‘You were a long way away when she disappeared,’ Alison said. She was guessing, feeling her way, the story coming together piece by piece. Thomas had been like her, like Reginald De Morven, a traveller through time. It seemed that that had been his downfall, his and Mary’s.
She waited, conscious of Thomas’s thoughtful gaze resting on her, horribly conscious of the dead man a mere few feet away, Will Fenner, gone to account for his sins at last.
‘I was a hundred years away when it happened,’ Thomas said at last. ‘A hundred years in the future. I had gone to find work so that I could wed Mary. I had nothing and I wanted to be able to offer her so much, a future to make her proud.’ His voice fell. ‘I planned to take her with me the very next day.’
Alison remembered Adam reading aloud the description of Thomas Fenner from the book of legends: ‘There were those who called him a magician, a warlock, for the way in which he could appear from the mists and disappear… His brother’s men sought him in vain…’
‘You were trapped in time and could not get back,’ she said. ‘You could not find a way back in time to save Mary.’
‘It had always been easy before,’ Thomas said, ‘but not that night. That night I bet the hourglass in a foolish game of chance. I lost it. When I needed it the most I could not use it and there was no way back, and Mary’s voice screaming in my head, and then nothing more.’
The hourglass, Alison thought. Like Reginald De Morven years before, like her, Thomas had had a sand clock too.
‘You reclaimed it though,’ she said. ‘You must have done for you are here now.’
‘I half killed a man for it,’ Thomas said. ‘We fought. The glass ran back and forth between us until I thought it must surely break. It brought us both back here but at the last moment he snatched it from me and disappeared. And I—’ His voice fell. ‘I was too late. I was too late to find Mary.’ He turned his face away from the light.
Alison’s heart ached for him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Then: ‘I loved her too. I did not realise it when we were children, but I did. She was gallant and true.’
A smile lit the sombre darkness of Thomas’s eyes. ‘It pleases me you think so,’ he said. The smile died. ‘Will killed her,’ he said. He looked down at the dead man, stirring the body with his foot. ‘He swore it was not so, but I know he did. Many a time I would have killed him for it. I wanted to kill him.’
‘And tonight you intended it,’ Alison said. ‘Why, after all these years? Why had you not done it before?’
Thomas was silent for a moment. ‘I promised Mary,’ he said quietly. ‘The very first night we were together she made me swear I would never touch Will. She knew we hated each other. She knew we could easily come to blows and she was afraid I might hang for it. For myself I would not have cared, not with Mary dead. But I gave her my word and I would not break it. For so long I did not waver. But tonight—’ He sighed. ‘Tonight she felt closer to me than ever before. I could not bear it. I no longer wanted to live with the shadow of Will Fenner taunting me.’
He knelt beside his brother again and raised his arms so that the light caught the flash of gold on Will’s hand.
Alison stared. ‘That’s Mary’s ring,’ she said. The long-faded memories of Wolf Hall came to her then, of Mary furtively rummaging through a box in the room they had shared, counting up her pitifully small possessions—her mother’s pearls, her father’s engraved ring: ‘What I have I hold.’
‘I will hold it now,’ Thomas said, ‘in memory of her.’
He raised his gaze abruptly. ‘Why did you come back, Mistress Banestre? Was it to find your son?’
Alison nodded. ‘I too have been searching for many years.’
Thomas gave her a faint smile. ‘You are in quite the wrong place.’
‘I know,’ Alison said. ‘Like you I have never found time bends well to my will.’
‘He is a fine knight now, your son,’ Thomas said. ‘A great man.’ He looked at her. ‘Are you sure you wish to change that?’ He waited. ‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly, ‘you should go back. Before it is too late for you too.’
He dipped his head in farewell and walked away.
The lantern flickered and went out, leaving Alison in darkness. Somewhere in the wood an owl hooted. The house still stood, a dark shadow against a darker sky.
