In the meantime I visited the attic room as often as I dared. It was not so difficult; Selena and Francis were often out and when the coast was clear I would set Charlotte some work to do, palm the key and slip up the stairs, locking the door behind me. My greatest fear was that Mrs Durbin would discover me and my heart was always pounding as I emerged into the hall once more. But if she did suspect, or if Julia made mention of her secret visitor, she said nothing. In any case it was a chance I had to take if I was ever to gain Julia’s confidence and get to know her.
Gradually she became used to me and, I think, came to look forward to my visits. Gradually, as she became less wary, she began to respond to me. But I knew I must tread carefully indeed. And though there were so many questions I was impatient to ask her and so much I could tell her, I knew I must wait for the right moment.
It came one afternoon when Francis and Selena took Charlotte visiting, leaving me alone in the house. Mrs Durbin was, I knew, having her afternoon nap; I had peeped into the kitchen and seen her snoozing in the chair beside the range. Taking care to make no sound that might disturb her, I unlocked the door and crept up the stairs.
It was a dark, overcast day and the attic room was unpleasantly dim. Julia was sitting in her chair, unable to see well enough to work at her embroidery.
‘Charity!’ Her face lit up when she saw me; the sight of it lifted my heart.
‘Julia.’ I wished I dared call her ‘Mama’. ‘How are you today?’
‘Oh, quite well, thank you,’ she replied politely as if this were a perfectly normal social visit. And then, to remind me it was not: ‘The house is very quiet. Is everyone out?’
‘Everyone but me and Mrs Durbin, and she’s fast asleep by the fire,’ I said.
Julia smiled, a sad little smile.
‘She’s getting old, is she not? I remember when she was quite a young woman.’ Her face clouded. ‘Oh, what will I do when she gets ill and dies? I shall have no one! No one!’
‘You have me now,’ I said firmly.
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘I have you.’
I set about lighting the lamp, reminding myself I must put it out again when I left so as not to arouse suspicion. When I turned back to her, I saw that she was looking at me closely.
‘You remind me of someone, Charity,’ she said in a puzzled tone. ‘I keep trying to remember who. And the closest I can come is… I think you look as I used to look, long ago when I was young. But I’m being foolish, am I not?’
My heart had begun to pound very loudly, so loudly that I thought she must hear it. I crossed the room to her and dropped on to my knees beside her.
‘No,’ I said gently. ‘No, you are not being foolish.’
‘But…’
‘You once had a little daughter, did you not?’ I could scarcely breathe for the tightness in my chest.
She nodded. ‘Charlotte. Yes.’
‘No – longer ago than that. Ten years and more before Charlotte was born. Another little baby girl.’
Her eyes went far away. I saw the pain etched clearly on her face. Then she shook her head.
‘No, there’s only Charlotte. The others are dead.’
The others. Others? Had I more siblings I did not know about? But I could not concern myself with that now.
‘There was another daughter was there not?’ I pressed her.
‘I don’t remember…’
‘You do remember, Julia,’ I said insistently. ‘You try to forget because it hurts you so to remember. Isn’t that true?’
‘I… I suppose so…’ The haunted look in her eyes tore at my heart. I wondered if it was wrong of me to pursue this path, whether I was in danger of upsetting the fragile balance of her sanity. But surely my revelation could bring her only happiness? And in any case, I knew that nothing on earth would stop me now.
‘Suppose, Julia, that the baby girl you gave birth to twenty years ago was not dead as you believe, but alive?’ I said urgently.
That lovely smile that came so rarely transformed her features suddenly.
‘Oh!’ she cried, clapping her hands together. ‘That would be wonderful!’ Then her brow furrowed. ‘But she is dead,’ she said. A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. ‘I lost her. I saw her die.’
