She slipped into bed, pulled up the sheets, and patted the mattress beside her. He sat.
“Andrew?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes. I do.”
“That's what you were trying to tell me on Dunn Street that night I ran away, isn't it?”
“Yes. Although, honestly, I'm not sure I really knew it then.”
“I didn't know it then, either—well, maybe I did but couldn't deal with it.”
Andrew leaned down and kissed her.
“I know I love you, too, Andrew … but sweetie, it scares me to death,” she said.
“I know it does. We can take this slowly. I don't want you ever to be afraid again.”
Nicola sat up, the coverlet sliding to her waist. Andrew did not think there could be a more beautiful woman in the world.
“Andrew?”
“Nicki?”
“When are you going back to the States?”
“Never.”
“What?”
“Never. I'm staying here. I'm resigning my position at the university.”
Nicola stared at him for a moment.
“Andrew?” she asked again.
“You certainly have a lot of questions.”
“I only have one more: Will you please get undressed and come to bed?”
They did not go to sleep immediately. As the light outside failed, they traced each other's contours with their fingertips and their lips and their tongues, as if they were archaeologists deciphering an ancient, sacred text etched on their skin.
And later, when it was finally dark, Nicola put her lips to Andrew's ear and whispered, “Would it be okay if I just curled up with you? Could you do that? Just hold me? I'm afraid.”
And he did, drawing her into his arms, her back curled against his chest, her rear cupped in his lap.
She pressed herself into him and he felt her tension ease. They were both asleep in moments.
During the afternoon of the 16th, an incredible amount of rainfall fell, conservatively estimated to have been over 1,422 million litres (310 million gallons) in just two hours. That's over 197,500 litres (43,000 gallons) falling per second, the equivalent of 21 petrol tanker loads of water flowing through Boscastle every second.
Boscastle: The Flood (North Cornwall District Council, 2006)
eighteen
Andrew was frying eggs and bacon when Lee burst through the cottage door Wednesday morning.
“Mum says to tell you that the radio says folks will be allowed into the lower village to collect valuables later this morning! Where's Nicki?”
“Here, sweetie,” Nicola said, emerging from the bedroom wearing one of Andrew's shirts and the skirt from the night before. Lee threw herself at her, and they hugged as if each of them was a source of nourishment for the other.
“Mum also says your clothes will be out of the dryer in a few minutes.”
“Have you ever considered a career as a newscaster?” Andrew grumped. He hadn't had his tea yet.
Lee shot him a look. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“I'm never funny before lunch.”
“You got that right,” she said.
God help the man who marries her, Andrew thought, but he was chuckling. He was deeply happy. Awakening earlier with Nicola beside him had felt like a miracle; he'd lain motionless for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, the tumble of dark hair across her face, the relaxed curve of her full lips in slumber. When the morning sun had reached her face, she'd opened her eyes, seen him watching her, and smiled. Without saying a word, she'd pulled him atop her and guided him inside her. Then, very slowly, they made love.
“Good morning, darling,” she'd said afterward, grinning.
“‘Darling’?”
“Yes. Because you are. I'm just a slow learner is all.”
“I'll say.”
She'd punched him playfully. “For that, you get to make me breakfast!”
“You call that punishment? I'd gladly do that for the rest of my life!”
She'd grinned. “You may have to.”
He'd wanted more than anything to make love with her all morning, but he also hadn't wanted to break this spell, to send her back to the dark place that he knew still lay within her.
“Tea, then?” he'd asked.
“That's a start…”
“Yes, madam; coming right up, madam.”
He'd hopped out of bed. She'd sat up, then leaned toward him. “Do you suppose you could leave part of you here?”
“What part.”
“You know damn well what part!”
“I don't think that will be possible, madam; I shall need my wits about me.”
“Is that where you keep them?”
“Yes, madam.”
She'd pouted. “I should have known.”
“I'll just be getting that tea now.”
It was past noon when the two of them reached the bridge. A crowd of shell-shocked residents milled about behind an emergency cordon waiting for the police to let them through, but there was a holdup of some sort. Nicola elbowed to the front and found the elderly but formidable Joyce Manley, who lived in a little cottage on Valency Row, yelling and waving her walking stick at the police officer manning the tape.
“’Ow come all them media jackals can wander about the village willy-nilly and us what lives here can't, eh? Where's the justice in that?”
“I'm sorry, dearie, I am; I'm just following my orders,” the officer said calmly.
“That's what the Germans said in the war!”
Nicola looked around. There were television satellite trucks positioned in the road and cameramen and reporters everywhere, many interviewing local and county officials. Off to one side, a Salvation Army emergency services van had been set up, and there were a lot of fire and rescue staff milling about in full emergency outfits. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had teams of veterinarians and volunteers combing the wreckage for lost pets.
Then the walkie-talkie on the policeman's lapel squawked. He mumbled “Roger” into the device and then unhooked the tape, gently herding everyone away from the bridge, which only infuriated Mrs. Manley more.
“Please, madam,” he said, his arms spread wide to move people back, “it's only for a few minutes. The prince is arriving, you see.”
