The Disappearing Rose

by Renee Duke

  “Of course. It’s lovely. I see you still keep it on the top shelf of that cabinet over there. You’re closest to it, Jack. Could you fetch it, please? It’s in that wooden box.”

  Jack went to the cabinet and took out a small oblong box. After he handed it to Mrs. Marchand, he and his cousins settled down on a rug in front of her and waited for her to show them its contents.

  The box was made of basswood, a light, almost white coloured wood. Delicately carved roses adorned each of its sides, with larger, but no less intricate, roses on the lid.

  Prying the lid off, Mrs. Marchand said, “This medallion’s solid gold. It’s of Armenian origin, and is thought to have been in the family for generations before possession of it was officially recorded by a William of Roseheath around ten-eighty-five. He was definitely one of our Wolverton ancestors, but, like most people, they didn’t start using a specific surname until much later.

  “Missives from William’s time indicate he was quite taken with the medallion. He even claimed it had mysterious powers. It was just kept in a pouch in those days, though. A couple of centuries later, a Roswold—sometimes spelled Rosewold—Wolverton commissioned someone to make this box for it. He also composed a rather curious verse and had it put on the lid.”

  She turned the box lid over so Dane and the others could read the words carved into its underside.

  ’Tis for youth to call its own,

  By speaking words in proper tone.

  And up to five times be guided,

  To those whose fate be not decided.

  For divers lives must come to blend,

  Ere the roses’ peregrinations end.

  “Peregrinations?” said Paige. “What on earth are peregrinations?”

  “Travels,” said Uncle Gareth.

  “Then why couldn’t he have just said travels?”

  “Because people back then seldom used a small word if they could use a big one.”

  “Hmph,” said Paige.

  Dane had a different question. “Which rose is it talking about?” he inquired. “The box is covered with them.”

  “It must be the one on the medallion,” Jack said as Mrs. Marchand lifted the finely crafted object out from the folds of a piece of dark blue velvet.

  The obverse, or front, of the medallion had a solid, perfectly formed five-petal rose projecting from its otherwise flat surface. The reverse side was completely flat, but had a stamped image. One of the two human figures depicted there was a weary-looking old man with a long beard. He was seated on the back of a huge eagle with one hand resting on the shoulder of a young girl. The girl stood before him, her own hands cupped and elevated to receive the single rose he held in his other hand. Both wore simple robes and beneath their sandal-clad feet were the words: ROSAE ADULESCENTIAE OMNIA TEMPUS REVELAT.

  “That’s Latin,” said Jack. “It means, ‘To…to the rose of…youth…time reveals all’.”

  Dane looked at him with open admiration, but the translation failed to impress Paige.

  “That makes about as much sense as the verse on the box.”

  “I expect they both made sense at one time,” said Uncle Gareth. “Unfortunately, the meanings of such things tend to become obscure as generations pass.”

  Grantie Etta disagreed. “How do you know they weren’t obscure to begin with? This little gewgaw has mystical connections. Its powers weren’t meant to be available to all and sundry.”

  “What kind of power is it supposed to have?” asked Dane.

  “The power to drive people crazy trying to figure it out,” said Mr. Marchand, leaning over the back of the sofa to take a closer look.

  “It’s had plenty of opportunity to do that,” said Aunt Augusta. “It’s almost two thousand years old. It’s one of a set of artefacts known as Keeper Pieces.”

  “Keeper Pieces? That’s a strange name,” Dane said.

  “It’s a strange story,” said Mrs. Marchand. “You’ll have to get Uncle Edmond to regale you with it. He’s the family expert on the history of the Middle East.”

  “Good luck getting hold of him,” said Grantie Etta. “All I’ve been able to make contact with lately is the wretched boy’s answering machine.”

  Hearing their grandfather’s older brother referred to as a wretched boy made the children smile. Great Uncle Edmond was almost seventy-three.

  “Whatever its history, this medallion’s a real beauty.” Mr. Marchand ran his forefinger across it admiringly. “Are you sure you don’t mind Dane wearing it, Grantie Etta? I could get it copied, you know.”

  “Nonsense. Use the real thing.”

