Dragoon Hall: Curse or Cure?

I did bear guilt. They kept telling me I shouldn't feel any, but I couldn't get out from underneath it and I couldn't tell anyone why. The loving had been intense and among the best we'd ever had, provided the most satisfying release I can remember us as having. But it had also ended in sobs. That should have given me a clue, because it wasn't joyous. It had been tortured. I should have realized it would be the last—that Matt intended it to be the last. All the signs were there. Before we went upstairs, Matt leading me by the hand, he wanted me to hear the tune of a new composition he was working on and made me stand behind him, my hands on his shoulders, as he played.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

"Yes," I'd answered—truthfully. "It's a haunting tune."

"Remember it for me," he said before turning and saying, "Take me upstairs now, please."

He was calm on the surface, but so morose, and, I knew even then by how intensely he had ridden me, that he was teeming below the surface. He was still agreeing with me that all would work out, all would be well, as I lay on my bed, watching him dress, wanting him again. I was minimizing the seriousness of what seethed between us, undiscussed, but he lied to me about how serious it was. It wasn't until I heard the car start up that panic set in. He shouldn't be driving; it was my car; he'd walked here from the village. I leapt out of bed and pulled my jeans on. I heard the crash before I'd raced out of the front door—and then seen the car wrapped around the tree on the road beyond my driveway. And Matt slumped over the wheel, lifeless.

I fell apart. I don't think I have pulled much of anything together yet. They told me that there wasn't anything I could have done and I shouldn't be taking it so hard, that they should have known how badly Matt was taking the diagnosis. How bad a diagnosis, I'd asked, and I'd blanched when they told me. They'd asked if anything had gone badly with the tutoring session, and I couldn't tell them what really was happening, so I just said no, that there had been no problem, no warning. They apologized about my car being wrecked—and I fell apart—and I couldn't even tell them why.

"Uh, sorry." I came back into the present standing there next to the baggage carousel in the Birmingham airport, people having to jostle around me to get to their bags and me, with my suitcase right in front of me at the carousel. I heard the mumbles about just standing there in the way. I couldn't disagree. I felt I had gotten in the way with Matt's life, although intellectually I knew that was nonsense. I hadn't made him ill. There had been too many flashbacks to that day. Fewer as time went by and after I'd left the rehab center. But they were still there and they probably would be as long as I couldn't talk to anyone about the guilt. I couldn't do that to Matt, though. I hadn't even been able to talk to the therapist about it, and he was a complete stranger.

Sighing, I left baggage claim and took the long walk to the car rental pickup. It had been the therapist's idea to leave entirely for a while. God, I hoped he was right. I couldn't take too much more of this being bottled up inside me. And I hadn't been able to even think about sex since that day—or, rather, I'd thought about sex frequently but hadn't been able to do anything about it.

"Get out of Weston. Leave Vermont for a while. Get out of the country. You can do your writing anywhere," Doctor Quinn had said. "And find someone you can unload on," he'd added. I think he was hurt I hadn't been able to talk to him about it.

So, here I was in Birmingham, England, about to get into a rental car and head south, past Gloucester on the A48, into the Forest of Dean on the border with Wales, to Dragon Hall, wherever that was, to steep myself in English history and maybe get a long-dormant novel out of it—before I went mad. The chances were quite good I'd go mad from not being able to talk to anyone about Matt. No one else in the world had taken the path I had, or was saddled with the needs and wants I was.

I'd been tutoring him in English. He was a gifted student—and musician. I'd been sure he'd be a famous composer someday. He was sure of that too until his confidence—and his future—were stolen from him. But he needed help in expressing himself in writing. He'd come to my house outside of Weston, Vermont, twice a week, walking from his house in the village. As he became more comfortable in opening up in his writing, the more apparent it was what we secretly shared in our lives and wants. I didn't think anyone his age would want what I wanted from someone his age. But it showed forth in his writing that he did.

We'd work on English composition, more at the start than later. I'd told him that had to continue. He had to have something he could show to his teachers and parents of what he was writing, although, certainly, not all of his writings could be shown to them.

