Gethsemane Hall (10 page)

the grand tour

Meacham thought,
Here we go
. She heard the gate close behind her. The sound was a restrained latching of metal, but it felt like the hollow boom of a vault door. After twenty yards, the gravel drive’s steep gradient dropped into the trees. The oaks reached across to each other, making a roof and blocking the sunlight. Meacham had thought
tunnel
just before they walked through the gate, but now, as they approached, she kept thinking
funnel
, and then, before she could stop herself,
throat
.
You
, she told herself
, have the willies
. When was the last time that had happened? The most recent memories were from childhood, too faded to carry emotional weight. The closest thing to fear in her adult life had been in Geneva, when everything had gone wrong in ways so inexplicable and surreal, and on a scale so colossal, the balls-up had seemed almost supernatural. This was different. This was the creeps. This was looking at dark woods and not really wanting to go in.

This was also idiotic. The dream was the culprit, she decided. It was still bothering her. Its insidious and nasty nothingness had her heart pinching. Her gut had been hollowed out by a visceral crash course in existentialism. She resented the merry havoc games of her subconscious. She knew what she believed, and that was already close enough to nothing for government work. She shouldn’t be having sucker-punch aftereffects from a dream, for Chrissake. She put her overreaction down to a lack of sleep. The nightmare had finished her for the night. She was never at her best when sleep-deprived. No one was. Decisions were unreliable, responses irrational under those conditions. The history of the Agency was a testament to the effects of too much coffee and nerves, and not enough sleep and reflection.

They passed under the shadow of the oaks. The underbrush was night-thick. The trunks were fuzzy with moss. Meacham could hear the green. She looked to the right and left of the drive, but her view stopped a few yards into the mass of trees and ferns. Hardly unusual, she reminded herself. Typical English vegetation, which made up for its limited space by mightily concentrating its resources. She stared into the woods, armed with the knowledge of the mundane. The gloom stared back, and she blinked first. Crawford had told her: specific environmental factors could trigger unease or worse. She hung on to that fact.
(And you’re tired — you’re overtired.)
She walked a bit faster, stepping a bit harder than she had to, encouraging the real-world crunch of gravel under her heels.

She caught up to Hudson.
Do your job,
she told herself.
Be useful. Know these people. Gather the intel.
She’d read a file on Hudson. She had the breakdown on everyone she was going to be staying with at Gethsemane Hall. At one point she had considered using Hudson to approach Gray, but she had discarded the idea once word starting coming back that the two weren’t working together anymore. She also doubted, given Hudson’s causes, that he’d be open to collaboration. Knowing him now had a different importance. She knew what most of the agendas in the group were. She didn’t have his filed away yet. “I noticed you didn’t speak at the press conference,” she said.

Hudson had been frowning at the woods. He looked at her now, as if relieved she had drawn his attention. “I don’t have a public interest in the results of the investigations.”

“How about a private one?”

He thought that one over. “I suppose so.”

Meacham caught him looking at Gray. The lord of the manor was several paces ahead of the rest of the group and moving fast.
(Wee wee wee, all the way home.)
“You’re worried about him,” she guessed.

Hudson didn’t seem concerned or surprised that she’d read him. “Yes,” he said.

“About his health?”

“His spiritual health.” He gave Meacham a wry smile. “I don’t think that’s uppermost on your mind.”

“No,” she admitted. “It isn’t. But why are you worried?”

“There’s something wrong with the house.”

“You think the place is haunted?”

“No. If you accept the tenets of Christianity and really think them through, there isn’t really room for the idea of homeless spirits.”

“Then ...”

“A place doesn’t need ghosts to be spiritually unhealthy. Take Abu Ghraib, for example.” He paused, and Meacham caught a twinkle. “Even if the place were closed down and empty, I don’t think anyone could spend time there without suffering some sort of damage.”

“I didn’t realize Gethsemane Hall had that kind of reputation.” She glanced over her shoulder. Pertwee was out of earshot, thank God. She was bringing up the rear with Corderman, walking behind Crawford and Sturghill. The ghost hunter was talking with Corderman and still glaring death beams at Crawford’s neck.

“It doesn’t.”

“What makes you think there’s a problem, then?”

