Iron Chamber of Memory Read Free Page A

close and low, almost a whisper.
    She explained that she had been waiting in the inn for Manfred since yesterday. “He was supposed to meet me, to show me the new house he inherited. But he forgot. When I saw you from the window walking up the Rue de Sermon, I called out, but you did not hear me. I trotted after you this whole way, waving, but you never turned to look. And once you were in the woods, the path bent and twisted, so you were never in sight. But I am not one to give up so easily!”
    “My apologies,” he said gallantly, inclining his head.
    He was extremely glad to see her. In part because a familiar face was always a comfort when one was alone in a strange place, but mainly because, upon seeing her, he was struck by the cheering thought that while Manfred might conceivably forget one of them or the other, he was hardly likely to forget them both!
    Hal had known her over the last two years, as she and Manfred had been seeing each other steadily. The two of them had put off their wedding until after Manfred’s dissertation was due at the end of the spring term. Hal had been selected as best man, and he took his duties seriously. He determined to be as fiercely loyal to Laurel as he was to Manfred. When at the University, he made it his mission in life to keep other students and professors from coming between Manfred and Laurel.
    They spent a few moments looking for her dropped hat, gradually circling out from the path as they searched, but the did not find it. It seemed the wind had taken it away and hidden it somewhere among the trees. He found the size of them oddly disquieting, rather like seeing a cow taller than a man. They were giants; it was an old-growth forest. It was amazing to him that in all the years back before the reach of history, despite all the boats and ships that sailed forth from France and from England, no mariner ever cut down these mighty boles for ships, no crofter for planks, no shepherd for firewood.
    He called off the search, saying the two would have to come back in daylight. She took his hand playfully.
    “Now you have to lead me there. I don’t know this path. I’ve never been here, not at night, I mean. Small wonder they call it Wrongerwood! Everything about it is wrong.”
    He said, “Is that really the reason for the name?”
    “No,
Wronger
is a corruption of the French. Like most things English, I suppose. It comes from
Rongeur d’Os
. It means Wood of the Gnawer-of-Bones. Lovely name, don’t you think? After the ghastly hound which supposedly haunts this forest. But perhaps we can we talk of something more pleasant?”
    He agreed to change the subject, and they walked under the trees together as the world grew darker.
    He asked her about the house and the island, and she told him what she knew.

The Unlit Isle
    The island of Sark rose sharply from the sea eighty miles south of England, between Jersey and Guernsey. It was small, inhabited by less than a thousand souls all told. Magdalen College, where Hal and Manfred first met, was more populous. He tried to recall how many people lived in his dormitory; it was entirely possible that there were more people living there than were now present on the island.
    There was one abandoned silver mine on the south spur of the island, called Little Sark, and one manor house to the north, on Greater Sark, perched on a promontory rising three hundred feet above the sea. The two segments of Little Sark and Greater Sark were connected by an isthmus called
La Coupée
, a bridge of rock as tall and narrow as a wall. It was three hundred feet long, with a dizzying drop of two hundred sixty feet or more to either side. Before railings were put up, children were wont to crawl across on hands and knees, fearful of being thrown over the side by the powerful winds that often rushed out to sea.
    The island’s single village held exactly one inn with rooms to let for travelers, whose lower story, which had once been a livery stable, was the