Later he'd spend time at my piano, composing and chatting with me as the tunes poured out of him. I urged him to show those to his parents and teachers too, acknowledging that creativity in the writing aided in the other interest as well—and produced something that made his continuing to come to me justified to those paying for it.

And even later, after his writing had become more expressive and revealing, much of our time together would be spent upstairs, in my bedroom under the eaves, me stretched out on top of him, his fingers playing tunes on my shoulder blades and his heels rubbing on my calves as I moved inside him. He was fully open to me, wanting all of me, moving with me, from the very first time we lay together. I had never imagined this could be, but it was.

And then when he'd gotten the diagnosis the time with me was more frenzied. He'd compose on the piano furiously as if there wasn't time to get it all out, and in bed I'd be on my back and he'd be riding my cock hard, as if there were no tomorrow. He lied to me, though. The leukemia was worse and more advanced than he'd acknowledged to me. And he was less prepared and inclined to take it all slowly than he owned up to. I, smitten with him and absorbed in myself and my own pleasures, had overlooked the signs of how serious he was about not going on. Others missed them too. But no one else was as intimate with him as I was. No one else, to my knowledge, was fucking him. So, I should have listened more carefully, not just to what he was saying but also to what he wasn't saying, to what he was signaling with his body.

And then when he did it and I fell apart, I couldn't tell his parents—the world—why I was taking it so badly that I had to be institutionalized and, eventually, banished across the ocean. I couldn't do that to Matt. How could I tell his parents—the world—under the circumstances that I, a thirty-four-year-old writer, had been fucking their eighteen-year-old son?

* * * *

"No, that would be Dragoon Hall, not Dragon Hall, Mr. Peterson," the caretaker who let me into the house said. "Tis a common misunderstanding. It is a recent name, no older than the seventeenth century—which is new for a house whose foundations go back to the Normans and the fifth century—and some say back to the Romans and even to the time beginning. Named after the king's Dragoons who were housed here in the English Civil War, it were, and who were murdered right here in the entrance hall when the Roundheads rode their horses right into the house. You can see the marks of the horses' hooves still gouging the floor planking, and it be said that for a hundred years you could see the stains of the Dragoons' blood spilled there. But that would be long past worn away."

"Interesting, David," I said. I'd met him for the key to the house and a tour down in the village of Newnham on the banks of the Severn River on the A48 that I'd taken south from Gloucester. He was the one who was to take care of anything that went wrong in the house while I was there.

"Crowders have been caretakers here for hundreds of years," he had said proudly.

My publishers had arranged for me to stay here, steeped in English history, while I attempted to pick up on the writing of the novel I'd dropped when Matt died. And, indeed, the house was interesting—beyond interesting. The latest house on these foundations dated from the Jacobian period, David said. The foundations went back to the Normans, and there were even remnants of something here from the Romans. It was a solid red-brick house with two principle rooms, a living room to the south and the dining room to the north of a center hallway on the main floor, the lower floor being where a kitchen, keeping room, and storerooms were located. All of the rooms were of large proportions. Above the main floor were two large bedrooms, each now with bath, and there was a library over the center hall. Another, quite atmospheric, bedroom was in the attic, under the eaves. The house was set remotely in its own park, with stables and outbuildings that predated the current house and even included the ruins of a Roman temple.

"I suppose there are stories of the ghosts of the murdered Dragoons walking the floors at night," I said in amusement. David Crowder, an older, gnarled, but solidly built, assuredly once handsome and strapping man in worn work clothes—obviously a hardworking, simple, close-to-the soil man of the fields—was not amused, though. He might have been any age from fifty to sixty-five. When men of this age were still in trim, I didn't shy away from them. Crowder had charisma and a solid body.

"Aye. Those unfortunate king's men and many more besides. This may be the most haunted house in England. It certainly stands as one of the oldest ones. Many momentous and tragic events have been seen by these old walls. Besides those Dragoons, a family named Racine be in residence here in the mid seventeen hundreds. One master of the house of that family was murdered in his bed by his manservant for buggering a stable boy, the manservant's brother, up in the attic room, all while the master's wife slept in the room below—during both the buggery and the murder. And the Racines lost the house when two brothers fought a duel over ownership up in the library room and both fell mortally wounded. A coven of witches is said to have burned out on the lawn for not being Catholics, and there's talk more recently of a woman in yellow being seen in the house, but no one knows the meat of the legend of that one."

