Secrets of the Chocolate House

by Paula Brackston

  “Liam, your tame little mechanic. Why are you wasting your time with him?”

  “It’s none of your business who I spend my time with. Let go of me!” She shook off his hands but he was standing so close she was trapped against the wall. She could smell alcohol on his breath.

  “You stood me up,” he said. “We were going to meet. You promised.”

  “I was busy.”

  “I waited, you never showed up. Did you enjoy that, eh? Thinking of me sitting there like an idiot? Did the two of you laugh about it?”

  “You’re being ridiculous. You should go back to London. Why are you still hanging around here?”

  “You know why. You and me, Xan, we’re not done.”

  “How many times do I have to say it? I’m not interested, Marcus.”

  “You said. Same as you said you weren’t interested in singing, but I hear you’re going to do exactly that, right here in this twee little provincial pub tonight.”

  “I’m earning a living, but then you wouldn’t know anything about doing that, would you?”

  “You wouldn’t sing with me, but you’re singing with him, aren’t you? I saw the name of the band on the flyers. I asked around. He’s wormed his way into your life, hasn’t he? I bet he fixes that idiotic taxi of yours, doesn’t he? And now he’s got you singing in his pathetic band.”

  “It is none of your business.”

  “He can’t write for you, though, can he? He’ll never have that connection with you, Xan, you know that. You’d do better singing in London, with me.”

  “Nothing would be better with you, Marcus. Just leave me alone!” An edge crept into her voice that gave away her anxiety at having to deal with him in such a condition. Marcus heard it. He reacted minutely, his expression hardening a fraction, knowing that he was getting to her.

  Fortunately, someone else heard it too. A figure stepped out of the shadows.

  “You heard her; leave her alone,” said Liam.

  Marcus wheeled round.

  “Why don’t you piss right off, grease monkey. She’s way out of your league.”

  “I don’t think Marlborough is the right place for you,” Liam said lightly, refusing to be riled. “Isn’t there a rock somewhere in the city you can crawl back under?”

  “Xan and me have history. She’d do anything for me.”

  “From what I’ve heard she’s already done more than enough.”

  Xanthe slipped away from Marcus, moving beyond his reach. He noticed her move and tried to grab hold of her again. She shouted, more in anger than fear, but it was enough to trigger an instinctive reaction from Liam, who lunged at Marcus. The two barreled into a stack of crates, sending them toppling, scattering and smashing empty bottles across the yard. Neither took any notice of the chaos they were causing as they grappled, slinging fists, cursing and kicking at each other.

  “Stop it!” Xanthe yelled. “Will you both just grow up!”

  The back door of the pub opened abruptly and the bulk of Harley blocked out the light from the passageway.

  “Hell’s teeth, hen! What goes on here? Oi!” he yelled at the fighting men. Marcus had Liam pinned to the ground now and was raining blows down on him. While Liam was in better physical shape he was clearly holding back from hitting Marcus. Xanthe thought he could more than likely flatten him if he took it into his head to do so. Marcus was in such an agitated state he had quickly gained the advantage, not able to restrain his temper and desperation. Harley grabbed hold of his collar and hauled him to his feet.

  “Would ye mind finding somewhere else for your brawling?” He kept a tight hold on the flailing younger man, his weight and strength unmoved by Marcus’s best efforts to free himself.

  “Get off me! This is nothing to do with you!”

  “Oh it’s plenty to do with me when it’s in my own backyard, let me tell you that.”

  Liam got up, wiping blood from a split lip. “You want locking up,” he told Marcus.

  Xanthe looked at his bruised face. “Liam, I’m so sorry.…”

  “Don’t do that,” he said quickly. “Don’t apologize for something that is his fault, not yours. Haven’t you learned that lesson yet?”

  His words stung. “I didn’t ask you to step in,” she said.

  “Oh, and you were doing just fine when I found him attacking you?”

  Marcus jabbed a finger in Liam’s direction. “See, she doesn’t want you interfering. This is none of your business.”

  Liam had had enough. “Why don’t you piss off back to London,” he snarled at Marcus.

