Blood Line: What if your family was the last left alive? (The Blood Line Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Green

  Then, just as that power seemed to be leaking away, Aunt Margaret came to the rescue of them all — and handed control back to him.

  ‘Rabbits,’ she said, her voice breaking the silence.

  ‘Rabbits?’ Nigel spluttered. ‘What are you jabbering about?’

  ‘Rabbits,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve noticed them feeding in the evening and early morning. There’s a plague of rabbits this year.’

  ‘So you were saved by rabbits?’ Mark asked Paul.

  ‘We were. With so few deer competing for the grass, the rabbit population had exploded. From a food perspective we’ve never looked back. Nigel even conceded that it made sense to allow me out of the park to search for seedlings. It was during one of those foraging parties that I managed to slip into 47 Doning Hill Rise and leave you the message.’

  ‘You say you never looked back from a food perspective. Are you saying things got worse in other respects?’

  ‘They sure did.’ Before Paul could elaborate, Bridget arrived to do her shift on the treadmill. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ he promised. ‘Now we both need some sleep.’

  Mark glanced at his watch. It was already two o’clock in the morning. Like his brother, he could look forward to less than four hours’ sleep. He lay down on the mattress in the corner of the Punishment Room, pulled the blanket over his head and was asleep within seconds. He slept soundly. He didn’t hear the shifts change as Bridget departed and Cheryl arrived, and neither did he hear the children arrive for the four-to-six shift.

  When Mark finally came to, at quarter to six, he saw a little girl’s face staring down at him inquisitively.

  ‘I’m Mary-Claire,’ said the child. She was a stocky little thing with dark, close-cropped hair and a cheeky face.

  ‘Hello, Mary-Claire. You were a baby last time I saw you.’

  ‘She’s still a baby,’ called another youthful voice. Mark glanced at the treadmill; two small boys were walking side by side on the drum.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Mark,’ called one of the boys.

  ‘Hello, Ruben. Hello, Harry,’ Mark said, recognising his two nephews. ‘You’re a lot bigger than the last time I saw you.’

  ‘I’m five,’ Mary-Claire said proudly. ‘And you snore.’

  ‘Do I indeed?’

  ‘Uncle Steven doesn’t snore, he’s too ill.’

  ‘What do you mean he’s too ill?’

  ‘Damian and Jasper beat him up,’ Harry said.

  ‘You were told not to say anything,’ Ruben admonished his older brother.

  ‘Take me to your Uncle Steven,’ Mark instructed, jumping to his feet and heading towards the door.

  Mary-Claire hesitated. Before Mark could pursue the matter further, the door opened and Paul walked in. He was pale, drawn and dishevelled.

  ‘What’s happened to Steven?’ Mark demanded angrily.

  ‘There’s been a fight,’ Paul said, looking reproachfully at his grandchildren, ‘but don’t worry, he’s going to be okay.’ His head was twitching, giving lie to his words.

  ‘I want to see him,’ Mark said as he headed out the door.

  ‘Come back in,’ Paul yelled. ‘If you’re caught out there while you’re under punishment, they’ll brand you. Worse still, they might give Steven a second branding.’

  ‘I want to see him. Now.’

  ‘Look, come back inside. You don’t want Steven to get another branding.’ Mark stood his ground. ‘Please, just come back inside,’ Paul begged. ‘I’ve told you, he’s okay. Bridget and Cheryl are going to bring him over on their way to breakfast, you’ll see him then.’

  Reluctantly, Mark returned to the Punishment Room.

  ‘Thank you,’ Paul said. ‘Now, if you relieve the children on the treadmill, I’ll tell you about the branding regime.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Mark repeated the moment the children were out of earshot.

  ‘From what I can make out, Jasper and Damian attacked him as he left the Great Hall last night.’

  ‘So it happened last night?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul said sheepishly.

  ‘And you never told me!’

  ‘It was for your own good. God knows what would have happened if you had seen him last night.’

  ‘He’s that bad?’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Allison’s checked him out — just cuts and bruises and a couple of cracked ribs.’

