The Little Shop of Found Things--A Novel

by Paula Brackston

  Xanthe would have found it difficult to disagree. It felt as if the whole of England was spread out before her. As far as she could see in any direction the fields and hills rolled away, a hundred shades of green and gold. Small clusters of trees punctuated the swaths of grass and crops. To one side there were wide fields dotted with plump sheep. Far below she could make out tractors working to cut and turn more hay. There weren’t many houses save for the occasional farm or hamlet of cottages, with, at the limit of the view, the rooftops of Marlborough just visible. Above it all was the wide, wide sky, powder blue with wisps of cotton-white cloud whipped into feathery shapes by the summer wind. And there, to her right, on the facing hill, was the most magnificent chalk horse she had yet seen. It was hard to judge its size precisely, but she guessed it to be at least sixty feet long. There was something timeless and powerful about its simplicity and the way it seemed to stand sentinel, proud and fearless, over the landscape around it.

  “He’s quite something, isn’t he?” Liam said, nodding at the horse. “I like to come up here and clear my head. Take in the view and spend some time in his company. Don’t want to sound like Harley and his ley lines, but, well, the old horse has a powerful presence, don’t you think?”

  She nodded. “He does. I never expected this place to be so filled with things that can’t properly be explained. To be honest, I feel like I’ve moved to a whole new world. And it’s a pretty darn mysterious one. Particularly our new home.”

  He looked at her. “Old man Morris still hanging around the shop, is he?”

  “As a ghost, you mean?” She shook her head, dismissing the idea along with a chill that came with the memory of whatever it was that lingered in the blind house. “No, not a ghost. Not that.”

  “But … something?”

  The warm breeze kicked up a miniature whirlwind at their feet, whisking dust and leaves into a brief flurry. Xanthe found she was avoiding Liam’s gaze. It was a complicated subject to tackle without feeling at least in the smallest measure insane. She pushed her messy hair out of her face and attempted a nonchalant tone. “Do you know of any stories about a local girl, someone who lived here, oh, I don’t know, maybe a couple of hundred years ago? Someone who might have been accused of something and locked up in a jail in the area, possibly even the one in our garden?”

  “Not that I can think of. Have you asked Harley?”

  “Not yet. I don’t have anything much to go on, really. Just a feeling. And a … dream. Something about that jail connects to a piece of silver I bought at the auction, and to this girl, only I don’t know how.”

  “Wow. Sounds like you’ve had a lot going on in the short time you’ve been here.”

  She shrugged, feeling suddenly foolish. “It’s probably nothing. They say moving to a new house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Then there’s the business to set up, and Mum’s not been great lately.”

  “Did she have an accident?” he asked.

  “It’s arthritis,” she explained. “She gets her days. Sometimes she overdoes things and then pays the price.”

  “It must be hard for you too, having to be the one to look after her.”

  “Trust me, most of the time it’s the other way around.”

  “If you say so,” he said in a way that suggested he did not entirely believe that this was an accurate description of the way things were. Perhaps he was right. He was quick on the uptake, having already sensed there was something she was trying, and largely failing, to talk about. That it was something beyond the normal getting-to-know-you pleasantries and small talk. But how could she tell him she had traveled back through time? What kind of a lunatic would she sound like? She did not know him well enough for that manner of confidence. She was simply going to have to fathom things out by herself.

  She put on her brightest smile. “Thank you, for bringing me here, for showing me this. It is wonderful. I can see I’ll be coming here whenever I need a bit of time out, a bit of a breather. But, well, there’s a room waiting to be painted.…”

  “Say no more.” He rubbed his hands together in a show of eagerness for the job. “A deal is a deal. Let’s get at those brushes and rollers, and we’ll have the job done in good time for a pie and a pint at The Feathers.”

  “The pub two nights running? What kind of wild living goes on around here?” she smiled.

  “Maybe Harley can book you up for a gig. I’d like to hear you sing.”

