‘’Tis most kind,’ said Wilson with a nod of thanks, ‘I will be sure to tell him so when next I see him.’
Trailing silently behind, still holding Daniel’s arm, I tried to remember if any of the historical sources I’d read in my research had said how the Duke of Ormonde had escaped to France. I didn’t think they had. Which left me wondering if he had made the crossing as a passenger aboard the Sally.
No doubt I was going to find out.
It was strange, knowing what I was seeing was history unfolding. How many historians would have paid money to walk in my shoes at this moment, I wondered? To be able to listen and watch while these men played their parts in a growing conspiracy, one that would lead in a few months to open rebellion?
From the glance Wilson gave me I guessed he was finding my presence a bit of a nuisance. His next words were proof. ‘Surely Mistress O’Cleary will much prefer waiting out here while you show me which stall I may use for my horse?’ And directly to me he said, smiling, ‘You’ll not want to ruin your slippers.’
He appeared to be expecting a response from me, but Daniel stepped in smoothly.
‘She has not the use of speech.’
The man named Wilson raised his eyebrows. ‘Does she not? And how then was she robbed of it?’
‘It is my understanding she has been afflicted since her birth.’
‘Remarkable.’ He looked at me as though I were a scientific specimen, and I had the impression he’d just dropped me down a few points on the scale of intelligence. ‘How sad,’ he said, then turned away dismissively.
I knew Daniel would have to follow, so I lifted my hand from his arm and the look he angled down at me held quiet thanks. He said, ‘Please go and let your brother know that we will have a guest for dinner.’
With a nod, I went. I looked back once, but they had gone into the stables with the horse already, and the yard was empty. When I brought my head back round I saw that Fergal had come out to stand within the open doorway, hands on hips. He frowned. ‘I thought I heard a horse.’
I quickened my steps, knowing I’d have to be in the house with the door shut, and able to talk without worrying Wilson would hear, before I could tell Fergal what was going on.
‘Has someone come?’ he asked.
I gave another nod, but faintly, because something had begun to change in Fergal’s face. He was looking at me strangely. With my next step I came close enough to see his eyes, to watch the question in them change to open disbelief. And then he raised his hand and crossed himself. ‘Sweet Jesus.’
And before I could react, he started wavering and faded to a shadow and then vanished altogether like a breath of smoke dissolving in the air.
I stopped walking.
And suddenly I wasn’t in the yard myself, but stepping out onto the open hillside from the Wild Wood, with sunlight breaking through the clouds above me and Trelowarth waiting patiently to welcome me, and Susan a small figure heading off towards the greenhouse.
I hovered in confusion for a moment before memories started swirling back – my evening spent with Claire, my sleeping over at her cottage, and my waking up to find she’d gone out before me. Coming back along the coast path through the woods, and then the sudden rain, and running for the house, and …
That had happened two full days ago for me, yet here I was back in the present day, and it was plain to see no time had passed. When I looked down I saw the deep impression of my footprints in the muddy ground that led to where I stood now on the soft grass of the hill, and everything was as it had been. As it should be.
Well, perhaps not everything.
I ran my hand down one hip to make absolutely certain, and my fingers smoothed across the silken fabric of the gown I was still wearing. And beneath its linen covering my hair was still pinned up in its elaborate style. Not things that could be easily explained, I knew, if anyone should see me.
It was that one thought that shifted me to motion, forced my feet to leave the spot where they had taken root, and lead me running uphill in a hurry to be safely out of sight.
At this hour of the morning Mark should already be out and working. I could only hope that he’d be keeping to his schedule. But in case he was still finishing his breakfast in the kitchen, I went in by the front door and made a beeline for the stairs.
I’d gone halfway up before I heard a door close overhead, and cheerful humming that I recognised as Claire’s. There was no chance for me to make it to my room without her seeing me, and since her steps were coming down the corridor right now there likely wasn’t even time for me to turn and go downstairs again. I’d never cross the hall in time.
