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

by Michael Green

  Early in December Mark and Steven called a special meeting for two in the morning in the Punishment Room. Adam and Warren representing the Daltons, Duncan and Cameron the Steeds, and Paul and Fergus were there.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Mark said when they were all assembled. ‘Now, we’re about to show you something that we believe will significantly improve our lives. But, before we do, we want your assurance that what we show you will remain a secret among the eight people in this room.’

  Once everyone had signalled agreement, Steven increased the speed of the treadmill, before calmly stepping off. As the treadmill began to slow there was panic in the room. Adam made for the door as fast as his short stride and gammy leg would allow, where Fergus blocked his way. Paul sprinted across the room and jumped on the treadmill.

  Mark laughed, ‘Stop panicking.’

  Meanwhile, Steven had walked to the side of the treadmill and was sitting on a chair, turning a small wheel with one hand.

  ‘Come on. Off you get,’ Mark said, dragging Paul off the treadmill.

  ‘What about the Chatfields?’ Cameron looked agitated.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mark assured him. ‘I’ll let Steven explain.’

  Steven sat calmly on the chair turning the hand-wheel; the bearings were perfect, the effort required minimal. ‘The Chatfield brothers,’ he began, ‘always know when the treadmill has stopped because there’s a dynamo attached to the shaft at the top of the belt system. A wire from the dynamo leads to an alarm in the Turner Gallery. When the dynamo stops, the alarm rings.’

  ‘So why isn’t it ringing now?’ Warren asked, glancing anxiously across Flag Court.

  ‘Because we’ve rigged up an additional belt system leading directly from the dynamo to this hand-wheel.’

  ‘The advantage’, Mark added, ‘is that, instead of having to drive the treadmill, all you have to do now is turn the hand-wheel — obviously a lot less effort.’

  Duncan stroked his beard. ‘But what happens if the header tank runs dry?’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ Steven assured him. ‘Ninety per cent of the water being lifted up the belt is going out through the overflow pipe, onto the roof and back down into the reservoir.’

  ‘You mean we’ve been driving this thing most of the time for nothing?’

  ‘Exactly. All you’ve been doing is keeping the dynamo running to stop the alarm ringing.’

  ‘So now we only need to run the treadmill for two or three hours a day, like I first calculated?’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Mark said, ‘we’ll still need to keep the treadmill operating as normal during the daytime. It’s too risky to have it stopped when the Chatfield brothers are wandering about.’

  ‘However,’ Steven added, ‘now that we’re able to operate the dynamo independently of the treadmill, we can do something about the bearings and reduce the friction. Also, the treadmill was designed to lift the maximum amount of water in the minimum amount of time. We’re lifting a lot more water than we need to. If we reduce the amount of water being lifted by the belt, it’ll take a lot less effort to operate.’

  ‘Makes a lot of sense to me,’ Paul said enthusiastically.

  ‘The trick will be to reduce the friction and the amount of water being lifted little by little so that no one notices,’ Mark added. ‘We need to rotate all family members through the treadmill after each modification, and gradually reduce the workload.’

  ‘What about the Chatfields?’ Adam asked. ‘Surely they’ll notice the modifications?’

  ‘Did you notice them?’ Steven asked him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You did a duty last week. Did you notice the modifications?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘The Chatfields won’t notice either. We remove the hand-wheel during the day and poke it up into the ceiling.’

  There was silence as the cousins digested the facts.

  ‘So this is what we propose,’ Mark said after a while. ‘First, it’s important that what we’ve done remains secret. We could have just kept it to ourselves, but we think it’s time for the families to start co-operating. It’s time for the committee to be formed again.’

  ‘Nigel won’t talk to a committee,’ Duncan said.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. There are benefits in having a committee to manage matters among ourselves. Apart from anything else we need to set up a schedule to ensure that the treadmill punishment is shared equally among our three families.’

  ‘Fat chance of that!’ exclaimed Adam.

  ‘Why not?’ Mark challenged him. ‘We’ve halved the work of driving the treadmill.’

  ‘It’s fair enough,’ Duncan agreed. ‘We’ve got to be better off than we were before.’

  ‘What about the Morgan family?’ Warren asked. ‘I notice that Susan and Diana haven’t been invited to this meeting.’

