Fallam's Secret

by Denise Giardina

  He strode back down the aisle, the constables following, with Noah staggering between them. Uncle John stepped into the aisle as Sitwell passed.

  “Pardon, sir,” he said, “I am a physician. Might I tend to that man’s head wound?”

  “This man is beyond help,” Sitwell said.

  Noah was saying as much as he could to Lydde with his eyes: Farewell. Go back to your time, and know you have been loved for hundreds of years.

  Then he was gone, borne out the door of Trinity Church between his captors.

  AT Soane’s Croft Lydde huddled in a corner of the kitchen, weeping in the arms of Mother Bunch, who had at last been told the truth about the odd boy Lewis and Pastor Fallam, her husband. Uncle John watched Lydde a moment, left the room, then returned with a box. He dropped it at her feet with a clatter.

  “There’s this,” he said.

  She sat up and stared down at the box, which she recognized as the one Uncle John had carried back from West Virginia.

  “Everything in me,” said Uncle John, “is saying don’t show this to Lydde. Because I know what you’ll want to do. And I should simply take you safely back to the New River in the twenty-first century and forget about this place.”

  She turned her tear-stained face to him. “Except I never could forget him,” she said.

  “No,” Uncle John agreed. He knelt and opened the box to display an array of canisters. “Pepper spray foam for close quarters.” He held up one canister, then another. “Pepper spray fogger that reaches up to thirty feet. And a couple of holsters to strap on so we can carry several. The effects of both last about half an hour and the people who get hit will be blind and in pain. Plus they’ll be terrified because they’ll think it’s some kind of witchcraft and they’ll think it’s permanent. But they won’t die.”

  She wiped her face. “Why didn’t you bring back some guns?” she said angrily. “The ones they have here couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

  He shook his head. “These people have enough problems without inflicting ours on them. Besides, I don’t think Noah would want you killing his constables to save his life.”

  She shut her eyes. “No,” she agreed.

  “We could get some horses from Mossup’s,” Uncle John said. “You can hold them nearby while I go in and try to get him out.”

  “No,” Lydde said. “You hold the horses and I’ll get him out.”

  “Lydde, don’t let’s get into the same arguments you have with Noah.”

  She stood up. “Listen to me! I’ll have an easier time inside. I’ll wear one of the dresses. They’ll be confused, won’t know how to confront me at first. I would have more time to act than you do.”

  “Lydde—”

  “Don’t ‘Lydde’ me! You know I’m right. I’m younger. I’ll react more quickly. I’ll have the advantage of surprise, not you. Besides, he’s in there and I want to be in there with him. If he comes out, I’ll come out with him. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll stay in there with him. That’s what I want. Please, Uncle John. He’s my husband, not yours.”

  Uncle John rubbed his hand across his scalp. “Let me think about it,” he said after a moment. “I’m going to take a walk.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  But he was already out the door.

  AN hour later he returned.

  “I took a stroll over to Constable Baxter’s cottage,” he said. “He’s upset about Noah. He went over to the jail and scouted things out while I visited with his wife.”

  Uncle John sat down at the kitchen table, where Mother Bunch picked halfheartedly at a cold roast chicken and Lydde left her plate untouched.

  “Baxter learned a few things,” Uncle John continued. “It seems Major-General Sitwell and his Bristol constables are having a fine old time tearing apart the inside of the Bishop’s Palace and making a bonfire of Noah’s blasphemous books.”

  “Oh,” Lydde said, a catch in her voice, “he loves those books.”

  “Also, they plan, after supper tonight, to torture Noah into revealing the names of his gang members.”

  “God,” Lydde whispered.

  “Baxter also told me Noah is in the middle cell on the right. And here”—Uncle John reached into his pocket—“is the key.”

  THE afternoon was on the wane when a lone figure rode into St. Pancras churchyard with two bundles tied to his saddle and a large puppy sprawled across the horse’s neck. John Soane slipped off Lady’s back, hauling the dog down after him, and went to knock on the vicarage door of his friend the Reverend Smythe. They talked quietly for a moment, then Mr. Soane, who had retained sole possession of the keys to St. Pancras Church, unlocked the doors and led the old vicar inside.