You should go back…
Thomas had been a kindred spirit, she thought, searching for Mary just as she had searched for Arthur, through time, through space, looking, longing, failing in his quest. She had the chance to succeed though. She was here, now. She could find a way. She could go from here to Northamptonshire, begging a ride on a cart as she would have done in the past, trading her money for food and drink if she could persuade people to take the foreign coin, until she came to Harper’s Green and found Arthur Tercel.
Yet still she hesitated. Arthur would be in his late twenties by now. She had no idea of the form that his life would have taken. It was such a difficult adjustment to make. All of her thoughts had been focused on reclaiming her baby not on what he might have become. She had never imagined that when she found him he would be an adult man.
She shivered. Everything felt tilted off its axis, different from how she had imagined. She rested her head back against a tree trunk and closed her eyes briefly. What had become of Arthur in adulthood? A fine knight, Thomas had said, a great man. She wondered what it would be like to have an adult child and her mind felt empty, unable to grasp the concept. Arthur was the same age that she was.
She realised with a shock that she belonged to a different time now, a different place. Thomas had spoken the truth. She could not set history on an altered course. She did not have that right. She no longer had a place here. Everything had changed.
Even so, she still hesitated, breathing in the cold night air, feeling the touch of it against her cheek, knowing that she would never stand here again in her own time. Then, catching her breath on a sob, she took her bag from over her shoulder and groped inside it until her hand closed about the hourglass. She closed her eyes again and wished harder than she had ever done in her life before.
It felt as though she was falling, through time, through space. She opened her eyes and saw the stars spin crazily over her head and then someone caught her and held her tight and she recognised his touch and held on to him and thought:
This time I will not let you go.
‘I knew I said I wouldn’t interfere,’ Adam said fiercely, ‘but in another moment I was coming to find you.’
Alison raised her head slightly from his shoulder. They were standing under a streetlamp, bathed in its orange light, directly in front of Richard’s gallery. Cars swished past through the dark. The Christmas market was shuttered, the shops closed. She let out her breath in a long sigh and held on to Adam more tightly.
‘You couldn’t,’ she said, against his chest. ‘You’d have needed the hourglass.’
‘Fuck the hourglass,’ Adam said savagely. ‘I would have found a way.’
‘You said you would never follow me,’ Alison said.
‘I lied,’ Adam said. ‘I got as far as the motorway and knew I had to turn back.’ He drew back a little, tilting her chin up so that she was looking at him. ‘Why did you come back, Ali?’
‘Because of lots of things,’ Alison said. ‘Because of you.’
Because of Thomas and the things he said. Because love should be stronger than time.
She could feel the tears running unchecked down her face and for once she did not try to hold in the emotion nor did she feel ashamed of it.
‘I’ve a lot to tell you,’ she said, stepping back but keeping a hold on his hand. ‘Let’s go home.’
She saw a shadow touch his face then and felt the happiness wither in her. She was too late.
‘Adam,’ she said desperately, but he shook his head.
‘No.’ But his grip on her hands had tightened rather than pushing her away. ‘It’s my turn. Listen.’
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nbsp; She waited, holding her breath.
‘If we do this,’ he said roughly, ‘if we are going to be together, then I don’t want to mess it up again. Once was bad enough.’
‘You didn’t mess it up,’ Alison said. Her throat was thick with tears. ‘I did that. Not once but twice, through not trusting you.’
Adam nodded. ‘I need to know that will never happen again, Ali, that I can trust you and you can trust me. I don’t want to come back one day and find you’ve gone.’ He caught hold of her tightly. ‘This is our reality now. It doesn’t mean that what happened before doesn’t count. It made us the people we are. But now we go forward, not back.’
Alison put her arms about his neck and pressed close. ‘Yes. I promise.’ She snuggled into him and felt the love and reassurance flow from his body into hers and did not turn from it. Here she had found her still centre and her peace. There would be no more travelling, at least not into the past again.
The hourglass was still in her hand. She opened her fingers and watched it fall. The glass smashed and the sand fell in a soft cloud that seemed to vanish into the air.
‘Thank God for that,’ Adam said, looking at the splinters of the empty wooden stand.
