Rose Campion and the Stolen Secret

by Lyn Gardner

  “The past is the past,” said Sarah. “I cannot change it. But I can make a future for myself. The loss of Edgar is unbearable, but I never really knew my son. He was taken from me when he was just a babe. Finding he had a family, finding you and my grandson, Freddie, are very great compensations. And then of course there is my great-niece, Aurora, in whom my poor dear sister lives on every day. And Edward, of course.” She sighed. “I pity my dead husband. Poor Henry. They say he died of a heart attack, but I think what little heart he had left was broken by the knowledge that he’d brought such dishonour to the only thing he truly cared about: the ancient name of Easingford.”

  Aurora, Edward, Thomas, Mr Cherryble and the new Lord Easingford’s lawyer, Mr Merryfield, pushed back their chairs in Thomas’s study and stood.

  “I think that’s the last of the papers that need to be signed for now,” declared Mr Merryfield, and he turned to Edward. “You are leaving for Easingford immediately?”

  “Within the hour,” said Edward, glancing at Aurora’s pale face. Mr Merryfield nodded. “You must be eager to see your birthright,” he said.

  Edward gave a non-committal grunt. “It will be strange seeing the place where I was born, and where I was supposed to have died.” He rose. “Aurora, my dear one, I’m sure you want to say goodbye to your friends. Gentlemen, please come downstairs with me for a drink. I’ll see you shortly, Aurora.”

  Edward and Thomas went downstairs together chatting like old friends. Thomas had already become a bit of a father figure to Edward, and Edward had insisted on giving Thomas an interest-free loan to secure Campion’s future.

  Aurora found Rose riding the bicycle up and down in the yard. Her eyes started brimming with tears. “I’ve only just found my Campion’s family,” she said, “and now I’ve got to get used to a whole new one.”

  “Edward’s lovely,” said Rose. “He reminds me so much of Ned. And Thomas really likes him.”

  “He is very nice,” said Aurora, “but I keep wondering when he will stop feeling like a stranger and start feeling like a father.”

  She looked apologetically at Rose. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I know I sound like I’m moaning. All I ever wanted was a real family and now I’ve got a ready-made one including a father, two aunts and a cousin, and yet it’s surprisingly hard to get used to. And leaving Campion’s and you and Effie and Thomas, and leaving doing our act and going to Easingford…” She trailed off.

  “You should tell Edward how you feel,” insisted Rose.

  “But I don’t want to seem ungrateful.”

  “I think a man who gave up playing Hamlet will understand,” said Rose. “And in any case I think he probably already knows.”

  They found Edward sitting alone on the middle of the stage in the empty theatre.

  “I love this stage,” he said.

  “We do too,” said Rose.

  “I can understand that,” said Edward. “I’ve only been at Campion’s a couple of weeks and already it feels like home.”Aurora burst into tears.

  “Aurora!” said Edward, jumping up and putting his arm around her. “Please don’t cry. Listen, let’s go to Easingford and take a look. And maybe Thomas will let us take Rose with us for a little holiday. And if it doesn’t feel like home – well then, we’ll come straight back here again. We can settle Sarah, Grace and Freddie in Yorkshire if that’s what they all want, but there’s no reason why you and I have to live at Easingford. If you want to come back to Campion’s, I won’t stop you. I promise.”

  “Do you really mean that?” asked Aurora.

  “I’d never lie to you, Aurora; there have been too many lies in the past.”

  Edward looked at Rose. “Will you come with us for a week or two? If Thomas doesn’t mind?”

  “I’ll be delighted to see the back of her for a bit,” grinned Thomas, walking on to the stage to join them. “You’d better go and pack, Rosie, if you really are quite sure you want to go to the country. I went there once and it was horrible. Full of cows and sheep and so dark at night I thought I’d gone blind.”

  Rose and Aurora giggled. “They say that in the country when there are no clouds you can see all the stars in the night sky,” said Rose.

  “You can see stars every night of the week at Campion’s Palace of Varieties and Wonders, clouds or no clouds,” replied Thomas tartly. “You don’t have to go all the way to the ruddy country.”

  They all burst out laughing. Rose stood for a moment on the stage after the others had left to gather their belongings. She suddenly sensed movement in the gallery. She looked up and saw a ghostly figure. It was Ned. But he was much more insubstantial than he had been on previous sightings. He looked at her, smiled, mouthed the words, “Thank you” and disappeared. Rose knew she wouldn’t see him again.

  The carriage rumbles along muddy, rutted Hangman’s Alley. Just before they turn the corner, Rose and Aurora both lean out of the window to get one last glimpse of Campion’s and of Thomas, Effie, Lottie, Molly, Jem and all the others, including O’Leary, who are standing outside waving goodbye. Rose knows she will hold the image of their wild, smiling, happy faces in her heart for the entire journey to Yorkshire. The carriage heads off alongside the silvery Thames. There is no fog today. The great river shimmers in the sunlight under an apricot sky. The mudlarks see Rose and Aurora through the open window and chase after the carriage, shouting. Rose takes Aurora’s hand and squeezes it hard. As they clatter onward, Rose puts her head out of the carriage window to listen to the hum of London. The city and Campion’s sing to her, a siren song calling her back.

  Copyright

  For Hector L.G.

  ROSE CAMPION AND THE STOLEN SECRET

  First published in the UK in 2016 by Nosy Crow Ltd

  The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street

  London, SE1 1QR, UK

  This ebook edition first published 2016

  Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and / or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd

  Text © Lyn Gardner, 2016

  Cover and inside illustrations © Júlia Sardà, 2016

  The rights of Lyn Gardner and Júlia Sardà to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblence to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978 0 85763 487 0

  www.nosycrow.com

  Look out for the first title in

  Lyn Gardner’s series:

  Turn the page for a sneak peek!