  “You will see Mother Bunch is taken care of?”

  “Oh, yes,” said the Reverend Smythe. “I shall marry Alis, of course, to head off any scandal.”

  Uncle John nodded, startled to hear Mother Bunch referred to by her given name.

  “If I were you, I’d pack at once,” Uncle John said, “and leave for Bradway while all the uproar is going on. I have a feeling the days of this old church are numbered.”

  “Very sad,” said the Reverend Smythe.

  “And now I must situate Bounder and be on my way.”

  They found an old table in the sacristy and carried it down to the crypt, placed it over the cistern so the dog wouldn’t fall into it, left Bounder inside, and closed the door. As they climbed the stairs back to the sanctuary, the Reverend Smythe said, “I shall miss you, my friend.”

  Uncle John put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “I’ll come back for the dog,” he said, “and it will be best if you don’t try to learn where I’ve gone.”

  Then Uncle John was on his way once more, riding Lady to the shingle of beach below the abbey with the bundles. There was still no sign of a ship. “God, they should have been here by now,” he muttered. He dropped the bundles of clothes far enough away that the tide wouldn’t take them. With them he left a note for Simon telling him what had happened. Then he went back as he had come, leaving Lady with the Reverend Smythe and walking the rest of the way back to Mossup’s stable.

  LYDDE waited at Soane’s Croft in an agony of indecision. She wore a dress over her breeches, a cloak with a hood to cover her short hair, and holsters with canisters of pepper gas fogger and foam around her waist. Several times she started to leave. But it was not close enough to dark, when it would be easiest to go undetected. Still she was terrified of waiting too long for fear they would have started torturing Noah. She was counting on his being alone in his cell and able to move on his own.

  At last she set out. Few people were out that late Sabbath afternoon and those who were stared at the hooded woman, shawl covering her lower face, who strode alone toward the Pye. When she reached the river she met no one, and by the time she was angling past the market cross, the streets of the town were nearly deserted.

  Outside the jail, Lydde paused and took out the canister of pepper foam. She tried the outside door, found it was unlocked, and opened it carefully. A constable in the room where Noah had met with Baxter stepped into the foyer and Lydde sprayed him with the pepper foam, which clung to his face like a mask. Before he could manage a scream, she shoved him back in the room and shut the door. Then she found the key to the cell block on the ring Baxter had given them, turned it, and pulled the door open.

  Two men stood in the hall near Noah’s cell and turned at her approach. They stared in astonishment. Lydde didn’t recognize them and decided they must be Bristol constables.

  “Who is this?” one chortled.

  She took a step closer.

  “A whore,” she said.

  “Indeed!”

  They came toward her.

  “No,” she said, “a witch.” She raised the canister of foam and sprayed them both in the face.

  At their howls of pain, a door opened behind her. She had anticipated it—recalling from her previous visit that the jailer
s hung out in the first room on the left—and she had already moved toward it. When the door swung open, revealing six men, four of them sitting at a table, she hit the closest in the face with foam from her right hand, sprayed the room with fogger from her left, and slammed the door on their screams.

  Then she heard Noah’s muffled voice behind her crying, “Lydde!”

  She ran to the door of his cell, where she barely registered the sight of his battered face pressed against the small barred window. With shaking hands, she dropped her canister of foam and managed to work the key into the lock. She turned it and he tumbled out into the hall.

  She took his hand.

  “Run!” she cried, and they dashed down the hall, leaping the writhing bodies of the two stricken constables and bursting into the clear evening air.

  “To Mossup’s!” Lydde yelled, and they sprinted, Noah clutching Lydde’s arm so as not to leave her behind. Behind them they heard a man calling out, raising the alarm. Before they reached Mossup’s they met Uncle John leading three horses along East Gate Street. They mounted as quickly as they could, Noah stopping to help Lydde.