I was panicking, pressing my back to the panelled wood wall, when the feel of that wood stirred my memory and I turned to push the panel on the landing in the way Daniel had shown me. Part of me didn’t expect it to open, but it did, and just in time I slipped into the cramped and cobwebbed space and pulled the panel closed again behind me as Claire’s footsteps neared the stairs.
I heard her light and even tread come down and cross the landing, passing close beside my hiding place, and without pause she carried on and down the final half-flight to the hall.
The dress looked different, here. I spread it on my bed and touched its folds with careful fingers, for the journey across time had left it faded, and the stitching of the seams showed through in places, weakened. Fragile.
Such a lovely thing, I thought. And now I’d brought it here, and there was likely no way I could ever take it back to where it properly belonged. My own clothes, left behind in Daniel’s time, were easy to replace, but this …
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly, although I knew the people the apology was meant for couldn’t hear me. I found a padded hanger in my wardrobe and I hung the chemise and skirt and bodice on it, then I covered all of them with Daniel’s red silk dressing gown – his ‘banyan’, he had called it – because somehow it seemed right to me for them to be together. They were almost too bulky to keep in the wardrobe now, and anyone who opened up the wardrobe door would see them, but for the moment it would have to do.
The slippers and hairpins were easier. Wrapped in the soft linen cap they tucked tidily into the drawer where I’d already hidden my sleeping pills, wristwatch and phone. I’d left the watch and phone there even after I had figured out that stress was not my problem, since I didn’t want to run the risk of taking either item back in time with me. Modern technology didn’t belong in the past.
Nor do you, I reminded my face in the mirror.
But somehow the eyes that looked back at me didn’t seem wholly convinced.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mark and Claire were in the kitchen when I went downstairs. Claire glanced around as I came in and said, ‘Got back all right, did you? Oliver telephoned. Something about an old book he found down in his archives that mentions a smuggler who lived at Trelowarth.’
‘Really?’ I felt a small charge of excitement. ‘That was quick.’
‘You’re to meet him at one, if you’re interested. He said he thought it was well worth a lunch.’
Mark said, ‘That’s the line he’s using these days, is it?’ With a grin he reached to take an orange from the basket on the worktop and began to peel it. ‘Good one.’
‘Give it up. He’s helping me do research.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he is.’ He tried to school his features. ‘And you’re sticking to your story, are you, that you spent last night at Claire’s?’
I looked to her for confirmation. ‘Claire?’
But she was smiling. ‘Just ignore him, Eva,’ she advised, and crossed between the both of us to fill a glass with water at the sink. ‘He knows full well you were with me, I rang him up to let him know.’
‘And a good thing she did,’ Mark said. ‘I was beginning to think you’d gone the way of the Grey Lady. Though it’s not really proof, is it, Claire only saying you were with her …’
I interrupted, disregarding that last bit to
ask him, ‘Who’s the Grey Lady?’
‘You know. The one who vanished at Trelowarth. Have you never heard about her?’
‘No.’ I had the sudden feeling I was standing in a draught. I moved and asked him, ‘When was this?’
He turned to Claire. ‘When was it? You’re the one who knows the story.’
She considered. ‘Oh, before my parents’ time. I had the story told me when I first came to Trelowarth by an old man in the village who was nearly ninety then, at least, and he had been a young man when it happened. He’d seen it with his own eyes, so he said.’
‘What did he see?’ I had the strange sense that I knew what was coming.
‘He saw a woman disappear.’ She said it very plainly, as though such a thing were possible. ‘Right here, behind the house. A woman he knew well. He said one minute they were talking, and the next she went all grey and then just faded into nothingness, and disappeared.’
The draught returned.
Mark saw me shiver and said, ‘It’s a story, Eva. People don’t just disappear.’ He split the orange into sections, offering a piece to me.
I took it. Forced a smile. ‘I’m only thinking it might be another tale to tell the tourists, that’s all.’