  Olivia Marvell stood on the pavement in the pouring London rain. She screwed up her eyes as she lifted her face to the sky and the rain lashed down so hard it was like hundreds of tiny pinpricks. Olivia sighed. Even the weather had a grudge against her. She glanced at her dad, Jack, who since they had left the Tube station had been wrestling with an umbrella that kept being caught by the wind and turning itself inside out. The umbrella was clearly going to win. Jack looked as cold, wet and miserable on the outside as Olivia felt inside. She shivered. She hated London already; she had only been here for a few hours, and longed for the Italian late-summer sunshine that made you want to arch your back and stretch like a cat.

  In one hand Olivia held a battered, bulging suitcase out of which poked a sodden, slightly muddy pyjama l
eg and the end of a thick wire; in the other she was holding the hand of Eel, her little sister. Eel hadn’t been christened Eel, of course, but had acquired the nickname soon after birth because she was such a wriggly little thing, never still for a minute. She was jiggling around now, pulling on Olivia’s hand, but Olivia only held on tighter.

  “Cut it out, Eel! Anyone would think you were seven months old, not seven years,” said Olivia irritably.

  A few passers-by eyed them curiously, and one smartly dressed woman crossed over the road as if to avoid the raggle-taggle group.

  “Bet she thinks that we’re going to beg for money or mug her,” muttered Olivia fiercely.

  “You can’t blame her,” said Eel sadly, shaking her chestnut curls like a dog and spraying Olivia’s face with more water. “We look rubbish. We probably pong too,” she said, sniffing herself like a bloodhound. She was wrong about that, but they did look a mess. Olivia’s hair was stuck damply to her face while Eel had a big smudge on her forehead and her skirt was torn after an unfortunate encounter with the ticket barriers at the Tube station. Eel had never seen ticket barriers before and had decided she never wanted to see them again. They had appeared determined to gobble her up.

  “Come on, girls,” said Jack, abandoning his tussle with the umbrella. “We’ll be soaked through if we stand here any longer. Let’s just walk fast. It’s not very far.” They set off at a brisk pace, even though it made Jack limp badly, and as they turned the corner of the street, an imposing red-brick building came into view. At the front of the building a sign written in large black letters declared “The Swan Academy of Theatre and Dance”. In smaller letters below it said “An academic and performing arts education for talented children aged 7–16”. Underneath that was written in italics: “Proprietor: Alicia Swan”.

  “Here we are,” said Jack, coming to a halt opposite the building and dragging them into a shop doorway for shelter.

  Olivia’s mouth fell open as she read the sign, and then she turned to her father and said accusingly, “It’s a stage school. You said that we were going to stay with our grandmother and go to her school. You didn’t tell us that she runs a stage school.” Olivia spat out the words “stage school” as if they had a nasty taste.

  Jack looked like a small boy who had just been caught with his fingers in the sweet jar. “Didn’t I? I must have forgotten to mention it.”

  Olivia glared at him. “But you’ve always said that you hate all that fake theatre stuff, and so do we.”

  “Not me,” piped up Eel. “I’ve always wanted to learn to dance but we’ve never stayed anywhere long enough to have lessons.” She tried to do a little twirl and got tangled up with Olivia, who was still gripping her hand. “I’ll be a great dancer. The bestest.”

  “You can’t say bestest,” said Olivia witheringly.

  “I can if I want,” said Eel, but she looked as if she might cry.

  “I’m sure you’ll be a fantastic dancer,” said Jack soothingly, but Olivia detected a note of false cheerfulness in his tone.

  “But what about me?” demanded Olivia. “I can’t dance and I won’t dance, and I don’t want to go to stage school either. I want to stay with you and carry on walking the high-wire.I’m a circus artist, not a stage-school brat.”

  Jack looked at his elder daughter, at her determined mouth and flashing eyes, and for a moment thought that his beloved wife, Toni, had suddenly come back to life. He shook his head sadly before swallowing hard and declaring a little too heartily, “Well, there is a choice. It’s stage school or the orphanage run by a wicked old witch who eats children for breakfast.”

  “Well, I vote for stage school,” said Eel, hopping from one leg to another, “and Livy will have to come too because she’s superglued herself to me and is holding my hand so hard it hurts.”

  “That’s because you can’t be trusted!” said Olivia, the words exploding out of her mouth like a stuck cork suddenly released from the neck of a bottle. “It’s all your fault that we’re in this situation. If you hadn’t…” She tailed off as she saw Eel and Jack’s faces, white with shock. Olivia’s anger evaporated as quickly as it had materialised and she burst into loud, guilty tears.

  “Oh Eel, I didn’t mean it! I’m really, really sorry,” she sobbed. “I know it was an accident. It’s just everything feels so miserable, and I’m tired of pretending everything is all right when it’s not.”

  Eel hugged her and said tearfully, “It’s OK, Livy. But we’ve got to make the best of things.” She moved her head close to Olivia’s and whispered, “We’ve got to be as brave as llamas and very cheerful. For Dad’s sake, cos he hardly ever smiles now.”

  “I think you mean lions, Eel. Llamas probably aren’t that brave. But you’re right, Dad is so sad and defeated all the time.” And, as if somebody had turned on a hosepipe, Olivia’s tears started flowing again.

  “He looks just like my teddy bear looked after he accidentally got put in the washing machine on an extra-hot wash,” replied Eel sadly. “If it was an accident,” she added ominously.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” said Jack firmly. “We’ve just had some bad luck, my lovelies, but our luck will change.”

  “Look,” said Eel, sniffing and pointing at the sky, “it’s changing already. It’s stopped raining and the sun has come out. I might even dry out if Livy would only stop crying all over me.” Olivia gave a wan smile and hiccupped…