“Bloody hell,” Joyce bellowed. “I just knew someday my prince would come, and me hair wouldn't be done!”
This got everyone, including the cop, laughing just as a cavalcade of funereally black vehicles rounded the switchback, descended the hill, and swept past the cordon and across the bridge. A few moments later, Prince Charles emerged from a large black Range Rover. He was deeply tanned and wearing a dove-gray double-breasted suit in a faint glen plaid. Andrew noticed that he also had on brightly polished brown shoes and wondered whether no one had told him about the mud everywhere. The prince waved to the clutch of residents on the other side of the bridge and was immediately escorted by officials around the corner of the ruined Riverside Hotel and uphill toward the Cobweb. As if on cue, it began sprinkling again. He felt sorry for the fellow; you could tell he'd wanted to visit with the residents, but he'd been commandeered elsewhere. Some meeting, no doubt.
“He's very short,” Andrew commented.
“And very rich,” Nicola said. “Let's hope he's come to offer assistance; in addition to being Prince of Wales, he's also the Duke of Cornwall. They say he cares a lot about rural England; here's his chance.”
They stood there for a moment, taking in the spectacle, and then Nicola nudged him. The officer was letting people in.
“Come on; we've got work to do.”
They headed downstream toward Nicola's cottage. On the opposite bank, they saw Colin beside his coast guard vehicle and called to him.
“Hang on a bit,” the museum director yelled back.
He pulled open the rear door of the car and Randi leaped out. The
dog looked around, then danced like an acrobat across the debris pile that once had been the lower bridge, and tried to launch himself into Nicola's arms.
“Bloody ungrateful, I call it!” Colin called, smiling broadly.
“Thank you, dear man!” Nicola called back as she struggled to calm her dog, who now was leaping at Andrew with equal enthusiasm.
Then they entered the wreck that had once been Nicola's home.
Nicola had finished packing her paint box and was stuffing clothing into a valise when Randi barked, just once.
She looked up wearily at Andrew. “Would you see what that's about?”
“I'm on it.”
He picked his way down the muddy steps. A few moments later, he called back: “Nicola? A gentleman to see you.”
She cursed and descended. Then she saw him.
“Dad!”
Sir Michael stood in the shelter of the hole that had been her front wall. Andrew was at his side. Randi panted happily.
Muddy from climbing over the tree lodged in what remained of her sitting room, she hesitated. The elegantly dressed old man stepped forward and she threw herself into his arms.
“Nicola, thank God. Oh, thank God.” That was all he could say. There were tears in his eyes. The two of them, the old man and the woman, clung to each other as if they'd drown if they let go.
Andrew had no idea what was happening.
Nicola lifted her face, saw his bewilderment, and laughed.
“Andrew Stratton, allow me to introduce Sir Michael Rhys-Jones, my father-in-law. Well, former, actually. Dad, this is Andrew, an American architect, a formidable Cornish hedge builder, and the man I love.”
Now it was Sir Michael's turn to be flummoxed, but he recovered quickly, scrutinized the man beside him for a moment, and then said, “Nicola, I am very pleased indeed.”
Andrew bowed slightly, took the old man's extended hand, and said simply, “Sir Michael; my pleasure.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Nicola erupted.
Sir Michael laughed. “That's my girl; right to the point! All right, I'm here with Charles.”
“You know the prince?”
“My dear, there are many things you do not know about me, but you will; you will in time. Yes, I know the prince. I've been one of his financial advisers for most of his adult life, and I'm on the board of the Prince's Trust. There are certain other connections I have that made it possible for me to prevail upon him to let me come along on this visit. I was desperate to know how you were, and the local authorities hadn't a clue.”
The penny dropped for Andrew. “You're MI5, Sir Michael, aren't you?”
Sir Michael lifted his bushy eyebrows and then smiled. “Goodness, you are a clever devil, aren't you? Only in an advisory capacity, my boy, I assure you. But it brings me certain perquisites. Like finding my dear Nicola.”
He turned to his former daughter-in-law. “I will have to leave in a few minutes, dear. You will need a place to live …”
“I have one, Dad,” she said quietly, nodding toward Andrew.
“Yes,” he said, scrutinizing Andrew once again. “Yes. Good. That's for the best. But I shall be in touch. And please, Nicola, stay out of this place in future; it is dangerous.”
Nicola nodded. The old man turned and began walking back upstream toward the bridge and the prince's entourage.
“Daddy?”
He stopped and turned.
“Wait.” She took his arm and walked with him.
Andrew held Randi and let her go. Except for earlier that morning, he had never seen her so happy.
That night, the word went out through Boscastle that the Wednesday night sing would go on as usual, as close to the Wellington Hotel as possible. Andrew and Nicola were there, along with Roger and Anne and Lee and many of the regulars. A bonfire had been built outside from the ruins of the Welly's Long Bar, and a full keg of ale had been delivered, gratis, by Skinner's Brewery. They sang the old songs for more than an hour, with a fierceness that attested to their stubborn refusal to let this disaster kill the traditions that made living here unique.
