Touch Not The Cat (15 page)

Dawn always came too soon.

... If ye should lead her in a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say: for the gentlewoman is young, and therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing. . . .

—Romeo and Juliet,
II, iv

Lunch was a very American affair, plates of salad with cold chicken, cheese, and fruit all served together, with crisp rolls, and coffee poured for a starter. Apart from the coffee, which I persist in wanting later, it was delicious, and perfect for the middle of a fine warm day. Also, the water was iced, a luxury for Ashley. Contemplating the amount of ice in the crystal jug, I wondered if, in the interests of American sanity, the Underhills had installed a freezer of their own. Our old refrigerator had never made more than twelve smallish cubes at a time in all its long, long life.

During lunch conversation was general, and I thought I could feel Mr. and Mrs. Underhill working to keep it so. But afterwards, back in the drawing room over more coffee, Cathy came straight back to the subject they obviously wanted to avoid.

"When you talked about mysteries, Bryony, what did you mean? Not the old stair, I guess; that would never be a mystery to you."

Jeffrey Underhill’s head turned, and his wife bit her lip, but I had had time to think. I said smoothly:

"Why, no, it was something that my cousin and I found in the schoolroom."

Cathy looked at James, then, quickly, at me. "In the schoolroom?"

"Yes. Have you ever been in there?"

"No, I have not! The only parts of the house I've been in outside our own apartments are the rooms they keep for show. Why would I go in the schoolroom? What's up there?"

"A few reminders of time past, that's all," said James. "A family of hippopotami in grey velveteen, and four battered school desks, with empty inkwells. Highly symbolic, but—"

"I suppose so," said Cathy, impatiently. "But what's the mystery?"

"What hippopotamuses?" asked her mother. "What on earth are you all talking about?"

I laughed. "Nothing that's in the schoolroom, anyway. Something outside. We found a new view from the window, a view of the maze."

"Oh, the maze!" Cathy, her eyes bright, came forward, looking excited. "If you knew how I'd wondered about that maze! And the elegant little roof you can see . . . a sort of summerhouse, isn't it? I've walked all around the outside of those darned hedges to find the way in, and I even went in at two of the entrances, but I simply couldn't get through all that stuff, and anyway, I knew if I did, I'd never get out again. Gosh, I suppose you know the way in? Do you mean you can just walk right in as far as that summerhouse and out again, without getting lost?"

"Oh, yes. So can my cousin, unless he's forgotten. Have you, Twin?"

I caught the glint in James's eye. He knew quite well that I found it impossible to address him directly as "Emory." I always had; so I had learned to use, when necessary, the irritating expedient the boys had invented.

"I don't know," he said. "I'd hate to try, without you there to guide me. But that's what you were going to tell them, wasn't it? We've got a map now."

"A map?" asked Cathy. The excitement she was showing, genuine or not, generated a sort of extra emphasis, so that the word "map" set up an echo in my mind.
"The cat, it's the cat on the
pavement. The map. The letter. In the brook."
I pushed it aside for the moment. James was explaining.

"Yes, a map. That was the mystery we solved just now in the schoolroom. When we were up there we noticed that one of the old trees on the edge of the lake had come down, and we could see clear through the gap to the maze. And from that height on the third story the layout can be seen almost completely. A bit blurred where it's overgrown, and not altogether easy to follow if you drew a plan from what you saw, but what it did tell us was that there are plans everywhere in the house."

He paused for effect. The two women looked amazed, but Jeffrey Underhill’s brows came frowning together for no more than three seconds, then he said: "The coat of arms. I've wondered about that."

"Good God, you're quick," said my cousin admiringly. "Yes, it does seem an unlikely design, now one knows, doesn't it?" He nodded towards the carved fireplace. "There, Cat, you see it? That uninspiring pattern surrounding our enigmatic motto. That's a map of the maze."

"Well, for heaven's sake!" Cathy jumped out of her chair and ran to examine it more closely.

"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Mrs. Underhill, "that you didn't know this, either of you, till this very morning?"

"We'd no idea," I said. "There's never been anywhere from which you could see the maze from above, unless perhaps you'd climbed out on the pavilion roof, and that's not really been safe for years.