  ‘I haven’t invited them for two reasons,’ Mark explained. ‘First, from what I’ve seen, the Morgan girls rarely end up doing punishment on the treadmill.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Duncan confirmed. ‘If they spend time on the treadmill, the service His Lordship receives suffers. I’m sure he’s told his sons to go easy on the Morgan girls.’

  ‘What’s the second reason?’ Adam asked.

  ‘We know there’s an informer in the community and I believe it’s a woman,’ Mark said.

  ‘What makes you so sure it’s a woman?’

  ‘Something I overheard Jasper say.’

  ‘And you think it’s one of the Morgan girls?’ pressed Warren.

  ‘I honestly don’t know. However, until we know who it is, we don’t want the women in any of the families to know about the modifications.’

  There was a ripple of indignation.

  ‘I hope you’re not accusing one of my family of being the informer?’ Duncan said, voicing the thoughts of the others.

  ‘I’m not accusing anyone. But someone is reporting back to the Chatfields. I wouldn’t like to think it’s Cheryl or Bridget, but until we know, the rule applies to them too. Anyway, the fewer people who know about the modifications, the less chance there is of someone making a slip and spilling the beans. The children will be kept in the dark for the same reason.’

  ‘So what exactly are you proposing?’ Paul asked.

  ‘That only the people in this room know about the modifications, and that we eight men operate the treadmill during the night shifts.’

  ‘All the night shifts!’ Adam exclaimed.

  ‘I realise we’ll miss some sleep, but we’re only going to have to turn the hand-wheel. There’s no reason why everyone here shouldn’t do an hour on the hand-wheel so we can all get a decent night’s sleep.’

  ‘You mean help do another family’s punishment!’

  Mark was becoming angry. ‘You’re thinking about this the wrong way. This is not a fight between the Steeds, the Greys, the Morgans and the Daltons. It’s a fight between the Chatfield family and the rest of us. At the end of the day, the treadmill has to be operated, or at least this hand-wheel has to be. If we co-operate, the result is less work for everyone.’

  ‘Mark’s right,’ Duncan agreed.

  ‘He is,’ Warren said, adding his weight to the argument. ‘It’s time to stop fighting with one another.’

  ‘So the women and children have to work the treadmill during the day?’ Adam said.

  ‘It’s not ideal,’ Mark conceded, ‘but they will be better off, too. They’ll all get a decent night’s sleep. They’re going to be working during the day regardless, whether it’s the treadmill, the gardens, the fields or around the house. If Steven can reduce the friction on the bearings, working the treadmill could end up being a lot less work than some of their other duties.’

  ‘It’s a brilliant piece of work! Well done, Steven,’ Paul said.

  ‘And Fergus,’ Steven said. ‘He helped as well.’

  Duncan raised an eyebrow. ‘Did he, indeed? I thought he was sneaking off to see Jessica when he slipp
ed out of our quarters in the early hours of the morning.’

  ‘I suggest we all get back to bed,’ Mark said, content the argument had been won and keen that no more objections be raised. ‘Let’s have a committee meeting tomorrow evening to organise the schedule for the treadmill.’

  ‘You can use our lounge if you like,’ Adam volunteered.

  Mark noted with satisfaction that co-operation between the families was already under way. ‘Fair enough. Tomorrow nine o’clock it is. In the meantime, remember what you have seen here tonight is between the eight of us only. If word gets back to the Chatfield brothers, all the work Steven and Fergus have done will have been a waste of time.’

  ‘And Steven and Fergus could be in a lot of trouble,’ Paul added grimly.

  47

  At the committee meeting the following evening, a schedule was drawn up planning the rotation of the treadmill duties between the families. Agreement was also reached as to what transgressions would be reported to the Chatfield brothers to facilitate the handover of punishment duties and when incidents would be reported.

  Over the next few weeks, some of the leather buckets had slits cut in the bottom, thereby reducing the weight of water being lifted. Bearings were fitted to the shaft at the top of the belt, considerably reducing the friction on the system.

  Mark’s long-term focus remained bringing about a change of regime. A functioning committee was a small step, but as time went by the co-operation between the families gathered momentum. Manning the treadmill had been the major cause of inter-family strife. Now that that task was being shared equitably, tensions eased.

  At the end of two months, Susan and Diana were invited to join the committee. While they were never made privy to the modifications to the treadmill, they soon became involved in other aspects. Diana in particular, despite her earlier threat to concentrate her efforts on the Morgan family alone, became a leading light. A natural leader, she encouraged the pooling of books to form a library and organised school classes for the children in the evenings and Sunday afternoons. A formal curriculum was drawn up, and those members of the community with relevant experience were appointed tutors.

