“Charlie,” she chided softly, “we shouldn’t talk about that now.”
“Why not? What better time? I know you brought me here because you’ve got questions of your own you want answering, and I don’t blame you. If I’d seen that damn assassin come after me, I’d be asking questions too. But think about it, Judy, that’s all I’m asking. Think about whether the new Charlie’s worth a little bit of your time. Will you do that?”
“I’ll do that.”
“Thank you,” he said, and taking the hand she’d tucked through his arm, he kissed her fingers.
“You’ve heard most of Oscar’s secrets now,” he said. “You may as well know them all. See the little wood way over towards the wall? That’s his little railway station, where he takes the train to wherever he goes.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Shall we stroll over there, ma’am?” he said. “Where did the dog go?” He whistled, and Skin came pounding in, raising golden dust. “Perfect, Let’s take the air.”
The afternoon was so bright it was easy to imagine what bliss this place would be, even in its present decay, come spring or high summer, with dandelion seeds and birdsong in the air and the evenings long and balmy. Though she was eager to see the place Estabrook had described as Oscar’s railway station, she didn’t force the pace. They strolled, just as Charlie had suggested, taking time to cast an appreciative glance back towards the house. It looked even grander from this aspect, with the terraces rising to the row of ballroom windows. Though the wood ahead was not large, the undergrowth and the sheer density of trees kept their destination from sight until they were under the canopy and treading the damp rot of last September’s fall. Only then did she realize what building this was. She’d seen it countless times before, drawn in elevation and hanging in front of the safe.
“The Retreat,” she said.
“You recognize it?”
“Of course.”
Birds sang in the branches overhead, misled by the warmth and tuning up for courtship. When she looked up it seemed to her the branches formed a fretted vault above the Retreat, as if echoing its dome. Between the two, vault and song, the place felt almost sacred.
“Oscar calls it the Black Chapel,” Charlie said. “Don’t ask me why.”
It had no windows and, from this side, no door. They had to walk around it a few yards before the entrance came in sight. Skin was panting at the step, but when Charlie opened the door the dog declined to enter.
“Coward,” Charlie said, preceding Jude over the threshold. “It’s quite safe.”
The sense of the numinous she’d felt outside was stronger still inside, but despite all that she’d experienced since Pie ‘oh’ pah had come for her life, she was still ill prepared for mystery. Her modernity burdened her. She “wished there was some forgotten self she could dredge from her crippled history, better equipped for this. Charlie had his bloodline even if he’d denied his name. The thrushes in the trees outside resembled absolutely the thrushes who’d sung here since these boughs had been strong enough to bear them. But she w.as adrift, resembling nobody; not even the woman she’d been six weeks ago.
“Don’t be nervous,” Charlie said, beckoning her in.
He spoke too loudly for the place; his voice carried around the vast bare circle and came back to meet him magnified. He seemed not to notice. Perhaps it was simply familiarity that bred this indifference, but she thought not. For all his talk of embracing the miraculous, Charlie was still a pragmatist, fixed in the particular. Whatever forces moved here, and she felt them strongly, he was dead to their presence.
Approaching the Retreat she’d thought the place win-dowless, but she’d been wrong. At the intersection of wall and dome ran a ring of windows, like a halo fitted to the chapel’s skull. Small though they were, they let in sufficient light to strike the floor and rise up into the middle of the space, where the luminescence converged above the mosaic. If this was indeed a place of departure, that rarefied spot was the platform.