  “Let’s go!” Uncle John cried, and they galloped down the street and through East Gate, heading for St. Pancras.

  When they reached the turnoff to the church, Uncle John pulled up, as did the others, and dismounted.

  “Take care of her!” he called to Noah, who clasped his hand. Then Uncle John pulled a knife from his belt and handed it over. “Just in case,” he said. He smacked the rump of Lydde’s horse and watched them ride away into the dusk toward the sea.

  At St. Pancras he found the Reverend Smythe waiting.

  “Did they get enough of a head start?”

  “I don’t know,” Uncle John said, his voice trembling with pride, “but by God, she got him out.”

  They stood for a moment listening for sounds of pursuit. Several minutes had passed, by Uncle John’s judgment, when six men on horseback thundered past, heading toward the abbey. Uncle John and the Reverend Smythe shrank back against the side of St. Pancras. When the horsemen had disappeared, Uncle John, overcome with emotion, put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “Do me a favor,” he said. “I’m going to the crypt to wait with the dog until I hear from you. Let me know one way or the other. I can’t leave otherwise.”

  The Reverend Smythe covered the other’s hand with his.

  “Yes,” he said. “I will walk into Norchester now.”

  THEIR horses were running at full speed across the heath and Lydde had trouble holding on. She slipped sideways and managed to right herself by grasping the horse’s mane, but the sudden yank caused the animal to pull up and throw her to the ground. She struck her head.

  Noah turned his horse and headed back, slipped off his mount, and went to her. She was sitting up, a dazed expression on her face and her forehead red with blood. He gathered her in his arms and looked up. Horsemen appeared on the far horizon.

  “Come on,” he urged.

  She tried to focus on what seemed to be two Noahs floating before her.

  “Leave me,” she said. “I’ll slow you down.”

  “As if I could,” he said, and pulled her up to lean against his horse. Then, clutching her collar, he mounted, leaned over, and hauled her up by the armpits to ride in front of him.

  It was true the horse could not run as fast with the extra weight. Noah cast anxious glances over his shoulder at the pursuing horsemen, who were gaining. Then he was negotiating the hollow that wound down to the shingle and there was a ship offshore and a shallop drawn up on the beach. A group of sailors came alive at the sight of them and began leaping into the shallop, manning the oars.

  Simon ran toward them, put his arm around Lydde, and helped Noah drag her to the shallop even as a crowd of horsemen thundered down the gap onto the beach.

  “Row!” came the command, and they were thrown back into their seats as the boat shoved off. Behind them the horsemen were dismounting and trying to ready their weapons. Noah held Lydde close and leaned over her as the Bristol constables fired. Their gun balls splashed harmlessly into the surf vacated by the shallop, which the oarsmen expertly carried out into deep water. Soon there was no sound except the rhythmic slapping of the oars.

  “My God,” Simon said, “you have both been beaten around the head.”

  “We have,” Noah said, and held Lydde.

  Lydde mumbled and he leaned over to hear what she said.

  “Where are we?”

  “We are on our way to the ship,” he said.

  “Did I get you out?”

  He squeezed her shoulders. “You did,” he said.

  “You should keep talking to her,” Simon said, “to keep her awake until we can get her on board.”

  So Noah whispered in her ear, telling her how magnificent she was, describing her exploits in detail, telling her over and over that he had seen nothing so brave.

  Simon, listening, asked, “Did she really do that?”

  “She did,” Noah said proudly.

  THEY got her on board the pitching ship by tying a rope beneath her arms and pulling her up, Simon ahead and Noah behind to make sure she was not allowed to drop back into the sea. Once on board, they were met by Mary, who showed them to the space between decks that would serve the four of them as a cabin, partitioned by a sheet hung down the middle for a paltry privacy.

  For a time the ship was becalmed and all feared a party from shore might try to board. Armed sailors stood watch. But soon after dark a wind filled the sails and they moved out to sea.