  “But it’s so valuable. What if he breaks it?”

  “I’m sure he’ll be careful with it.”

  “I’ll be very, very careful with it,” said Dane, whose actor’s eye could see how much the medallion would add to his costume.

  “You’d better be,” Mr. Marchand told him, looking stern. Then he beamed. “Thanks a million, Grantie. This will add a nice touch to my flashback scenes. Edward the Fourth’s children probably had lots of stuff with a rose motif.”

  “How come?” asked Paige.

  “A white rose was the emblem of their family, the House of York,” her father replied. “Their rivals, the House of Lancaster, used a red one. That’s why the wars they fought against each other were called the Wars of the Roses.”

  “I tried reading about those once,” said Dane, shaking his head to throw off a sudden wave of jet lag induced fatigue. “I found them pretty confusing.”

  “Me too,” Paige agreed. “There were too many guys called Edward, Henry, and Richard.”

  “There certainly were,” said Mrs. Marchand. “And most of them had wives called Elizabeth, Margaret, or Anne. I know there wasn’t that wide a selection of names available back then, but you’d think they could have put a little more effort into naming their offspring.”

  “Like you did?” said Mr. Marchand. “You named our kids from the eras you were writing about around the time they were born.” He turned to his children. “You two don’t know how much you have to thank me for. If I hadn’t put my foot down, you’d be walking around as Berengaria and Gorm.”

  Paige’s name had indeed been inspired by Mrs. Marchand’s novel about a young girl who disguised herself as a page boy in the court of Queen Berengaria of Navarre, and Dane’s by one about the wife of the Danish king, Gorm. Even so, her children doubted her work would have led her to choose anything too unusual. She and Aunt Augusta had always hated the Latin appellations bestowed on them by their parents.

  “People had nicknames and titles,” said Uncle Gareth. “Those letters I found were to an Edward Wolverton, but the cousin who wrote them addressed him as Ned.”

  “And he was chummy with Edward the Fourth, whose family doubtless called both him and his oldest son Ned,” said Mrs. Marchand. “You probably couldn’t move around here during a royal visit without tripping over a Ned.”

  “Probably not,” agreed Grantie Etta. “The house wasn’t as large back then. Neither were the rose bushes on either side of the front door. Is that going to cause a problem with authenticity, Alan? They’re supposed to be the same ones Edward Wolverton planted at the request of his mother, Rohesia, but they’ve grown quite a bit.”

  “Don’t worry Grantie, we’re not going to chop them down to an appropriate size. Computer technology can adjust anything we can’t physically recreate.”

  “Good. Did you children know that Rosebank was originally called Rose Blanche, the French for White Rose? My ancestors had to change the name after that Lancastrian upstart, Henry Tudor, defeated the Yorkist king, Richard the Third, and set himself up as King Henry the Seventh.”

  “Yeah? Well, that’s what comes of murdering your nephews,” said Paige. “You come to a bad end yourself and someone else takes the throne from you.”

  “Richard the Third did not murder the princes,” said Grantie Etta, bristling. “That story, and other lies, were put about by Tudor propag
andists after he perished on Bosworth Field.”

  Uncle Gareth laughed. “Careful, Paige. Grantie Etta and other champions of Richard the Third take exception to remarks like that.”

  “Champions of Richard the Third?”

  “Commonly known as Ricardians. Ricardians dismiss much of what’s been said about Richard the Third by what Grantie just called Tudor propagandists. They think he was a much better king, and a much better person, than the general public has been led to believe. They strive to improve his image and for the most part, I applaud their efforts, but I’m afraid I’ve found some to be just a wee bit…fanatical.”

  “He means round the twist,” whispered Jack.

  “Overly zealous, dear,” said his mother, overhearing him. “Overly zealous is a much nicer way of putting it.”

  “And I wasn’t referring to Grantie,” Uncle Gareth put in hastily, seeing the old lady’s indignant expression, “or even Ricardians in general. There’s a small Ricardian society here in the village. Its members support the cause in a calm, reasonable way, and steer clear of the kind of people who take it to extremes.”