  ‘Cracked ribs?’

  ‘He’ll be all right, and by the way, the fact that Allison has seen him is strictly between you and me.’

  ‘What’s the big secret?’

  ‘If Nigel were to find out, he’d give Allison a beating.’

  ‘What’s going on in this madhouse?’ Mark fumed. He was exhausted, and struggling unsuccessfully to come to terms with the alien world in which he found himself.

  ‘I’ll come in tonight and fill you in on the rest, but for now I must tell you about the branding regime — before Steven’s brought over here and before you get yourself, or him, into any more trouble.’

  ‘What’s all this rubbish about branding?’

  ‘It’s not rubbish. If you get three brandings you’re executed.’

  ‘By whose authority?’

  ‘Nigel’s, of course.’

  ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘He already has.’ The words were laced with emotion, escaping softly and reluctantly from Paul’s lips. The truth dawned on Mark.

  ‘Mathew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Mark said, trying to come to grips with what he was hearing.

  ‘I don’t want to see the same thing happen to Steven. That’s why I didn’t tell you about Steven last night, and that is why, when you see him this morning, however angry you are, you mustn’t react. If you do, and you get branded yourself, you’ve only got another two to go. Worse still, if Steven gets involved and he ends up with two brandings, he only needs to make one more mistake and that’s it.’

  There was silence as Mark grappled with the enormity of what he’d been told, wondering, but deciding not to ask, what Mathew had done.

  ‘So what are we likely to get branded for?’

  ‘Whatever takes Nigel’s whim. However, striking him or one of his sons, as Steven did last night, is definitely going to earn a branding. Leaving the park means one. So does stealing from the Chatfield family, or letting the treadmill stop, even for a second.’

  ‘How would they know if the treadmill stopped?’

  ‘I don’t know, but somehow they do. Cheryl let it stop once. She was so tired she just lay down and went to sleep. Within minutes Damian was here. She was tried for “dereliction of duty”, found guilty and branded. And she’s not the only one. Somehow they always know if it stops.’

  ‘This is unbelievable,’ Mark said, shaking his head.

  ‘Oh, and unauthorised sex is another offence that earns a branding.’

  ‘Unauthorised sex?’

  ‘All liaisons have to be approved by Nigel. He insists on deflowering the women. All part of the tradition of being a Lord.’

  ‘It’s unbelievable!’ Mark repeated. ‘How did you let yourselves get into this situation?’

  Paul was peering through the doorway, watching Bridget and Cheryl carrying Steven on a stretcher round the perimeter of Lawn Court. ‘You don’t understand,’ he answered.

  ‘Damned right I don’t understand.’

  Paul began to speak slowly, emphasising his words. ‘Steven will be arriving soon. Remember, you can’t afford to get involved in another fight, however you feel. If Steven ends up with another branding he’s going to be in real danger.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  ‘You just need to keep your temper.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Mark repeated.

  ‘And remember, you must keep the treadmill going — letting it stop will lead to a branding.’

  ‘All right,’ Mark said irritably, raising his voice. ‘You don’t need to keep on. I get the point.’

&nbs
p; However, despite Paul’s efforts, Mark was not prepared for what he saw over his shoulder as Bridget and Cheryl carried Steven into the Punishment Room. He hadn’t expected a stretcher, and he certainly wasn’t prepared for the sight of his son’s face. Fortunately, Paul had anticipated Mark’s reaction, and as his brother leapt off the treadmill, he climbed on.

  Steven looked dreadful. Mark bent down, concerned and angry.

  Steven peered through the slit of his right eye; his left eye remained closed. ‘I’m all right,’ he mumbled through discoloured, swollen lips.

  ‘You don’t look it.’

  ‘Allison’s checked him out, he’ll be fine.’ Paul assured him again. ‘Now will you please come back and man this treadmill.’

  ‘I promise you one thing: those two are going to pay for this.’ Mark breathed heavily as he stood up.