  Harley rolled his eyes. “I’ve a pub to run here, and yon lassie is due to sing, so you two can both take yourselves off and cool your heels.” He flung Marcus forward, away from Liam, toward the yard gate. “I seem to be making a habit of evicting you from my premises, laddie. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. You show your face anywhere near my property again and it’ll be the police for you, d’you hear me?”

  Marcus ignored him and took a step toward Xanthe, who instinctively stepped back. Marcus looked as if he was about to lay hands on her again but looked from Harley to Liam and thought better of it. Instead he leaned close to Xanthe, his voice low.

  “OK, you play at being a small-town girl, Xan. It won’t last. You don’t belong here with these nobodies. One day you are going to realize that. And I’ll be waiting for you when you do. We are very far from over, I promise you.” He spat in Liam’s direction before turning on his heel and striding off into the night.

  Harley let out a sigh. “Right, if that’s that, I’ll be about my pub. Xanthe, hen, if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer not to have that wastrel in my life, d’you ken?”

  “Sorry, Harley.”

  “Xanthe…” Liam raised his hands in a gesture of exasperation, letting them drop by his sides.

  Xanthe saw Harley watching her. She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m OK, really I am. I’ll be in in a minute.”

  He grunted, nodded, pointing at Liam’s face. “You’d best tidy him up a bit. Don’t want people put off their pints,” he said, and went back inside.

  Liam asked, “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “I’m fine.” She lifted a hand to turn his face to the light. She could see another cut over his left eye and his jaw was already beginning to swell. “We should put something on that.”

  “Do you think Harley would spare one of his sirloin steaks? Ouch!” He winced as she dabbed at the cut with a tissue.

  Xanthe started to apologize and then stopped herself, not wanting to begin another argument.

  “Thank you,” she said instead. “For helping.”

  “I’m not sure being thrashed and having to have Harley wade in was really helping much, if I’m honest.”

  Xanthe smiled. “I like that you tried.”

  “My grandad used to say trying is OK when you’re five years old. After that you have to succeed.”

  “Hard man, your grandfather. Keep still, this is bleeding a bit. Here,” she said, taking his hand and placing it over the tissue on his wounded eyebrow. “Keep the pressure on it.”

  “Will I have a manly scar, d’you think?”

  “’Fraid not.” She looked at him differently then, considering how even battered and bruised his face had an appeal that was hard to ignore. He noticed her looking at him and smiled, causing her to blush and him to wince at the split in his lip.

  “And thanks for not, you know, laying into Marcus.”

  “It was tempting.”

  “I’m glad you resisted.” She stepped away, fidgeting from one foot to the other in an attempt to keep out the cold night air.

  “You ready for your performance?” Liam asked. “The band is stoked about this. All of them.”

  “I was hoping for a peaceful walk to steady my nerves,” she said with a shrug.

  “After singing up in London two nights running I’d have thought you’d be over your nerves. Settling into your st
ride,” he said.

  Xanthe managed to hide her confusion, remembering that she was supposed to have been at Harley’s friend’s pub. The effort of more deception, especially when Liam had got hurt on her behalf, was wearisome.

  “Oh, you know, home crowd…” she said.

  “But this time you’re not on your own. You’ve got Tin Lid. You’ve got me,” he said suddenly, his face serious.

  Xanthe looked away. “Liam, I…”

  “I know, I know. You don’t have to say any more. Let’s hope that charming ex-boyfriend of yours has finally got the message that he’s not welcome. That’ll be one less thing for you to worry about.”

  “Let’s hope,” Xanthe agreed.

  He took the padding from his brow to check the bleeding.

  “I think it’s stopped,” Xanthe told him. “You’ll live.”

  “You sure?”

  “Well, long enough for me to buy you a drink, anyway. Come on, it’s bloody freezing out here. Got to get you tidied up before our set.”

  “Yeah, Harley won’t be pleased if takings are down because of my ugly face.” Liam smiled, flinching as he did so, taking Xanthe’s arm, his grasp firm and reassuring as he led her toward the door of the pub. “Oh,” he stopped, “in all the excitement I nearly forgot.” He reached inside his jacket pocket and took out a small packet, inexpertly wrapped in tissue paper. He offered it to her. “I wanted you to have this. A good luck charm, for your performances tonight. Solo and with us.”

