by Winona Kent
It seemed, to Charlie, that Augustus was gone only a matter of moments, before he was back. But then, she realized, she must have been asleep—or had lost consciousness.
Lying in Mary’s little bed, hugging the clay container that Sarah had brought up, filled with hot water from the pot over the fire, she listened to Sarah, talking to Augustus, their voices echoing in the kitchen below.
And then she heard Sarah’s footsteps as she made her way up the stairs. And her knock upon the bedroom door, followed by her entry, carrying a cup of hot tea.
“I have stirred a few drops of the tincture into this with a little sugar and milk,” she advised, helping Charlie to sit up. “The sweetness will take away the bitter taste.”
Charlie sipped from the cup.
“I hope Monsieur Duran did not meet with any disagreement from his son,” she said. “Will you thank him for his kindness?”
“He was able to visit the manor undetected. I will convey your thanks.”
Sarah paused.
“My dear, you are very pale.”
“Perhaps if you opened the window a little, the fresh air would help revive me.”
Sarah did so, admitting a warm afternoon breeze, and the trilling of a pair of robins in the apple tree below.
“I will come back in a little while to ensure that the laudanum has had the desired effect,” she promised. “You must try to rest.”
Charlie slid down beneath the covers again, to wait for the opium tincture to do its work.
And it seemed that this happened very quickly indeed.
Her mind lapsed into a kind of drifting consciousness, where she was neither here nor there, but she was aware, nonetheless, of the lessening of the grip that the pain had on her body.
She was aware, too, of a distant knocking, downstairs and far away. The kitchen door. And voices. Augustus…and who…?
He was familiar-sounding.
Mr. Rankin?
The voices continued through the house, and emerged in the back garden as the gentlemen stood beneath the open bedroom window.
“I thank you for agreeing to see me, Monsieur Duran. I have done something which you may judge me harshly for. But I must declare, in my defense, that I have acted only out of concern for Mr. Deeley, who is my friend. And who I believe now, more than ever, to have been wrongly accused of setting last night’s fire at the inn.”
There was a moment of silence.
And then: “This morning, before the sun was up, I was standing at the scullery sink, washing away the soot from the fire. The lesser Monsieur Duran entered the house from the kitchen garden. He did not see me. But I observed him, and watched as he opened the door to Mr. Deeley’s room. What he did whilst inside the room, I cannot honestly say. Only that after he departed, some minutes later, I found the piece of paper you now hold in Mr. Deeley’s wardrobe drawer, unconcealed, and placed in such a manner as to be easily discovered.”
“What is it?” Augustus asked.
“It is a deed, sir. Concerning, firstly, a piece of property which now comprises the Village Green, and secondly, the property at the end of what is known as The Poorhouse. It was most lately in the possession of Mr. Ferryman, the proprietor of The Dog’s Watch Inn. He had posted it on his wall.”
In the additional seconds of silence that followed, Charlie crawled from the bed and stood, unsteadily, at the open window. She was able, unseen, to look out and down, at the tops of the heads of the two gentlemen below, and at the bloodstained parchment that Augustus was holding in his hands.
“You were wise to remove it,” he judged. “And you have shared this knowledge with no one else?”
“Not a soul,” said Mr. Rankin.
“Then let this remain between us alone. Will you take this document back into your safekeeping?”
“I will not, sir. Your son’s sense of rancor knows no bounds, and I would not wish it to be discovered upon my person. You may keep it. It is my fond hope that you may somehow use it to secure the freedom of Mr. Deeley. If I am called upon to give an account of what I have seen, I will step forward and speak with honesty.”
“I will think on this,” Augustus promised.
He folded the paper, and tucked it inside his shirt.
“Although given the politics I have thus far observed, I suspect I may be required to invoke a more immediate solution to Mr. Deeley’s unfortunate circumstances. Will you gather together two or three of his most trusted friends, and meet me shortly at a location which is mutually acceptable and discrete?”
“I know of such a place,” said Mr. Rankin. “A hayfield, in the corner of Beckford Farm, not far from this village. It is surrounded by hedges and affords a tolerable degree of privacy.”
“Then we will adjourn there in one hour’s time,” Augustus decided. “Again, I thank you for your actions. Until then, Mr. Rankin.”
Chapter 33
“My dear!” Sarah exclaimed, as Charlie appeared on the stairs. “You are improved?”
“A little,” Charlie answered.
It was the truth. The pain was much less, but her words seemed very distant, as if she was speaking through a nearly transparent tissue. Some of it, she was certain, was due to the poison from her inflamed appendix. And much of the rest was because of the laudanum. But there was something else…an unworldliness that she was unfamiliar with, a feeling of not being quite present, not being quite there.
Most peculiar.
She looked at the clock. Three hours had passed. It was four o’clock. Eight hours until midnight, and the appointment she was meant to keep here, in the sitting room, with Nick.
In the chair beside the fireplace, Augustus was sewing a button onto Jack’s shirt.
“Do keep still, sir,” he said, “or my needle may land most inopportunely upon your person.”
He looked up at Charlie, who lingered on the staircase.
