knew this even before I reached the ivy-crept stone wall. Possibly it was the wrought iron gate and the roofless walls I could see beyond it. The gate looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, and in fact there were rust marks showing it’d been chained shut until very recently. But when I pushed the gate it opened with a shiver and a screech, so I edged in.
The walls were all weatherstained and mossy, in some places even cracked and pitted. It was cold. Quiet, too. So quiet that I found myself stepping softly to lessen the echo of my footsteps in the stone paved alleys.
Every now and then I stopped to scrape dirt into piles against the walls as markers. The alley I followed had began to fork and twist fantastically, and the prospect of getting lost had become real, perhaps even dangerous.
Sometimes the path crossed another, making me wonder if I wasn’t going round and round and round. Farther in, the alleys widened occasionally into little gardens, all dead from long neglect, oblongs of dust and empty flower beds. And every time I found one I found more of the same coldness and a sense of sadness that the sun, sitting on the east-facing walls, couldn’t burn away. All I could see of the world was the sky holding one small cloud. It was just enough to show me that I was spiraling in toward the center. So I pushed on, now noticing a slight downwardness as I passed other oblong boxes of once-was gardens and the craters of dry pools with dry ruts leading in and out.
Small statues stood guard at random places, and there was even the occasional stone bench. It was while passing one of these that I thought I heard slow footsteps in the next alley. I stood up on the bench, but the wall was still too high. So I yelled, “Hello! Is anybody there?” For a long time I listened for an answer, hearing nothing, yet sure there was someone or something behind that wall. The silence grew, and I was wishing now I hadn’t called out. Then a wind leaped up with an almost human cry, stinging my face and hands with dirt. Something winked across the sun and was gone, leaving silence again, and an odd impression of dry heat and vast distances that passed as quickly as it’d come.
The alley was still, and for a long time I sat on the bench, wondering if it mightn’t be wiser to search my way out. No, I’d come too far to turn back just because a bird had startled me. And the wind? A freak gust. So I told myself, and so I continued on.
The alleys were still cold but had less shadow in them by the time I saw tree tops looming over the walls ahead. Not long after that I hit a path running beside a curving wall that these trees grew behind. I guessed they were the trees I’d seen from “The Second Pavilion.” But this curving wall, this inner circle, was beyond guessing. Following it round I came to a gate.
This was not like the one at the entrance. This inner gate was big, solid and sported a padlock perhaps a century old or more. It was as good as any Keep Out sign. Above the gate was a piece of stonework that had the look of being tacked on as an afterthought. On it was carved RETINE QUOD AQUA COERCETUR.
It was all Greek to me, or rather Latin, though the third word was obviously water. I noted the words down on a parking ticket I’d gotten in Oxfordshire, then set off following the rest of the wall. It took me a few minutes to get back to the gate. I’d found only that one gate in my circuit of the wall, though at one point I thought I heard something like tinkling bells coming from somewhere.
By now I was beginning to feel hungry and more than a little thirsty. Great Britain isn’t known for its deaths by dehydration, so, not wanting to start a trend, I tried to recall the paths that had led me in.
There was no pattern to the maze, no every-third-gap-on-the-left-continues-the-path sort of thing. I just had to do my best in following memory and my little markers of heaped up dirt. Between them I wound up in more dead ends than there are in any two cemeteries. But I persevered, and what with finding dirty marks that I hoped were my earlier footprints, I eventually worked my way out.
There was a small truck in the drive by the steps of the East Front. There was an oil stain and a piece of mirror among the plant cuttings and soil in its tray. Keenen the gardener, I presumed, had returned from taking the Norton to the garage.
I slunk in through the great marble columns, half expecting to be turfed out by some snotty-nosed butler. I was coming down bad with doses of class consciousness and culture shock, an easy frame of mind to fall into with these imposing surroundings. So, gathering all my nerve, I pushed open the door and strode in as if I owned the place. Truth to tell, I felt less like “Lord Ernie” than “Ernie Pine, lower class interloper,” and I couldn’t help looking around to make sure no one saw me.
There was no one in sight, but muffled voices, raised as if in argument, were coming from behind the grand staircase.
A gray-haired man wearing a bib-and-brace stood in the doorway of what I supposed was the housekeeper’s under-the-stairs office. He was almost back to me, and as I approached I recognized Mrs. Winton’s voice coming from within.
“But he’s a gift.”
“But he ain’t black,” said the man. “And any road, if His Lordship—”
“Who ain’t black?” I asked.
The man turned sharply, and for several seconds just stared at me as though I’d committed some unforgivable social blunder. Mrs. Winton leaned out through the door and smiled.
“Mr. Pine, we were beginning to wonder if you’d lost yourself in the maze. You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Aye, not the first,” echoed the old man, looking away.
I muttered something about it being formidable, though there were other adjectives that came to mind more readily—weird, for instance. I was introduced to the grayhaired man, the Manor’s head gardener, Keenen (“Keenen, sir, just Keenen”).
“About the bike,” I said.
“Took your machine into town first thing, I did,” said Keenen, “and Scudamore’s workshop they be onto it promptly.”
“Meanwhile, Mr. Pine is welcome to stay here,” said Mrs. Winton.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
Mrs. Winton fluttered her hands. “Think no more of it. It’s only right that we should put you up while you’re off the road. Isn’t that so, Keenen?” But before he could answer, she continued, “And you won’t be the only stranger at the Manor soon as there’ll be outside contractors coming in tomorrow to see to the grounds. Now, sir, what did you think of our maze?”
