by Jane Ashford
“Down the coast,” said Roger. He looked out to sea. “Farther out.”
“We can’t take boats this size far into open water,” the man replied. “And out there—”
Roger knew the end of this sentence, and he didn’t want to hear it. Why were they talking? They should be rowing.
Movement caught in the corner of his eye, and he turned eagerly. But it was a line of dark clouds boiling up in the east, promising a squall. He glanced at the faces of the local men who had turned out to help. They looked sympathetic, pitying, but not sanguine. None of them believed they would find Fenella alive. Their eyes showed their fearful respect for the riptides and sadness for the losses any village of fishermen endured.
The owner of the boat was frowning at the approaching weather.
Roger couldn’t endanger them, no matter how much he needed them to keep searching. “Very well.” He would pace the shoreline from which she’d disappeared, he decided as they turned back toward the island. No, he would keep one boat, purchase it if necessary, and row out on his own. He would find her!
A choking despair loomed, telling him what he would find. He fought it off.
Another boat came closer. Macklin sat in the bow wrapped in a wool cloak. When they’d come alongside, he reached out and put a hand on Roger’s shoulder. “I think we must go in,” he said. “There’s a storm on the way. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t leave her out there, struggling in the water.” Roger choked on that unbearable picture, which was still better than the alternative—that all struggles were done.
A shout from one of the other boats drew their attention. A rower there leaned out and pulled a bundle from the water.
A stomach-clenching mixture of fear and hope shot through Roger. He grabbed his oar and nearly overset the boat with the strength of his shove.
They’d found the tunic Fenella had been wearing for the pageant. Roger recognized the pin fastening the neck. He snatched it from the man who’d retrieved it and held it to his chest despite the water that ran over his clothes. His mind felt perfectly blank. For a few minutes he didn’t even notice that the boat was moving again.
Then he looked up. The chop of the waves was increasing. Clouds flowed across the sky. Macklin was directing the whole party toward shore. Roger wanted to argue, to convince them to turn back, but words had deserted him, perhaps forevermore.
They had to lift him from the boat. A man on either side escorted him to the waiting horses, and Macklin persuaded him to mount.
* * *
Fenella trudged along a lane, trying to avoid stepping on sharp stones with her bare feet. So far, she’d seen no sign of people. The fields on either side had been harvested already, and the golden stubble was empty. The workers had moved on to others. Her hopes of coming across a cart to carry her were waning, and the cold of her damp shift and weariness dragged at her. She’d had a spurt of energy when she reached the shore, but now the efforts of last night were taking their toll. Still, there was no choice but to keep walking, one foot in front of the other.
Movement caught her eye. A gowned figure emerged from a clump of bushes some way down the lane. Fenella raised her arm and waved. “Hello,” she called. Her voice caught and rasped like a rusty hinge, the lingering effects of maltreatment with the cord. She tried again, forcing a louder shout. The figure turned and looked in her direction. “Please help me!” cried Fenella, waving again.
The person started toward her. When she came closer, Fenella was astonished to recognize the girl Lally. “What are you doing here?”
“I live up yonder.”
Following the little girl’s pointing finger, Fenella saw a stream tumbling down the incline toward the sea. She could just see the crest of a roof above its lip. This must be the mill.
“Are you dead?” Lally asked. “’Cause if you’re a haunt, I ain’t speaking to you.” She made a banishing sign with extended fingers.
“I’m alive.” It hurt to talk. And Fenella’s mouth was parched with thirst. Her whole body yearned toward that stream.
“They said you was drowned. Like Maid Marian was. I saw them carry her from a boat up to the tent. Never knew she was so old.” Lally looked anxious suddenly. “Don’t let on I told you. Dad said I wasn’t allowed to go to the pageant. On account of what I did.” She looked as if she didn’t understand her transgression completely, and as if this was a familiar experience. “I sneaked over when my dad thought I was in my room, ’cross the sand.” She grimaced. “Which I’m also not meant to do. You won’t tell?”
Fenella shook her head wearily. “I got out of the sea,” she said. “She tried to pull me under.” Memories of the dark sea made her shudder. Or perhaps it was just the breeze on her wet shift. She wrapped her arms around her torso for warmth.
Lally frowned. “Pull you under the water? After she shot at you? I don’t understand what she was about.” The girl looked frustrated.
“Let’s go up to the mill and find your parents.” With a stop at the stream for a drink, Fenella thought.
“My dad,” the girl corrected. “My mum’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lally shrugged. “I don’t remember her.” She eyed Fenella. “You’ve gone all bluish.”
“I’m very cold.” Fenella started walking again. The girl fell into step at her side.
“Did somebody steal your clothes?” asked Lally. “Some boys did that to me once when I went swimming.”
“No, I had to take them off in the sea, so that they wouldn’t drag me down when I swam across from Lindisfarne.”
Lally looked shocked. “Nobody’s supposed to swim in that channel. You’re like to be carried away by the tides.”
“I very nearly was. That’s why I need your help now, Lally.”
The girl’s face shifted. She seemed to take in Fenella’s plight for the first time. Her dark eyes filled with sympathy. “I’ll fetch a cloak,” she said and ran off before Fenella could reply.
