by C F Dunn
On the Thursday before we left, he stood by the doorway to my bedroom, his strong, supple body clothed in the pale-blue sweater I liked and looking so good I could have cried. He held up a bunch of keys and offered me his car so that I might go to town to buy something.
“I can’t drive your car – it’s far too beautiful and, besides, I’ll bet it’s not even legal for me to drive it. And anyway, I’ve not driven for ages so, for the sake of other road users, I’d rather not.”
He pursed his lips briefly. “You’d better get used to it; you’re going to need to drive if you stay here and want any independence.”
I found myself speechless as what he implied sank in. It must have been the first time he mentioned my staying on in the States beyond the generalized comments about me not leaving him. This sounded more like a life plan and his eyes had danced, giving him away, and my little stomach sprites performed a delightful jig to accompany them.
Now, however, the sprites took refuge, to be replaced by an army of ants that scurried around my tummy. I reapplied the lipstick already chewed off twice before, and gazed glumly at myself in the mirror, only then seeing his reflected image. Caught fretting, I swivelled around on my chair, sheepishly.
“You look beautiful and you’ll be fine,” Matthew reassured me, holding out his hand. “Ready?”
“I suppose…” I mumbled, but took his hand anyway, feeling the strength flowing from him to me.
A dull day, grey with a threat of yet more snow. I huddled into the seat, wishing he would drive somewhere we could be alone again. The car tyres crackled over the frozen ruts in the college car park, leaving only two cars under their blankets of snow. One of them – I realized – was probably Sam’s.
“I don’t even know where you live,” I said.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he promised.
We picked up speed once we were on the main road, juggling between vehicles on the busy highway until we found near solitude on the minor roads. Here, only a few late deliveries were being made by corporate vans – gaudy in the monochrome landscape. Everything jarred when normally I would have found beauty in all that I saw. My pulse hammered away and I felt sick with nerves.
“I just don’t know how they’ll feel with me in the house. It doesn’t seem right somehow – I’m a… a usurper, an interloper, a cuckoo… and it’s a sensitive, family-ish time of the year, to boot. It was bad enough when I thought I was going to meet your parents, but your son, Matthew…”
He looked at me sideways and smiled his half-smile. He had heard this anxiety a number of times over the last week; he had been very patient.
“I know you don’t find this easy, but Henry and the family are looking forward to meeting you. Even if one or two of them might find it awkward at first, they’ll get used to the idea.”
I had a feeling from the way he said it, that it would be a case of their having to like it or lump it, because he was as immovable as the boulders we passed by the roadside.
I hadn’t been taking much notice of where we were going. We headed west, away from college and the town, where the land rose in a series of low hills – rising until they became mountains as part of the chain that flanked the low-lying area on which the college stood.
Matthew swung the car ninety degrees down a slender road, barely more than a track, running through thickly wooded slopes. At times a river flowed so close I could almost lean out of the window and touch it, the waters bouncing around the iced rocks lining its bank. We came out of the trees and there, on a gentle slope overlooking the river valley, stood a house. Or rather, it wasn’t a single house but a range – like an abbey grange – made up of buildings that appeared to form a square.
“Here we are,” he announced cheerfully. He glanced at me, measuring my initial reaction, but my petrified face remained as frozen as the surrounding landscape. I craned to look at the fine weatherboarded house sitting securely on a rise set back from the river in gardens of snow. Trees – unadorned except for their temporary mantle of white – kept a reverential distance beyond the river. A long, two-storey wing that must once have been a barn, ran back from the front face of the main house at right angles.
“That is Pat and Henry’s home.” Matthew indicated the barn. “On the other side is Dan and Jeannie’s house. They converted it from the stables.”
“And yours?” I asked, already guessing the answer when we drew up in front of the classical façade and came to a standstill. “Ah, I see…”
“Do you like it?” he asked a little anxiously as emphatic silence replaced the sound of the engine.
“Couldn’t you find anything bigger?”
He grinned, and then came around the side of the car, opening the door for me before I could think up any more excuses. Leaning forward, I swung my legs onto the snow and took his proffered hand. On looking up, an unexpected movement caught my eye as a face appeared at a first-floor window. Ghost-pale and with silver-white hair, hollow eyes punctuated its skull. The disembodied face hovered momentarily before retreating into the darkness. I stared. I blinked.
Matthew’s face came into view as he peered into mine.
“Sweetheart, what is it?”
With a shiver, I shook my head free of the uneasy image.
“Matthew, is your house haunted?”
His gaze followed where mine was drawn like a magnet, but the windows gleamed darkly wholesome, and all I could see of their benign surface was the mirror of the snow.
“Not that I’m aware,” he answered, turning back to me with a questioning look. “If it were, it soon wouldn’t be. I’d give any spirits short shift; they have no business in my home.”
I pulled myself out of the car, hearing the snow compact solidly beneath my boots and welcoming its reality.