  Xanthe took it from him and undid the wrapping. Inside was a finely worked gold pin in the shape of a horseshoe, studded with tiny pearls.

  “Oh, Liam! It’s lovely, but…” She remembered then how he had spent time at the Victorian jewelry stand at the sale in Ditton. Even then he had been thinking of her, wanting to buy her a gift.

  “Well, I know how much you like our white horse up there on the hill, and horseshoes are meant to bring good luck, aren’t they?”

  “It’s too much … I can’t…”

  “Yes, you damn well can. I want you to have it.” He took it and gently pinned it to the lapel of her dress. The gold looked lovely against the red of the print and the luster of the pearls gleamed beneath the low light of the yard. “For luck,” Liam insisted.

  “It’s gorgeous. Thank you,” she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek.

  Inside, the main bar was packed. Xanthe didn’t flatter herself thinking they were all there to hear her sing, as Annie had only booked her at the last minute, and the posters had been scrawled on in black marker to alert people to the collaboration with Tin Lid. It had been Xanthe’s idea to try out singing with the band. Practice had been so encouraging, and she had felt her nerves slipping away. It would be so much better to work with them. It would take time to work out their unique sound, to meld her voice with their playing, but she was confident it would work.

  As Xanthe hung up her coat in the passageway behind the bar she glimpsed her mother and Gerri finding seats in the far corner. She had long ago trained her mother not to sit too near the front. Having someone she knew in her line of vision inhibited her performance. She thought about the fact that she was here, in the twenty-first century, singing for her supper, just as she had done the first time she had traveled back to the seventeenth century. For a moment her thoughts took her back to Samuel’s day and to the time when she had sung at Clara’s birthday feast. He had held her hand that evening, and saved her from having to dance when she didn’t know the steps and might have been revealed as a fraud. It all seemed so long ago and so far away. She was aware, however poignant the memory, of a shift in her feelings, a subtle alteration in her emotional response to the memory. It all felt more distant, somehow. More completed. A part of her life that was over.

  “You up for this, then? Ready to do what you do best?” Liam’s question brought her back to the present. Even with his swollen face he exuded a calm, upbeat confidence that was hugely welcome at that moment.

  “Yes.” She smiled back at him. “Yes, I think I am.”

  20

  Xanthe was up early the next morning, the sun not properly risen, so that the town was revealed in an eerie half-light. There was a heavy frost, and she had to scrape ice off the windscreen of her car. As she did so she thought about how the black cab was a constant reminder of the London life she had left behind. Was she wrong to hang on to it? Could there even be some truth in what Marcus had said about her not belonging in a quiet place like Marlborough? Was her taxi a sign that she had not, in fact, entirely closed the door on that life? After all, when she was singing was when she felt most at ease with herself and most able to cope with what life threw at her. It was in itself a type of forgetting. She finished her task and got into the car, turning up the heating and rubbing her hands together against the cold. The vehicle felt comfortingly familiar. And it was useful; not many other cars would be able to accommodate so many antiques when she and her mother went on a buying trip. She ran her hand around the large, cool steering wheel. No, she decided, this was one link to her past she was not prepared to let go.

  It was not quite seven o’clock as she drove out of town. The November day was slow to get under way, so that the countryside remained largely hidden, the sun not yet high enough to properly illuminate the rolling fields and hills that spread away into the distance. There was very little traffic. In less than half an hour Xanthe was turning into the main street of Laybrook. She parked up at the side of the road and walked through the sleepy village. At the lych-gate of the church she hesitated, gripped by a nervousness she had been doing her best to ignore. This was something she had to do, but that made it no easier. Once she had seen that gravestone, once she had read the words and, more important, the date inscribed upon it, there was no unknowing what she would discover. She stood for a moment, her eyes closed, picturing Samuel, for once not fighting the memory. Had she done enough? Would Fairfax have returned before Samuel had a chance to shore up his standing with the king? She did not trust the man to keep his side of the bargain, and he was likely to be furious at having been tricked by Xanthe. Would he have taken his anger out on Samuel? She told herself that the chocolate pot returning meant Samuel had at least succeeded in taking it back to Bradford. That gave her hope.

