Walking the Labyrinth by Lisa Goldstein Page B

dead.
    But when I met you, Lady Dorothy, my heart melted. You came to our meeting still dressed in black crepe, still mourning for your husband as Queen Victoria mourned for lost Albert. I saw that you had not left your house in five years, saw how lonely you were. And so when you asked me if your husband, also named Albert, had any messages for you, I closed my eyes and nodded solemnly.
    “He says to tell you he is happy, very happy,” I said. “He misses you and eagerly awaits his reunion with you. But your work on this plane is not finished, he says. You must learn more, understand more, before you are ready to join him.”
    This is how the deception started, with kindness. I learned everything I needed to know about your husband and your marriage just by looking at you, so the trick was not difficult. You remembered my every word in those days; sometimes you would even write them down in a little notebook you brought for that purpose.
    As the years passed there were times when my inventions were insufficient to banish your melancholy. You would retreat to your house for months, where you would commission another painting or purchase another leather armchair. When you returned to our meetings I would outdo myself to provide a spectacle for you. Cymbals would clash, trumpets bray. A heavy scent of roses, Albert’s favourite flower, would pass briefly through the room; sometimes a spectral hand would drop a few red petals into your lap. Mirrors would hang suspended in midair, and in them it would be possible to see a dim outline of your husband. All these things I took from your mind; they were all things you desired.
    Shortly after you joined the Order you were absent from our meetings for several months. I travelled to your house in Applebury and found you sunk in misery. “When will I be allowed to join Albert?” you asked me plaintively. “He gives me his love, tells me all is well. But what is that to me if I cannot see him, or touch him? Have I done something, or failed to do something, so that I am being kept from him?”
    It was then that I broached the idea of the Labyrinth. I swear to you, Lady Dorothy, that I meant nothing more than to create a diversion for you, to give you something that would occupy your mind and keep you from thoughts of your dead husband. It’s true that I was remembering the ancient ruined mazes in the village where I was born, but at the time I had no idea of their significance.
    You embraced the idea eagerly, excited at the thought of your house becoming a tangible symbol of our Order. Then and there you began to write to carpenters and bricklayers, stopping to sketch tangled mazes on your heavy embossed stationery. When you put your pen down I took it up again, elaborating on your drawings of the Labyrinth, straining to remember the twisting avenues of stone I had played in as a child.
    I lived with you, on and off, for several months over the course of that year. You kept busy in your basement, directing the labourers who worked for you. And I went there too, watching as the Labyrinth took shape. I walked it from its beginning to where the labourers had left off, and as I walked I felt myself growing stronger. And not just me—it was as if I were giving strength to the wood and brick and plaster around me.
    It was then that I remembered something my grandmother had told me long ago. “We give power to the places we live in,” she said. “We make them magic. Why does our village have such fat sheep and cattle? Look at this apple—have you ever seen such a rich red? It’s our doing, all of it.”
    The mazes focused the power—I saw that now. I had never understood that before, though I had seen my grandmother, and my mother too, walking those lanes of stone. Perhaps they didn’t fully understand it themselves. It’s strange, isn’t it, Lady Dorothy, that Mary Frances should have stumbled on such a powerful symbol when she founded the Order. Or perhaps not—she had a