by C F Dunn
“Are you all right, Matthew, after all this, after everything?”
He smiled briefly. “I’m always all right, Emma.”
He came and sat beside me, still miles away, and then I did what I wished I could have done a long time ago. Locating the well of his emotion, I placed my hand over his heart where the depth of his sadness stained his life mulberry, and drew the wound as if drawing venom. I watched as his colours changed perceptibly from dark to light, pulsed momentarily, then settled to a rich mid-blue.
He gave a short laugh of disbelief. “That’s quite a remarkable gift you have there, Dr D’Eresby,” he said, kissing my palm before leaning over, flicking a switch, and removing the monitor from my hand. The machine remained soundless.
He threw back the bedcovers and, picking me up, took me to the window. He placed me on my feet and we cradled together watching the snow fall, his cheek against mine, both hearts beating in time.
He looked down at our clasped hands, turning his so that the light caught the gold of the two rings he wore. His smile seemed poignant at first, then resolute, as he eased the band from his wedding finger. He held it for a second more, then reached out and placed it carefully on the table in front of us, a circle of gold on the dark wood. He breathed deeply – a long breath – letting go.
“Look,” he murmured. Outside, a lone tree braved bitter winds. Pale pink flowers clung to every bough, each blossom crowned in delicate snow. “It won’t be long now; winter will soon be over and we will breathe the sun again.
‘As blown brown buds of death’s decay
In winter’s empty grip shall lie,
Till warm-beamed sun will fill the day
And spring shall come again.’”
“That’s beautiful,” I whispered. “Who wrote it?”
“A seventeenth-century gentleman,” he said.
“That wouldn’t happen to be you, would it?” I asked.
He raised his eyes to mine, and the light in them shone for me, and for me alone.
“It might,” he replied.
Author Notes
BY LOYALTY DIVIDED
To that storm of blood that is now falling upon this kingdom and all those fears and confusions that petitions daily show to be in the thoughts and apprehensions, both of the city and the whole kingdom, we might add such circumstances that are of late discovered and broken out concerning His Majesty’s person, and likewise a confused and levelling undertaking to overthrow monarchy, and to turn order, that preserves all our lives and fortunes, into a wild and unlimited confusion. BL E451(33)
Royalist proclamation for support, 1648
As the relationship between king and Parliament deteriorated in the early 1640s, the conflict we know as the English Civil War presented an opportunity for families to settle old slights and scores, and stories of internecine strife pepper the history of the period. The tiny county of Rutland was not immune. Families came to blows; just one of the numerous accounts where simmering tensions erupted into bloodshed was that of Edward Noel and his son, Baptist – fighting for the king – against their cousins, Sir Edward Harington and his son, James, who fought for Parliament.
Material held in the National Archives, Kew, in family records, crumbling parish accounts, local oral traditions – all hold clues to the personal conflicts bubbling beneath the surface of the greater, national one. Bullet holes in the stone arcading of a church, axe marks on a banister rail, ghosts of lovers wandering the manor gardens in which they were killed, together they bear witness to the minor tragedies that left a legacy of bitterness.
Relationships, in the broadest sense, lie at the heart of many dramas, and their power to heal or divide form the basis from which stories often spring. Littering the history of the period, such incidents provide the backbone to the emerging tale in The Secret of the Journal. When faced with the disfigured tomb of the knight lying in a little English church all those years ago, it was a simple step for me to imagine a story in which the jealousy of a younger brother led to conflict – with devastating results.
“For what can war, but endless war, still breed?” (John Milton, 1608–74.) As a historian, my protagonist, Emma D’Eresby, is acutely aware that events do not exist in isolation, but cast long shadows that shape the future. In Rope of Sand, Emma meets Matthew’s family for the first time and, while she suspects that not everyone welcomes her, she is unaware of the lingering malevolence of historic conflicts that drove the family apart many years before she was born, sowing the seeds of disunity for the future. What goes around comes around.
REALM OF DARKNESS
The past is never far behind, and in Realm of Darkness – the fourth book in The Secret of the Journal series – as Emma begins a new life with Matthew, history catches up with terrifying results.