  ‘Fine,’ Paul said. ‘I understand how you feel. However, you need to pick your moment, and it’s not now. Remember, whatever happens, keep this treadmill going.’

  37

  By the time Paul had eaten his evening meal and returned to the Punishment Room to relieve Mark, Steven was able to contort his face into something like a disfigured smile and mumble, ‘You should see the other guy.’

  It was sheer bravado, but Steven’s sense of humour cheered everyone, especially Mark.

  ‘Don’t worry, son,’ he said. ‘They’ll pay. But first we need to find out what we’re up against.’

  As Paul took up his treadmill duty again, he also picked up the thread of events at Haver Park.

  Aunt Margaret’s rabbits had ensured the community’s survival, but they also re-established the authority of the Chatfields. They alone had access to the firearms needed to shoot the rabbits.

  However, as summer came in and the gardens began to produce, Nigel’s hold over the community began to wane once again. The abundance of food led to speculation that new communities could be formed, far away from Haver Park. Mysteriously, Damian came to hear of the rumblings and reported back to his father.

  If life had improved somewhat for the Morgans, Daltons, Steeds and Greys, it had improved even more dramatically for the Chatfield family. They were living in the staterooms and being waited on by servants, very much in the manner of generations of former owners of the great house.

  There were three major suites in the staterooms at Haver, each including a gallery big enough for a game of cricket. At the end of each gallery there were one or more large bedrooms, together with smaller rooms such as dressing rooms and closets.

  Greg and Miles shared the Warwick Gallery, off which lay the Italian Ambassador’s Bedroom and Dressing Room. The gallery contained a collection of seventeenth-century furniture that prior to the pandemic had been priceless. The walls were lined with portraits of British monarchs.

  Miles had been awarded the Italian Ambassador’s Bedroom (named for the ambassador to James I who had once stayed there). The huge, gilded four-poster bed, with its velvet hangings, was Miles’s pride and joy.

  His brother Greg had felt hard done by. He’d been given the less sumptuous Dressing Room in which had been erected a simple four-poster bed. His disappointment was mitigated somewhat by the seventeenth-century billiard table, overlooked by a huge painting, just outside his room. Greg enjoyed both the billiard table and the voluptuous nudes in the Titian painting.

  Jasper and Damian shared the Crimson Gallery. Portraits of British nobility stared down from the walls. At the end of the gallery, on the left-hand side, lay the Sequin Bedroom, the second grandest bedroom in the house, which had been allocated to Jasper. It was named after the sequinned satin drapes around the four-poster bed that dominated the room.

  Damian had to ‘make do’ with Lady Beatrice Grenville’s Bedroom, a smaller, less grandiose room named after a noblewoman who had occupied it in the eighteenth century. But Damian was more than compensated for this by his exclusive rights to an additional room that lay beyond the bedroom. This had been Lady Beatrice’s dressing room. Damian kept the door locked at all times.

  The most splendid bedroom in the house, appropriately named the King’s Room, lay at the end of the Turner Gallery. Apart from the inevitable four-poster bed with sumptuous hangings of gold and silver fabric, the King’s Room boasted many silver artefacts, including a huge mirror. Most imposing of all was the ornately carved, solid silver table. The room had once hosted Henry the Eighth. Now it housed Nigel Chatfield.

  The Haver Trust had protected the furnishings in the staterooms with heavy filter blinds on all the windows. Nigel and his sons had torn these down and thrown open the curtains. While many of the priceless treasures inside were now doomed to only a few more decades of life at best, the Chatfields were able to enjoy the treasures in all their splendour.

  So that a few privileged people could — just as they had in the past — enjoy the sumptuous comforts of Haver House, an army of servants was required to maintain the estate. As a result, for long hours each day, the Morgan girls laboured to clean the huge staterooms and to pamper to the needs and wishes of Nigel and his sons. Gardeners, farm workers, tradesmen and labourers were needed to provide the other services that such a large house requires.

  Never in his life had Nigel lived so well, and never had he enjoyed so much power. He was living the life of royalty, and he wasn’t going to allow anyone to threaten it. While the Steeds and the other families talked and speculated late into the nights about leaving Haver, the Chatfield family were engaged in discussions of their own.