  “I have a cousin who takes everything to extremes—Ricardianism included,” said Mr. Marchand. “Needless to say, I didn’t tell her anything about my current project.”

  “A project designed to throw my once peaceful home into total chaos for the next week or so,” said Grantie Etta.

  “You’ll love every minute of it,” said Uncle Gareth.

  “Of course I will. Especially the fights between Professor Clarke and Professor Hodges. They came for tea yesterday and argued the whole time. You’ll be much duller company.” She glanced at Mrs. Marchand and Aunt Augusta. “You will be staying to tea, won’t you? Lydia’s got in all of Jack’s favourite titbits and said she’d do some of those battered sausages Paige and Dane seemed to like so much the last time they were here.”

  As far as the two young Canadians were concerned, battered sausages were among England’s leading attractions. At teatime, they were delighted to find they were just as tasty as they remembered.

  Chapter Three

  The costumes they were to wear in Mr. Marchand’s documentary arrived the next day. They had been made to measure and were perfect modern replicas of the type of clothing favoured by fashionable people in late fifteenth-century England. Paige displayed little enthusiasm over her long purple and maroon gown, dainty embroidered shoes, and black velvet cap studded with pearls, and even less over the blonde wig she was going to have to wear because she had refused to dye her hair.

  The boys, however, loved their ensembles, which consisted of velvet doublets with decorative embroidery, short capes, velvet hats with jaunty little feathers, and tight black hose. The hose resembled modern day leotards, but had to be tied onto their doublets with points: tagged laces on the doublets that threaded through holes in the hose.

  Leather shoes completed their costumes, along with a blond wig for Dane. Unlike his sister, he would have been willing to dye his hair, but wore it too short to be compatible with the times. Hair colour and style were not an issue with Jack, whose golden curls were deemed to be sufficiently medieval looking.

  Admiring themselves in the hall mirror, the two boys felt they looked even more regal than the princes, Edward and Richard, did in a book of famous paintings Uncle Gareth had shown them. The book contained photos of paintings featuring well-known historical characters. The painting he liked was by a nineteenth-century artist, John Everet Millais. It showed the princes, dressed in black doublets and hose, standing beside a winding staircase. The younger one was seeking comfort from his older brother, who held him tightly by the hand. Both looked frightened and bewildered.

  Paige’s medieval counterpart was Cecily Plantagenet, the third of the princes’ seven sisters, but the only picture Uncle Gareth had of her was a stilted, unrealistic one on a postcard of the royal family’s stained glass window in Canterbury Cathedral.

  Mr. Marchand began shooting the documentary’s fifteenth century segments the very next day. Except for Dane’s wig, which Dane had already learned could quickly become itchy, the boys got into Aunt Augusta’s car fully dressed. Paige did not. Determined not to wear any medieval trappings until she absolutely had to, she had her costume on a hanger and her wig on a stand.

  Aunt Augusta dropped her passengers off at the door and went to park in a nearby field with a number of other cars. Looking around, they found Grantie Etta sitting under a beech tree watching some men set up cameras to take exterior shots of her house.

  The old lady welcomed them warmly and handed Dane the box containing the medallion.

  “It looks splendid on you,” she said after he had put it on. “Now you’d better run in and let your father know you’re here. Not too many of the other actors have arrived yet, so he’ll probably let you take yourselves off somewhere until you’re wanted. If you don’t want to stay inside, you can go and play in the gardens round back. Provided you two boys do nothing whatsoever to tear, get dirt on, or otherwise ruin those clothes, of course.”

  Grinning, Dane and Jack headed for the house. Paige handed her costume to Grantie Etta and ran to catch up with them.

  Inside the house they had to step over wires, duck under wires, and dodge around people carrying wires. They also had to keep out of the way of crew setting up lights, cameras, microphones, and other equipment. Dane and Paige were used to film sets, but Jack found it all a bit chaotic. His blue eyes darted everywhere, trying to take it all in. He found the sight of Mr. Marchand waving a clipboard about and shouting at everyone especially unsettling, and asked his cousins if their father was in a bad mood.

  “He always yells a lot when he’s working,” said Paige. “He does seem a bit snarlier than usual though.”

