The Catswold Portal

Another long silence as the queen watched her, a look that made her stomach twist with fear. But then suddenly in the queen’s eyes something almost vulnerable shone: Siddonie’s face softened, for an instant her smile was almost gentle. “You will start in the kitchens, Sarah. You will report to Briccha. If you are a good worker there may be other chores.” Then suddenly her fists clenched and she half rose. “You are dismissed. Rise and get out. Now!”

Alarmed, Melissa backed quickly to the door. And her anger rose so fiercely she had to restrain herself from hissing curses or from striking out at the queen. She fled, enraged—and shocked at herself.

Outside the door she stood, regaining her breath, almost more frightened of her own fierce reactions than of Queen Siddonie.

Chapter 7

Braden was parking the station wagon after a pointless drive up the coast when he saw his neighbor, Olive Cleaver, come down the garden and go into the tool room carrying a camera and notebook. Olive was in her seventies, a skinny woman with parchment pale skin made more sallow by her garishly flowered house dresses: Woolworth designs of raw color so terrible they were wonderful. This one featured giant orange and yellow nasturtiums on a black ground. Its garishness shocked all color from Olive’s bare legs and wrinkled arms and face. As she entered the tool room, she smiled and waved at him. He wondered what she was going to shoot in there with the Rolleiflex. Olive, strictly an amateur, did some passable work. He opened the back of the station wagon and retrieved his duffel bag and paint box. He’d packed extra shorts and socks and his razor, but he hadn’t stayed anywhere, had turned around again and come home.

He had driven north toward the wine country and Russian River on a sudden whim, wanting to get away, but something—boredom, a sense of uselessness—had made him head back again. He had felt as confined in the car as he had felt in the studio; the same stifled sense of captive panic he’d had after the war when he marked time in England for three months without any action. Driving north, he had changed his mind about going to Russian River—the place stirred too many memories. He’d wondered why the hell he had thought he could go there, and he had cut off 101 suddenly onto the narrow road to Bodega Bay.

He and Alice had gone to Russian River before they were married, in the middle of winter, and pitched a tent. They had had the place to themselves. They’d cooked on a campfire and had swum nude in the icy river. The first night, Alice spilled chocolate syrup in the sleeping bag, and for a week afterward they had made love and slept engulfed by the smell of chocolate.

Heading for Bodega Bay, passing green pastures where dairy cows grazed, he had let his mind stay numb and blank. At the shore he’d walked along the beach for several hours not thinking, watching the sea, trying to become a part of whatever it was out there—the rhythm of the waves pounding, the emptiness of sky and sea meeting unbroken, hinting at some kind of meaning he couldn’t touch. Alice had loved the sea, she would have been running out in the cold water picking up shells, would have sat on a rock shivering, drawing the gulls and plovers.

Now as he carried his bag and unused sketching things across the terrace to the studio, he glanced up the hill again toward the open tool room, trying to focus on Olive Cleaver, get his mind off Alice. He was aware of flashes of light from inside the tool room as Olive worked with her flashbulbs, likely shooting still lifes of the garden tools, arranging earthy little studies.

He went into the studio, dropped his bag and paint box, and made himself a sandwich and opened a beer. When he came out of the house onto the terrace again, Olive was crouched before the oak door, taking pictures of the cats’ faces. This should have amused him, but suddenly he wanted to tell Olive to stop it, stop taking pictures of the cats, stop fooling around with the door. He wanted to tell her to leave the cats alone, that they could be dangerous.

He didn’t like that kind of thought in himself; he didn’t like these crazy notions. Why the hell did he focus on cats? Everywhere he looked, his attention was drawn by cats; he’d gotten his mind fixated on cats. Even on the beach before he left Bodega Bay he’d seen a cat trotting along the sand, hunting among the seaweed, and he had to stop and stare at it. Black-and-white cat. It had stopped, too, and looked at him. Alice would have coaxed it to them, petted it, talked to it, given it part of their lunch. Watching the stray cat, he had imagined Alice there so clearly—her pale hair blowing in the sea wind, her fine-boned face concentrated as she talked to a stray cat. Alice had needed animals around her, had been more at home with animals than with people.