Prelude to Eternity. Brian Stableford
dowager Lady Langstrade since she was Millicent Houghton,” she said, “and I’ve been a frequent guest at the new Hall ever since the reconstruction rendered it fit to live in—at least once a year for nearly twenty years now, in good times and sad times alike. I’d heard vague tales of the ghost long before I ever got to see it, but they were generally regarded as servants’ gossip in those days. Although the old manor house was called Langstrade Hall, no Langstrades had lived in it for centuries—it was even owned, for a while, by relatives of mine, the Ashersons—and all the ghost stories associated with it were old enough to be treated with contempt. The reconstruction of the new Hall seemed to change that, though. Perhaps the ancient ghosts were disturbed somehow, and prompted to walk again—but I make no claim as to that.
“The first time I experienced an apparition for myself was seventeen years ago, but it was so slight—the merest of suspect presences—that it was only in hindsight that I realized what it must have been. The first time I saw ghosts, clearly and unequivocally, was in 1811. It was late at night, in August, during a heat-wave. I was in my usual room—the Yellow Room, it’s called now—which faces east. I couldn’t sleep, and I got out of bed in order to go to the window, in the hope that I might catch a breeze by leaning out, since none seemed to be capable of making its way into the room. That was when I saw a group of uncanny lights, moving slowly and methodically over what was, in those days, a vast lawn.…”
Escott opened his mouth as if to interrupt—presumably, Michael guessed, to inform the Monticarlos that the location in question was now the site of the Langstrade Maze—but Lady Phythian, intent on telling her story in her own way, silenced him with an irritated frown.
“I woke Millicent,” the dowager continued, “who woke the late Lord Langstrade, who summoned his butler, Heatherington, and his gardener, Jefferies, in order to mount an investigation. We all went out together, taking courage from our numbers. All five of us saw the lights from a distance, as we approached and agreed that they were not natural, but by the time we reached the ground over which they were moving, they had vanished into thin air. Jefferies declared that they must have been swarms of fireflies engaged in mating dances, but no one else believed that ridiculous suggestion for a moment.”
This time it was Hope who tried to interrupt, quite possibly to offer a learned discourse on the mating habits of fireflies, but again Lady Phythian refused to relinquish the floor.
“That,” the story-teller continued, emphatically, “was only the first time I saw the ghosts. Nine years ago, in 1813, the event was repeated, almost exactly. This time, again from the window of the Yellow Room, I was able to count the lights—there were eight—and was able to discern that they were ghostly lanterns, held aloft by shadowy hands, moving in strange spirals around a region at the further end of the lawn. Again, Jefferies, having arrived at the spot after their disappearance, declared that they must have been fireflies—but this time, Millicent, Harry and I had got much closer before the lanterns winked out, and none of us was in any doubt that they really were ghostly lanterns. That was when Harry—Old Harry, that is, not the present Earl, who was left to sleep, much to his annoyance—guessed that the apparition must be taking place on the anniversary of Harold Longstride’s combat with Emund Snurlson, and that the ghosts must be converging on the yew tree in the shadow of which the crucial fight to the death had taken place.
“The third time I saw the apparition, seven years ago, it was clearer still. This time, I was able to make out the silhouettes of the human figures carrying the lanterns. They were, alas, not pale and shiny, as ghosts are often said to be, but dark and fugitive. I am certain nevertheless that they constituted two groups of four, the second group seemingly tracking the first along their strangely convoluted spiral route—although both groups broke up before the second caught up with the first, and they were in complete disarray by the time they disappeared again.”
Escott, despairing of being able to get a word in edgeways, caught Michael’s eye and raised his eyebrows expressively, unnoticed by the story-teller.
“I saw the apparition one more, three years ago,” Lady Phythian continued, as unstoppable as the Sir Richard Trevithick, which was now traveling through the northern hinterlands of Hertfordshire at full steam, “but, much to my disappointment, instead of becoming clearer once again, it had returned to its former vagueness. Mr. Hope and Mr. Escott have never seen the phantom lanterns, even though they have been guests on the anniversary, but they always sleep in the Rose Room and the Lilac Room, both of which face south, and on the one year that they consented to wait up all night in case the ghost put in an appearance—four years ago, if I remember rightly—the phenomenon did not appear. They doubtless believe that I imagined the whole thing, and that it is partly because of my overheated imagination that the present Lord Langstrade insisted on completing his father’s plans for the Maze and the Keep, but I know full well that what Millicent, Harry and I saw was not natural, and that it really was connected to the Maze.”
Signor Monticarlo looked puzzled, but was too polite to interrupt; he merely exchanged a glance with his daughter, who smiled at him tenderly. Lady Phythian took the hint, though, and elaborated her explanation.
“In addition to hearing tales of the ghost,” she said, “I had long grown used to seeing the document on which the Langstrade Maze is designed. Whether it really is a copy of a design originally made by Dedalus of Knossos I have no idea, but I am certain in my own mind that there is something mysterious and magical about it. I feel it whenever I look at the diagram, in the same way that I often used to feel the presence of the Langstrade ghosts when sitting on the lawn where the Maze now stands, even in broad daylight. I have felt it even more strongly while exploring the maze itself, during the years when its hedges were not as intimidating as they are now.
“At any rate, the ghosts whose lanterns I saw were definitely walking the maze, even though construction of the present Maze had not yet begun when I first saw the apparition. They were heading from the periphery to the center: the location where the Keep and the yew tree now stand proud once again, in commemoration of the glorious summer of 822 A.D., when Harold Longstride defeated Emund Snurlson in single combat and blocked the progress of the Viking invasion—the renewals of which he succeeded in keeping at bay for the rest of his life, although his descendants could not, in the end, resist the incursions of Eric Bloodaxe.”
Lady Phythian nodded her head as she drew to her conclusion, as if to imply that what she had said was more than sufficient to confound the most determined skeptic who ever drew breath.
“With all due respect, Lady Phythian,” Quentin Hope said again, just as insincerely as the first time, “and without wishing to endorse the unreasonably stubborn skepticism of my friend Mr. Escott, I wonder whether we might be confusing causes and effects slightly. You claim that the ghosts, in appearing to simulate the movements of someone walking the Maze that Lord Langstrade subsequently constructed on their stamping-ground, were reproducing some past event or ritual—but I can’t help suspecting that your seeing the ghosts, and your interpretation of their movements, might well have been partially responsible for the first Earl’s decision to site the Maze there, and the second Earl’s decision to complete his father’s plan. After all, there was no previous connection, even in rumor, between the ghosts and the diagram, was there? They were two entirely separate components of the first Earl’s imagined family history.”
“I am by no means the only person to have seen the Langstrade ghosts move in that peculiar fashion,” Lady Phythian said, stiffly. “I was not the first observer to connect the pattern with the Maze, but once the connection had been pointed out, I was able to see with my own eyes, and feel with my own heart, that it was true. The present Lord Langstrade has seen the phantom lanterns for himself, and so have his wife Emily and his daughter Cecilia. They have all confirmed that the lanterns’ movements do correspond, very precisely, to the pattern of the Dedalus design.”
“That tends to be the way with ghost sightings in Britain,” Escott put in, as if to inform Signor Monticarlo of a relevant item of folkloristic analysis. “Each seer reproduces what previous seers have seen, although each one also tends to elaborate the pattern a little further. There is a kind of feedback process, by which the reported illusions not only sustain one another but collaborate in their own elaboration