‘There are two of them,’ Alison said, ‘but I don’t know where the other one is.’ She pressed her hand against Adam’s cheek. ‘Now can we go home?’
Adam unlocked the car and she slid inside.
‘Do you want to talk about what happened?’ he said.
Alison sat there silently for a moment, conscious of his gaze on her face, the contained patience of him as he waited. There was so much she wanted to say, a tumult of emotion fighting within her.
‘I’ll tell you everything one day soon,’ she said. ‘I promise. I need to think about it first.’
Adam nodded. ‘Arthur?’ he said.
‘I know now what he became and where to find him,’ Alison said shakily. ‘But I will go and look for him in the present, not the past.’
Adam put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. ‘We’ll go and look for him,’ he corrected her softly.
There was a tap at the car window. ‘Traffic warden,’ Adam said, reaching for the ignition.
‘No,’ Alison said, ‘it’s Richard.’ She opened the door and Monty pressed a wet nose into her hand.
‘Hello, my children,’ Richard Demoranville said, as though to find the two of them sitting outside his gallery at night was a perfectly natural occurrence. He tilted his head to one side and fixed Alison with his bright blue gaze. ‘Did the sand glass work, my dear? Would you like to come in and tell me all about it?’
Chapter 28
‘You’d better explain what you know about this,’ Adam said.
They had followed Richard back into the gallery, watching as he moved between the displays, placidly turning on the lights, banishing the past in the bright reality of the present. It amused Alison to see how pugnaciously Adam was looking at his godfather. Poor Adam, he had had a lot of shocks to deal with in a single day. She wondered if this would be the one to push him over the edge.
‘Shall we go upstairs?’ Richard suggested, his blue eyes twinkling benignly as he took in Adam’s confrontational stance. ‘You can be indignant in more comfort up there.’
‘Thanks,’ Alison said hastily, scuttling through the office and up the stair, following Monty before Adam could refuse.
The first floor contained an elegant sitting room with a bow window that overlooked the High Street. Hector was sitting curled up in an armchair. He raised his head and regarded them solemnly with his very green eyes.
‘Take a seat,’ Richard invited. He seemed in no hurry to talk. Adam’s seething impatience only seemed to amuse him. Alison settled into a deep armchair with plush silver and gold cushions but she was too wound up to relax. Instead, she perched on the edge, watching Richard.
‘How did you know?’ she asked directly.
Richard laughed. ‘About the sand clock? Because, my dear, I had taken the same journey as you.’
Alison’s stomach dropped with the shock of realisation. ‘You too?’ she said. Then: ‘Of course. How else—’ She stopped as another, greater shock hit her. ‘Wait,’ she said slowly. ‘You were Reginald De Morven.’
Richard spread his hands in a little gesture, half apologetic, half acknowledgement. Hector rose from his chair, arched his back and leaped elegantly onto Richard’s lap, looking at Alison with an expressive flash of his green eyes.
‘Holy shit,’ Alison said, staring. ‘I wish you’d told me,’ she said, as the thought sank in. ‘I’ve been searching for you everywhere.’
‘Who the hell is Reginald De Morven?’ Adam interrupted. He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it to agitated spikes. ‘Will someone tell me what the fuck’s going on?’ He looked wildly from Alison to his godfather. ‘You’re saying that you’re some sort of time traveller too? Am I the deranged one here, or is this a conspiracy?’
‘Dear boy,’ Richard said calmly. ‘Did you think that Alison was the only one?’
‘Yes!’ Adam said explosively. ‘Call me simple but I didn’t imagine it happened that often.’ He glared at them ferociously then threw himself down in the armchair opposite. ‘I’m not sure how much more of this I can deal with,’ he muttered.
‘You’ll be fine.’ Alison waved a hand towards him. ‘It’s just the shock.’ She turned back to Richard. ‘Did you know I had come from a different time?’