  Xanthe suddenly felt the weight of her own past catching up with her as she turned to go. “Oh, I think I’ve got enough to do right now without singing, don’t you?” She tried to keep her voice light but knew there was a note in it that more than likely gave something away, particularly as Liam had turned out to be a good deal more perceptive than most people. Even so, he did not question her further, and they walked back to the cab in an easy silence. He could not have known that as soon as they headed for home Xanthe’s mind was focused once more on what she had experienced the night before. She knew about the ley lines now, but beyond that she was still at a loss to work out what she was being shown in the jail. Still she did not know who the terrified girl was. All she did know, beyond any doubt, was that she had not succeeded in helping the girl. And that the only way she might do so was to return to the blind house, to allow the girl to connect with her again. Xanthe also knew that this meant risking being taken back in time as she had been before. The thought terrified her. What if she was in danger there, where nobody knew her and nobody would come to her aid? What if she was not able to return to the present? If she had so little control over what happened to her when she stepped inside the jail, how could she be sure she would come back? It was a truly dreadful thing to face. In trying to help the desperate girl who was reaching out to her across time, she might became lost, cut off forever from home, from her own time, from her mother. Never able to return. She shook her head at the thought of it. Never was simply too enormous a thing to contemplate. She could not risk it. Not for herself and especially not for Flora. However much she wanted to help, she had to stay away, stay out of the jail, turn her back on the poor girl. She had no real choice in the matter.

  Xanthe could not have known that at the very moment she was coming to this conclusion, Margaret Merton was standing in the garden, waiting. Waiting for her. For Margaret knew enough of the workings of young women, of the frailties of the human spirit, of the many conflicting demands life could make upon a person. She had seen the fear in Xanthe’s eyes. She would not be surprised by the girl’s reluctance to revisit the blind house. She had anticipated such a reaction. Anticipated it, considered it, and arrived at a manner in which to overcome it. For Xanthe was her daughter’s only chance of deliverance, and for this salvation to come about, the girl must return to the blind house. And, however reluctantly, she must also return to the past.

  7

  True to his word, Liam helped Xanthe paint the shop. They applied a coat of emulsion in no time at all and even succeeded in glossing the woodwork. He offered to come back the next day to finish the task, but Xanthe told him she could manage. It had been agreeable having his company, having his help. It surprised her that she liked it, indeed, but she had no wish to become beholden to him. Nor did she want him entertaining ideas that she might be interested in him. Which was why she also turned down his suggestion of supper at The Feathers. Later, when she and Flora sat down to pasta, garlic bread, and locally made pesto that Flora had bought in the market, she found herself reluctant to talk about her trip out.

  “It was nice,” Xanthe said, tearing off some garlic bread.

  “Nice? Is that all I’m going to get out of you?”

  “Liam knows a load of stuff about the area. He made a good guide. And it did me good to get out in the fresh air and blow away the cobwebs. Better?”

  Flora ate thoughtfully for a moment. Xanthe could see she was considering talking about all manner of things she herself would sooner avoid, so she attempted to turn her attention
back to the business.

  “The shop’s shaping up, don’t you think? Have you decided on an opening date yet?”

  “Well, there’s still a mountain of stock to be prepared. I don’t want us to rush it and let people see us before we are at our best. But—” she paused to take a swig of bottled beer “—we do need to be selling stuff as soon as we possibly can.”

  “So, two weeks’ time, d’you reckon?”

  “Before the August bank holiday and all those lovely tourists and holiday makers desperate to spend money? Would be ideal. It’s possible, if we push on with everything. Time to get adverts in the local paper, put up some fliers.”

  “Book the mayor to cut a ribbon?” Xanthe teased.

  “Very funny. Think we’ll just go with offering an opening day discount. Maybe we could get cakes from across the road, too.”