Hudson nodded towards Gray. His face was twisted for a moment by needle-sharp worry and hurt.

Meacham purged the levity from her tone. “You’ve been friends a long time?” She knew they had been, but better to let Hudson open up and tell her more than she could glean from dry analysis and summaries of dates.

“I was his best man.”

“Have you spent a lot of time here?”

“Never. He hasn’t been here for years. He came when he was younger, but I don’t think he liked it much. Now he doesn’t want to leave.”

“People change.” She spread her arms to take in the trees as they funnelled them down. Cool air rose like breath to meet them. “After what happened to him, if he wants to be alone, this is a good place.”

“I know.”

“So?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. He was shattered and bitter before he decided to come down. Now there’s something off about him. I don’t think his staying here alone is healthy.”

“He won’t be alone now.”

Hudson nodded, looking relieved as well as worried.

But then the drive made a sharp bend, and they hit the transition between the untended woods and the gardens. The variety of tree species multiplied. Oak, elm, chestnut, willow, and pine lined the circumference of the grounds and protected the isolation of the Hall in its cleft. Then there were the yew trees. Meacham had never seen so many. They were the forward guard of the perimeter, a force of massive, twisted age. Their branches were a confusion of pythons, their trunks thick as history. Their roots were coiled high on the ground, ready to propel them forward if the need arose. They were England, and they were watching. At first, Meacham could only see fragments of the house through the branches, but the drive made its final descent free of the trees.

Gray paused on the elevation, waiting for everyone to catch up, the proud host presenting the first real view of his home. Gethsemane Hall was an exercise in architectural stratification, arranged around a central courtyard. Authentic half-timbered Elizabethan gables with strangely placed mullioned windows became faux Elizabethan Victoriana whose timbers were too regular and clean. Bursting in between was medieval stonework that was built for defence, not aesthetics. The house showed the history of its renovations like tree rings. A massive gatehouse tower dominated the west front. It was one with the foundations, works that made everything more recent look like a temporary afterthought. The house was surrounded by a moat. To the right, the gardens spread out over two levels split in half by a fifteen-foot change in elevation. The half nearest the house was formal. Exuberant flower arrangements bordered the moat wall. On the other side of the drive, which followed the wall, was a lawn, wide open except for a huge scotch pine that twisted as if agonized by its own height. Its branches pushed against a phantom west wind.

The upper level of the gardens was a planned wilderness. The trees ran riot. Willows drooped over a lake, and a monkey puzzle burst, incongruous, between them. The lake fed a cascade nestled in the rise between the two halves of the grounds. The cascade spilled into a rectangular pond. From this distance, the pond seemed still. Meacham looked from it to the moat. She noticed that the moat’s water wasn’t stagnant at all and guessed that the pond must feed into it underground.

Pertwee had pushed ahead a couple of steps and was gazing at the Hall and its grounds with baby-wide eyes. Her breaths were deep and big, as if she could suck the scene into her lungs. “This is so beautiful,” she said. Meacham agreed. “Can’t you feel the peace?” Meacham differed. Pertwee wouldn’t give it up. “Just like its namesake,” she said.

Meacham saw Hudson stiffen.
Interesting,
she thought. The subject of religion came up, and Hudson, of all people, reacted as if an unforgivable social breach had been committed. Why was that? Then she saw the way he was watching Gray: wary, braced.

Gray didn’t disappoint. “You mean the peace of the garden where Jesus asked God to let him off the hook? Where he was scared witless? Where he was quote
in agony,
unquote? Where his sweat was ...” Dramatic pause. He turned to Hudson. “How does it go, Patrick?”

Visible reluctance before the answer. “‘His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’”

“As it were,” Gray repeated, sour fun on his face. “And yes, where Judas delivered the kiss. Is that what you feel, Ms. Pertwee? The peace of betrayal?”

Pertwee reddened but held her ground. “None of what you said has turned the Garden of Gethsemane into an unholy place. It is still revered.”

“That’s sweet,” Gray said. He spoke the words without irony, without condemnation. Because of that, even Meacham felt the burn. Pertwee swallowed hard and assembled a brave face. Meacham watched the joy return to her eyes as she gazed on the hall. The girl bounced back quickly. Her belief system was solid. She was going to be a headache.

