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"I was also dimly aware, unwillingly aware, that though the ancient trees might have created this clearing, the clearing itself could not have remained free in any natural way. The swamp should have swallowed it up a long time ago. As it was the blackberries were eating at it, and the wicked, high-toned wisteria had a claim on it, sprawling out to shroud the undergrowth to the right of the house and to the back of it, coming up over the high two-story roof.

"But somebody was living here. Probably. But then maybe not. At the idea of squatters or trespassers I was incensed. I regretted that I hadn't brought a handgun. Should have. And might whenever I came back. It all depended upon what I discovered in the house.

"Meantime I had spied another structure, something seemingly solid and massive, well behind the house. The wisteria covered half of it. The sun was strik

ing off the surface of the rest of it, positively sparkling on it and making a dazzle through the spindly trunks of the newborn trees.

"It was to this structure that I went first, very reluctantly passing by the inviting front steps of the house but determined to discover what this massive shape was.

"I could only explain it to myself as some sort of tomb. It stood as tall as me, was rectangular in shape and appeared to be made of granite, except for panels set into it front and rear and each side, which were made out of a metal which appeared to be gold.

"I yanked off the nest of wisteria as best I could.

"There were figures carved into this metal, Grecian figures who seemed to be engaged in a funeral procession, and the procession appeared continuous from panel to panel, enclosing the structure to which there was no back or front or door.

"I must have circled it some ten times, running my hands over the figures, touching the finely carved profiles and folds of garments, and realizing very slowly that the figures were more Roman than Greek. I made this judgment because the human beings were not idealized as the Greeks would have made them but were in fact slender and particular people of several groups. At one point it occurred to me that this was of pre-Raphaelite design, but I wasn't sure of myself on that score.

"Let me say simply, the figures were classical, and the procession was unending, and though some of the figures appeared to be weeping and others tearing their hair, there was no corpse or bier.

"After I'd surveyed it carefully I began to try to open the thing. But it was no luck. The gold panels -- and by now I was convinced that they were gold -- seemed firmly fixed into the granite pillars that marked the four corners of the structure, and the granite roof, peaked like those of so many New Orleans tombs, was very securely in place.

"To make certain that the substance of the panels was gold I chose a place on one of the panels very near the granite, and with the edge of my hunting knife I scratched there and discovered that not only did no base metal show through but that the gold itself was soft. Yes, it was gold. It was lots and lots of gold.

"I was totally baffled by this thing. It was august, it was beautiful, it was quite literally monumental. But to whom had this monument been made? Surely this wasn't Rebecca's tomb!

"Of course Mad Manfred had to be responsible for this thing. It befitted his Byronic image of the builder of Blackwood Manor, his fancy, his munificent dreams. Nobody else would come out here and make a gold tomb. Yet how could it be Mad Manfred's mausoleum? How could his interment have been achieved?

"My brain was crazy with questions.

"Mad Manfred had been past eighty when he made his Last Will and Testament. I had seen the dated document. And at the time of his wild escape from the sickroom to the landing he had been eighty-four.

"Who or what had awaited him on this island? And, of course, this tomb, if that is what it was, had no name or date or any writing on it. How utterly bizarre that one should make a mausoleum of solid gold and then leave it unmarked.

"I decided to take my time before going up into the house. I walked around the island. It wasn't very big. But over half of its banks were thoroughly blocked by the largest cypress trees I had ever seen. Choked in between where they could get the light were the wild tupelo gum and the black gum, making an impassable barrier, and then to the right of where I'd come ashore a mass of water oak and ironwood and the wisteria which I've already described.

"In fact, it was pretty evident that there was only a small place to come ashore, and I had done it properly by dint of sheer luck. Unless some other agency was involved.

"It was very still, except for the bees and a general pulsing drone that seemed to rise from the swamp itself.

" 'Goblin,' I called, but he didn't answer me, and then I felt him brush past me, soft as a cat against my neck, and I heard his voice in my mind:

"Bad, Quinn. Go home. They worry about you at home.

"The truth of that seemed very certain, but I had no intention of responding.

" 'What is this place, Goblin? Why did you say it was bad?' I asked. But he gave me no answer, and then, after a pause, he told me again to go home. He said, Aunt Queen has come home.

"I was powerfully intrigued by that statement. Goblin had never told me the whereabouts of others. But I was by no means ready to go back!

"I sat down on the stairs. It was solid, which was no surprise to me since it was built of cypress; the whole house was built of cypress, and cypress never rots.

" 'Rebecca,' I asked aloud, 'are you here?' There came that dizziness again, and, whereas I had been just a little afraid of it in the pirogue, I let myself slip deeper into it now, closing my eyes and lying back and looking up at the broken leafy light.

"There rose a wave of conversing voices, whispers, curses, a woman crying again, Rebecca crying, Can't torture me like this, and then a man muttering and saying, Damnable, and someone laughing. What did you expect of me! asked a voice. But the surging, driving conversation broke with no further clarification and washed away from me, leaving me almost sick.

"I felt a hatred for the voice that had spoken, the voice which had asked, 'What did you expect of me!' and it seemed a logical hate.

"I stood up and took a deep breath. I was sick. The damned heat had made me sick. I was also getting bitten by mosquitoes, and that was making me feel sick as well.