And of course from the garden you can't see the pattern at all."

"An aerial photograph?" suggested Mr. Underhill. "That could be interesting, if half what I hear about the history of this district is true. Has it never been mapped?"

Though his voice sounded interested, I got the distinct impression that he spoke with only half his mind on what he was saying. He was absorbed, a long way away from us, in some frowning abstraction. So, I imagined, must the tycoon's reaction always be to small talk; smooth from long practice, and clever because he couldn't help it, but with the burning-glass of his full attention focussed a light-year or so away from this pretty room, and the trivialities we were talking about the maze.

"I suppose the Ordnance Survey must have taken pictures," James was saying. "They certainly mapped the district. We've got their maps, but they don't show the actual design of the maze, and I've never seen a photograph."

"In any case," I said, "it's all terribly overgrown now, with the hedges leaning together in places. From the air, I think it would just look like a huge thicket. What you really need is a plain geometric map like the one on the coat of arms, and then a machete. Mr. Underhill, there was something—"

He looked up from his coffee cup. I had been wrong. His attention, all of it, was right here in this room. It met me, palpably, and stopped me short.

"Yes, Miss Ashley?"

"There was something I wanted to ask you. Would I be in anyone's way if I spent a bit of time in the library? I want to go through the family books in the locked sections. They ought to be sorted out fairly soon . . . if that's all right?"

"Well, of course," said Jeffrey Underhill. "The house is yours, you know that. You don't need my permission to use your own part of it. Or this part, for that matter. Did Emory tell you that he and I are going to talk later on about the extent of our lease?"

"Yes."

"Well, meantime, please do your best to forget we're in the house at all. Go where you like. Now, what about keys? Do you want to keep my set?"

"No, thank you." I fished them out of my handbag. "I can get Rob's."

"Good. Then there'll be no difficulty about the tours." He took the keys from me, and laid them on the coffee table in front of him. "Stephanie, will you let the guide have these back this afternoon, please?"

"You leave that to me, dear," she promised, and began once more to tell me how welcome I was to anything and ev erything the Court could still offer me. She was interrupted by Cathy, who was over at the fireplace, busily tracing out the design of the maze in the stone.

"'Touch Not the Cat . . .' It's a queer motto, isn't it? Emory said it was enigmatic. I say it's just plain arrogant. What does it mean? What is this cat they put in the middle of the maze? It looks more like a tiger!"

"It's getting on that way," said James. "It's a Scottish wildcat. There are lots of stories about them, but one thing's for sure, they can't be tamed, even if you take them from their mother while they're still blind and sucking. You'd not touch one of those lightly, glove or no glove."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Mrs. Underhill.

"A bit out of place here, perhaps?" commented her husband. "One gathers that the gloves they use in these parts have been velvet for rather a long time."

"Yes," said Cathy. "How does a Scotch wildcat get down here, right in the middle of England? And what does 'but a glove' mean?"

"Without a glove," I said. "It comes from an old word, "butan.' The motto belonged—still does, I believe—to the Scottish Clan Chattan. One of the Ashleys married a girl called Julia McCombie who belonged to the Clan. She was a beautiful girl, and he was wild about her. He altered the whole place for her, did the house up specially, and built the pavilion in the maze. . . . The maze itself was here already; there's an engraving somewhere that shows it newly planted sometime in the eighteenth century, with a pretty little classical folly in the middle, a sort of imitation Roman temple. William Ashley pulled that down and built the pavilion that's there now. It must have been lovely when it was new. He built it as a sort of summerhouse for Julia; he raised it so that she could sit there and have a view right across the hedges of the maze."

"I suppose that's why he put the Scotch cat in the middle of the maze on the coat of arms," said Cathy.

"And he took her family motto as well?" said Mrs. Underhill. "How very romantic. But didn't the rest of the family mind? Surely they must have had a motto already?"

"Oh, they did. But the odd thing is that it was almost the same. It was 'Touch Me Who Dares,' and the crest was a creature like a leopard, so I suppose it seemed natural to poor William to use the coincidence, and put Julia's crest everywhere instead."

"Why poor William'?" asked Cathy. "What hap pened?"

