Destiny (Immortal)

by Gillian Shields

  I still hadn’t told Sarah and Evie that I had even met Lynton. I made up more excuses about my art project for Miss Hetherington, which I hoped would explain my absences when I ran down the corridors to the little practice room and Lynton’s company. Afterward I wasn’t even sure what he and I had talked about, only that he never made me feel afraid, or stupid, or crazy. Lynton didn’t tell me much about his life at St. Martin’s, just that he was studying music, of course. “I think music has healing power, don’t you, Helen?” he asked, looking at me with his steady gaze.

  “I knew someone—” I replied, then stopped. I didn’t want to say too much.

  “Someone who…?”

  “Oh, someone who was a healer,” I said, trying to brush it off. But he didn’t let go of the subject.

  “And did they heal you?”

  “Why would you think I need healing?”

  He hesitated. “I told you before, I get the feeling you’ve been very unhappy for a long time.”

  “I was brought up in an orphanage,” I told him shortly. “It wasn’t that great. I survived, though.”

  “Yes, you’re a survivor. You’re much stronger than you think. You’ve struggled on and on, haven’t you? But don’t you want to stop pushing yourself, Helen? Isn’t it time to ask for help?”

  “What do you mean? Like a doctor or something? I’m not insane, whatever they might say.”

  “I know. I was thinking more of someone to share things with.” Then he turned away, looking slightly self-conscious. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to intrude. I’m sure you’ve got good friends already. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, honestly.”

  “It’s just that I’d like to help you, even after the concert is over. I want to be your friend.”

  “I—I want that too,” I said.

  “Good.” His eyes were clear and blue again, and he picked up his flute. “Good! Now let’s try that opening section…ready?”

  And so we sang and played and watched each other, and every time we met I felt closer to him than before.

  Twenty-two

  FROM THE DIARY OF HELEN BLACK

  OCTOBER 18

  It seems strange not to share this with Sarah and Evie, but I don’t know how to explain it. “There’s only one boy allowed into Wyldcliffe, and Mr. Brooke says I must sing with him in the concert, and Lynton likes me…he thinks I’m wonderful….” It sounds so bizarre, like a lonely girl’s ridiculous fantasy, as though I have gone out of my way to throw myself into Lynton’s path. I haven’t—I promise you that, Wanderer. I would never do that. And if you were here, I would never have—

  But you are not here. I know now that you’re not coming back. You are a dream, a memory. Lynton is real. Forgive me. I don’t want to live in dreams anymore.

  Lynton says he has special permission from St. Martin’s to come here most evenings after his other classes to study with Mr. Brooke and to prepare for the concert. But he says that more than anything now he comes to see me.

  Am I being stupid? Am I?

  His music is as tender and true as the sigh of the sea. I never really wanted to sing for anyone but myself and my sisters in our chants, but now…now I feel so free when he plays his flute and we make music together. But afterward, when he’s not there, I can’t help listening to sour, nagging doubts that try to convince me that Lynton is just fooling around, indulging in a little flirtation to make the dull days at school pass by, and that he goes back to St. Martin’s and laughs about me.

  I don’t really believe that. I just can’t.

  Distractions, marsh lights, fairy tales…happy endings?

  No, don’t be foolish, Helen. Don’t hope for too much.

  I was running up to the dorm after breakfast to fetch a book I had forgotten when I heard Lynton calling my name. I stopped in surprise halfway up the marble stairs and turned to catch sight of him in the black-and-white hallway below, standing next to the painting of Agnes.

  “Helen! I’ve been looking for you.”

  Two young girls from the lowest form giggled and whispered, “It’s her boyfriend,” as they ran past. I ignored them and hurried back to where Lynton was waiting for me.

  “What are you doing here so early?” I asked.

  “I’ve come to see you, of course.”

  “But I have to go to class!”

