Hamelton (Dr. Paul) (5 page)

"It's an old house, no longer used, toward town a bit but still on the estate. We can go that way if you like."

The ride was rough on me, although, it was only ten minutes slow walking away, I still did not quite have the knack of riding on the English saddle. Handy was being very talkative to Hanna. He teased her when he could. Basically just getting attention. Riding over a ridge, I saw the top of a two story wood house emerge. Hanna informed us that when work was being done on the main house, the laborers worked too late to get home to town at night and were too noisy to have close by, so the original Hamelton (William's grandfather) had them build their own house in this small valley. The "valley" looked more like a one acre hole in the ground with an opening gorge on the far end. The Hidden Six was rarely used since then. Once a mistress lived there, another time all the house servants had to stay there and so on over the several hundred of years of only occasional use. Most of the time it sat falling apart waiting for a use to have it fixed up again. It did not seem to have been used for some years. Everything was still in one piece with some parts changed as needed and all it needed was some care and a good cleaning. We hitched the horses on the post in front and went in to look. Handy was just interested in chatting to Hanna so I wandered off to investigate.

The kitchen must have been remodeled, 20 years ago by the look of the appliances. "That's right, somehow they must have put power into this place," I thought. I noticed there was no refrigerator, for a moment I thought it funny then I remembered the smell of the last old refrigerator I opened. I started to search the cupboards, and then I realized nothing from William's time would still be left in a remodeled room. The lower rooms were empty of furniture, two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and the kitchen. I remembered the bathroom added onto the room I was sleeping in. The living room must have been larger, and then divided to accommodate the bathroom. Upstairs was more interesting. There were two average sized bedrooms, one very small storage room, and an oversized bedroom. This required some thinking. I looked into the large room and saw a dividing line down the middle, at one time this room was two rooms. The large room was once two small rooms made into one large one. Originally two bedrooms down and four up, total six. Okay. There were six bedrooms in this house. The house is hidden from view. Hence the Hidden Six! I felt proud of my deduction.

If William wanted to meditate here he would use the large room, assuming it was enlarged during his time. Now in the large room I looked for clues. The window supplied a view of the top of the mansion. I paced the floor thinking. Suddenly I spotted what I was looking for, something out of order. There was a light stain in the floor. I bent over on my knees to examine it. In the center of the stain was a deep indentation into the old wood. I put the tip of my pinkie into the small gouge. I had never seen a several hundred year old blood stain before but I thought rather confidently this was one.

Hearing the voices downstairs and having completed my inspection, I went down to join them. Hanna was sitting on the ground with her back against the house and her legs extended straight ahead. Handy was on her right side sitting crossed legged facing her. I sat on the other side of her facing outward. I had been mostly quiet up to this point. However, this seemed to be a good time to see if Hanna had information on my investigation. "Do you know when this place here was renovated?"

"When I was a kid, I think it was rented out to a worker with a large family who didn't want to sleep with the other gardeners in their cabins."

"When were the rooms rebuilt?" I pressed.

"I answered already. The bathroom and kitchen were added long before I was born, then renovated when I was very young, and the gardener vacated when I was about 11, been empty since then I think. Do you need all the details?"

"Maybe I do. Why is the place called the Hidden Six?" I asked.

"I don't know if anyone knows why," Hanna replied, "I do have to make one confession to you both, when I told my uncle Joffy about you going to the Knight's Edge, he must have gotten himself drunk, then went there to scare you. You see, he's really mad at me because I work here. He just took it out on you."
My opinion was changing about Hanna; she seemed relaxed around us, like a friend. I realized she was a tomboy at heart and rather intelligent. Because of my youth at that time I was not really used to treating a girl like a friend. "So he was the hooded stranger? Apology accepted. What was he talking about, rogues?"

"Well that happened right here, I'm told. Each time they showed up, it turned out the Hidden Six had been used as a hideout for them." We talked for some time but the rest of what she knew I already knew.

