by Renee Duke
Jack nodded and, exchanging worried looks, the children went back inside.
Chapter Eleven
The Wolverton-Hernes’ departure did not mean an end to discord. Just as Grantie Etta was about to begin her speech, screams surpassing Penelope’s started up in the playroom.
Brad hurried off to see what was amiss and, seeing all heads turning in that direction, Cousin Anna raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“No cause for concern,” Uncle Edmond assured her. “Just wee Caddy in a paddy. Again.”
“If that little madam stomps anywhere near me when she’s having one of her foot stompers, I’m going to trip her with my stick,” Grantie Etta said grimly.
Cousin Ophelia gasped. “But Grantie, that’s…that’s child abuse.”
“I’m old. I can get away with it. Why doesn’t your son put his foot down over that young woman’s idiotic child-rearing theories, Malcolm? Has he no spine at all?”
Cousin Malcolm sighed. “It’s not a matter of spine. He agrees with her. I can’t bring any instances to mind, but apparently, he, like Alexis, was horrifically oppressed as a child, and is determined not to inflict the same kind of tyranny on his own offspring.”
“Hmph,” said Grantie Etta.
Cousin Melanie hastily brought all the other small children out into the hall. A few minutes later, diminishing scream levels indicated Brad and Alexis had taken theirs outside, thus allowing Grantie Etta to make her speech.
Short and humorous, it was followed by speeches from Uncle Edmond and others, the application of her handprint to Cousin Anna’s mural, the taking of numerous group photos, the making of toasts, and the cutting of a huge cake, after which people were free to mingle again until the scheduled entertainment began.
A steady stream of them stopped by to visit with Grantie Etta, who revelled in all the attention. During a lull, Great-Gran beckoned to her sons, who were standing nearby with Paige, Dane, and Jack.
“Is there somewhere we could go for a while?” she asked. “Somewhere quiet?”
“Is Grantie getting weary?” inquired Granddad. “Or is it you, Mother? Are you feeling unwell?”
“We’re both fine,” she replied. “I just want to talk to you away from here. All of you.”
“There’s a small reading room at the back of the hall,” said Grantie Etta. She smiled mischievously. “I didn’t think it would be comfortable enough for a delicate, sensitive, child like Penelope. Should suit us all right, though.”
Just then, Lady Olesia Pickering, mother of Sir Magnus, came up to her.
“Been waiting for a break in the traffic, Rosetta,” she bellowed, in a voice that could easily have been used for shouting ‘Tally-ho’ across a hunting field, had she not been vehemently opposed to blood sports. “Seems to be one now. Magnus told me there was a bit of a brouhaha over your Keeper medallion earlier. Like to know more about that. He thinks you should sell it to him so undesirables can’t get hold of it. Can’t say I follow his reasoning there. Fool boy’s just lost two Pieces of his own. Not much of a testament to his security system.”
Grantie Etta smiled resignedly. “You can fill me in later,” she said to the others.
“What’s this all about?” Uncle Edmond asked once they had withdrawn to the reading room.
“Well, like Lady Olesia, I want to know more about what happened outside,” his mother replied, settling into an armchair. “Since Percy and his issue did not return, I assume it was to do with them.”
After hearing Jack’s account, she gave a grim nod. “I thought it would be something like that. Penelope’s a nasty child, just like Percy was.”
Uncle Edmond looked thoughtful. “You were afraid of him back then, weren’t you, Mother? Still are, perhaps.”
“He’s ruthless when he wants something. And he’s long wanted the medallion.”
Jack stared at her. “You’ve used it, haven’t you? Grantie thought you didn’t, but you did.”
“Yes. Once.” Great Gran sighed. “I went to Windsor, not long after the castle was built. It was a wooden castle then. I met a girl called Frideswid. She and her brother Wigstan were being held there as hostages against their father’s good behaviour. He was some sort of Saxon noble, and apparently hadn’t taken the Conquest too well.”
“Did you help them escape?” Jack asked eagerly.