"They didn't have much time," I said. "She died not long after he'd got the pavilion finished. He went peculiar then, used to shut himself up in the pavilion, and blocked some of the paths in the maze, and devoted himself to his writing and his studies. He wrote verses to her, too. There's a little book of them in the closed section of the library, called A
New Romeo to
His Juliet.
He had her painted as Juliet. She's the one on the main landing, with a view of the maze behind her."

"Why, that's really romantic!" Mrs. Underhill said in her gentle voice. "And that's my favourite of the portraits, too. This will make it very interesting indeed to see that pavilion, if you're really sure you can find the way—"

"Oh, yes!" cried Cathy. "Do say you'll take us in, please, Bryony!"

"Of course. We'll go now if you like. But if we're going through that maze, Cathy, you ought to put on something you don't care about. Whatever you wear will probably end up in tatters."

She grinned. "You English really are the politest folk. As if I didn't know just what you think about this sweater. Don't pretend you don't know these are my very smartest rags. Patches special extras by Bonwit Teller."

"You will do us all a favour," said her father crisply, getting to his feet, "if you get that sweater torn to pieces, so that even Cathy refuses to wear it."

"I'll do my best," I said, and Cathy laughed, and turned to my cousin.

"Emory, you're coming, aren't you?"

"Some other time," said my cousin. "Your father and I have some talking to do."

"Okay. I'll just go change my shoes, Bryony." She ran from the room.

Mrs. Underhill saw me eyeing her cream linen suit, and shook her head. "Some other time I'd love to. But not right now, if you don't mind. I've things to do."

"If the things to do include the washing up, then let me help you do it before we go."

"No, you certainly will not. What's the machine for? And look how many dishes there are. It will take one minute and a half, and not a second longer. Now you just go off with Cat, and forget about it.

And don't leave without calling in again, will you? It's been a real pleasure. Get Cat to bring you in for tea."

She went, with James pushing the trolley for her. Jeffrey Underhill, with a word to me, went after them. I waited for Cathy to come back, watching the flicker of the log fire which looked pale in the sunlight, and thinking about the echo of Herr Gothard's voice, and the "William's brook" which might or might not be "William's book," and the cat which might or might not be Cathy Underhill.

To have a view now from the pavilion, it would have to be built on stilts like a water tower. The yew walls of the maze were eight feet high, and hadn't been clipped for some half-dozen years, so leaned over, top-heavy, to make the path in places into a black-green tunnel. Underfoot the weeds had seeded and reseeded into a long pale pash of sun-starved grass and groundsel, all too generously sown with nettles. In summer, what with the weeds underfoot and the dust harboured by the choked evergreens, the labyrinth would be impassable, but the main hazard now seemed to be the roosting birds. The hedges were full of them, and as we pushed our way past they exploded angrily in every direction. The smell of the yews as we disturbed them was as thick as smoke. Here and there a thin patch let a probe of sunlight through to gild the tiny green cones that clung along the feathery branches.

Lamps of peace. Or was that the fruit? Must I wait for autumn and the lovely green-and-rosy acorns to glow along the dark boughs?

Lover? Lover, are you with me?

The only reply was Cathy, bravely treading behind me like Wenceslas' page. "Why did they ever make mazes? Just for fun?"

"When this one was planted it would be for fun. It was the fashion then to have follies, like mazes and grottoes and Grecian temples, in your garden. But the idea was ancient, wasn't it? There was the Labyrinth in Crete. I don't know if that was the first one. The legend said that Daedalus invented it for King Minos to hide the Minotaur in."

"Oh, yeah, I knew about that. I just read that fabulous book by Mary Renault . . . it was really a sort of storehouse, wasn't it? Do you suppose," asked the tycoon's daughter, "that it was a sort of primitive safe? You know, the treasure right in the middle, and even if thieves got in, they starved to death looking for a way out?"

I laughed. "It's an idea. But you were more likely to find a tomb in the middle than a treasure. I read somewhere that a maze was supposed to be the path the dead follow on the way to the world of spirits. Once at the heart of the maze, and nothing could touch you again; you'd reached a place outside the world, a place without bearings."