He had journeyed to Paris, to the Sorbonne to study the great French theologians. The family's plan was that Florence and the two girls would join him the last fortnight for a brief French holiday.
He looked up quickly from the storm of memory to check the slow progress of the entourage which, despite the cold wind, was moving at a snail's pace down the quay. “Hurry!” he breathed to the still-distant group. If only they would hurry, he would be forced to engage them in brief dialogue, thus banishing memory, pushing it back into the past where it belonged.
But memory arrived first, and he saw himself as a young man again who had just alighted from a chaise at the end of this very quay and was now hurrying toward the ferry house and the long pier where people waited to greet incoming passengers.
And there it was. He could see the packet even as he hurried down the quay, his head bursting with plans for the holiday. Then the wind suddenly picked up — where had that wind come from? — and whitecaps danced on black water and... What was the matter with the packet? Look! It was rolling first to one side, then the other. And what was that trailing up from the captain's deck, like gray smoke, followed by red, like a red tongue licking out from...
Dear God, no!
Old Charon closed his eyes and held on to whatever support he could resurrect from deep within, for in the blowing wind he heard the screams of thirty years ago originating from two sources, from those waiting on the dock to greet friends and families and visitors who were within sight of the land, and those distant cries of terror from those aboard the ferry who, better than anyone else, could see the flames and knew the seriousness of their predicament.
Then had come the explosion, and as it resounded in memory he grasped the sides of his head and covered his ears, foolishly thinking the sound came from without and therefore could be blocked, forgetting momentarily it came from within, from the caves of memory, and therefore could never be blocked, only endured.
He forced himself to watch the burning ferry again, the flaming bodies who jumped too late into the channel, those below deck who never had a chance, and those — like his wife and two daughters — who had simply gone down and whose bodies had never been recovered.
For a moment the wound throbbed, a physical pain sharper than any he'd ever felt. He had tried to return to England, but he had suffered endless nightmares in which he had seen his two young daughters trying to struggle up from the black depths of the channel and they kept calling to him, begging him to save them.
The peace he searched for was not in London or in Paris, and he kept returning here, to this place, the French customhouse at the quay. While he'd not found peace — that would never be his, not in this world — he had on occasion found a cessation of pain as he tried to administer to others.
Breathless from the storm of memory, he lifted his head and saw the entourage about one hundred feet away, the woman still leaning heavily on the stewards — ill, was his guess — while in contrast the two young children pranced and skipped down the quay as though to say their youth alone had made them superior.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” they called as they came close.
He started to call them back under some false pretense so he could enjoy their new and breathtaking beauty. But the nursemaid was almost upon him, and though old and bowed, she gave him a shy halfsmile and a weary look.
He stepped forward, prepared to address her in French, when she bobbed her head and spoke first.
“Monsieur, are we advancing in the proper direction for the evening packet?”
Her English, though not flawless, was understandable, and he nodded quickly. “Yes, madame,” he said, raising his voice over the incredible wind. “Straight ahead to the ferry house. The packet leaves at seven.”
“Merci.” She smiled, clasped her cloak more tightly about her neck, and looked quickly behind, apparently checking on the progress of the lady supported between the two stewards, her heavily veiled head and face obscured not only by the black veils but also by the sharp downward angle of her head. The nursemaid passed him by a step or two, looking first at the children who had run ahead, then behind at the faltering and ill lady.
“May I be of assistance?” Old Charon offered quietly.
The maid looked up gratefully, then shook her head. “Pray for us, if you will,” she said. “I fear the count ess will be dead before we reach London, and the doctors...”
She was ill, just as he’d thought.
“Keep a cheerful and hopeful heart, madame,” he advised.
“I try, monsieur, I try...”
“That's all God requires of us.” He stepped closer, selfishly wanting to prolong the brief exchange. “What, may I ask, is the nature of her illness? Your mistress, I mean.”
“If we knew that, we could have stayed in Paris,” the old woman mourned. “She cannot take food or water or liquid of any sort, and she weeps constantly and claims a pain no French physician can locate or identify.”
There was something familiar in the description of the malady, more an ill spirit manifesting itself in the body.
“May I inquire her name,” Old Charon asked, “so that I may pray for her?”
“She is the Countess Eugenie Retiffe, only daughter of the Duke Henri Retiffe.''
“Who are the children?”
“Her young nephew and niece. Only they, on occasion, can make her smile.”
Then the lady was approaching and he could hear her over the wind, the pitiful sound of soft continuous weeping, as though something in the soul or the spirit or both had broken. As she passed by, Old Charon ached to reach out to her, but grief that deep had to be dealt with alone and over a number of years.
“God be with you,” he prayed as she passed falteringly by, and hoped she would look up, but she did not. As the stewards led her past, the old nursemaid stepped back to one side, keeping a watchful eye on the lot of them.
“Sir...” It was the old nursemaid again, who had taken a few steps after her mistress and now returned to his side. “There's an old man at the head of the quay, dead or dying, we know not which, but he appears to have lost his footing and slipped. Look to him, would you, please?”