“Your sleep has benefited you,” he judged. “Will you join us? There is a little honey cake left over in the kitchen.”
He cut his sewing thread with a pair of scissors borrowed from Sarah’s hussif.
“There you are, sir. I recommend you master this skill as soon as you are able. I myself have sewn all of the buttons on all of my waistcoats twice over.”
Jack, who appeared to be rather more aware than Augustus of the inopportune places upon his body where the needle had landed, removed himself without comment.
Augustus tucked the needle, thread and scissors back into Sarah’s carrying case.
“Monsieur Duran,” Charlie said. “Will you come into the garden with me? There is a matter I wish to discuss with you.”
The patch of grass in the shade of the obliging apple tree, beneath Mary’s bedroom window, was the most comfortable spot for a conversation, and so it was there that Charlie and her great ancestor repaired.
“Monsieur Duran,” she began. “I spoke to you earlier about my origins. Where I have come from.”
“Indeed,” Augustus agreed. “And although the knowledge you imparted was both surprising and, I confess, not a little confusing, I have no trouble whatsoever believing what you say.”
“Thank you,” Charlie said. “This gives me great relief. But there is something more. In my future, two pieces of land are under threat of redevelopment. The Village Green. And a property at the end of Poorhouse Lane.”
“Ah,” Augustus said. “These very same subjects have recently been discussed by Mr. Rankin and myself.”
“I confess,” said Charlie. “I overheard your discussion. And that is why I am speaking with you now. If, in the future, the plans for development succeed, they will tear out the heart and soul of this village.”
She paused.
“Mr. Rankin gave you a piece of paper which he had removed from Mr. Deeley’s room.”
Augustus reached inside his shirt, with withdrew the folded deed.
“This piece of paper?” he inquired, offering it to her, so that she could see it properly.
&nb
sp; Charlie unfolded it, carefully, as it was very old and fragile.
“This is the same document I saw posted on the wall at The Dog’s Watch,” she confirmed. “And I do not believe it was Mr. Deeley who removed it. I believe it was your son. Who took it from the wall, then set the fire which implicated Mr. Deeley. And then he placed the deed in Mr. Deeley’s wardrobe to cast further guilt upon him, to ensure a conviction of theft as well as arson.”
“This goes without saying,” Augustus agreed. “Although whether Mr. Rankin’s testimony would be enough to save Mr. Deeley’s neck is debatable.”
“He will not hang,” Charlie replied. “I know what is written in our historical documents. There will be no trial.”
She paused again. The laudanum was making it very difficult for her not to cry.
“The village surgeon will declare him insane,” she said, sadly, “and he will be sent away to an asylum. For the remainder of his life.”
“And this outcome cannot be changed?” Augustus asked, his face clearly troubled.
“I wish it could be so,” Charlie said. “But if, in the future, the outcome has been recorded, then I believe these events in the past which have caused it to happen cannot be altered at all. Unless we wish for chaos to ensue.”
Augustus pondered this for a moment.
“I must admit,” he said, “this supposition plays havoc with my simple understanding. It is indeed a conundrum. However, I will think further upon it. I have already set a plan in place which will, if all goes well, release Mr. Deeley from his prison this night. I will have a horse waiting. And he will have safe and swift passage to France.”
Charlie looked at him.
“Then our history books will be wrong.”
“It would not be the first time, surely.”
“It would not,” Charlie said, slowly. “For what is the consequence otherwise? Mr. Deeley is delivered to Bedlam and forgotten for all of time.”
“Yet whether he spends the remainder of his days in Bedlam, or in France, he will not alter the future of Stoneford.”
“He will not,” Charlie agreed.
It did make sense to her.
She very badly wanted Nick to weigh in on the argument. What would he likely say? What would happen if Mr. Deeley went to France and ended up leading another revolution. What would the history books have to say about that, then?
Charlie shook the thought away. It was too complicated for her mind to work out.
She would have to put her trust in The Fool from the Tarot card, which she had tucked into her bodice, next to her phone.
“And what of this deed?” Augustus inquired. “In your future, who owns the land it describes?”
“Ron and Reg Ferryman. Two brothers who are direct descendants of Lemuel Ferryman. But their ownership has always been in question. The two properties originally belonged to an ancestor of Mrs. Foster. Here, you can see. John Harding.”
She showed him the name.
“When Mrs. Foster married Mr. Foster, her land became his. But he lost the deed to pay off a gambling debt. Mr. Ferryman came by this paper illicitly, but he will never admit to the circumstances. And in my future, this deed was believed destroyed by the fire at The Dog’s Watch Inn. So there has never been any proof of ownership. For anyone.”
“Then here,” Augustus concluded, “must be one more instance of the past and future standing at odds with one another. For as you can plainly see, this deed is not destroyed.”
“But if my future is to remain unchanged,” Charlie said, slowly, “then this deed must not exist. Because the end result must always be that Ron and Reg Ferryman believe the properties belong to them.”
She looked at Augustus, hopelessly.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You have told me,” said Augustus, “that you must return home, very soon, to seek a cure for your physical ailment. Might you not take this paper with you? No history will be changed. The document was merely misplaced over the centuries, not lost. And now it will be found. And the wrong will be made right. By you.”
