Part 3

     The old bricks are cool against my back, their rough edges softened both by long years of weather and by occasional patches of cushy green moss. I tilt my face up toward the sun, and close my eyes, letting my thoughts drift awhile between thoughts of the Masons, drawing ideas, the songs playing one into the next through my headphones...
     After a little while, I no longer feel the warm heaviness of the sunlight against my skin, though the air itself feels thicker. I open my eyes – is a storm coming up? - and then really open my eyes, wide and full, seeing walls around me. I guessed right – I am in the tower's outlines. The room around me is maybe ten feet across, perfectly square, with a spiral staircase curling luxuriously up through the middle of it. I'm leaning against a wall of stucco painted a warm deep red, just underneath a window with an arched top. Heavy ochre-gold drapes brush against my arm, I have no idea what the fabric is but it's very, very thick, with tiny intricate floral patterns embroidered all over it. There are several couches and divans around the room, all in heavy, expensive-looking patterned material, with dark wood frames. A corner-stand with several shelves filled with stunning chinaware set on lace doilies and silken squares. A fireplace, along one of the outer walls, lined with patterned brickwork similar to what I'd seen outside, the mantle above it holding an assortment of strange curios under glass bells.
     I realize my headphones are still on – I quickly pull them out, then turn off the iPod. But I wasn't missing anything by having them on, the house seems absolutely silent. It's the middle of the afternoon, I suppose people would be out making social calls at this time of day? Mr. Mason would be at work--- or would he? No-one's ever mentioned his occupation, I suddenly realize. Does he have one, or was he just super-wealthy to start with?
     A doorway leads out of the room into a dim wood-paneled corridor, and then there are the stairs going upward. I'm torn on which way to continue on – what will happen if I'm on an upper floor when I shift back to my own time, when those floors no longer exist?! But at the same time... how else am I ever going to see in upper interiors?
     I take a deep breath, and put my hand on the railing of the stairs. The ironwork frame is, no surprise, a gorgeous swirl of whirling curls set among and moving among straight vertical lines. The steps themselves, as well as the railing, are polished deep-red wood, probably coated in about twenty layers of varnish. I grimace, knowing just how flammable this whole thing is.
     And have a brief moment of panic – I have no idea when in the house's history I am right now, what if this is the day of the fire? But no, the family was all at home that day, weren't they? There's no use in worrying over it either way, I'm here, and it's not like I'm going to not look around me.
     I take a deep breath anyway, and let it out in a sigh of relief. I don't smell any trace of smoke. I do smell... oh that's what it is, I think it's the scent of cigars, lingering in the heavy air of what I assume is a parlor.
     I reach the second floor, and find myself in a sort of office. Office doesn't sound like the right word, what would they have called such a--- a study! That's it. I'm in a study. The walls are paneled in rich dark woods, somewhat similar to some of the hallways I've seen, but set in a different pattern here. Panels of gracefully swirling wood grain alternate with panels carved with flowers – I recognize a few here and there, clematis, roses, wisteria... There are two desks, one beside a window facing the front of the house, another on a side wall. Each is in gorgeous worked wood, with floral details for the knobs of drawers and along the sides. Shaking my head slowly in awe, I quickly give up trying to sort out just how much it would have cost to furnish any one of these rooms. On one hand, everything was hand-made at that time, so the carving I feel like is a little less expensive of work than it might be in my day, but to get such gorgeous wood, and, heck, buying any kind of furniture, had to be a huge luxury. A glass-fronted bookcase holds an array of muted colored books and portfolios (which hold business paper and things I would assume), there are a couple of more comfortable looking chairs set off in one corner, grouped around a round ironwork table with a glass top. A brass-colored vase, a good foot or so tall, is overflowing with flowers – roses, among others – whose rich spiced scent merges with the warm smell of the wooden walls.
     Again, there is a door that I presume leads to the rest of the house, though this one is closed. But looking up the staircase--- oh there's no question I'm heading up! Grinning, I move quickly upwards, and, ridiculous though it is, can't help but clap my hands together in delight as I reach the next floor.
     The final two – maybe two-and-a-half? - stories of the tower are all a single room with a vastly high ceiling. And every inch of the walls, except for a huge fireplace along an outer wall and some giant windows, is covered in books. I've found the library!
     I look around quickly, and shudder – the library is where Mr. Mason may have died. Or maybe not - my earlier thoughts have me seriously doubting that part of the story. In any case, I'm relieved to find myself still alone in the vast room.
     The shelves are all a dark wood, and in each of the four corners, there are densely-carved square wood pillars, maybe two feet across on each side. These meet a matching wooden border where the walls meet the ceiling, and--- and oh, the ceiling is stunning! It's--- no, it's not actually arched like that, the tower has a flat roof, it must all be trompe l'oeil, holy cow. Gothic arches curve in toward a central point, aging vines heavy with fruit and flower growing up the smooth stonework. Each of the four arches is a window to a different scene, which seem to be representative of different seasons, judging by the color schemes – though the skies in all four line up perfectly, so that it looks like it's the same sky in each image, like you're seeing all four seasons at once. There are figures – dancing women, young men playing instruments, I think an angel or two? It's hard to make out the details...
     Looking around the walls, I see that there are indeed a few of those ladders with wheels attached to a track that runs between the shelves – ladders that reach only about halfway up--- oh! There's a balcony, that runs around the edges, no, two balconies, the dark wood of their landings camouflaged them among all the shelves. It looks like they're roughly lined up to where the floors of the house would be. Makes getting to shelves that high a heck of a lot more practical, I can't imagine climbing a ladder twenty, thirty feet up, only to realize the book you wanted is five feet to the right. I'm sure Mr. Mason had servants to do the climbing for him, anyway – would he have had a personal librarian, to know where everything was? Or would he have had it all in his head? ...no, I'm sure there must be some sort of cataloging system, there's...I can't even estimate how many books. Thousands, tens of thousands. And though there's a wide range of colored bindings, they're lacking the neon rainbow of my-present-day's paperbacks to help distinguish between them. There's only so much variation on dark fabric and leather book spines that can be seen from more than like a foot away.
     That ceiling, though... while I'm insanely curious as to what types of books the mysterious Mr. Mason – and even more mysterious brother of Mr. Mason – would have kept, I know it would take me weeks to skim even half the titles in this room. But the ceiling... somehow, I feel sure that the main structure of the house was entirely created by the first two who lived here, that couple so desperately in love, who so tragically... what? No-one knows why they left, no-one knows the end – let alone the beginning or middle – of their story. But maybe I can get some glimpse of insight into their lives, their personalities, their story, by looking at the place they built themselves to live in, the world they created to surround themselves within.
     This in mind, I pull out my camera. I've got to try it sometime, in this time outside of my own, why not now? I turn it to face upward, get the screen turned on, and hit the zoom button, drawing one small section of the distant ceiling nearer to my eye. As I suspected, the artwork is absolutely stunning – there's so much detail in every drape and fold of the robes and diaphanous dresses of the figures, in every curl of every leaf of every vine and flower's petal... I take a few dozen shots, turning from one season to the next, mentally crossing my fingers, raising an artist's silent prayer that the image will be captured just as I see it. I zoom back out a ways, knowing that the zoom doesn't always capture as sharp of an image. (One of these days, I will buy a real digital SLR camera. But a fresh-from-college kid's budget doesn't quite allow for that.) I take a few photos of the room at large, then draw a slow breath, as I drop the camera from my eye (I can't help but still use the physical viewfinder, despite the much larger LCD screen, it just doesn't feel real to me somehow). If the photos don't follow me back into the present, I want to have as clear a memory of this place as I can.