The Secrets of the Lake
Page 25
‘Whatever’s happened to you . . .?’ he began to ask, but he was stopped mid-sentence by the most astonishing sight. She grunted once or twice, and the humps on her back started to unfurl into wide, ribbed sheets of tough, green hide. With a powerful movement of her shoulder blades she began to flap them, up and down, and as she did so they grew higher and wider still.
‘Oh . . . my . . . goodness,’ he managed to gasp. ‘You’ve got wings.’
‘Like a proper dragon,’ she said, grinning widely, and flapping so enthusiastically he feared she might blow him off his feet. ‘And there’s something else, Jimmy. Better move away, just in case.’
He scuttled backwards until there were five or six yards between them.
‘That’ll do.’ She sucked in an enormous breath and then let it out with a loud whoosh that turned into a bright red-and-orange flame, smelling of wood fires and toffee caramel.
Jimmy burst into astonished laughter and she laughed along with him, with a deep fearsome roar. Each time he tried to stop she flapped her wings again, whipping up dead leaves and bits of grass into a great whirlwind, which made him laugh all the more. At last he got so out of breath that he had to sit down, and she noticed the brown paper bag.
‘Have you brought buns?’ she asked, folding away her wings. ‘All that flapping is hungry work.’
‘Fruitcake, with marzipan and icing. You’ll like it,’ he said, passing her a slice.
‘Yum, this is delicious. I’ll miss you, you know,’ she said, through a mouthful.
‘Miss me? Why? Where are you going?’
‘Now I’ve turned into a proper dragon I’m in too much danger, living near human beings. They’d shoot me down like one of those poor pheasants. I have to go and live in Dragon Land, where I will be with others like me, and they will keep me safe.’
‘You can’t,’ he said, close to tears. ‘You mustn’t leave me.’
‘I have to, Jimmy.’
‘Can’t I come with you?’
‘You would have to live with dragons for the rest of your life.’
‘I wouldn’t mind. Just so long as I can be with you.’
‘Are you really certain?’
Jimmy nodded. ‘But how will we get there?’
‘I’ll carry you.’
‘You mean fly, with me on your back?’
‘I don’t know for certain, but we can try, can’t we?’
And so, when they had finished all of the cake, he climbed onto her back and clung tightly to one of the large scaly lumps at the back of her head. She unfurled her wings and began to flap them, slowly at first and then faster and faster and faster, till they seemed to be leaving the ground. As they lifted upwards, she gave another huge roar, sending a brilliant burst of flame spurting from her mouth.
The lake was now far below them, and Jimmy could see the big Hall, and Eli’s hut in the woods, and then the street and the houses and the church tower, growing smaller and smaller until, finally, they disappeared into the distance and all he could hear was the whoosh of air as the dragon’s wings carried them higher and higher into the sky.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although this novel is in no respect autobiographical, its setting is very personal to me.
I was fortunate enough to spend my childhood years living in a house beside a flooded quarry that had become a small lake, with islands and inlets and huge willow trees, just like my fictitious Wormley Mere. It was my playground, my swimming pool, my boating pond, the home for my pet ducks and the rabbits that lived on the islands. It taught me to be curious about flora and fauna, and gave me a love of all living things. It was obvious that one day I would feel compelled to write about it.
Just a few miles away from there is a village with its own lake where, it was said, a fearsome dragon lived. Even the name of the village, Wormingford, suggests the connection with a dragon, which was often referred to, in early English, as a ‘worme’. In the church there is a wonderful stained-glass window showing a ‘dragon’ – which is obviously a crocodile really – with a pair of white legs waving from its mouth, being threatened by a knight on a white charger.
The creature was said to have escaped from the menagerie of an early king and found its way to the River Stour, stealing sheep and eventually demanding to be fed virgins until the supply began to run out. Desperate, the villagers turned to a local knight, Sir George of Layer de la Haye, who efficiently despatched the beast, as though his mother had named him for the task. Neighbouring villages, including Bures, also lay claim to the dragon myth.