  “Can I help you?”

  A gentle voice broke into Xanthe’s thoughts. Embarrassed, she opened her eyes and found a short, middle-aged woman in a duffle coat and woolen mittens. It took her a few seconds more to notice the clerical dog collar.

  “Oh, thanks, I was just…” She waved her hand vaguely at the churchyard.

  The vicar waited. When Xanthe said no more she smiled. “I was about to unlock the church, if you want to go inside…?”

  Xanthe shook her head. “I’m just looking. Just … visiting.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, feel free,” said the vicar before going through the gate and heading for the church.

  Xanthe waited until she had gone inside. She was sure the woman meant well, but at that moment the last thing she needed was to have to try to explain what she was doing, or to share how she felt. She was having a hard time explaining it to herself. The narrow path that wound around the church was slippery with frost, the grass at its edges fuzzy with ice. Under the shade of the yew trees frozen moss formed little cushions of silvery green velvet. From nearby oaks a parliament of rooks began their morning noise, while a wood pigeon cooed its mournful, repetitive song.

  At last Xanthe came to the place she was looking for. A few paces ahead of her a modest headstone stood slightly apart from some of the others, age and time having given it a slant and a weathered appearance. She forced herself to walk up to it, to stand directly in front of it.

  She took a breath.

  “Right,” she told herself, her voice loud in the stillness of the day. “Let’s do this.”

  She peered down at the stone, narrowing her eyes to make out the faded and worn lettering that had been carved into it so many, many years
before. Moss and lichen obscured the wording, so that she had to reach out and rub at the surface of the tombstone. Gradually the inscription revealed itself. She forced herself to read out what was there, determined to take it in and accept it, however painful that might be.

  “Here lies the body of Samuel Appleby of Marlborough.…” She paused, assailed by a jolt of pain that she should have been expecting. To read of his death, however much she had prepared herself, was still a shocking thing to do. She went on. “Architect and Master Builder of Renown, Loyal Subject of His Majesty King Charles.… Charles! Not James?” Relief swamped her. As far as she could recall, James I ended his reign in 1625. She raced on to the next line. “Taken into the arms of the Lord, 1648.” She let out the breath she had been holding. Forty-two years after the date she had left him. Which meant he had lived on until his early sixties. Suddenly she found herself shedding tears of relief. She had not failed him. He was safe. Whatever Fairfax had done next he had not taken his revenge on Samuel. By modern standards dying before reaching even seventy seemed harsh, but given the times Samuel had lived in it was a fair age. There were other lines of the inscription, written below, the lettering a little easier to read, being a few years younger. Xanthe read it aloud to the rook sitting on a low branch opposite her.

  “Here lies also the body of his beloved wife, Henrietta Appleby, left this earth for a better place 1661.”

  Of course Samuel would have married Henrietta. She was a good woman, and she would have made him a wonderful wife. A beloved wife. It was to be expected. It was as it should be. Xanthe was truly glad for him; that he had been happy. That he had found love. She knew then that she had done what she had been called by the chocolate pot to do. She had rescued Samuel from Fairfax and he had lived the life he had been meant to have. All was as it should be, order restored. Her duty as a Spinner fulfilled.

  After leaving Laybrook Xanthe took the road that passed through Ditton. There was one more thing she wanted to check. One more thing she needed to see if she was to truly believe that she had done her work as a Spinner. She slowed the car as she approached the village, glancing first to the left at The Swan Inn, and then to the right. And there it was. She stopped the car in the middle of the road, taking advantage of the lack of traffic. The widow’s cottage. Samuel’s work. Showing signs of rot in some of the window frames but otherwise wearing its years lightly. It had been completed by Samuel, just as he had intended. Just as it should have been. It had survived all those long years afterward, giving shelter and a cozy home to four centuries of people. It would continue to do so for years to come. Order had been restored. The damage to history and the possible future threatened by Fairfax’s actions had been repaired. Because a Spinner had done her job.