They were facing a tall, green-painted wooden door, the first door Emma had seen since entering the ruins. The green door was set into a sturdy, level wall that stretched east and west for a hundred feet or so. The drabness of the gray stone had been relieved by a series of niches set into the wall at irregular intervals and planted with primroses.
Gazing upward, the duke explained, “Grandmother had this wall built from leftover bits of the castle. It’s twelve feet tall and three feet thick, to protect that which she held most dear.” He reached for the latch. “No one’s looked after it for years,” he added. “Bantry’s had so much else to do....” He glanced beseechingly at Emma. “What I mean to say is, I’m sorry it’s such a cock-up, but it’d mean a great deal to me if you could see your way clear to ...” He gripped the latch firmly and took a deep breath. “You see, this place meant everything to my grandmother, and she meant everything to me.”
The duke smiled a wistful, fleeting smile, then lifted the latch. As the door swung inward, Emma stepped past him and down ten uneven stone steps. At the foot of the stairs she stopped.
“I’ll leave you alone for a while, shall I?” murmured the duke.
Emma didn’t notice his departure. For a moment she forgot even to breathe, and when she remembered, it was a slowly drawn breath exhaled in a heartbroken moan.
5
Emma stared at the ghost of a garden. The shriveled stalks that shivered in the breeze held no bright petals or sweet scents, and the withered vines that stretched like cobwebs across the walls would never blossom again. The chapel garden was a tangle of decay and desiccation, yet it held within it the sweet sadness of a place once loved and long forgotten.
Two tiers of raised flowerbeds, deep terraces set one above the other, encircled a rectangular lawn. In each corner rounded ledges rose, like steps, almost to the top of the wall. To her right lay the dried bed of what had been a small reflecting pool, and a wooden bench rested beside it, bleached silver by the sun. The garden had been beautiful once, but now the ledges were crowded with cracked and crumbling clay pots, the raised beds dotted with dried flowerheads, the rectangular lawn matted with bindweed and bristling with thistles.
A curious building straddled the center of the long rear wall, one end facing out to sea, the other planted firmly in the garden. Stubby, oblong, built of the same charcoal-gray granite as the castle, it had no belltower, no arches, nothing to entice the mind or enchant the eye. Its only decoration was a thick mat of moss on its steeply pitched slate roof, and a golden dapple of lichen above the low, rounded door. A flagstone path led from the door to the stairs, neatly bisecting the lawn.
On impulse, Emma dropped to her knees in the damp grass, parted the weeds, and dug her hand deep into the soil. She grabbed up a fistful of moist earth, sniffed at it, rubbed it between her palms, and let it fall through her fingers. “Anything will grow in this,” she marveled, and felt a flicker of hope. With work and perseverance, the ghosts could be banished from this place, and the flowers that belonged here could be restored in all their glory.
When she had risen, Emma walked slowly to the door of the stubby building. She put her shoulder to the darkened wood and shoved, then caught her breath as she beheld the chapel’s sole adornment.
It was like stepping into a jewel. The stained-glass window flooded the chapel with color and light, drenching the rough stone walls, the flagstone floor, and the beams overhead with rich and vibrant hues. Five feet in height, perhaps, and three feet wide, the window rendered all other decoration superfluous.
A border of red roses framed the figure of a woman. She stood against a swirling background of scudding clouds and storm-tossed trees, one hand clasping the collar of her billowing black cloak, the other hand thrust defiantly skyward, gripping a lantern that glowed with an unearthly radiance. Wind-whipped tendrils of raven hair flew wildly from the black cloak’s hood, but the woman’s face was as still as the surface of a cavern pool. Emma gazed up into her fierce brown eyes; then stumbled back across the threshold and through the rounded door. She leaned there for a moment, blinking dazedly in the sunlight, and when she looked up again, the garden had come to life around her.
She smelled the scent of lavender that framed the chapel door, saw the bed of irises, the splash of poppies, the glowing cluster of pink peonies backlit by the sun. Old Bourbon roses cascaded down the gray stone walls, coral bells rose from a cloud of baby’s breath, and still water sparkled in the small reflecting pool.
Emma knew that she was dreaming in broad daylight, but she didn’t want the dream to end. The images came to her as vividly as a memory of home and, sighing, she felt as though she’d returned to a place she’d left years ago and longed for ever since. She leaned against the chapel and watched the seasons change, until a sound caught her attention. The garden faded, the pool went dry, and she straightened, embarrassed to be found day-dreaming by the duke.