She covered her face with her hands then, drawing in on herself, and I felt a moment’s doubt. Was I wrong? Were Francis and Selena wrong? Was it just an enormous coincidence that I was a foundling who looked as she had once looked? Fragile though Julia was in both mind and body from her years of incarceration, strange and distant and frightened, I did not think she was mad. Though she seemed to have closed her mind to a past she did not want to remember, she could talk quite lucidly about the present and particularly about Charlotte. Why, then, should she say she had seen her child die if it were not so?
I took her hands in mine, easing them gently away from her face.
‘Are you sure, Julia?’ I pressed her. ‘Are you quite sure she died?’
More tears rolled down her pale cheeks. ‘She must have done,’ she whispered. ‘She could not have lived. And I never saw her again.’
My heart leaped. I longed to press her to explain but dared not. For the moment it was enough that she had never seen the body of her child.
‘She did not die,’ I said with certainty. ‘I don’t know what happened to her, but she did not die. They lied to you when they told you she did. Look at me, Julia. The reason I remind you of yourself when you were young is because I look just as you did. Everyone thinks so. Everyone,’ I emphasised.
She blinked away the tears, looking at me intently. She freed one of her hands from mine and tentatively touched my hair, her fingers hovering nervously before stroking a bright strand.
‘My hair,’ she said wonderingly. ‘My hair was just that colour.’
Then she touched my face, just as hesitantly, and explored like a blind man the contours of my cheek and chin.
‘It is like seeing myself as I was,’ she murmured. ‘But she was just a baby. You are a woman.’
‘Every baby grows up,’ I said gently. ‘Every little girl becomes a woman.’
‘Yes – yes, it’s true. And it was so long ago. Long before Charlotte…’
She broke off and I could read in her transparent face her struggle to understand. Then, quite suddenly, the tears began to flow once more. Her whole body was rigid.
‘Julia!’ I said, alarmed.
And she threw her arms around me.
‘Nancy!’ she whispered through her tears. ‘Oh, Nancy, is it really you?’
Nancy. So that was the name she had given me. My real name. It sounded strange to me but I rather liked it. Not Charity – child of the parish. Nancy.
I held her. I was in my mother’s arms for the first time for many long years and I was weeping too.
‘You have come back to me,’ she said when she could speak again. ‘I can’t believe you’ve come back to me. But it is you, I know it. Oh, Nancy, you won’t ever leave me again, will you?’
‘No,’ I vowed. ‘I won’t ever leave you again. I’m going to take you away from this place – you and Charlotte too. We’ll all be together. When the summer comes you can sit in the sun and smell the roses. And the sea…’
‘No!’ She stiffened suddenly and there was panic in her voice. ‘Not the sea!’
‘Hush!’ I calmed her. ‘Not the sea then, I promise. The countryside. The rolling moors. Would you like that better?’
‘Will there be horses?’ She spoke now like a child looking forward to a special treat. ‘I love horses!’
I smiled. ‘There will be horses, I’m sure, if you want them. But you must say nothing of this to anyone yet. It is our secret, remember?’
She nodded.
‘And now,’ I said, ‘I must put out the lamp and go back downstairs.
‘Nancy, don’t leave me…’
‘I must for the moment,’ I said firmly. ‘But I’ll be back soon, I promise. And we’ll leav
e this place forever.’
I turned out the lamp and went back downstairs. Then, before I could go back to Charlotte, I found a quiet corner where I could cry out all the emotions that were seething within me.
At last I dried my eyes and washed my face. Julia’s features looked back at me from the mirror, the familiar features we shared. I tidied my hair; pulled myself together.
I did not yet know how I was going to achieve my promise to Julia but I was more determined than ever. Somehow I would take her and Charlotte away from this dark house. Somehow I would ensure that the years that were left to her would be good ones. Somehow, at last, I would give Julia the happiness that had eluded her for so long and which she so richly deserved.
* * *
The letter I was awaiting from Joshua arrived at last. Carefully I explained to Julia that I had to go away for a few days but that I would soon be back.