  “No, you don’t. I’ve got permission from your Miss Hetherington to take you to listen to the choir sing matins in the cathedral over at Wyldford Cross this morning. They have an excellent musical reputation, and I told Miss Hetherington that it would be really helpful for you in preparing your piece for Lady Agnes’s memorial. She has, miraculously, agreed that I can drive you over there. So if you go and get your coat, we can start as soon as you’re ready.”

  I couldn’t believe my luck. A whole morning’s holiday away from Wyldcliffe—and a whole morning with Lynton. The only pang of guilt I felt was for Sarah and Evie, left behind. But if I told them where I was going, I’d have to tell them who I was going with, and telling them about Lynton seemed to be getting more and more difficult.

  Five minutes later I was climbing into a low black car that I hadn’t seen before.

  Lynton said that St. Martin’s had lent it to him to make it easier for him to get to Wyldcliffe for his studies with Mr. Brooke. Soon we were speeding down the country lanes away from the school and the village and everything that usually bound my horizons. We took the little-used road that wound its way across the high moors to the ancient town of Wyldford Cross. Eventually, the road led all the way to the sea, but I had never been as far as that. The sea—I thought of Evie and how much she missed her home by the ocean, and I seemed to see Agnes’s gray eyes again, in the color of the wild autumn sky.

  Agnes, I breathed, watch over us. Be with us when we go to find Laura. But until then, another voice whispered in my head, until then let me forget everything but being with Lynton, being free…. And so I talked and laughed as we drove along, and every dark thought and anxiety was pushed back into the abyss. After about twenty minutes, we reached the outskirts of Wyldford Cross. We swept past the elegant buildings and playing fields of St. Martin’s Academy and drove into the town center, where fine old houses clustered around the market square, jostling next to a jumble of pubs and shops and narrow alleyways. At the far edge of the square, the spire of the cathedral rose to heaven, reaching up to the great beyond.

  We parked the car and walked inside. A scattering of worshippers, mostly elderly people and a few footsore tourists, occupied the carved pews. The choir was gathered around the elaborate altar, and their voices soared like angels into the shadowy spaces of the cold church. It was beautiful and remote, and although I admired the skill of the choristers, the music didn’t touch me in the way that Lynton’s simple melodies on his flute did. There was no heart in it—only art and ornament and the heavy weight of tradition. I was glad to get out of there when the service was over, and back into the open air.

  “Do you want to have a coffee, or something to eat?” Lynton asked.

  I shook my head. I had never sat with a boy in a coffee bar, finding endless nothings to talk about and giggle over, and the idea made me feel awkward. I felt myself getting sucked back into shyness and silence.

  “Um…no thanks,” I said. “I’d better go back. But thanks for bringing me.”

  Lynton looked disappointed. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

  We quickly found the car again. On the drive back Lynton talked about the singing that we had heard and different musical techniques, filling any gaps in the conversation easily and smoothly. But as we drove over the moors again, he took a different way home. Instead of sticking to the road we had already traveled, he swerved the car down a narrow track that was enclosed on either side by rough stone walls and straggling thornbushes.

  “What are you doing?” I said, suddenly feeling alarmed.

  “Getting us lost.”

  “What do y
ou mean?”

  “Don’t worry. There’s something I want to show you even more than the cathedral choir. Have you ever been to Thornton Falls?”

  “Do you mean the waterfall on the far side of the moor? No, though I remember Miss Scratton took some girls on a visit there a couple of years ago. I was sick and couldn’t go. But we haven’t got time now, have we?”

  “Oh, Helen, it’s hardly out of our way, and you simply have to see the waterfall. It’s a perfect miracle.”

  “But I mustn’t be late going back to school—I’ll get into trouble—and Dr. Franzen—”

  Lynton pulled the car over and laid his hand on mine. “I promise you that you won’t be late. Miss Hetherington isn’t expecting us back for ages. And I wouldn’t ever get you into trouble with Dr. Franzen. I’d never do that.” His voice was soft, but the look in his eyes was hard—intense. Then he shrugged and said, “Look, we’re out on the moors and everyone else is stuck in class. Why don’t we make the most of it?”

