in the series of contests that had divided England between Norse and Germanic invaders.
Indeed, Old Harry’s antiquarian fantasies had extended far beyond that, asserting that the settlers in Britain who had become the Celts had been the descendants of Cretans who had escaped the catastrophic destruction of the Minoan civilization in the volcanic upheaval that had been responsible for the mythical Deluge, and that the Longstrides were the descendants of the greatest of all the ancient world’s engineers: Dedalus. In Old Harry’s contention, the revolution he had helped to bring about in the textile industry had been an extrapolation of family tradition, the modern mechanical loom being merely “a recapitulation of the Labyrinthine principle”.
The only item of “evidence” supporting the first Earl’s insistence on linking the Langstrades and the probably-imaginary Longstrides with Dedalus was a diagram of a maze inscribed on a piece of parchment that had been found in the ruins of Cribden Abbey, which had once occupied the site on which Langstrade Hall now stood. Just as the old hall had replaced the Abbey, Old Harry had insisted, the Abbey had replaced a pagan place of worship, whose central feature must have been the maze described on the parchment. Although the first Earl had been able to confirm, during his sojourn in the ruins of Knossos, that the design on the parchment bore no significant resemblance to the design of the actual Cretan Labyrinth, parts of which had now been excavated, he had merely concluded that the Cretan Labyrinth had been Dedalus’ first draft, and that the engineer had spent the time in which he had been imprisoned in his own construction by the tyrant Minos dreaming of the new design that he had carried away to England when the volcanic eruption set him free.
The second Earl had inherited his father’s eccentricity along with his wealth, and had thought it his filial duty to complete the grand plans that the first Earl had made, perhaps more in hope than expectation. Michael knew that he ought to be grateful for that, given that it was the expression of Lord Langstrade’s whim that had generated his commission to paint “Harold Longstride’s Keep”, but he couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy about it. The instructions he had received were detailed, and there seemed to be an awful possibility that his picture would somehow fail to meet the Earl’s expectations. He had been told that he must establish the perspective of the Keep very carefully, taking in both the immediate background of the wall of the reconstructed Maze and the more distant background of Bancroft Scar, positioning a symbolic yew tree within the field of view with the utmost care.
According to what Old Harry had passed off as a family legend, scrupulously handed down over the generations, the mighty Harold Longstride had once emerged from behind a yew tree to surprise and confront Emund Snurlson, the leader of a host of Viking marauders, on a late summer’s day corresponding to the modern August seventeenth, in the year that would now be reckoned as 822 A.D. In consequence of his victory in the ensuing single combat—in which, for some unaccountable reason, Snurlson’s followers had not intervened—the Vikings had retreated and their heroic conqueror had built the “original keep”, in order that the Norsemen should never conquer the shallow valley in which his lands were situated.
Almost everyone except the present Lord Langstrade and his dutiful mother—including his wife and daughter—believed that the legends of Harold Longstride and the Dedalus Maze were the pure stuff of dreams, but that did not matter to Michael. It was in expectation of celebrating the millennial anniversary of Harold’s supposed duel with Emund Snurlson that the new Keep—or the Folly—and its surrounding Maze had been built over the course of the last seven years; Michael, like Signor Monticarlo, Augustus Carp and Gregory Marlstone, had been invited to Langstrade Hall in order to provide an apt commemoration of the occasion. Lady Phythian had been included in the party because she, like the absentee Geoffrey Chatham, had long been a regular visitor to the Hall, while Hope and Escott had been preferred to the present Earl’s other acquaintances because of their auspicious meeting in the ruins of Knossos.
Michael was able to take some comfort in the fact that he seemed, at present, to be the only intended contributor to the supposedly-momentous occasion whose contribution seemed fully assured. Gregory Marlstone’s time machine had already failed to function twice at more widely-advertised and much better-attended exhibitions, and the London newspapers had turned against him in no uncertain terms, branding him a philosophical failure and freely referring to his third intended trial, even in advance, as “the folly in the Folly”. Augustus Carp’s reputation as a mesmerist had also taken a severe knock since he had suffered the sudden loss of his long-time somniloquist, a woman of delicate constitution carried off by the influenza; the replacement he had recently recruited was said to be mediocre at best. To cap it all, Carmela Monticarlo—who usually accompanied her father on the piano when he played sonatas—had sprained her wrist badly, forcing the violinist to restrict his intended program to solo pieces, in the performance of which he was reputed to be far outshone by his more famous contemporary, Signor Paganini.
Taking everything into consideration, Michael thought, as he stared out of the window of the carriage, looking over Lady Phythian’s bulky shoulder, his performance with the brush ought to be the most reliable on offer—but that had to be balanced against the fact that he was far less famous in his own field than any of the other three “performers” was in his, and none of them had the burden of anxiety that arose from being hopelessly in love with his host’s daughter.
CHAPTER THREE
LADY PHYTHIAN AND THE LANGSTRADE GHOSTS
“I don’t agree that the current vogue for Medievalism, of which Langstrade provides a prime example, is inherently anti-progressive,” Quentin Hope said to his loyal adversary—presumably in the response to the suggestion that it was, although Michael had not returned his attention to the argument in time to catch Escott’s last remark. “Progressiveness doesn’t require the past to be forgotten—quite the contrary. Without a keen awareness of the past, progress couldn’t be perceived, let alone properly measured and appreciated, and it’s entirely right that we should loyally celebrate centenaries and millennia of every sort, including imaginary ones. Centenary and millennial celebrations are inherently comparative, forcing us to observe and calculate how far we have come in the interim. It’s entirely justifiable for the present Earl of Langstrade, as the heir to an industrial fortune forged in loudly-clattering automated mills and secured by democratic hegemony, to set himself up in contradictory juxtaposition with the legendary Harold Longstride, a pre-feudal chieftain for whom life was little more than eternal agricultural labor, punctuated by occasional bloody struggles against violent marauders.”
“Langstrade’s not interested in drawing comparisons to demonstrate the superiority of modern civilization over ancient barbarity,” Escott retorted, scornfully. “His interest in the past is a purely nostalgic one, which represents a calculated antithesis to the mechanized source of his fortune and status. He’s trying to identify himself with the imaginary Harold Longstride, who was invented by his father for precisely that Romantic purpose. The reason that Langstrade is so insistent that his fictitious ancestor still haunts the grounds of the Hall, along with his retinue—even though the modern building bears not the slightest resemblance to whatever might have stood there in the ninth century, and in spite of the fact that no presently-discernible trace of any keep existed before the foundations of the Folly were laid—is that aristocratic privilege is based in the prestige of the past, and requires endorsement by it. The imaginary ghost of Harold Longstride is a quasi-paternal figure, symbolic of an imagined heritage, and his actual non-existence is testimony to the force of the longing that Langstrade experiences to turn his back on the bewildering present and the prospect of an even stranger future: a longing for continuity, stability and an end to the madness of progress.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Escott,” Lady Phythian put in, sharply, “but the ghosts of Langstrade are certainly not non-existent, any more than they are quasi-paternal. As you know perfectly well, I have seen the phenomenon with my own eyes, on more than one occasion, and the number of other witnesses, in the course of the last twenty years, must run into the hundreds.”
“With