Richard smiled. ‘Dear child, I knew nothing.’ He paused, head bent, studying the cat on his lap. ‘I thought perhaps there was a chance,’ he said, after a moment. ‘There was something about you. I could scarcely ask, though, could I? It’s not the sort of question one does ask without risking an accusation of madness.’ He looked at her directly, his blue gaze suddenly acute. ‘Which answers your previous question. There was never the slightest likelihood that I would tell anyone I was Reginald De Morven.’ He stroked Hector’s ears gently. ‘How many people did you tell the truth of your identity?’ he asked. ‘I doubt it was many.’
Alison was silenced. She remembered the utter isolation and the sense of dislocation she had suffered. Of course Richard would not have approached her directly. It was impossible.
‘I told Diana,’ Alison said. ‘Just as you did.’
‘Yes, Diana,’ Richard said. He sighed. ‘I was so very sorry to hear she had died. She helped me a great deal. Not in the beginning, perhaps. I was too disturbed and confused to understand what had happened to me. But in time—’ He gave a rueful half-shrug at his choice of words. ‘Well, in time her wisdom helped me find my way.’
‘I did ask,’ Adam said, recalling them to his presence in the room, ‘who Reginald De Morven was?’
‘Sorry,’ Alison said. ‘Reginald De Morven was a fourteenth-century knight in the service of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. He disappeared one day on his way to the French wars and when he reappeared he raved of seeing metal birds and diabolical machines and of having paid a visit to hell.’
‘As in, the twenty-first century?’ Adam said. There was a spark of amusement in his eyes. ‘That’s pretty apt.’
‘Diana told me.’ Alison turned back to Richard. ‘I’m sorry. She broke confidentiality to try to help me.’ She frowned. ‘We thought you had died, though. Your tomb is at Kingston Parva.’
Richard was shaking his head. ‘The tomb in the church at Kingston Parva is a memorial to Reginald De Morven,’ he corrected gently. ‘There is no body.’ His gaze turned opaque, inward-looking. ‘I can only assume that the De Morven family wished to give the impression that I—that Reginald—had died,’ he said. ‘They would not have been able to explain it when I vanished for a second time. Had I run mad again? Had I taken my own life? There would have been shame in it for them and confusion.’ Rueful affection warmed his eyes. ‘It was another world we occupied, a world of superstition and magic and fear. My family—’ His voice caught a little. ‘They were not people who would have understood.’
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‘Is that why you chose to come back?’ Alison said. ‘To the present, I mean. Because they could not understand and you were alienated from them?’
‘In part.’ Richard’s gaze was shadowed now. ‘Having seen the future, I felt disassociated from my own time. But in the end it was curiosity that took me on my journey. I longed for a time when my talents as a soldier might be recognised.’
‘The English Civil War,’ Adam said softly. His dark gaze was riveted on his godfather now. ‘You always were a dab hand at sword-fighting and building fortifications when Rob and I were kids.’
‘Dear boy,’ Richard said, ‘you have no idea how lucky you were. That was genuine medieval technology we used on those sandcastles.’
Adam grinned. ‘You provided my inspiration for studying history,’ he said. ‘So thank you for that.’
Richard smiled in return. ‘A pleasure,’ he murmured. He reached out and opened the rosewood cabinet to the left of his seat, leaning over to take something out of the display. Alison’s breath caught as she saw it was a sand glass, a match for the one that she had taken from the office downstairs. This one looked different, though. It was far more battered and worn and, even as she looked at it, it seemed that the glass shivered. Then she saw there was a crack running down the side and almost all the sand had run out.
‘You had them both,’ she whispered. It was then she remembered Thomas’s words:
‘I half killed a man for it… We fought. The glass ran back and forth between us until I thought it must surely break. It brought us both back here but at the last moment he snatched it from me and disappeared…’
‘Oh!’ She looked from the sand glass’s battered frame to Richard’s steady blue gaze. ‘That was the glass that belonged to Thomas Fenner,’ she said slowly. ‘You took it from him in a fight.’
Richard’s gaze darkened with memory and pain. ‘They had both been mine at the beginning,’ he said. ‘The sand glasses were identical, matched. I left one behind at Kingston Parva when I fled that time. When I saw it in the possession of Thomas Fenner I wanted it back.’
The Phantom Tree Page 31