  “No wonder,” said Dane. “Look over there.”

  Paige looked and saw a skinny woman with long, straggly brown hair streaked with grey standing beside a hall table. A wide brimmed straw hat shaded her face, and most of her pale green blouse was covered by a loosely-wrapped beige shawl. An enormous beaded purse dangled from her right shoulder, and a pair of worn leather sandals peeked out from beneath the hem of her long floral skirt.

  “Cousin Ophelia,” groaned Paige. “What’s she doing here?”

  “We’ll soon know,” Dane said as their father’s least favourite relative zigzagged toward them with squeals of pleasure. He and Paige usually used the courtesy titles of aunt or uncle for any of their parents’ adult cousins with whom they were well acquainted, but this one considered that both inaccurate and unnecessary. She only tolerated being addressed as Cousin because Mrs. Marchand demanded some type of formality between children and adults.

  Cousin Ophelia greeted them with enthusiasm. “Well, hi, there,” she said. “Oh, Dane, you look so precious in that outfit! Why don’t you have yours on, Paige? I can’t wait to get into mine. Moira’s bringing it for me.”

  “Moira?” said Paige.

  “Moira Dexter. She runs the village shop here. I met her back in the eighties when I was doing the European youth hostel thing. She’s a very dear friend, and an ardent Ricardian, just like me. Her group offered to help your dad with his documentary as soon as old Mrs. Wolverton told Chloe about it. Chloe is Moira’s daughter. She does the cleaning here at Rosebank.”

  She paused for breath before going on. “My spirit guide told me something monumental was coming. I was so pleased when Moira invited me over to join the fun. She was surprised I didn’t already know about it. So was I. Can you believe it? My own cousin decides to do a documentary on something so close to my heart and doesn’t say a word to me! He said it was because I move around so much, he didn’t know where to find me. But he set this up months ago. You’d think he could have tracked me down. Not that it really mattered, of course. The Threads of Destiny that surround us all stepped in to make sure I got here.” She clasped her hands and closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m a great believer in the Threads of Destiny.”


  Cousin Ophelia was a great believer in a lot of things, most of them weird.

  “Uh, well, it’s great you could make it,” Dane said politely. “Who are you playing?”

  “Elizabeth Darcy, the lady in charge of the royal nursery. It’s just a small role, but I’m going to put everything I have into it.” Her attention was suddenly diverted by some people carrying garment bags. “Ooh, Moira’s here! I’ll have to go and get changed.”

  Dane watched her flit off. “I guess we’ll be seeing her later,” he said with a sigh.

  “Yeah, staked out on an anthill if she gets on Dad’s nerves too much.”

  “Are there any other people like her on Uncle Alan’s side of the family?” asked Jack, looking a bit dazed.

  “Thankfully, no,” Dane answered. “The rest of the Marchands all think she’s a bit strange.”

  Paige grimaced. “More than a bit. And has been for as long as we’ve known her. I mean, what woman in her right mind would want to be called Ophelia?”

  “Isn’t that her name?”

  “For now. That could change. Her parents christened her Beverly Belle Rose, but Dad says that, when she was about fifteen, she decided the Beverly bit didn’t ‘resonate properly’ and had been a ‘psychological burden to her since birth’. The only way to rectify matters was to choose a new name. She’s been choosing new names ever since. She claims it helps her stay in harmony with who she currently is. And, currently, she’s an Ophelia.”

  “But not Ophelia Marchand,” said Dane. “Two or three years ago she changed her surname as well.”

  “Yes, she goes by Ophelia Path-Holder nowadays,” said Paige. “I think she got that one from her spirit guide. Or maybe an intergalactic traveller she made contact with while exploring the cosmos with her mind.”

  Dane laughed at the expression on Jack’s face. “Come on,” he said. “We’d better go check in with Dad.”

  Mr. Marchand was talking to Professor Hodges and Professor Clarke. Both were middle-aged, but short, stout Professor Clarke was the complete physical opposite of his colleague. Professor Hodges was a tall, slender man with guarded blue eyes and an obstinate chin.