‘Why don’t you ask Oliver?’ he said, his eyes all innocence. ‘He’s good with local history.’
Claire told him, ‘Actually, I’d think it would be more the sort of question that you’d want to ask Felicity.’
‘Why Felicity?’
‘Well, she’s keen on ghosts and folklore. She’ll be in the shop today, Eva, if you’re going down to Polgelly. You ought to stop in for a chat.’
I had hit on a better idea. ‘Why don’t we all go? We could have fish and chips at the harbour.’
Claire shook her head. ‘Susan and I have to go shop for tables and chairs,’ she said, then went on in an offhand way, ‘But Mark will come, I’m sure. He’s always up for fish and chips.’ I saw the glance Claire sent her stepson and I knew that she, like me, had noticed Felicity’s feelings for Mark, even if he hadn’t, and was trying to play matchmaker.
He fell for it. ‘All right. I’ve got some work I need to finish first, though,’ he said drily, ‘on my blog.’
I smiled. ‘Why don’t I go ahead, then? I’ve got banking that I need to do, and I’ll collect Felicity and Oliver, and you can meet us at the harbour. One o’clock?’
With that agreed, I headed out. I wasn’t sure that I was really up to lunching in Polgelly, since I wasn’t quite myself yet and a part of me just wanted to lie down and rest, to find my balance and restore it after all my travelling through time. But overriding my exhaustion was the lure of learning more about the Butler brothers from the book that Oliver had found.
And I did have a bit of business to attend to at the bank. If I surprised Mr Rowe with my request to put a Trust in place, in secret, for Trelowarth, he was too much the professional to let it show. Of course, he said, it could be done. It would take time, preparing all the paperwork and seeing to the finer points, but yes, it was quite possible. And with those wheels set spinning into motion, I moved on to my next stop.
Felicity had customers. I waited by the shelves that held the little dancing pisky figures, picking up the nearest one and weighing it within my hand until she had the time to come across and say hello.
‘You want to watch those,’ she advised me. ‘Tricky things, those piskies.’
With their pointed hats and elf-like clothes and laughing eyes they looked completely harmless, but I knew the tales of piskies and their mischief. ‘I’ll be careful. What is this?’ I asked, and pointed to a little sign among them with the words, ‘Porthallow Green’ carved on it.
‘Don’t you know that story? Well, you know Porthallow, surely? And according to the legend there was once a boy from there sent on an errand by his master, and it was dark before he’d finished and on his way home he heard a voice at the roadside say, “I’m for Porthallow Green.” And the boy thought, well, it might be good to have a bit of company, even from a stranger, so he called out, “I’m for Porthallow Green,” and quick as a wink, there he was, on Porthallow Green, with the piskies dancing round him. Have you really never heard this one?’
I told her that I hadn’t.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘one of the piskies called out, “I’m for Seaton Beach!” and the boy thought, Well, why not? So he said, “I’m for Seaton Beach,” and there he was, with the piskies again. And they went on like that all night, all the way to the King of France’s cellar, where they drank his wine and danced, and when the piskies brought the boy home in the morning to Porthallow Green, he still had his wine glass to prove it.’ She smiled. ‘Wouldn’t happen today, of course. Think of the airfare I’d save if I could go and stand in a meadow and simply call, “I’m for Ibiza,” and land on the beach.’
‘But you’d have to rely on the piskies to bring you back home again,’ I pointed out. ‘They don’t, always.’
‘True enough.’
I asked casually, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of anybody disappearing from Trelowarth?’
As it turned out, she had never heard the story of the Grey Lady. ‘When was that, do you know?’
I did the maths. ‘Claire said she heard it when she first came here to live, which would be nearly thirty years ago, and the man she heard it from was maybe ninety, so assume that he was twenty-five or thirty when it happened … ninety years ago?’ I estimated. ‘Give or take.’
‘I’ll have to ask around,’ she said, ‘but nothing would surprise me. You know Trelowarth’s built right on a ley line?’
‘A what?’