Her startling announcement took him by surprise, and he remembered the bundle of blowing rags. When he looked up to thank the old nursemaid for this grim news, she’d already returned to the aid of her mistress.
He forced his stiff joints into action and increased his speed toward the end of the quay. Drawing close, he now observed the bundle of rags had two arms, a scarecrow physique, and a head covered with tangled wet hair where the sea spray battered him. Something was tucked beneath him, elevating his body at an awkward angle, and his feet and legs had slipped into the icy water.
Moving carefully so as not to fall on the rocks, Old Charon started tentatively down, testing each step before he transferred his full weight to it, making certain the rock would hold, all the time looking down on the wretched piece of humanity which now resembled debris the channel might have washed up onto the embankment.
Asking God for strength in excess of his seventy-three years, Old Charon pushed up the long sleeves of his robes, found the man's hand, soiled beyond recognition, and blood-encrusted, as though he'd recently suffered a wound; then quickly he reached down, grabbed him beneath the arms, and pulled. With gratitude he felt the body move. He pulled again, and in the process lifted the torso and shoulders and saw the head fall lifelessly down against the chest. Yes, dead, Old Charon thought sadly, and pulled again, stepping carefully, up the shifting rocks, exposing a wicker case.
“Don't worry, my friend,” Old Charon soothed. “I'll fetch it for you in a minute.”
Breathless from exertion, he dragged the man the rest of the way up, placing him gently face down on the path.
Old Charon bent down, resting his hands on his knees for a closer look. Strange. Not as old a man as he'd thought. Suddenly Charon saw the movement of an eyelid. He stared down for a few additional minutes and was
on the verge of turning away to descend the rocky embankment for the wicker case, which clearly had been of great importance to the man, but as he turned, he saw the eyelid move again, as though the man wanted very much to open his eye.
“Hello!” Old Charon grinned. Gently he turned the man over on his back, newly shocked by how thin he was. His ragged, filthy shirtwaist was open due to lack of buttons, and every rib showed, as did the jutting angles of the collarbone.
It suddenly occurred to Old Charon the only malady which might be plaguing this wretched man was lack of food, insipient starvation.
Hurriedly he tried to draw together as much of the tom fabric as he could in an attempt to protect the man from the biting wind. His coat — while soiled beyond recognition, and tom — was of good quality. Perhaps there was identification in one of those tom pockets. But a cursory examination of the two sashed pockets revealed nothing of interest. Scraps of paper, mostly, two curious yarn circles — one red, one green — a soiled linen handkerchief, and an empty envelope with the name Madame Charvin lettered on it.
“Come on,” Old Charon urged, slipping an arm beneath the man's head, elevating it slightly in an attempt to encourage a return to consciousness. “Come on, my friend, you're stuck here for a bit longer. Death doesn't want you, either, for a while.” Suddenly the man's eyes opened, and Old Charon found himself staring down into a most remarkable skeletal face, far younger than he had imagined.
“Hello.” Old Charon grinned. “I just pulled you out of the channel. I trust that was all right, unless you had plans to swim to Dover.”
He waited to see if the man would respond. When he didn't, Old Charon said, “Can you speak, my friend?” He elevated the man's head a bit more. As he did, he saw the dried, split lips try to move. After several moments of tortured effort which produced nothing in the way of recognizable communication, Old Charon lowered him gently back onto the quay.
All at once one bony hand reached for his arm and gripped it with surprising strength, and at last one word emerged through the cracked lips. “C-case...” was all he said.
For a moment Old Charon couldn't understand. Then he did. The wicker case which had been abandoned at the edge of the rock embankment. “All right,” he agreed, and stood. “I'll fetch your treasure.” He saw a look of relief cover the emaciated features.
When Old Charon returned with the case, he saw the man's eyes were open, fixed on the rapidly gathering dusk, squinting as though he had perceived some unfathomable mystery in the heavens.
“Can you walk?” Old Charon asked, placing the wicker case on the man's chest.
But the question went unanswered, for at the feel of the slight weight of the container on his chest, he grasped it to him as one might grasp and hold a beloved woman. At the same time, he tried to raise himself, an impossible task under the best of circumstances. But Old Charon was there to help, and with the man holding on tightly, together they drew him to his feet, where for a moment he wobbled ominously.
“Shall we?” Old Charon bobbed his head toward the end of the quay and the ferry house.
As the man started tentatively forward, another word escaped his lips, a simple one, and easily understood. “Home,” was what he whispered.
Old Charon nodded, maintaining his viselike grip. It was his intention to see the man safely settled into the warmth of the ferry house, then fetch a few limited provisions from his own quarters. He still harbored the opinion the man needed food as much as anything, and he would certainly need it for the voyage to Dover, if indeed that was his destination.
Halfway down the quay, pleased he was not carrying a dead man but assisting a live one, Old Charon grew brave. “May I... inquire as to your name, sir?” he asked.
They never broke the pace of their limited stride, and the man never lifted his eyes from the footing of the quay. Neither did he respond except to say brokenly, “H-home...”