  For a moment I saw myself as a totally different person, sneaking off with a boyfriend like any other teenage girl, ready for a day of stolen freedom and laughter. And just then I wanted to be that girl. I looked at Lynton’s pleading face, and I laughed. “All right, take me to see your miracle. But next time tell me before you get us lost.”

  “Okay.” He grinned, and I wondered whether there would be a “next time.” But for that day, that present moment, just being with him was enough.

  Lynton drove carefully down the rough lane. As we went along I noticed a distant noise echoing above the car’s engine. Eventually the lane petered out into a single muddy track.

  “We’ll have to get out and walk here,” said Lynton.

  I wrapped my scarf and coat around me as we left the car behind and walked in the direction of the noise. The sun slipped from behind the clouds for a second, and a brilliant glow spilled over the wide land, lighting up the bracken and heather. “Just round here, past these rocks,” Lynton said, and when we turned the last corner I gasped in amazement. At the end of a narrow ravine, like a sheet of pure light, constantly moving and yet always the same, a waterfall poured down the face of a steep cliff. It was so delicate, but powerful—light, water, and sound all blending in perfect harmony. It was a miracle, just as Lynton had said.

  “It’s beautiful!”

  “I told you it was worth seeing. And we can go farther, right up the cliff.” He led the way, guiding me over the slippery rocks that were splashed by the foaming pool at the foot of the falls. Some rough-hewn steps had been hollowed out of the granite cliff, and we climbed precariously next to the sheet of plummeting water, reaching higher and higher. The sound of the waterfall tumbling down the rocks was like the earth singing its own secret song. Then we stepped onto a polished ledge of wet stone that jutted out between the cliff face and the glittering curtain of water, and stood there, gazing at the wonder of it. The water hid us from the outside world, and light glimmered and danced all around us, like a living rainbow. “No one would ever find us here,” Lynton said joyfully. “Isn’t this how life is meant to be? Everything in harmony. Don’t you feel you could actually step out through the water—”

  I took a quick, sharp breath. Lynton had said the very thing I was secretly thinking. How I would love to summon the spirits of the air and dance through the fine spray of water onto the back of the wind and soar breathlessly over the hills…Did he know something that he wasn’t telling me? I tried to cover my confusion with a flippant answer.

  “And get smashed to pieces on the rocks below?”

  “No.” Lynton looked at me strangely. “I feel we could step out and fly, don’t you?”

  To fly…to be free…and yet together…

  “Listen, Helen,” he said softly. “This is my cathedral. It’s as if the whole world is singing just for us, telling us its secrets. If I were ever in trouble—if ever I needed time—this is where I would come.”

  Lynton reached out and touched the sheet of falling water. As it divided around his fingers, we saw a glimpse of the wild ravine below us, and the light on each bright droplet broke into a thousand dazzling colors. I laughed in delight and reached out to do the same.

  I don’t know quite what happened next. Overexcitement, giddiness from the light and the noise—I don’t know—but my foot slipped on the wet ledge, and I lurched forward and lost my footing. I was falling—and before I could react I glimpsed a glimmer of white in the corner of my eye—something soft brushed against me, and the next moment Lynton had his arms round me and was pulling me back to safety. But then he quickly stepped back from me as though he’d had an electric shock.

  “Come on, let’s get down from here,” he said abruptly. “You’re shaking.”

  “No, I’m all right, it was stupid of me—thanks for grabbing me like that. I’m not usually so clumsy.”

  I wasn’t shaking with fear of falling. It was the softness that had held me as I had slipped, and Lynton’s talk of flying, the intense light in his eyes, the rapture in his face, the touch of his body—all that had made me tremble. I felt on the verge of a secret, the key to everything—

  But then the certainty died. Lynton was guiding me down the steps in the cliff, taking me back to the car, producing some sandwiches for me to eat, making jokes, being utterly, totally normal. We had been to see a local beauty spot, I had got dizzy for a second—that was all. No miracle.

  We drove back to Wyldcliffe without speaking much. Lynton looked tired, and I saw fine lines around the corner of his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. I wondered if the other boys at St. Martin’s were like him, and I realized he hadn’t told me anything about his friends there or what he did, other than his music studies.

