“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.