‘Ley line. Sort of a geomagnetic conduit, if you like. A lot of ancient monuments and holy sites were built on top of ley lines. There’s a line that runs clear under St Non’s well and through the Beacon and Trelowarth to Cresselly Pool.’ She laughed at my expression. ‘I’m not making it up, honestly. Dowsers can find them, they’re actually there. They’ve a powerful energy. All sorts of strange things can happen on ley lines.’
I certainly wasn’t in any position to argue that, I thought. As I set my pisky back among his dancing brethren on the shelf, Felicity asked brightly, ‘So, what are you doing down here in Polgelly?’
I turned and told her, ‘Taking you to lunch.’
The tide was in, the wind was fair, and many of the fishing boats had gone to take advantage of the day, to ride the sea beneath a sun that warmed my shoulders even through the fabric of my shirt and felt like summer’s kiss upon my upturned face.
I felt another happy moment of nostalgia, sitting on the whitewashed harbour wall enjoying fish and chips that had been wrapped in newspaper, the old way I remembered it. The rest was well-remembered, too: the biting tang of vinegar, the sharpness of the salt, the sound of seagulls wheeling greedily above me while the water lapped the wall below and, further off, the waves that crashed in rhythm at the entrance to the harbour and cast up a spray that carried on the breeze to cool my skin.
Felicity, beside me, smiled. ‘You look as though you’ve eaten the canary.’
Mark said, ‘That’ll be next, at the rate she’s going. Where are you putting it all, Eva?’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘You can chase that with a pound of fudge,’ suggested Oliver, who in this group had fallen very naturally back into his old childhood pattern, teasing me to focus my attention where he wanted it – on him.
Not that he had seemed at all put out that I’d brought Mark, nor that Felicity had joined us. Oliver, as I recalled, was nothing if not sociable, and with his easy-going ways he could adapt without complaint to any change of plan. But he was not about to let that steer him off his course, or change his purpose.
It was clear he had his eye on me. I noticed it today more than I had at our last lunch together, noticed how he looked at me and how his smiles lingered. And a month ago I might have even welcomed the attention. After all, he was a nice guy, and looked absolutely
gorgeous in his plain white shirt and jeans, his blond hair golden in the midday sun and tousled by the harbour breeze. I knew most women would have thought him wonderful if they’d been in my place.
But when I looked at him today my only thought was that his face, though handsome, didn’t have the same appeal as Daniel Butler’s, and that Daniel’s eyes in that same light would have been even greener than the sea beyond the shore.
I shrugged off Oliver’s remark, and smiled. ‘I doubt that I’ll have room for fudge when I’m done with this.’
‘If I take you for a walk, you will.’
Mark said, ‘I thought you called her down to see a book.’
‘I did. Only found it this morning. It came in a box with some others I bought at a sale last year, and it’s been gathering dust at the back of my bookshelves.’
Felicity glanced over, curious. ‘What sort of book?’
‘A field guide of sorts to this area – natural history with small bits of colour thrown in – but it mentions some people that Eva’s been after. She’s trying to find Susan somebody famous who lived at Trelowarth,’ he said, ‘and these brothers, the Butlers, were smugglers. Infamous, not famous, but the local people loved them, so the book says. They were heroes here.’
Mark said, ‘Like the Carter brothers up at Prussia Cove?’
‘Exactly. But the Carters weren’t in business till years afterward. They weren’t even born when the Butlers were free-trading out of Polgelly.’ He’d finished the last of his chips and he crumpled the wrapping of newspaper into a ball. ‘I have to thank Eva for putting me on to them. I’d never heard of the Butlers, myself.’
Felicity was looking at him with the keen eyes of an old friend who will not be fooled. ‘I’m surprised you found the book at all,’ she said innocently, ‘if it was at the back of your bookshelves.’
‘Yeah, well, Eva asked me yesterday about the Butlers, and I had some time last night, so I just thought I’d look. You know.’
She smiled at him. ‘Oh yes. I know.’
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