  “So what’s it like at St. Martin’s?” I made myself ask him.

  “Oh—it’s a good school. Very traditional, very English—cricket and rugger and turning out gentlemen.”

  “Are you a gentleman?”

  He laughed. “I’m just passing through. They won’t have time to turn me into anything that isn’t really me.”

  I fell silent. Lynton obviously didn’t mean to stay around long. But I was tied to Wyldcliffe, body and soul. There was nowhere for me to fly to.

  As we drove down the village high street in Wyldcliffe, two old women were standing outside the store, gossiping. The shrill, excited voices of the children playing in the yard of the little village school hung in the air. A few more minutes would take us up the lane and back to the forbidding gates of the Abbey.

  “Stop!” I said on impulse. “Wait—pull the car over.”

  Lynton did as I asked, then turned to me. “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “You took me to your favorite place. I want to do the same.”

  His eyes gleamed. “Sure, of course,” he said. “That’s only fair.”

  We left the car and took the path to the church. The ground was strewn with wet leaves, orange, and bronze, and red. Gnarled yew trees, shaped like monsters, guarded the entrance to the churchyard. I opened the gate and stepped inside, and Lynton followed.

  “I come here sometimes on my own to sit and think,” I said. “And to be close to Agnes. Her grave is down here. I’ll show you.” I led the way to where the angel statue stood watch over Agnes’s tomb.

  “‘Lady Agnes Templeton, beloved of the Lord,’” Lynton read out. “She’s the girl in the painting at the school, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard some of the local people talking—don’t they say that she’s some kind of ghost who will come back to Wyldcliffe one day and save it?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Do you believe in all that stuff, Helen?” he asked, looking at me with a searching expression.

  I looked back fearlessly and declared, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “So do I.”

  And then, for an instant Lynton’s face changed as he caught the long low rays of the afternoon sun. He seemed to be surround
ed by a blazing light. The birds in the trees rose as one, clamoring as they flew away, and the carved angel shimmered brilliantly—I blinked and everything was as it had been a second before.

  “Perhaps that day is near,” Lynton said. His blue eyes smiled at me, and the churchyard was peaceful again. Everything was at peace except for me.

  “Day? What day? I’m sorry—”

  “The day of healing, Helen. Lady Agnes’s time of triumph. When all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s get you back to school.”

  Was I crazy? Or was everything in this valley of Wyldcliffe connected?

  Twenty-three

  FROM THE DIARY OF HELEN BLACK

  OCTOBER 21

  My meetings with Lynton are followed by restless nights. I watch the old moon wane, dreading the day when this time will be over and I will have to face everything that is waiting out on the lonely hills.

  But until then, each moment is as precious as a pearl on a string….

  One evening we met outside one of the music rooms as we had arranged, but as soon as Lynton saw me, his face lit up with a mischievous smile.

  “Follow me,” he said. “We need a bigger space. The concert won’t be in a practice room after all.” He picked up his flute case and a sheaf of music and set off. I followed him to the east wing, where the red corridor led to the common rooms, but he turned another way and we found ourselves in front of the locked doors of the ballroom. Lynton seemed to know the school like the back of his hand.

  “This would be a great space to sing in,” he said.

  “But it’s always locked,” I objected.

  “Is it?” Lynton brushed the heavy brass handle with his fingers, and there was a tiny click and the doors swung open. He gave a little bow and whispered, “Enter your kingdom.”

  I slipped inside, and Lynton closed the door behind us. I had never been in the ballroom before. It was a vast, beautiful place, but everything was covered in shroudlike dust sheets, except for the silvery mirrors that lined the walls and reflected everything to infinity. Heavy drapes laced with cobwebs hung at the full-length windows. It was like the room where the enchanted princess was waiting to be woken from her sleep, or at least how I had imagined it when I was a child. I felt safe there. The silence and the dust and all the forgotten years seemed to protect us from prying eyes.