  Xanthe agreed she would ask Gerri and sent her mother to bed dreaming of the perfect launch event for her new baby. Because it was her passion, in truth. While Xanthe was happy to be a part of it, and considered herself lucky to be given the opportunity with her own life and plans in such a state of disintegration, the shop would always be Flora’s. She was glad that her mother had something on which to pin her hopes. Something other than her father. Something more than just Xanthe herself.

  Once the house was dark and quiet Xanthe sat on her bed and began examining the chatelaine again. She turned it over in her hands, letting its warmth throb into her fingers, paying no heed to the buzzing noise it set up in her head. It was, she was certain, only a part of the puzzle, and, surprisingly, the less frightening part. It was the stone building that had tipped her from the present and sent her tumbling into the past, even if it had done so because of the chatelaine. Laying the intricate silver piece on her lap, Xanthe snatched up her sketchbook, not for drawings this time, but for notes. Perhaps setting things down plainly on paper would make them less ludicrous and more manageable. Firstly, the stone shed was, according to definitions of the things in the slim volume she had found entitled Historic Buildings of Wiltshire, definitely an old jail. It seemed strange to her at first that it had lain undiscovered for so long. Even an enthusiast such as Harley did not know of its existence. Then, after more reading, she came across a photograph of Marlborough’s famously wide high street, taken in 1910, and there was another little jail, right in the middle of it. At some point, this second blind house had been built and was used more and more until the first one fell into disrepair and had become forgotten.

  Then there were the ley lines. There were two that intersected in the garden, at the precise spot where the jail stood. Had the person who chose the site for it known about these mysterious things? It seemed possible, though she was still uncertain as to when precisely the jail had been built, let alone by whom. If wisdom on the subject of these curious lines was to be believed, such a convergence meant a tremendously powerful location.

  The chatelaine was an important factor in what had happened to her, but it was proving a difficult piece of the puzzle to understand. More difficult than it should be. After all, antiques were the thing Xanthe felt she knew something about. If she was unable to solve all of the silver piece’s mysteries, what hope did she have with the rest of it? The auctioneer had described the silver as Victorian, with some parts thought to be earlier. In fact, she was certain the most significant part of it was at least a century older, if not more. The clasp and some of the chains were definitely from an earlier century. The weight of the silver, its luster, the way the carvings were worked, all pointed to an era of slower, simpler craftsmanship than the Victorian parts of it. And besides, whenever it was she had visited in the past, whenever the story had its origins, it wasn’t nineteenth century, of this much she was certain. The carriage and the way the girl was dressed, even the way she wore her hair, and the landscape itself all pointed to a much earlier time in English history. There were no fences or hedges, so it could have been before the time when people started farming in fields. That was an easy fact to fix in time, something that could be investigated and pinpointed. But plain clothes, with a pinafore like that, and few buttons or decorations? That was far trickier. A servant girl, probably, and a county one, but her clothes could have been anything from mid-fifteenth century to late eighteenth. Xanthe had barely had more than a glimpse of what the girl was wearing, after all.

  If she was going to get anywhere with discovering her story, with helping her in any way she could, she knew that she would have to at least make herself receptive to another vision. She needed to see more of the girl, of where she was, and when she was! She still had so little to go on. On top of that, she had no idea how the girl thought that she could actually, practically, do anything to help her. Xanthe failed to see how she could have any influence over something that had happened centuries ago. She rubbed her temples against a burgeoning headache. If only she could see her, hear her, talk to her, without risking traveling back in time. Might there be a way to use the blind house safely? To use it to communicate with the girl without ever leaving her own time? She was a long way from having answers to those sorts of questions. Nothing felt as if it were under her control. She knew that taking the chatelaine into the jailhouse was what had triggered her traveling, but the thing itself had not made the journey with her. She had not been holding it when she arrived on that muddy road in the path of those galloping horses. Would it help if she wore it, perhaps? Would that keep her somehow anchored to the present?