“They already had. They were in full flight when I materialized in front of them. Frideswid literally ran into me. Wigstan looked back, saw she’d fallen, and came back to pick her up. He then hastened us both into the forest. We hid out there for two days. It was rather fun to live off the land and scramble up into trees whenever soldiers came to comb the forest for the fugitives. But I knew if they were missing for too long their father might assume they’d been killed and attack the castle, or the Normans might assume they’d got safely home and attack his stronghold. Either contingency could have wiped out their whole family, so I pretended to be a witega, a seer, and my prediction of their family’s fate persuaded them to give themselves up.”
“What happened then?” asked Paige.
“They got a few cuffs, which children of those times were well used to, and went back to being hostages until such time as their father stopped stirring up trouble. Which left me free to go home.”
“After having what sounds like a pretty good adventure in the past,” said Dane. “How come you didn’t go on any more?”
“It was too dangerous.”
“But nothing bad happened to you. Or to the kids you helped.”
“The danger was back here. Percy’s parents were visiting mine, and I’d gone into town to get away from him. He must have followed me without my knowing and saw me disappear. When I rematerialized, he ran towards me, shouting, and I took to my heels. He was bigger and stronger than me, but I had a good lead and made it into of the protective arms of a nearby shopkeeper. Much to my joy, the nice man fetched him a clout for tormenting me. Percy ran off, and the shopkeeper’s lad saw me safely home. But right after tea, Percy cornered me and demanded to be told all about the medallion. He seemed to know quite a bit already, and had connected it to my sudden disappearance. I still had it on, under my jumper, and I was so afraid he’d try to take it from me, I somehow found the strength to twist away from him and run to my mother. I stayed by her side until they went home.”
“You should have told her he’d been bullying you,” said Paige.
“I did, but, as usual, it was an exercise in futility. He’d been bullying me for years. My parents complained to his on a regular basis. Their standard response was to say they were sure he was just teasing, and I shouldn’t be so sensitive. Even if I had a physical hurt to show, they always accepted Percy’s claim that it had been an accident. I knew it would only be a matter of time before he managed to take the medallion from me. And once he figured out how to use it…well, I didn’t much like the idea of someone like him being in control of something like that. I returned it to Auntie Etta the very next day, so as to keep it away from him.”
“You tried to keep it away from us, too, with that nonsense about it turning our skin green,” said Uncle Edmond. “Much good it did you. Merry wanted nothing to do with it after that, but for me and Avery, it was an added incentive.”
“Yes, well having had a girl first, I was still learning about the perversity of little boys. Willoughby wasn’t as vicious as his father, but I wasn’t sure what he might be capable of if Percy was still after the medallion, and had told him to take it from you. I couldn’t watch you every minute. I…I just wanted to keep you from harm.”
The old lady’s lower lip trembled. A bride at eighteen, a mother at nineteen, and a widow at twenty-three, she had raised her children on her own, and had always been very protective of them.
Uncle Edmond gave her a hug. “It’s all right, Mother, we understand. But you didn’t have to worry. Odious though he may be, Willoughby’s never been on Percy’s level. Even as children, Avery and I could hold our own against h
im. He wasn’t a match for our combined strength, and we knew better than to let him get either of us alone.”
“That’s right,” Granddad confirmed. “We never actively sought his company, and once we were old enough to delight in inflicting pain and/or embarrassment upon him, he certainly didn’t tend to seek ours. But now that I think of it, there was a time—just after our first trip with the medallion—that he showed considerable interest in it. Like Percy, he seemed to know something about it, and asked us if we had it.”
“We told him, no,” said Uncle Edmond. “Said jewellery was for girls, and what kind of sissy was he, wanting a necklace? That shut him up. But we took care that he was never around when we used it.”
“Although I did suggest we take him with us and then leave him stranded in the past,” Granddad quipped.
“Perhaps you should have,” his mother retorted, with unexpected harshness. “The fact you disliked him so much did make me feel a little less anxious. I wasn’t entirely sure you were even using the medallion, but you kept it for so long, I thought you probably were. I was so happy when you outgrew it and gave it back to Auntie Etta.”