With a sigh, Fenella trudged on. She veered off the lane to a loop of the stream and half knelt, half fell to drink from the rushing water. The cold liquid was a balm for her bruised throat as well as her raging thirst. But it chilled her further. Really, she had never been so cold.
She had just struggled to her feet again when Lally came running back with a heavy cloak. Gratefully, Fenella draped it around her shoulders. The cloth dragged on the ground. She gathered it closer. Wool was a marvel, she thought, as she felt the first touch of warmth. “Does your father have a horse and cart?” she asked. Surely a miller would need such a thing.
Her heart soared when Lally nodded, then sank when she said, “Dad’s gone out in it with a load of flour. Be back before supper, he said.”
“He left you all alone?”
“Mrs. Fisk’s here,” answered Lally. “She didn’t like me taking the cloak. Tried to snatch it away. You’ll tell her I was helping?”
Fenella nodded as they started walking up the hill. They would just have to see what could be done. It might be hours before she could reach home, which was a disappointment. But she was here, and warmer, and she could see her way to a solution. Pulling the cloak closer around her shoulders, Fenella was overtaken by a giddy sense of astonishment. She’d done it. All on her own, she’d thrown off a murderous assailant and battled her way to safety. “I fought the very tide,” she murmured. “And won. Unlike King Canute.”
“Who?” said Lally.
“An old king who challenged the sea,” said Fenella. She realized that she’d gone quite dizzy with relief. “Only he didn’t really. People get the story wrong. He was demonstrating the power of God to his courtiers.”
“His who?”
She’d been young and timid once, Fenella thought, and for a while it had seemed that limitation would be with her always. But it wouldn’t. She could take on anything af
ter this. She would never again doubt her own competence. She skipped a step, and another, despite her fatigue.
Lally gazed up at her. She shrugged. “Don’t know what you mean,” she said. “But lots of times I don’t. Dad reckons I never will. Says I’d best get used to it.”
Fenella was filled with a desire to do something for Lally. She didn’t deserve the way she’d been treated by Mrs. Crenshaw. “Is there anything you would like?”
The girl’s brown eyes were both hopeful and wary. “Reckon I won’t be joining Robin Hood’s band.”
“No, that was a lie.”
She nodded as if she’d expected this, and perhaps heard similar things before. She trudged on at Fenella’s side.
“I could give you some books about Robin Hood,” Fenella offered.
“I’m not much for books. I don’t read very good. And you have to sit still inside and take care not to spill.”
Of course books weren’t it. Fenella tried to think of something else. She wished she could find Lally a fairy mound or troop of merry, harmless outlaws.
“I’d like some flowers,” said Lally.
“Flowers?” Did she mean a bouquet?
“Dad said the garden at the mill was a sight to see before my mum died. All sorts of flowers. But he didn’t keep it up. He’s sorry about that, but he was right busy and the plants were finicky.”
This last sounded like a quote.
“I love flowers, and I could take care of them.” The girl nodded as if she expected an argument. “I could. Water them and all. I’ve pulled the weeds.”
“I’ll have plants brought to you,” said Fenella, delighted the request was one she could grant. “By someone who can tell you all about how to care for them.” She’d have the castle gardener find just the right person to talk to Lally.
“Where will you find them?”
“In the gardens at my house.”
“That castle?”
“Yes.”
Lally made an astonished sound. “You really will? Even though I took those letters for Maid Marian?”
“I promise.”
The girl’s answering smile was brilliant.
Perhaps they could do more, Fenella thought. They might settle a small pension on her in the future. Or some such arrangement. She’d ask Roger. Fenella’s heart soared. Soon she would see Roger and throw herself into his arms. After that, well a good bit after that, she would ask him. She laughed.
Lally joined in. The girl put her hand in Fenella’s, and they walked side by side up the hill to the mill.
Twenty
A slant of late-afternoon sun illuminated the rows of leather-bound books in Chatton Castle’s library, but Roger didn’t notice. He was here because he never sat in this room. Neither had Fenella, and so it reminded him of nothing in particular. Not that this stopped the rush of tender memories, which hurt more than anything he had ever experienced before. Part of him simply refused to believe that she wouldn’t walk through the door in another minute and ask him what in the world he was brooding about.
His mother and Macklin had herded him home. He hadn’t wanted to come. But even he had been forced to admit that lingering on the shore opposite Lindisfarne—in the stinging rain of a squall, when everyone else had departed—was doing no good. Fenella was gone, such a short time after he had understood, at last, that she was just the woman for him. No one survived a night in the North Sea.
If only he had realized the truth sooner. If only he’d had more sense. If only… His mind teemed with regrets. None of which made a particle of difference. All was disaster. He couldn’t really see where his life would go from here. Onward in numbing routine, he supposed, all his plans in ruins. He’d thought he had a second chance. This had turned out to be a cruel illusion.
Every bit of his attention was occupied by mourning. He didn’t hear a cart arrive outside, and when the chamber door opened quietly, he didn’t turn around. “Go away,” he said to anyone who might imagine he could be comforted.
“Very well. I just wanted to tell you I was home,” replied a woman’s voice, familiar and yet altered by a rasping croak.