  And then there was the menacing presence she had felt inside the jail. What did that have to do with the girl? Was it dangerous to herself or to the girl? Were the two things even connected?

  “Xanthe Westlake,” she muttered aloud, “what are you getting yourself into?”

  Downstairs, one of Mr. Morris’s several ormolu clocks struck twelve. She made her decision and got to her feet, unwrapping the beautiful treasure from its paper. This time she clipped the clasp onto the waistband of her jeans. The chains hung down her leg, the attachments swinging a little as she moved. It looked incongruous, having been designed to sit upon full skirts, so that the buttonhook, notebook, scent bottle, and purse would not have swung to and fro quite so much, but would have sat more comfortably. Before she had time to lose her nerve, Xanthe hurried downstairs again.

  Outside the night was cloudy for the first time since they had moved in, so that she fumbled her way across the garden, wishing she had taken a moment to fetch a flashlight. At the door of the jail she hesitated. The chatelaine was singing louder than ever, and now she could hear a chorus of whispers. The breathy voices were many and muffled, but she was certain they were urging her on, pressing her to step over the threshold. She took hold of the iron ring that was the door handle and pulled hard, preferring to have the door as fully open as possible. That way, perhaps, she might be able to talk to the girl, or experience another vision, without having to step into the jail itself. The enormity of what might happen if she took that extra step struck her anew. To truly leave her own time and journey into the past, it was both astonishing and terrifying. She put her hand on the warm, worn wood of the door, trying to let in more light, but the cloudy night was unhelpfully gloomy, the moon too shy to show its face.

  “Hello?” The tremor in her own voice did nothing to steady her nerves. She was too frightened to feel ridiculous about talking to herself, so she tried again. “Hello? Can you hear me? I’m here. I’m listening. What is it you want to tell me?”

  Inside the jail, standing in the darkness, Margaret Merton willed Xanthe to move forward further, just a little further. It would be so much easier, so much better for all concerned, if the girl were to go to Alice’s aid all of her own accord. A willing savior must surely have the best chance of success.

  Xanthe, squinting into the gloom of the interior, didn’t know what it was she expected to see. She half-wished there to be nothing, no sound, no vision, so that she could tell herself she tried but got nowhere. Still, guilt and curiosity, combine
d with a desire not to fail, caused her to lean in through the doorway.

  And then, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she did see something. She could make out a figure, shadowy but definite. But it was the form of a woman, not a girl, and Xanthe knew at once that this was not who had called her, not the one she had glimpsed running, not the girl who had pressed her hand and face to the carriage window pleading for help. This was somebody altogether different. In this woman she had found the source of the sense of dread and menace that had so overpowered her once before. Here was the very center of that threat, of that danger. Xanthe was torn between wanting to flee and being too frightened to move. Her left palm was still against the door, and for a moment she contemplated grabbing at the handle and heaving the thing shut. But what would be the point? She knew with unshakeable certainty that whoever, whatever it was that stood before her could not be kept anywhere by something so basic, so simple, so earthbound as a heavy wooden door.

  “Who are you?” she found herself asking. “What do you want?”

  As she watched, transfixed, the figure took a step toward her. And then another. At last the distance between them was less than a stride. As the woman moved from the dark of the interior to the thinner cover of the urban night that washed over the garden, she was revealed in more than sufficient detail to cause Xanthe to gasp. Her age was hard to define with any degree of accuracy, partly because of the lack of light, and not least because one side of her face was badly disfigured, the skin taut with scar tissue. Her throat also bore a broad scar, the skin raised and puckered around it. She wore a plain, ankle-length woolen dress beneath a filthy white pinafore, both of which were ragged at the hem. Her cotton mob cap was tattered and stained and not equal to the task of containing her coarse hair, which hung in gray hanks about her face. As if conscious of her appearance, the woman pushed at the hair and tugged at the cap, ineffectually attempting to neaten and tidy herself. When the apparition opened her mouth to speak, Xanthe held her breath.