Charlie didn’t say anything.
“You are perhaps having some second thoughts?” Augustus guessed.
“I cannot bear the thought of abandoning Mr. Deeley,” Charlie said. “I had halfway made up my mind to stay with him, here, until he was taken to London. And whatever was to become of me, and my illness…”
Her voice trailed off. She would die. The pain of a burst appendix would be lessened by the tincture of opium that Augustus had provided. But the poison would still take over her body, and she would be dead before Mr. Deeley was ever removed to Bedlam.
It was a detail she would spare Augustus from hearing.
“But just now, Monsieur Duran, you have offered me a new hope. If your plan is successful, and Mr. Deeley is able to escape to France…then I would wish only to go with him, and spend the rest of my life in his company. Will you help?”
“There is nothing more majestic than the constancy of true love,” Augustus replied. “Of course I will help. But what of the Village Green and this other property? Do you not wish to ensure their security for the future?”
Charlie glanced back at the cottage. The sitting room window sill, which overlooked the garden, had been decorated by Mary with a collection of glass bottles, all handmade and all quite exquisitely beautiful. Some held bunches of dried flowers. Others were filled with tiny shells and pebbles from the beach. One was empty, awaiting its treasure.
There was a way.
Of course.
“There,” Charlie said.
Carefully, she folded the deed, then bent it down through the narrow neck of the glass bottle. She stoppered the bottle, tightly, then sealed the opening with a dribble of wax from the lit candle she had thought, at the last minute, to bring with her.
“That’s got to last two hundred years.”
She placed the bottle in the hiding spot Augustus had dug out between two gnarled roots of the old Village Oak, using the spade from the kitchen fire that was more usually employed to remove ashes and embers.
“The deed is done,” Augustus pronounced, filling in the hole again. He stepped the mound of earth down with his boot, and replaced the bits of turf, so that it was indistinguishable from the ground around the remaining roots.
“Thank you,” Charlie said.
She took out her cell phone, and switched it on. 34%.
Enough to let Nick know that she’d got his message. And where to look for the buried bottle, and to tell him what it contained. The wrong, at last, made right.
Proof that the properties belonged to her family. Instructions for him to sort it all out.
A message of thanks. For finding a way to bring her back. For everything. And to advise him that she would not, after all, be waiting in Sarah’s sitting room at midnight. She had decided to stay here, in 1825.
Try and remember to put a fresh flowering geranium on Jeff’s grave every few weeks…
And goodbye, Nick. Goodbye. God bless. And goodbye.
She touched Send, and watched as it went.
“Mrs. Collins,” Augustus said. “I find I am now in need of your assistance. Will you explain your device’s workings to me, in preparation for tonight’s events?”
Chapter 34
It was nearly six o’clock and the early evening protests around the Village Oak had taken on a brand new cause.
Nick detected a rising anger, a backlash aimed directly at Ron Ferryman, for the criminal act of striking down old Emmy Cooper with his car.
Just inside the low stone wall on the green’s west side, Jack and Kirsty Parker were raising money to help Emmy with her rent, inviting people to drop coins and notes into a jar with a slotted lid. When she was released from the hospital, they planned on presenting her with the takings, and then, petitioning the Parish Council to house her somewhere so she would have help in her day-to-day living. Regardless of what her own views were on the matter.
Near
by, the McDonald family had hung a large white bedsheet over the wall, and were encouraging everyone to add their Get Well Soon wishes to it with coloured marking pens.
Nobody seemed to have any idea where Ron Ferryman had disappeared to. Least of all PC Smith from the Stoneford Constabulary, who was signing his name to the bedsheet as Nick arrived.
“Most likely in hiding with his lawyer,” Nick supposed. “If he hasn’t already relocated to the Canary Islands.”
“I suspect we’ll find him somewhere closer to home,” Kevin replied. “We’re just waiting for an update from the hospital before we officially lay charges.”
“You said that with a certain amount of satisfaction, Kev.”
“Did I…?” Kevin replaced the cap on the marker, and handed it back to Susan McDonald. “Dear me. I must try to be more circumspect in the future.”
Nick wandered across to the oak, where someone, presumably Reg Ferryman, had posted a notice on a large stand-up board about The Dog’s Watch Bottle Auction at 9pm that night. And someone else, presumably one of the tree protectors, had crossed out “Watch” and written “Breakfast” in its place. And someone else had written All proceeds to benefit The Teach Hedgehogs to Eat Ron Ferryman Foundation.
Nick smiled.
His sense of humour needed a boost.
He’d spent far too many hours in front of his computer, trying to second guess everything that could possibly go wrong with his plan to bring Charlie home at midnight.
For instance, what if he activated the two viruses, and what he thought would be the correct sequence of events turned out to be horribly wrong? And nothing happened. Or worse…Charlie and Mrs. Collins were transported somewhere else? Or to a nether world between then and now, and never completely returned, but rendered into ghosts of themselves, lost and forever-wandering disambiguations?
Horrendous thought.
He switched on his mobile.
Final instructions for Charlie.
There was an incoming text.
Nick read the message.
Twice.
Three times.