Old Charon nodded affably, as though he'd understood the fragmented message perfectly. “Yes, home. And your name, sir?” As a ploy it failed. For some reason, Old Charon did not suspect the man of withholding his name on purpose. It was simply a matter of his own name being of total unimportance. He was going home, and nothing else mattered.
“Step down,” Old Charon directed now as they approached the turnstile which led to the narrow walk, which in turn led to the ferry house. “We will wait in there. It's warmer.”
“No.”
The objection registered clearly. Surprised, Old Charon looked at the worn face, taut with effort. “Why not?” he asked. “Others will be waiting...”
“No.”
“Please, sir, you need to get warm. I was going to fetch you - ”
“No.”
Then they were through the turnstile and heading, not toward the old ferry house, but following the quay farther out into the inky water laced with whitecaps, where the cold wind blew stronger and the stinging spray leaped higher.
“Sir, I beg you,” Old Charon shouted above the shrieking wind. But it was no use. Despite his apparent weakness, the man was at last moving under his own power, though he faltered now and then and would have fallen were it not for the unreliable wooden railing which ran the length of the boarding pier.
At some point Old Charon fell back a few steps, baffled and helpless. He watched him make his way to the end and settle stiffly on one of the plain wooden benches. From this distance again he resembled a discarded pile of blowing rags. He bowed his head over the wicker case, his entire frame bent in on itself, a solitary figure of consummate grief.
Suddenly Old Charon shivered, not from cold. In a minute he would go and fetch the man a hard roll and a ticket to Dover. But for a few seconds he wanted to watch the man he had just rescued. For the first time in thirty years Old Charon realized he was in the presence of a man who had suffered a loss even greater than his own.
After a few moments of close and reverent scrutiny, Old Charon bowed his head against the blowing wind and prayed quite simply for a cessation of the pain the man was suffering, and for God's holy power to ease the emptiness caused by some recent and mysterious tragedy.
Forbes Hall, Kent March 25, 1875
Richard stood at the casement windows of Eleanor's bedchamber and stared out through the diamond panes at the perverse Kentish spring and heard his three-month-old son suckling at Eleanor's breast. He wondered how long it would be, what penance he would have to serve before God granted him just a semblance of that same contentment, that same peace.
John dead?
“Don't bite,” he heard Eleanor whisper softly, lovingly to the perfect infant, who on occasion was inclined to teethe on her full nipple.
Richard started to look back at the always moving tableau, but something prevented him from doing so, a deeper need to deny himself.
Why?
Suddenly he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the cold window glass.
Aslam.
There was part of the trouble, part of the grief, which had nothing to do with the news of John's death.
John dead?
He still couldn't believe it and had asked Aslam repeatedly for more details, had even dispatched Alex Aldwell back to Paris to see if he could locate Bates, who surely could tell them more. All Aslam had been able to tell him was that he had received a late-night messenger who had not identified himself, in fact who had refused to do so, and had informed him John Murrey Eden's body had been found and disposed of.
Richard stood away from the window, again struck by the bizarre nature of the tale. A late-night messenger? Who?
“He didn't name himself.”
“And you didn't ask?”
“I asked. He refused to reply.”
“Where and how is John dead?”
“He didn't say.”
“And you didn't ask?”
“Leave me alone...”
Richard closed his eyes against the memory of the angry exchange he'd had with Aslam. It had served no purpos
e.
Still, if John wasn't dead, then where was he? And where was Bates? Suddenly he turned about in desperate need of new vistas that would be capable of dulling memory.
He found them in the warm ambers, golds, and reds of the roaring fire, in the sweet peace he found on Eleanor's face as she leaned back against the chair while her son pressed a tiny fist into the soft white flesh of her breast and drew on her nipple.
“So you're back with us?” she asked quietly. He thought he saw something slightly cold and defiant in her face, and for a moment didn't know how to deal with either.
“I've always been here,” he soothed, at last turning his back on the cold winter. “Why do you say that I've been elsewhere?”
He stopped ten feet from the large overstuffed chair in which she sat and again recorded an expression on her face he couldn't quite interpret. He suspected she had been angry with him since the infant's birth and his own tardy arrival. Why she had been so shocked by the presence of the verifiers, he had no idea. Surely she knew such steps were necessary where direct lineage was concerned.
Knowing, or at least suspecting, he might be detained in London on Christmas, he'd taken steps to see to it a verifier from Hastings would be present, and, to further ensure both the proof and fact of his son's birth, the verifier had brought along a second witness, the wife of the Anglican priest in Hastings. And these two, with nothing and no one to serve save the cause of truth, had attended the birth and had duly recorded all the necessary information to ensure both the child and the family against any and all future disputes concerning his right to the titles, wealth, and land of Eden Point.
Now, thinking on the child, the future lord of Eden Castle, Richard stepped closer and peered inside the soft blue blanket and gazed at his perfectly shaped head, pleasing wide-set blue eyes, and tiny flawless features, like a perfect miniature.
Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5) Page 42