Then, sensing the winding down of the evening, Jack Vaughan began the first lines of a ballad they all knew, a song about the shipwreck of a vessel called the Mary Ellen Carter. It was a lengthy ballad, as most sea shanties are, but it was the last stanza that gripped the singers:
Rise again, rise again,
Though your heart, it be broken;
and your life about to end,
No matter what you've lost,
a home, a love, a friend,
Like the Mary Ellen Carter,
Rise again.
* * *
“Drew!”
It was Nicola. It was September now, and she had adopted Lee's nickname for him. She dashed across the lower bridge to where he and Jamie were working to repair the witchcraft museum. She waved a letter she had clutched in her hand.
Andrew put down his mason's hammer and stretched his back muscles.
“It's from Dad!”
It had taken Andrew a while to get used to Nicola's calling her former father-in-law “Dad,” but now he smiled and sat down on a rock pile.
“Listen!” she demanded.
My Dear Nicola,
For various boring tax reasons, I have arranged to donate Trevega House and its lands to the National Trust. But I have done so with the proviso that it remain in a lifetime tenancy so long as my family is in residence. I have named you as the family tenant. I have also named you and Nina as my beneficiaries. Jeremy is no longer employed in my firm and I no longer acknowledge him as my son. I have settled an amount upon him with his promise that he will relinquish any claim on Trevega or on my estate. Having little choice in the matter, given the information I have about his recent behavior, he has accepted these terms. No one since my dear wife has loved Trevega House as you have, Nicola, and it should be yours. Nina agrees.
I have also—I hope you will forgive me—examined the background of Andrew Stratton. You have chosen well. I should like to request that Andrew begin at once a survey of the properties appurtenant to Trevega House—the cottages, the mill—and advise me as to their restoration, renovation, and potential as rental properties, all income therefrom to go to you.
Please advise if this is acceptable … and please say yes, Nicola.
With love abiding,
Michael
Nicola was dancing around with excitement, in exactly the way Lee so often did.
Andrew smiled. “Tell me about Trevega House, Nicola.”
And she did, sitting on a pile of rocks beside him, the joy pouring out of her like sunshine.
When she was finished, Andrew said, “Do you think I could finish what I'm doing here first? It seems like Sir Michael's work will be long term, and I'd like to invite Jamie to be my partner.”
“And Flora and Jamie could have one of the cottages!” she enthused.
“Let me just see, okay, babe?”
“Yes. Yes of course.”
“Nicola?”
“Yes, love?”
“What will we tell Lee?”
Nicola winked. “She and I already have something planned,” she said. “She'll spend summers with us; she wants to learn how to paint.”
“I see. So you just assumed I'd agree to all this?”
“No, I didn't. That's why I threw Lee in as the clincher,” she said with a mischievous smile. “I know you're a sucker for her, and I didn't want to take any chances.”
Andrew grabbed Nicola and pulled her onto his lap.
“C'mere, you; I'll show you the clincher!”
Epilogue
The two women sat on the ground beside a primitive well, framed in rough stone, from which a spring seeped. They were just a few hundred yards downhill from Minster church, in the woods above the River Valency. It was the last night of the waning moon, and thus pitch dark but for the thick black candle flickering between them. Above them, the papery autumn leaves of
the sessile oaks rustled like static.
They had been here for some nights now, quietly going through the same ancient rite.
The older woman reached her hand into the water bleeding from the hillside and then flicked it over the head of the younger woman.
“Amen, hetem,” intoned the older woman.
“Amen, hetem,” the younger one repeated.
“What's mine is thine,” the older one continued. “What's thine is mine.
“Mighty ones and old ones:
“Witness Flora and Nicola anointing themselves, that we might be great like you.
“Thout! A thout! Throughout and about!”
The women sat quietly, taking in the sounds and spirits of the place—listening for owls, badgers, deer, and foxes. As it had during the nights before, time both stretched and compressed. Some nights they sat for what seemed like hours when in fact only minutes had passed. Some nights it was the other way around. After a while, Flora held up the remains of a photograph—the one from Nicola's bedroom that depicted her and her two brothers at the beach—and began a chant: “Johnny DeLucca, be dead and past; Nicola DeLucca, be whole at last.”
The younger woman joined in the chant, and gradually it built in volume and power. After perhaps ten minutes, Flora held up her hands and they stopped. Then she took what remained of the photo—just the head of Nicola's dead brother—tore it, and set it afire in the flame of the candle.
Both women let out a whoop! And then Flora shouted into the night: “The work is done; so mote it be!”
Nicola shuddered involuntarily and suddenly fell to one side.
Not far away in the darkness, Andrew Stratton struggled to get to his feet, but the girl beside him dragged him down again.
“Drew!” Lee hissed. “It's all right; it's what has to be.”
Jamie put his arm around his friend. “Let it happen, lad; let the magic work. Flora knows what she's about.”
Farther up the hill and just beyond the parish boundary, Colin Grant, unbeknownst to any of them, tied together two small sticks—one from Andrew's yard, the other from Nicola's former cottage—with red string, and left them as an offering beside the secret grave of a witch who had been known to have success with love spells.
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