“Too bad you weren’t able to use it more,” said Paige. “If you had been able to, was there anyone you could have gone on other trips with?”
“Not really. But thanks to Percy, I couldn’t even go on my own.”
“Strange how he picked up on the medallion being something special,” said Uncle Edmond. “I wonder how much he knew, and how he came to know it.”
“I’ve no idea,” said Great Gran, “but he definitely knew something. He said he’d been told to watch me because his father had seen me wearing the medallion and wanted to be sure I was taking care of such a valuable heirloom. Uncle Jasper was big on heirlooms. He thought he and Aunt Lavinia had as much, if not more, right to the Wolverton ones as anyone else did because he’d taken on the Wolverton name and had a Herne ancestor who’d married into the Wolverton family a few generations earlier.”
“Or infiltrated it,” Dane said suddenly. “‘Scions bred through infiltration.’ The heinous blood the book talked about. I might not have been sure it was them before, but I am now.”
“What book?” asked Great Gran.
They told her about finding Rosalina’s story.
“And you found it because Mitch Braxton knocked down a rug?” Great Gran mused. “Hmm. That fits in with a rhyme I found years ago. How did it go, now? Oh, yes. ‘One who would his past discover, might a troubling tale uncover.’”
Her listeners’ eyebrows rose in astonishment.
“Where did you find that?” asked Paige.
“In a box with some other sayings. It was one of several things I inherited from Great Aunt Rosalina. I got her sketch books, too.” She looked thoughtful. “You know, I think one of them might have contained the illustrations for that story. You said it didn’t have any, but she was a talented artist, so there really should have been some, even if they weren’t ever actually used. The box was just a plain old varnished box full of stiff cards with sayings of various lengths written on them.”
“Aurea-Rose’s Little Box Of Rhymes and Reasons,” Jack proclaimed. “Where is it now?”
“I’m not sure. Somewhere in the cottage, I suppose.”
“Really? I must ransack it later,” said Granddad. “Can you remember any more of the sayings?”
“Not offhand. My memory’s not quite as phenomenal as Grantie’s now that I’m older. They might come back to me if I think about them for a while.”
Granddad looked at his watch. “Yes, well, right now, we’d best go back out. It’s time for Grantie’s Skype connections with those who couldn’t be here.”
A big screen monitor set up on the stage allowed Grantie Etta to chat with about half a dozen people in turn, including an elderly man in Gdańsk, Poland, whose family had taken refuge at Rosebank during World War Two, and her cousin, Aurelia Marsden, who, though a mere one hundred years of age, was much frailer than she was and unable to travel from her home in Cornwall.
Others unable to attend the party had sent pre-recorded video messages with people who were there and once these had been played, the monitor was removed and the entertainment that was to precede dinner and dancing began.
Most of it was provided by friends and family, a magic show by Mr. Dexter, sitar music by Mrs. Bindal, and some skits by the older teens.
After that, Malcolm Marsden, came on stage. A powerful baritone who had once been a professional folk singer, he sang two songs before turning to Grantie Etta and saying, “And now for a special request, from a special lady.”
The request was for “Danny Boy”, and before he even got to the second verse, a tear was sliding down her cheek.
“She’s crying,” Colby observed. “Why would she ask for a song that makes her cry?”
“Not sure,” said Paige, “but I can guess. She had a fiancé, Daniel something, who got killed in a cave-in. I expect she called him Danny.”
Her great-grandmother nodded. “Daniel Tremaine. And she did call him Danny. That cave-in nearly got her too. He pushed her out of the way.”
“And “Danny Boy” is a song that makes a lot of people cry, son,” Mr. Braxton added, his own eyes suspiciously moist.
It seemed to be having a similar effect on Uncle Gareth. Abruptly, he turned away, a troubled look on his face. A moment later he slipped through the hall’s back door.