The remainder of the morning was rather uneventful. I talked a little to Hanna on the scenic way back. Handy kept poking at her, still misunderstanding her intentions. At one point Handy winked at me while pointing at Hanna behind her back. I spent most of my time thinking how I had figured out why the Hidden Six was given that name and a local did not know; perhaps I was the only one alive who knew that. It was indeed a boost to my deductive ego. Hanna mentioned to Handy that Maggie had given her time off to be our guide, with pay, for the days.

When we arrived back, Hanna and Handy wanted me to go with them to the town of Hamelton, but I did not feel like walking after the ride. Besides, I then more than ever wanted to read more of William's disappearance since I proved, with the gold ring in the window and the Hidden Six, that there were answers just waiting to be found. Jeff and Cindy did want to go, so that left me basically alone to my work.

Entering the library I noticed a plate of small finger sandwiches on the table I had been using. "Maggie has struck again," I said to the walls. As I sat to take a breath before I went to work I thought how peculiar Maggie had been, at first avoiding the subject of William, than making it easy to research. And on the other hand, she seemed to know more than she was willing to tell. She wanted to help, but wouldn't help. That was a small mystery that could be solved later.

Clearing my mind I worked intensively on understanding what was being read. William wrote that the group of followers attended lectures from William daily. William picked five men, including the Friar, to be his head teachers from his flock of over thirty followers. That way each teacher had five pupils, the number he felt was best to learn. With the intention that they would have even more followers, each of those people would have five to teach. The head teachers spent an additional class with William and then relayed the lesson to their pupils. William and the teachers continued the experiments then relayed what they were learning to the rest who were forbidden from experiments until William deemed it safe for them.

The experiments seemed to become more successful. Although he wrote more of the religious implications than what happened during the experiments, he did actually describe one of the successful experiments in detail. He seemed to believe the more he had done experiments the easier it was to fulfill the next experiment. He described it as a gate being opened bit by bit. His record of the one experiment went like this paraphrased to modern English:

"We, the teachers and I, lay on our backs on the empty floor with our feet touching one another. Our arms were out stretched to each other‟s arms. First came the meditation, silence, deep complicated thought. Then as the mind relaxes and empties there is a momentarily wonderful feeling. Slowly and delicately each muscle starting at the feet is tightened then totally relaxed. This exercise makes the releases the mind and body aware of the present, and releases from the here and now. As the mind sits empty, the inner mind stirs a single thought to distance. Soon the feeling of removal comes. That is the time to gently stir the mind and body through the hole that exists. Once inside the tunnel, what used to be a pushing is now a pulling. The other world awaits there."

He talked on about the wonders of the world of peace without ever talking about the world itself. Then the pages went empty. I put the books back on the shelf and went to my room. I thought about everything that was written and wondered if it could be true that a world of peace exists and William is there.

I locked the door to my room, I had decided I was going to try the experiment myself to see if it could be done. I laid on the floor with my feet straight out and my arms out to the sides. It took about fifteen minutes to relax, and another fifteen minutes to do the tightening and relaxing of the muscles. Nothing happened and I got bored waiting. I kind of dosed off for an unknown time. When I gradually awoke, I remembered I was supposed to be in the middle of an experiment. I realized I was very relaxed already and could go on to the next part. I concentrated on distance. Then the strangest feeling came over me. I can best describe it as a large vacuum above my head sucking up my liquefied body. A moment of limbo passed as if no life or death existed. Then I tumbled into a flowing tube. I felt as if my body was twisting through a straw. Then came that horrible feeling of when you are falling asleep and your body jolts. Then I felt normal.
I laid there for some time to see if it was finished. I slowly opened my eyes only to see the ceiling of my bedroom. I was disappointed. Were all those wild things that just happened wishful thinking? I stood up and stretched. Then came the shock. The lamp by my bed was gone and an oil lamp was in its place. I turned around and looked at the walls, the weapons were gone and the walls were bare stone. The bed covers were messed up. I walked up to the bed and noticed a large hand hanging over the side. Someone was sleeping in my bed! On the floor beside the bed was an oversized sword lying next to its sheath, ready to use, like a burglar deterrent. In complete disoriented fear I slowly backed up. I was in someone else‟s bedroom. I made it to the door. I reached behind me without taking my eyes off that hand hanging off the bed and opened the door as slowly as I could to get out of there. In the hall, closing the door I looked around and noticed the walls were not all plastered with white, as they had been before. The walls were stone. I smelled spices that seemed to have no origin. Small tables had candles periodically placed down the hall.