  For once Nigel didn’t fly off the handle; he knew he had the seasons on his side. By the time the families had realised that life away from Haver might be possible, it was already too late in the year for them to leave. They had nearly starved to death the previous winter, and they knew that attempting to leave Haver in the autumn would be suicide. Nigel had at least until next spring to solve the problem.

  Most members of the community simply dreamt of the possibility of leaving the park; some, like the Steeds, began to make tentative plans to leave. In the meantime, life went on.

  For some months Duncan had agitated to be allowed to mechanise the lifting of the water from the reservoirs beneath Flag Court to the header tanks in the roof of Cromwell’s Tower. Nigel had steadfastly refused permission. However, in early September, he abruptly changed his mind and called for plans to be drawn up.

  At the end of September he sanctioned the building of a treadmill and leather bucket system to lift the water. Duncan’s preferred option was a system driven by a windmill. However, Nigel insisted they build the treadmill first, pointing out that if it proved successful, it could be easily automated with the addition of sails at a later date.

  Reluctantly, Duncan agreed. Anything had to be better than lugging buckets of water up flights of stairs to the header tanks. The system he envisaged would mean operating the treadmill manually, but Duncan’s calculations indicated that the system could lift the required water with about two hours’ work a day.

  For once the Chatfield brothers were co-operative. They quickly actioned any requests for materials and tools. The key component of the system was a large wooden drum. The Steed family didn’t have the skills to construct one, but a large drum, which had previously stored cables, was located. Many eager family members helped manhandle the drum through Sevenoaks town, down the lane opposite St Nicholas’ Church, and through the park gates. Then, with a final cheer, they pushed it up the other side of the valley and through the West Gate. The drum was so large it had to be dismantled to get it through the door into the room on the ground floor of Cromwell’s Tower.

  The Steed family’s lack of trade skills was rudely exposed by the magnitude of the project. They reassembled the drum and mounted it on an improvised shaft. Then they had to construct the continuous belt with leather buckets, cut holes in the thick wooden floors of the two storeys above, and lead the belt up over a small wheel and shaft in the roof cavity at the top of the tower. Once the belt reached the roof ca
vity, the buckets emptied the water into sluices, which carried it into the header tank.

  Late one afternoon, early in December, after two months’ work, the treadmill was finally ready.

  ‘Eureka!’ Duncan said to Jasper and Damian, who were watching the final test. ‘It works! Tomorrow’, he continued proudly, stroking his beard, ‘we’ll start using it.’

  ‘Not tomorrow,’ Jasper said.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘My father wants to have a ceremony to mark its commissioning.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When we say so,’ Damian snapped.

  ‘But this is crazy. We want to use it now.’

  ‘You’ll be told when,’ Jasper growled. ‘Now get out of here.’

  Reluctant and disgruntled, Duncan left. Damian locked the door at the top of the tower; he also locked the door at the foot of the stairs. The treadmill had been mothballed before it had even been used.

  Duncan walked away angry and depressed. He was left with the unpalatable task of telling the rest of his family that the back-breaking work of carrying buckets up long flights of stairs would continue. As he walked around the perimeter of Lawn Court he resolved that he was not going to put up with the bullying and intimidation any longer than he had to. He was going to lead his family out of the park as soon as spring arrived.

  38

  Duncan’s badgering about the treadmill finally paid dividends. Jasper informed him that his father would commission the treadmill at the ‘Grand Christmas Day Lunch’.

  Nigel had decreed that Christmas Day would be a day of rest. It was to be the first full day’s rest that any of his relatives would have had since entering Haver Park.

  At Aunt Margaret’s insistence, it had been agreed that on Christmas Day the Morgan girls would have a break from cooking duties. The Dalton family, supervised by Aunt Margaret, would prepare the Christmas meal.

  Paul and his family volunteered to decorate the Great Hall, and the Steeds agreed to lead the Christmas service, nativity play and carols.