“How old is the house?” Sturghill asked.

“The oldest sections are over six hundred and fifty years old,” Gray said. “There have been additions and changes constantly. The most recent were commissioned by my aunt.”

Meacham said, “Your gardens look very well-tended. I thought no one had been living here.”

“There’s a firm in Axminster. My family has dealt with them since the fifties. They look after things.”

“No one local can do it?” She was surprised a gardening service hadn’t set itself up nearby.

“It’s not that they can’t. There’s a very good landscaping company here. They prefer not to work here.”

“The locals don’t like your house, I take it.”

“It’s more complicated than that. They don’t want to spend time here because they really
do
want to spend time here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I do.” His expression as he looked at the house was an indecipherable mix of love, longing, and fear.

“Then why do you stay?”

“Because I’ve given in,” he answered, and started walking again.

He led them around to the gatehouse tower. A narrow stone bridge crossed the moat. They passed through the tower’s arch and into the cobbled courtyard. A disused fountain stood in the centre. Against the south wall, Meacham saw an enormous dog house. It had half-timbered sides and an orange tiled roof. It looked like a chunk of gable that had been detached from the roof of the house. Meacham pointed to it. “For Cerberus?” she asked.

“It’s from the 1870s,” Gray answered. “Built for Falstaff.”

“Who was?”

“A Saint-Bernard and Rottweiler cross.”

“Must have been very effective at keeping the barbarians from the gate,” Crawford commented.

“The house has never really had problems with attackers.”

“Why not?” Meacham asked.

“Its location, mainly. It’s very isolated.”

“It isn’t very far from town.”

“True,” said Gray, “but Hawkesfield Road is recent history, by the Hall’s standards, and the drive even more so. The house is hidden by the forest, which is still pretty thick, so imagine it five or six centuries ago. There’s at least one story of a raiding party that targeted the Hall but became lost in the woods.”

A doorway in the courtyard led to the outer hall. “This used to be the buttery,” Gray explained. “There was an entrance to the Great Hall from the courtyard, but that made for a very drafty eating experience. My family finally had the idea of walling up that doorway and using this as the way into the Great Hall. Only took them five hundred years to come up with that innovation.” The room was very spare. There was a wooden bench in one corner, and beside it a Chinese vase with a few dead stalks of bamboo. A painting of George III hung on the wall opposite the entrance. It was going dark and waxy with sunlight and grit.

The Great Hall had a high, vaulted ceiling. The upper half of the space was light, wooden timbers arching over white walls. Very dark oak panelling sucked away light in the lower half. In the centre of the room, placed lengthwise, was an oak table, massive enough to pass for a dolmen. It looked small in a room that had been designed for several tables of its size. A heraldic frieze circled the room at the top of the panelling, just above Meacham’s eye level. Coats of arms were surrounded by gryphons, lions, giant wolves, and dragons. Lots of dragons. There were two tapestries, one above the door as they entered, the other on the opposite wall. The nearest was the most badly faded of the two. A woman stood in the centre of a forest clearing, a Latin speech bubble emerging from her mouth. She was surrounded by a kneeling crowd. Meacham kept thinking there were other figures in the trees, but every time she looked more closely, she saw nothing but twining vines and hanging fruit. “Saint Rose the Evangelist,” Hudson said. “The local patron saint.”

“She lived on this site,” Pertwee said.

“Or so the story goes,” Gray said, deflating her.

“Are you saying she didn’t?” Corderman demanded.

“I’m just waiting for something more definite than tradition to make the case,” Gray answered.

Meacham had no difficulty identifying the subject of the other tapestry. She’d seen plenty of encounters between Saint George and the dragon. Much of this work had faded, too, but the reptile’s colours and definition were still very strong. George and his horse were fading into nothing. The horse was rearing in front of the monster, and George’s lance was pointing at the ground instead of at the dragon. The stance looked awkward, like an accident waiting to happen. The lady stood behind the dragon, gazing at George with what struck Meacham as complete disinterest. Then she noticed that the woman wasn’t chained. The dragon, bigger than in most other representations she’d seen, was looming over George with a knowing look. The portrayal seemed to be coming from some parallel universe, where the knight was a patsy about to be roasted.