Roger whirled and leapt up so quickly that his chair tipped over and tumbled onto the carpet. Fenella! Could it be? Or had he gone mad and begun conjuring phantoms?
Her red hair was a wild snarl. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and she was wrapped in a bulky cloak. He ran over and swept her into his arms. She was reassuringly solid. He whirled her in a great circle. “I can’t believe it! You’re really here. I thought you were dead.” He remembered his promise to himself. “I love you,” he blurted out.
“I love you,” said Fenella at the same moment.
“I meant to tell you,” they said in unison.
Then spoke together yet again. “I’m sorry.”
Fenella giggled. Roger couldn’t laugh. In a little while he would, when this miracle had sunk in. But not yet.
The cloak came loose, revealing the top of her salt-crusted shift. He noticed bruises on her neck, scratches on her hands. “You’re hurt!”
“Well, I have been through a bit of an ordeal. I’ll tell you, in a moment. It’s so very good to be home.” She swayed in his arms.
Rather than berate himself for not noticing her condition, Roger sprang into action. He half carried her upstairs, scattering orders among the servants who lined the corridors for a bath to be filled, food and drink to be brought. Fenella’s half-laughing protests were ignored as he piled on command after command. He was only just able to leave her in the hands of her maid as cans of hot water began to arrive from the kitchen.
An hour later, they sat together in her boudoir, surrounded by the results of Roger’s demands, along with other treats added by Mrs. Burke and the cook. His mother had sent her delighted congratulations. Macklin had added a kind word, as had Mrs. Thorpe. Now they were finally alone. Wrapped in a warm dressing gown, with her feet up on an ottoman, Fenella had told him the story of her battle with the sea. She looked tired but content.
Roger couldn’t let go of his wife’s fingers. “I shall never allow you to swim again.”
She raised her eyebrows at the word allow, but said only, “I don’t want to just now. That’s certain. We will see about the future.” Fenella sipped hot chocolate with her free hand, one of the many delicacies that had been produced for her. Trays were crowded with small sandwiches and cakes and sweets. “Lally said they found Mrs. Crenshaw in the sea,” she said.
Roger nodded. “I don’t wish to say I can’t forgive her, but…I haven’t yet.”
“She created a domestic tragedy with her schemes.”
“Two,” said Roger. “First for Arabella and then very nearly for us.”
“‘Very nearly’ isn’t the same,” said Fenella.
After a moment he acknowledged this with a nod.
“She was sorry for what she’d done to Arabella.”
“Not as sorry as others,” he had to say.
“No. Her daughter, and you, bore the brunt of her mistakes.” Fenella considered. “And Mrs. Crenshaw herself, in the end. She was dreadfully unhappy.”
“That doesn’t excuse her.”
“No. She was broken by grief, I think.”
“I was desolate when I thought you dead,” Roger objected. “But I didn’t plot to kill anyone.”
Fenella nodded. She sipped her chocolate. “How could she do it?”
He addressed the literal part of her question, as the philosophical was beyond him. “She was staying in a cottage on an estate north of the island. The owner who let it was at the pageant, and he recognized her when she was taken from the sea. She arranged the visit from London with a false name. Corresponded with the fellow’s wife and gained her sympathy with a tale of being widowed and wanting to get away from home. Told them she was fond of history and meant
to look around the area, ending with the performance on Lindisfarne. They lent her a horse to use, but never noticed that she had a bow.” Roger realized he was babbling. Relief had set in. His brain felt as if it was fizzing.
“People don’t take much account of an older woman if she dresses plainly and keeps to herself,” said Fenella. She set down her cup and stretched. A soft groan escaped her. “I’ll be stiff for days, I suppose.”
“We will wait on you hand and foot.”
Fenella smiled at him. Fatigue was making itself felt after the excitement of reaching home. She would crawl into bed soon.
“I keep thinking if only Arabella had—” Roger clamped his lips together, as if he had to prevent further words from escaping. “No,” he said.
“No, what?”
“No trying to blame Arabella.” Roger passed a hand over his forehead as if he felt a pain there. “Part of the horror of this day was how much sorrier I felt about your death than hers. She deserved better of me, and the world.”
Fenella squeezed his hand. “Our children shall do as they please,” she murmured.
Roger returned the pressure of her fingers. “We will have those years together. You’re not gone. We will have a family.” He bent to rest his head on her forearm. “I do love you so. I am resolved to tell you that every day. Possibly several times.”
She caressed his bright hair. “I made the same resolution when I was lying on a freezing sandbar in the darkness. We will make a positive spectacle of ourselves.” She found she didn’t care. “I think perhaps I’ve loved you most of my life,” she added.
He looked up. “The wretched sprig I was? With my rudeness and the sodding sheep? You can’t have. You have much better taste than that.”
“I do.” Fenella smiled again. “And yet.”
“Yet?”
“I think I was enchanted by the wild, fearless boy you were.”
He looked touched, and a bit guilty. “I can’t say that I—”
“Of course you didn’t feel the same. I was…in hiding. It took an extraordinary goad from my father and a force of nature like my grandmother to release me.”