"Luckily, I can sleep through any creaking and apparitions flitting about," I said, with a smile. That wasn't true of late. I'd only slept in starts and stops since I'd lost Matt and any sound or irritation was enough to wake me. But I was sure that any sounds at night could be explained by the house's age. "As long as the ghosts aren't literary critics," I added.

"Won't be no one living to disturb you here, Mr. Peterson," Crowder said. "No one close by. I was told you will want your privacy. I live down in the village. I was told you're writing a novel on the empire in the middle eighteen hundreds. You'll find help on that—and most every other period in England—in the library. For light shopping, there are shops down in Newnham, but you'll probably want to go up to Cinderford to lay on most of your stores. I was told you're booked for three months." He looked at me appraisingly. I suppose that an American novelist was quite a novelty for him.

"That's how long my publishers took the house for, yes," I said. But I didn't add that I had no idea how long I'd be here. I had no idea how long I'd be anywhere. I was just drifting along—with everything that was hurting me and that I couldn't let out weighing me down.

After Crowder left, I wandered around the house and then sat in the window of the upstairs library and stared out over the landscape. There wasn't another house to be seen anywhere. The lawn and foliage were so fervently green that I had to rub my eyes and look away. The waning light later in the evening would soften the effect. I settled down at the writing desk facing the massive window in the library, which was located directly over the front entrance. The framing was in wood-separated diamonds and the edges were in ancient, wavy glass, but the center panel was in clear glass, giving a magnificent view over the verdant lawn and the wooded hills in the near distance.

Tired from the journey, I dozed—or, more accurately, went into a daydream such as I had been subject to in recent weeks. I woke, startled, with the sensation of the saddled roundheads riding their horses into the entrance hall below, their swords slashing away at the king's Dragoons. But, fully awake, I saw that it only was a wagon, being pulled by two horses, that was driving past the house on the drive. It was only then that I saw that the shaved-word-bedded driveway continued on past the side of the house and into the woods. Two figures were on the wagon bench, one large and one small. Both were male. The larger figure was a robust older man, muscular and large of frame—not fat, just large and muscular. The other was a berry brown young man. What caught my attention as they passed and focused it was the notion that the man had pronounced graying sandy-blond mutton chops. The scene hit me as one separated from the present and I briefly felt myself in an earlier century.

I reached for my laptop and entered my observation in my file of short story notes. One never knew when something seen or sensed could be used in a short story. Indeed, the legends of this house that David Crowder had already told me could easily get the creative juices going. I'd have to invite him up to the house for further discussions. I found David interesting, and, in keeping with my history with older men, of a familiarity that aroused me. And, as he suggested, I'd have to mine the shelves of this library for ideas.

I couldn't face a major shopping trip just now, so I decided to take the harrowing ride down the hill and into Newnham to check out what David had described as a couple of mom and pop convenience stores. I should be able to buy enough provisions to tide me over to the beginning of the week and then I'd go up to the larger town at Cinderford for some serious grocery shopping. The road down the hill was a narrow, winding lane, bordered closely by hedgerows. It was a breath-holding, prayer-producing challenge to navigate. But the road continuing on up to Cinderford didn't look any more inviting.

Newnham was just a small collection of buildings with the Severn River slowly flowing beyond. But there were a couple of pubs, one, set off from the other buildings, curiously called The Buggerman—English pub names were always something to ponder and try to decipher—and there were, as David had promised, a couple of hole-in-the-wall convenience stores.

The one I entered appeared to be run by a South Asian family. I found what I wanted, but as I shopped, I was aware I was being watched. I looked, casually, to see who it was, and my heart—and another part of my anatomy—went all aflutter. A late teens young man, dark complexioned and so handsome that he could almost be described as pretty, was closely watching me with a little smile on his face.