My bare feet walked down a narrow unfamiliar coarse carpet. I came to the end of the hall. As I stopped to look around the corner, dizziness overcame me. Again the vacuum feeling started, and then tunnel sensation, and then nothing. I opened my eyes slowly, I looked at the ceiling. I turned to the wall to see William's dagger hanging in the place it is supposed to be. Relieved I got up, opened the door to look down the hall, just to be sure no one with an oversized sword was still in the area, and then went to bed. I laid there for at least an hour thinking about what had happened before sleep overcame me. It was a restless night with multiple dreams.

V

I woke up with the sun the next day. I walked around my room and looked at everything on the walls. Several things that would normally be of interest to me didn't even register because my mind was on the events from last night. I ran it over and over in my mind. I thought about a lot of things and ended up deciding that I had to tell my friends what was going on. Jeff and Cindy may take it as some kind of a joke, so I needed Handy's support first.

Handy had left his door unlocked. I walked in and sat on his bed facing him. "Handy, its morning time, wake up."
He turned and looked at me mumbling, "What's going on Chris?"
"We need to talk and now, before the rest wake up."

He must have noticed the seriousness in my voice, because he sat up, slapped himself in the face as a gesture and said, "Go ahead, I'm here."

I started out by saying I had figured out what happened to William three hundred years ago. I told him of the book I had found upstairs. I thought it best at the time to leave out the parts about Maggie's help. I told him about the prior night and what happened. When I finished he did not say anything. I prompted, "What do you think?"

Handy said slow and seriously, "You didn't wake me up to play a joke on me did you?"

"I swear, on our friendship." That was a saying from our childhood from when we both had skinned our hands and grabbed hands mixing our blood to become “blood brothers”. He knew we both reserved that saying for only the most needed moments and when I said that, anything I said was true.

He, then very awake, said, "I have some questions..." I nodded my head while staring in his eyes as if I was all his. "Where do you think you went last night?"

"I think the question may be … when was I, and I don't know, the Garden of Eden maybe, if William is right."

"You did not seem to do anything that unusual to get there, William spent years trying, how did you do it the first time?" Handy asked.

"I thought about that too. William had mentioned in the book that each time he tried it was 'like opening a gate bit by bit'. I think the gate in this area is wide open, I just fell through it."

"What's next?" He said enthusiastically.

"I really don't know. I thought the town library", I said. Handy said, "I want to go. Through the tunnel I mean. We can get Jeff and Cindy... and Hanna. That makes five, a lucky number. What do you say?"

I knew better, but inside someplace the idea of being the teacher of what I had learned seemed to appeal to my ego. "Okay, if everyone wants to."

We talked a bit more then I left him so he could get ready for the day. I decided to go down and see If Maggie had coffee ready downstairs.

As she poured the coffee I asked, "Do you know why they call the Hidden Six... the Hidden Six?"
"No, I can't help you on that one."

"Did you know that the big bedroom upstairs was once 2 bedrooms? So at one time, there were six bedrooms hidden down in that little valley, hence, the Hidden Six. What do you think?"

She stuck out her bottom lip as if thinking and said, "Very well may have been." She went about her work within the room as I looked out the window at two gardeners trimming some rose bushes.