It seemed she had accepted completely that I was indeed her little lost daughter grown up, and my belief that she was not mad but perfectly sane was vindicated by the questions she asked me about my upbringing and the lost years. Yet I could never prise from her any detail of how she had come to lose me or why she had been so convinced that I was dead. Whenever I tried gently to probe the circumstances I saw the shutters come up in her face, she would become distressed and murmur: ‘I don’t remember. Please, Nancy, don’t ask me. I simply don’t remember.’
Whatever it was, I thought, it must have been so terrible that she had blotted it out. But soon now I would know the truth, for Joshua had said much the same in his earlier letter – that my past, as he had discovered, held some secret so dark he would only tell me to my face when he was there to comfort me.
I saw nothing of Tom in the week before I left. He made no calls to Morwennan House and when I casually mentioned his absence, Selena told me that he was away. She said it with an amused half-smile, and I thought she gained pleasure from the fact that nothing seemed to have come of his interest in me. It was the kind of vindictiveness I had come to expect of her, but although when I thought of Tom it was with an ache of yearning, I have to confess I did not think of him that often. I had too much else to occupy my mind.
The following week I left for St Agnes. As the coach bowled along the lanes, muddy now and bare for winter, I sat deep in thought, wondering what it was Joshua could tell me about my past, and how he could help me plan for the future.
I arrived in St Agnes at nightfall. The coach set me down at the vicarage and when I rapped on the door Joshua himself answered it.
‘Charity!’ He hugged me. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you! Come in, my dear!’
I could see at once that Joshua was living in some style. St Agnes was a parish rich from the proceeds of tin, and the vicarage, where Joshua lived with the vicar and his wife, was a far cry from our old home at Penwyn.
It was comfortably furnished and full of artefacts almost as fine as those at Morwennan House. The vicar and his wife extended me a warm welcome, sitting me down before the fire, providing me with a good meal, and fussing around me as if I were a long-lost relative of their own, not the foundling sister of their young curate.
At long last they retired to bed and Joshua and I were alone.
‘What has happened since I last saw you, Charity?’ he asked me at once. ‘Something has, I know. I could tell it from the tone of your letter, and now… I can see it in your face.’
I swallowed hard at the tears that suddenly threatened me. I so needed to share the burden I had borne alone since finding Julia in the attic room. But I could hardly bring myself to tell the terrible story to anyone, even my beloved Joshua.
‘You will treat everything I tell you in the strictest confidence, won’t you?’ I said anxiously. ‘You won’t tell another living soul?’
‘Oh, Charity!’ He took my hand. ‘Do you need to ask such a question? Of course I won’t repeat a word to anyone if you don’t want me to.’
I nodded. ‘I scarcely know where to begin,’ I said.
Joshua smiled, that angelic smile that looked so well with the clerical collar he now wore.
‘At the beginning, perhaps?’
* * *
I told him everything and saw his face grow dark.
‘Oh, Charity, you must get away from that terrible place!’ he said when at last I finished. ‘Those people are pure evil. You cannot stay there.’
‘I will never leave without my mother,’ I said with determination. ‘She has suffered enough. I have to rescue her, try to give her some sort of life that is worth living. And I won’t leave Charlotte either. But what am I to do, Joshua? Did you manage to trace Julia’s family in Launceston?’
He shook his head, looking guilty. ‘I’ve been kept very busy with my parish duties.’
My heart sank. ‘I was hoping her family might provide a haven to which I could take her,’ I said.
‘But her father will be an old man now, Charity – if he’s still living,’ Joshua pointed out. ‘In any case, I really don’t know when I’ll be able to make the trip to Launceston. Have you thought of going to the local magistrate?’
I gave a hollow laugh. ‘The local magistrate is Francis and Selena’s father.’
‘But he’s not in on this, surely?’ Joshua said.
‘No, I don’t think he is,’ I agreed. ‘And he seems a decent man. But I could hardly count on him to support me by going against his own children. It would be a terrible scandal – imagine what it would do to the family reputation if this were to get out! He would do everything in his power to keep it quiet, I’m sure.’