  The first night a seasick Noah lay on their straw mattress beside Lydde, who slept without moving. He whispered into her ear, reassured only by the warmth of her body and her soft breath against his ear that she was alive.

  The next day he went up on deck. Simon and Mary were already out, bracing against a cold wind. They were used to the ship’s sharp rocking, while Noah was not. He leaned over the rail to throw up, held at the coattails by Simon, who warned him of the perils of going overboard.

  “We have seen the last of England,” Noah said later, staring east at the white bank of fog where the coastline had once been.

  “We have,” Simon said. “But a new world entire lies ahead. It is like a second life.”

  Noah went back down to their cabin to find Lydde awake and staring at the shaft of sunlight from a small porthole. He stretched out beside her and she smiled at him.

  “They didn’t kill you,” she said, her voice weak.

  “No. Do you remember coming into the jail?”

  “Yes. I remember riding away from Norchester. And the last I remember is Uncle John giving you a knife. Just in case, he said. What did he mean?”

  Groggy though she was, she could see in his face that he was struggling with how much to tell her.

  “If we had been captured,” he said, “I would have been drawn and quartered, and you would have been tortured and burned at the stake. If we were in danger of apprehension and there was no escape, he meant I was to stab you and then fall on the knife myself.”

  Lydde was imagining parallel endings in parallel universes: Noah escaping on horseback while she was abandoned to the constables. Both of them caught and executed. Noah killed while she went back through the wormhole. The pair of them trapped on the beach with no ship and no hope, while Noah pressed the point of a knife to her breast, preparing to plunge it in, then kill himself so they might die together and escape further suffering.

  “Would you have done it?” she asked.

  He looked at her steadily. “Yes,” he said.

  “Thank you for telling me. And for loving me enough to—”

  “Hush!” He covered her eyes with one hand and placed the other on top of her head. “Clear your mind. Think no more on knives.”

  The motion of the ship and the lingering effects of her concussion made her dizzy even though she was lying down. “It’s cold,” she murmured.

  Noah tucked the blank
ets more snugly around them and held her close, kissed her forehead. “I will keep you as warm as I can,” he promised.

  WHEN Uncle John received word that Lydde and Noah had escaped, much to the fury of Elisha Sitwell and Jacob Woodcock, he said a prayer of thanks and went down to the crypt. Bounder greeted him joyously, leaping in the air and licking his face.

  “Come on, girl,” he said. “I’m afraid I have to add a few years to your life. But you’ll get good vet care, rawhide strips, and Milk-Bones. Lavinia will spoil you rotten.”

  He shoved aside the table, then had an idea.

  “Let’s give them something else to remember the pepper spray witch by,” he told the dog. He hoisted the pup into his arms and dropped into the cistern. The familiar disorientation came and they lay sprawled on the floor of a cave, smelling damp New River smells.

  He stood, held the dog close, and stepped back into the vortex of the wormhole.

  Again they lay in the crypt room beside the cistern. Uncle John chuckled to think of the wall paintings restored above them.

  “Hell,” he told Bounder, “they would have burned it anyway.”

  Then they were gone again to the Gorge and the shelf of rock below the Mystery Hole. Uncle John located the flashlight he kept there and flicked it on. Outside, he could tell by the crack of light near the cliff edge, it was a lovely spring day.

  He grabbed the dog, now grown to full size, by the scruff of the neck and crept along until they reached the skeleton stretched out on its bed of stone.

  “Still there,” Uncle John said aloud. He knelt, the light of the flashlight playing over the bones. He caught the glint of the silver chain and cross, reached in, and lifted the chain carefully with his fingers.

  “So,” he said, “looks like we were in the past. Maybe it’s the eternal recurrence we’re dealing with here.”

  Uncle John continued to move the flashlight back and forth over the old rib cage, certain now that these were the remains of Noah Fallam, his friend and Lydde’s beloved. Then the light caught something else. He leaned closer, probing with his fingers until he brought forth the object he had located.