For the first time since I'd been with Matt, I felt myself stirring inside. The young man was perfectly formed and sensual in the way that had always moved me and that I couldn't talk about and had only rarely acted on. I'd acted on it with Matt, though, and that had ended in tragedy. I couldn't afford that anymore—that stirring in my life had to be repressed. It would break my heart to go there again, I was sure.

I quickly paid the woman—the beautiful young man's mother?—for the small basket of groceries I'd bought. I couldn't resist taking another look toward the counter where the young man was standing, though. I nearly hyperventilated when I saw that he was still looking at me with a small smile on his face and that he was fingering a packet of Trojan condoms hanging on a wall of hooks at the drug counter.

I moved as rapidly but unobtrusively as I could out into the village street. It couldn't be possible. I must have imagined it. He couldn't have intentionally been signaling anything. This was what Doctor Quinn said might happen with nerve-calming medicine he had subscribed for me. He'd said the illusions might be the side effects.

"It might give you an overactive imagination—from time to time confuse you a bit and make you think you see what's not there," he'd said. "Of course, as a writer you may find that gives you an edge professionally. It might help you weave your stories. The medicine can get addictive, though, so we mustn't let you become dependent on it." We'd both laughed at that, but I had been having flashes of this overactive imagination even before he'd prescribed the medicine. It had been like urges and wants were anxious to bust out of me—my inner self yearning to stop holding onto what I knew should not be released.

It was growing dark as I returned to Dragoon Hall, mercifully not having met another car on the narrow, hilly lane. I quickly opened packets and wolfed down some food without even warming it up. Figuring out the appliances in the lower-floor kitchen could come in the light of the next day.

I went back up the library and opened up my laptop. I'd taken some notes on research I'd already done on England's colonial empire in the nineteenth century and, suddenly energized, I immediately started drafting text. As some point, however, weariness overtook me, and I lowered my head onto the desk in front of the library window and went to sleep.

* * * *

I woke up and lifted my head off the desk facing the library window. I was in a pool of light cast by a desk lamp but otherwise darkness was everywhere—in the library and out on the lawn down to a pond, the surface of which was shimmering in moonlight. My attention went to a hint of light among the trees off in the direction where the drive going past Dragoon Hall disappeared into the woods off to my right.

David Crowder had said that there weren't any other houses in sight of the hall. If these lights were coming from a building, it wasn't at that great a distance—just over the top of a hillside to the north of the house, beyond the Roman temple ruins Crowder had shown me. But it would be in a wooded area.

I felt stiff and there was a stitch in my side from having been hunched over the desk while I slept. I felt restless and not sleepy now that I'd dozed—for how long, I didn't know. I checked my watch, and when I realized I hadn't changed the time on that since I'd gotten on the plane in New York, I looked around for a clock. There was one on the mantel over the fireplace, but it was in the shadows too much to see the time from where I was setting, or even if the clock was working. There was a flashlight on the desk by the desk lamp. David had warned me that the electricity wasn't always that reliable here and the wiring was ancient in some of the rooms. Not all of the rooms were used that much.

The flashlight worked. I stood and went to the mantel. The clock was ticking. It was after midnight here. I went back to the desk and looked out the window. The pattern of lights in the wood had changed. There weren't as many points of light seen between the trunks of trees as there had been before. I stretched and yawned.

I should go to bed, but I felt restless. What I really needed was to take a short walk. It was a warm night for October. I had a flashlight in my hand that worked. I was curious about the light in the woods. It didn't appear to be far away, and the narrow wood-shavings-bedded road seemed to run right to where the lights were. I decided to take a short walk and explore.

If there hadn't still been a light on in the cottage, I would have missed it and walked on by. This could have been because it was nighttime, although the moon was full enough that, until I entered the copse of trees, I didn't need the flashlight. Indeed, I didn't turn it on even when I got into the woods because I had the light ahead to guide me and kept to the track of the drive. The wood shavings crunched softly, almost silently, under my feet as I walked the drive. I might have missed the cottage even in the day. Except for a clearing before the cottage door, the foliage around the small building was overgrown; it was built of stone, with a slate roof and ivy growing up the sides; and it was set into a hillside of like-colored rock and moss.