‘Well, I don’t know what else to suggest,’ Joshua said, looking perplexed, and it shocked me to see he was at as much of a loss as I was.
‘Perhaps it would be best to leave things as they are,’ he went on.
‘Leave my mother locked up in an attic?’ I cried, shocked. ‘How could that be for the best?
Joshua shifted uncomfortably. ‘Sometimes when people have been incarcerated for so long the things they want from life change,’ he said uneasily. ‘Julia may well be frightened by the outside world. She may not want to have to meet other people.’
I bit my lip, remembering her reaction when I had first found her. Certainly she had seemed frightened. Certainly she had begged me to go away and leave her alone. But she had soon grown used to me and to look forward to my visits. If only I could rescue her I could help her to adjust to society once more and that would be for the best, not leaving her locked away until her dying day. In any case, I could never leave the house knowing she was there, and I did not want to remain an hour longer than was necessary.
‘I’ll never abandon her,’ I said hotly. ‘There has to be a way and I’ll find it. Supposing I was to go to the authorities about Francis’s smuggling ring? I need say nothing about Julia – if I intimated that contraband was stored in the attics, they would search there – and discover her. Francis would be under arrest and unable to do anything to harm her – or me…’
‘Smuggling ring?’ Joshua said. ‘What smuggling ring? I knew nothing of this, Charity.’
‘Oh – he heads an organisation that covers half of Cornwall and beyond,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen boxes and bundles carried up from the bay by night and closed my eyes to it. But perhaps I could turn what I know to my advantage.’
Joshua looked concerned. ‘That’s a dangerous route to take, Charity. Smugglers can be ruthless indeed if they feel themselves threatened. And how could you be sure that the very official you speak to is not in Francis’s pay? So many are corrupt.’
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘But a desperate situation calls for desperate measures.’
‘I don’t want you putting yourself in the way of danger, Charity,’ Joshua said decisively. ‘Promise me you’ll do nothing rash and I will try to see what I can do. I’ll talk to Papa – he may have some suggestion to make. He’s a wise man, and a good one. And he loves you as his own child.’
‘Does he?’ I smiled w
ryly, remembering my loveless childhood.
‘Indeed he does, Charity, though he has never been good at showing his feelings – for any of us. He took you in, did he not? He gave you a home and raised you.’
‘He did, it’s true…’ I broke off, reminded by his words of what, in my anxiety over Julia, I had forgotten. ‘You said in your letter that you had learned the circumstances in which I was found,’ I said. ‘What were they, Joshua?’
‘You still don’t know?’ he said. ‘Julia has not told you what happened?’
I shook my head. ‘She has closed her mind to it. She thought I was dead. That’s all I know.’
‘Very well. Charity, I’ll tell you what Papa told me. It’s not the full story, of course. It can’t be, but…’
‘Never mind that,’ I said impatiently. ‘Tell me what you know.’
‘Prepare yourself then,’ Joshua said. ‘It is not a pretty story.’
Eighteen
Julia
At last the repairs were effected and the Guinevere made ready to leave Madeira for the return voyage to Falmouth. At first it seemed John’s prayers had been answered, for the seas were calm. But by the same token the winds were light and the currents less favourable and the Guinevere did not make the speed he might have hoped for.
Then, when they were within striking distance of home, the weather changed for the worse. A storm blew up that tossed the Guinevere like a toy boat in its relentless hold. For two days the crew never slept as they battled the mountainous waves.
Julia and Nancy were confined to their cabin, and though she was sick and weak again from the tossing, Julia did her best to keep Nancy from becoming too alarmed. The child, on the other hand, did indeed seem to have inherited her father’s sea legs. The bucking of the ship affected her not at all.
They sighted the Cornish coast at nightfall on the second day, before it was lost to them in the murky darkness. It was John’s intention to ride out the storm until daylight came, for he was well aware of the treacherous rocks that studded the peninsula. But with nightfall the storm gathered force once more, driving them willy-nilly towards the coast.
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