The cold voice of Marie Mandeville cut across their teasing. “My father will not be pleased if we arrive late. We will move now.” She looked at Doc. “I suggest you avoid falling off your horse again, outlander.”
Ryan was about to snap at her when he caught the look on Harry Guiteau’s face, a look that said to let it lie and not argue with her. So he kept quiet.
AFTER THE WILDERNESS of the forest, they soon found themselves riding paths much more traveled, trails that widened, eventually turning into a well-tended blacktop.
Evening had come creeping quickly across the plains on Kansas. By the time they finally came within sight of the outer walls of the ville of Sun Crest, it was full dusk.
But Mandeville had built well and skillfully, choosing the top of a hill for his mansion, so that it caught the last crimson rays of the setting sun.
“Gaia!” Krysty exclaimed as they all rounded a bend from within the forest and saw the ville for the first time.
It was one of the grandest baronial homes that any of them had ever seen, rising in towers and pinnacles and endless Gothic crenellations. The rich green of copper sheathing and silver and gilt danced in the fading glow of the western sun.
Doc leaned on the pommel. “‘In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,'” he said softly.
Dean put it even better. “That’s the hottest piping house I ever saw.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Reminds me of San Simeon,” Mildred said.
Michael nodded. “I saw pictures of that place. It wasn’t all that far away from Nil-Vanity, close to the coast. The home of I forget.”
“William Randolph Hearst.” Doc, now fully recovered from his ordeal, sat with them all, reined in a few yards from vast double gates of iron-studded wood. “A man who owned dozens of newspapers and thousands of people. He built himself the biggest and richest home in America. So he said. I must agree with you, Mildred. This ville does have certain similarities.” He lowered his voice so that none of the surrounding sec men could hear him. “Particularly with regard to its gross and baroque bad taste.”
Seen close up, Sun Crest was a staggering building. Ryan’s knowledge of architecture could have been written large on the head of a pin, but even he could see that it was a bizarre mixture of styles.
A moorish minaret towered from a black-and-white, half-timbered Tudor hall. One end of the ville was a heavily ornamented Gothic spue. The opposite flank to that gargoyled monstrosity was a grossly mismatching copy of a Norman keep. Sturdy and plain, decorated only with arrow slits and a lowered drawbridge across a decorative moat filled with blue-tinted water.
“If this is the outside, then what on earth can the inside be like?” Michael wondered.
The main gates had swung open, revealing an inner courtyard. Harry Guiteau had walked his horse into the group, hearing the teenager’s comment.
“Inside is quite something,” he said. “Real contrast to this dull and commonplace outside.”
Ryan gave him a polite laugh, joined by the others. All of them assumed that the sec sergeant was joking.
But he wasn’t.
THE HORSES WERE LED AWAY by a number of grooms, all dressed in the same muted red livery of Baron Mandeville. Without a word or a glance, the daughter of the ville strode toward a small door set at the bottom of one of the towers, which opened when she was only a step away, as if someone had been waiting patiently for exactly that moment, and then closed behind her.
The sec men also filed off, presumably to their quarters to wash and eat, leaving the seven friends standing on the cobbles, with only Sergeant Guiteau for company.
“What now?” Ryan asked.
“What indeed?”
It was full-dark, but the yard was well lighted with yellowish electric bulbs. Ryan had noticed that they’d crossed another river, much narrower than the Antelope, a half mile back, which was probably used to power a generator.
“We staying here all night?” Mildred was becoming angry. “We’re all tired and hungry, and Doc here is an old man who’s been through a dreadful experience. He’s still soaking wet.”