After seeing this, I became fascinated by dragons. One of my very earliest forays into fiction, at the age of eight, was a story about the Wormingford Dragon.
That said, the rest of The Secrets of the Lake – all of the plot and all of the characters, as well as the layout of the village and the vicarage – are entirely my own invention. The stained glass was installed in 1950, through the generosity of a local woman in gratitude for the safe return of those who came back from the Second World War. It is a charming design.
My thanks to the people of Wormingford and the present church community there, for the inspiration your window gave to a young aspiring author all those years ago. And to the landowner who in the year 2000, as a millennium project, was inspired to cut out a huge dragon into the hillside just a few miles away. I visit as often as I can, delighted to see the legend still being celebrated in this way.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Massive thanks to my lovely editor Caroline Hogg and all the team at Pan Macmillan, as well as my brilliant agent Caroline Hardman of Hardman & Swainson, for their clear-eyed advice and support in helping The Secrets of the Lake make its way into the world.
As ever my family, David, Becky and Polly Trenow, have been amazingly supportive, as have other relatives and wonderful friends, without whom life would be infinitely less fun.
Praise for Liz Trenow
‘Liz Trenow sews together the strands of past and present as delicately as the exquisite stitching on the quilt which forms the centrepiece of the story’
LUCINDA RILEY
‘Extraordinary, fascinating . . . deeply rooted in history’
MIDWEEK, BBC RADIO 4
‘What a delicious read The Silk Weaver is. I was enchanted by this novel set in eighteenth-century Spitalfields; meticulously researched, richly detailed, the brilliantly structured story shimmered as the threads of silk wound through its pages. I devoured it in two days and was gripped from start to finish. The characters shine too and Anna is an absolute triumph. A fabulous book’
DINAH JEFFERIES
‘Liz Trenow draws us in so that we inhabit her world, and it was a wrench to put the book down after the last beautifully written page’
GILL PAUL
‘Totally fascinating . . . a book to savour’
KATE FURNIVALL
‘Push back the gorgeous brocade curtains of The Silk Weaver’s period detail and romance and you find a window on eighteenth-century London that, with its prejudice and divisions, is surprisingly pertinent today’
KATE RIORDAN
‘I absolutely loved The Silk Weaver. Liz writes beautifully, and I adored the characters of Anna and Henri – their love was so delicately and believably evoked. The background motifs of the silks and the floral designs, and the political/social context which made their relationship so difficult, are also brilliantly done. I really couldn’t wait to get back to it each evening’
TRACY REES
‘An assured debut with a page-turning conclusion’
Daily Express
‘A novel about the human spirit – Liz Trenow paints with able prose a picture of the prejudices that bind us and the love that sets us free . . . Splendid’
PAM JENOFF
‘An intriguing patchwork of past and present, upstairs and downstairs, hope and despair’
DAISY GOODWIN
‘The aftermath of war can be ferocious. This gentle and thoughtful story concentrates
on the positives, without ignoring the destruction and pain of an epic conflict’
Daily Mail
THE SECRETS OF THE LAKE
Liz Trenow is a former journalist who spent fifteen years working for regional and national newspapers, and BBC radio and television news, before turning her hand to fiction. The Secrets of the Lake is her eighth novel. She lives in East Anglia with her artist husband, and they have two grown-up daughters and three beautiful grandchildren.
Find out more at www.liztrenow.com, or join her on Facebook @LizTrenow or Twitter @LizTrenow.
By Liz Trenow
The Last Telegram
The Forgotten Seamstress
The Poppy Factory
The Silk Weaver
In Love and War
The Dressmaker of Draper’s Lane
Under a Wartime Sky
The Secrets of the Lake
First published 2021 by Pan Books
This electronic edition first published 2021 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR
EU representative: Macmillan Publishers Ireland Limited,
Mallard Lodge, Lansdowne Village, Dublin 4
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5290-3662-6
Copyright © Liz Trenow 2021
Cover Images: Figure © Arcangel Images, Background & reeds © Trevillion, all others © Shutterstock
The right of Liz Trenow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Illustrations by Hemesh Alles
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