“Yes, silly of me to have suggested it; I expect it’s just a figment of my overactive nerves. Talking of which…” I regarded the broad steps leading up to double doors painted the same soft white as the rest of the house and framed by delicate webs of wood in the fanlight and the sidelights. Altogether corporeal movement shifted behind the glass and I suspected a welcoming committee. The spectral face forgotten, I moaned, “Matthew, do I have to do this?”
He smiled broadly. “Come on – it won’t be nearly as bad as you think, and remember, you’ve already met Ellie and Harry – that’s nearly a quarter of us, for a start; what can possibly go wrong?”
I was about to tell him in some detail when he grasped my hand firmly, half-tugging me towards the steps. Still I hung back, and his grin softened as he took in my scared face. Featherlight, he touched his fingers to the lines chasing my brow, imbuing in me some semblance of his peace.
“Emma, whatever happens, wherever this may lead, remember that you are with me now, and we are together.” And he slipped his arm around my waist as we mounted the final step so that when the front door opened a second later, and with his words echoing in my heart, there was nowhere else to go except forward.
Author Notes
Tucked away in the aisle of a medieval English church in a once-prosperous village lies a broken tomb. Traces of paint decorate the armorial shields and countless hands have polished the folds of marble over the years. The dog lying at his master’s armoured feet still guards his rest, and around the slab-sided tomb on which he and his wife lie, his sons and daughters kneel in stony supplication. One of these figures, alone of all the rest, has been defaced – a deliberate act conveying malice, and it was this that caught my interest on a cold spring day. What had driven someone to perform this act of hate in a place of sanctity? Who was the victim, and what story could they tell?
The story of the Secret of the Journal series mainly takes place in Maine, USA, and in and around the towns of Stamford and Oakham in the United Kingdom. Although these settings are real, some of the places mentioned – such as Howard’s Lake College and Old Manor Farm – are figments of my imagination for the purpose of storytelling, as are all the characters who
appear in the series.
The tale, however, has its roots in elements of human nature that preoccupy us as much now as they did in the past: the tendency to mistrust that which is different; the desire for love and acceptance and a community to which to belong; the hollow treachery of some, and the boundless loyalty of others; the need for forgiveness; the hope of all. Persecution is a subject that consumes Emma almost as much as the journal. She is both fascinated and appalled by it and can cite countless examples from her research into the English Civil War. She never imagined that it would be something that she would experience at first hand.
The genesis of the story revolves around an extinct village a few miles to the south of Oakham, and the house that once stood there. Marooned in the centre of England is the tiny green county of Rutland. A swathe of land now lies under the reservoir near Empingham into which the River Guash (or Gwash) flows. Between the Guash and the River Chater a lone building stands on the crest of a rise beside a few sparse trees and grazing sheep. Once part of the fine seventeenth-century manor house, this is all that remains of Martinsthorpe. The rubble of the house and the original medieval fortified manor crumpling the ground all around beg to tell a story. It is from this scene that I grew Old Manor Farm, where Emma goes in search of answers.
Researching the history of the area involved digging through archival material, including original documents and historical sources dating from the late medieval period and English Civil War. I spent time surveying the archaeological reports and walking the site, taking in the aspect of the land and talking to people who remembered this small rural county before its heart was flooded to make Rutland Water. I visited the surrounding farms and villages that would have existed in the early seventeenth century, and spoke to the very helpful and informative museum staff in Oakham and Stamford.
Unlike Martinsthorpe, Emma’s birthplace is very much alive and kicking. Lying on the Old North Road almost at the intersection of four counties, the town of Stamford, Lincolnshire, is riven with the past. Despite the many elegant Georgian façades, much of the town has kept its original medieval street plan, including slender Cheyne Lane, and secretive St Mary’s Passage, squeezed under a Norman arch and leading to the Meadows by the River Welland. Although the museum in Stamford has, sadly, now shut, the Rutland County Museum in Oakham provides an invaluable insight into the region, and the history of both towns is evident wherever you walk.
The region has seen its fair share of intrigue and rebellion. A few miles away is the site of the Battle of Empingham, otherwise known as Losecoat Field (and locally as Bloody Oaks), fought in 1470. Here, Sir Robert Welles, 8th Baron Willoughby de Eresby clashed with Edward IV, and forfeited his head for his treachery.
I took artistic licence and the opportunity to mix fact with fiction. While some of the family names such as Fielding, Harrington, and Seaton are common to the area, “Lynes” is one I have introduced for the sake of the story. The D’Eresbys, on the other hand, I descended from a fictional cadet line of the Willoughby de Eresbys, a family that played a major role in the region for hundreds of years. Like many old families, the D’Eresbys are dwindling. Emma and her sister are the last of her line to bear the name and, with their deaths, the family will pass back into the soil from which it came, and be forgotten like so many before them.
The need to belong and to have a sense of understanding of where you came from weaves throughout the story. Emma has discovered Matthew’s origins, but that is only the beginning; in order to prepare for the future, she must also discover his past.
The Secret of the Journal continues with Rope of Sand.
