A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(41)

That was what he had called Paul, my Prince. Not at first, of course, but later, once they grew to know each other better, once it seemed like they shared an uncommon sort of kinship. Not that they were kin and not that Paul would ever have thought they could be kin. But there had existed between them a fellowship, and the first time Mr. Guy had called him my Prince, Paul was certain the older man felt that fellowship as well. So he had nodded his assent. He was quite ready to seal his friendship with this important man who’d entered his life. He wasn’t altogether sure what it meant to seal a friendship, but his heart was always full to bursting when he was with Mr. Guy and Mr. Guy’s words surely indicated his heart was full to bursting as well. So whatever it meant, it would be good. Paul knew that.

A place of the spirits was what Mr. Guy called the special place. It was a dome of land like an upended bowl on the earth, grassed over thickly, with a flattened path running round it.

The place of the spirits lay beyond the woods, over a drystone wall, part of a meadow where the docile Guernsey cows once had grazed. It was overgrown with weeds and fast becoming encroached upon by brambles and bracken because Mr. Guy had no cows to eat the undergrowth, and the greenhouses that might have replaced the cattle had themselves been dismantled and carted off when Mr. Guy first purchased the property. Paul scrambled over the wall and dropped down to the path at its base. Taboo followed. It led through the bracken to the mound itself and there they tripped along another path which wound round to the southwest side. Here, Mr. Guy had once explained, the sunlight would have burned the strongest and the longest for the ancient people who had used this place.

A wooden door of far more recent vintage than the dome itself stood halfway round the circumference of the mound. It was hung from stone jambs beneath a stone lintel, and a combination lock thrust through a hasp on the door kept it safely closed.

Took me months to find a way inside, Mr. Guy had told him. I knew what it was. That was easy enough. What else would a mound of earth be doing in the middle of a meadow? But finding the entrance...? That was the devil, Paul. Debris was piled up—brambles, bushes, the lot—and these entryway stones had long been overgrown. Even when I located the first ones under the earth, telling the difference between the entry and the support stones inside the mound...Months, my Prince. It took me months. But it was worth it, I think. I ended up with a special place and believe you me, Paul, every man needs a special place.

That Mr. Guy had been willing to share his special place had caused Paul to blink in surprise. He’d found his throat blocked by a great plug of happiness. He’d smiled like a dolt. He’d grinned like a clown. But Mr. Guy had known what that meant. He said, Nineteen three twenty-seven fifteen. Can you remember that? That’s how we get in. I give the combination only to special friends, Paul. Paul had religiously committed those numbers to memory, and he used them now. He slipped the lock into his pocket, and he shoved the door open. It stood barely four feet from the ground, so he removed his rucksack from his back and clutched it to his chest to give himself more room. He ducked beneath the lintel and crawled inside. Taboo trotted ahead of him, but he paused, sniffed the air, and growled. It was dark inside—lit only from the door by the shaft of weak December light that did very little to pierce the gloom—and although the special place had been locked, Paul hesitated when the dog seemed uncertain about entering. He knew there were spirits on the island: ghosts of the dead, the familiars of witches, and fairies who lived in hedges and streams. So although he wasn’t afraid there was a human within the mound, there could well be something else.

Taboo, however, had no qualms about encountering something from the spirit world. He ventured inside, snuffling the stones that comprised the floor, disappearing into the internal alcove, darting from there into the centre of the structure itself, where the top of the mound allowed a man to stand upright. He finally returned to where Paul still stood hesitantly right inside the door. He wagged his tail.

Paul bent lower and pressed his cheek to the dog’s wiry fur. Taboo licked his cheek and bowed deeply into his forelegs. He backed up three paces and gave a yip, which meant he thought they were there to play, but Paul scratched his ears, eased the door shut, and buried them in the darkness of that quiet place. He knew it well enough to find his way, one hand holding his rucksack to his chest and the other running along the damp stone wall as he crept towards the centre. This, Mr. Guy had told him, was a place of deep significance, a vault where prehistoric man had come to send his dead on their final journey. It was called a dolmen, and it even had an altar—although this looked much like a worn old stone to Paul, raised a mere few inches off the floor—and a secondary chamber where religious rites had been performed, rites they could only speculate upon. Paul had listened and looked and shivered in the cold that first time he’d come to the special place. And when Mr. Guy had lit the candles that he kept in a shallow depression at the side of the altar, he had seen Paul shaking and had done something about it.

He took him to the secondary chamber, shaped like two palms cupped together, and accessed by squeezing behind an upright stone that stood like a statue in a church and had worn carvings upon its surface. In this secondary chamber Mr. Guy had a collapsible camp bed. He had blankets and a pillow. He had candles. He had a small wooden box. He said, I come here to think sometimes. To be alone and to meditate.

Do you meditate, Paul? Do you know what it is to make the mind go to rest? Blank slate? Nothing but you and God and the way of all things?