Cousin Malcolm put everything he had into the song. As his voice dropped for the final line, there was a crash outside, as though something metallic had fallen.
Moved by an instinct he could later not explain, Dane ran for the door. Paige, Jack, Colby, and Mr. Braxton quickly followed, but moved by a physician’s instinct, Doctor Bindal got there before any of them. He flung open the door and ran toward a man slumped against an overturned dustbin.
“Daddy!” cried Jack.
Aunt Augusta and Mr. Marchand pushed their way past them and took in the scene.
“Gareth,” she said softly as her brother-in-law whipped out his cell phone.
He was already punching 999 when Doctor Bindal requested an ambulance.
Chapter Twelve
Sitting in the hospital waiting room, Jack reviewed the events of the last few hours as if they had all been parts of a dream. Something that was happening, but not happening. He vaguely recalled Ravi racing back into the hall and barrelling out again with a medical bag, the clamour of voices, the arrival of the ambulance, his father feebly gripping his mother’s hand as he was placed inside, the ambulance pulling away, headed for the nearest A & E, he and his cousins following in Granddad’s car, their parents in Doctor Bindal’s.
Paige and Dane were with him now. They weren’t saying much. They didn’t seem to know what to say. He didn’t either. Across the room, his grandparents and aunt and uncle were talking in tones so low he could only catch a few words.
“…building a while…”
“…doing too much…”
“…making demands now, after all these years…”
They broke off as his mother and Doctor Bindal came in.
Aunt Augusta gave them all a slight smile.
“He’s fully awake. And stable. I’m going to stay, but the rest of you should go home. It’s past the children’s bedtime.”
Granny shook her head. “The others, yes, but not me. You’ll want someone with you.”
They returned to the Taisley house, where Granddad also spent the night. Past bedtime or not, no one, child or adult, slept much.
In the morning, Granny phoned to say the patient was a bit better and wanted Granddad to bring Jack the hospital to see him.
Once they’d gone, Mrs. Marchand got Dane and Paige to help her with the breakfast dishes. There weren’t many. No one had any appetite.
“What’s wrong with Uncle Gareth, Mum?” Dane asked, mechanically drying a plate.
“He suffered a collapse, due to stress. And an EKG showed there might be so
me problems with his heart.”
“Stress from what? The party? The arguments over those letters he found?”
“Among other things.”
“Like that meeting he and Aunt Augusta had in Maidenhead?” Paige conjectured. “They were upset when they came back. So were you.”
Mr. Marchand put down the newspaper he had been looking at, but not really taking in. “Might as well tell them, Tania. But it goes no farther, guys. And it especially doesn’t go as far as Jack unless his mother’s already broken the news to him. At the moment, your grandparents are the only other people who know.”
“Know what?” Paige demanded.
Mrs. Marchand sighed, and dried her hands on a tea towel before sitting down at the table across from her husband. “Know that Jack’s birth parents want to make contact with him. Well, more than that, really. They want him back.”
Paige whirled around from the drawer in which she had been about to place some cutlery. “Want him back? They can’t take him back—can they?”
She and Dane exchanged looks of dismay.
“Probably not,” said Mr. Marchand. “It was a legal adoption. But they can cause trouble, and intend to do so. Uncle Gareth’s known about it for quite a while. They went to him first. He didn’t tell your aunt until just a few days ago. And neither of them told us until they got back from Maidenhead.”
“What did they go there for?” Paige asked. “To see a lawyer?”
“No. He’d already retained one. She went to Maidenhead with them to meet with Jack’s biological family. The birth parents married a couple of years ago. Last year they were in a car accident. Due to injuries sustained, she can’t have any more children. Both sets of grandparents were at the meeting and I think it’s her parents who are pushing for this. His have other children, and a couple of grandchildren. Hers don’t, so Jack’s the only grandchild they’ll ever have.”
Paige’s temper flared. “So what? He’s the only child Aunt Augusta and Uncle Gareth will ever have. And they wanted him. His birth parents didn’t. Not when he was born. And neither did any of his grandparents.”