  A number of clubs were formed, including bridge, darts and chess. Writing groups were formed, as was a debating society. The club meetings were necessarily short, because the days of work were still long and hard. Nevertheless, an hour’s entertainment in the evening relieved the monotony of their lives.

  But in spite of what had been achieved, Mark’s life was in turmoil. He was torn between missing Jane and his grandchildren and wanting to spend time with Allison. He began to think seriously about how Nigel might be confronted, and whether the community was united enough to make a stand against him. Sooner or later he was going to have to show his hand, and he constantly fretted about who he could and could not trust.

  There was still no clue as to who the spy was. Mark was surprised that some of the community’s activities had not come to Nigel’s attention, particularly the debating society, which was becoming increasingly daring in its choice of subjects. By March he’d begun to wonder whether the spy was still operational.

  The question was answered all too soon. Late one afternoon, Jasper and Damian walked into the gardens and summoned Steven to accompany them back to the house. No one was surprised; ever since his success in repairing the clock, Steven had found himself increasingly being escorted to the staterooms to do work for the Chatfields.

  However, on this occasion he found he was not going to the staterooms; instead he was marched to his own quarters.

  ‘Right, where are they?’ Jasper demanded as he kicked open the door of Steven’s room.

  ‘Where are what?’

  ‘The keys.’

  ‘What keys?’

  ‘Don’t get smart with us,’ Damian said, taking his pistol from its holster. ‘The keys to Cromwell’s Tower.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘We’re going to find them,’ Jasper said. ‘If necessary we’ll rip this place apart.’

  Jasper began to search Steven’s room, turning the bed upside down, angrily pulling the drawers from the dressing table and emptying their contents on the floor. Once all the obvious hiding places had been searched, he picked up a shoe and systematically tapped the floor. Then he began tapping the walls, ripping off pictures Steven had collected to brighten up his tiny, dingy room. Steven knew if Jasper began tapping the ceiling he would almost certainly find the escape equipment that had taken months to accumulate.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to smash my room up, I’ll show you where the keys are.’

  He led the brothers to the Punishment Room. They stopped at the doorway and peered in, watching him as he stood on the stool and reached up into the ceiling to locate the hidden keys. He was relieved they hadn’t followed him in; perhaps they only knew about the keys, not about the modifications he’d made to the treadmill.

  His hopes were soon dashed. ‘I understand you’ve got a hand-wheel up there as well,’ Damian said. ‘You might as well bring that down, too. You won’t be needing it any more.’

  Steven took the wheel down from the ceiling, walked to the doorway and handed both it and the keys to Damian, who was wearing a triumphant grin. Steven was led across the central arch of Cromwell’s Tower to the door opposite the Punishment Room.

  ‘Time to see how good these keys are,’ Jasper laughed, as Damian tried several keys from Steven’s set.

  Once the door was open, Steven suffered the ignominy of being escorted to the third floor and locked in the cell with his own keys. Raucous laughter echoed up the stone steps as Damian and Jasper descended the tower.

  The Grey family were not too concerned when Steven failed to return to the gardens during the afternoon. They assumed he was busy working in the staterooms. Mark, as usual, didn’t go to the Grey family quarters when he returned from the gardens. Instead he went straight to Aunt Margaret’s rooms. Allison hadn’t arrived yet, and Aunt Margaret offered him the use of her bathroom so that he could get cleaned up for dinner.

  He washed and returned to Aunt Margaret’s sitting room to find Allison still hadn’t arrived. He looked longingly out the window. There was still half an hour till dinner.

  ‘You know she’ll make it if she can,’ Aunt Margaret said gently. She was sitting in her favourite chair reading her prayer book. ‘It’s not always easy for her to get away. She has to be very careful with Nigel. He’s got a frightful temper.’

  ‘I know. Remember when we went to the Halfway House, the Christmas I came back to England with Helen just before the pandemic started?’

  ‘Of course,’ Aunt Margaret said, looking up.

  ‘Remember that chart of the family tree you had?’

  ‘The one Nigel snatched away?’

  ‘Yes, he lost his temper then. What was that all about?’

  ‘Oh, just some silly family business.’

  ‘I think we should reconstruct that chart. It’s part of the history of England now. The Chatfield dynasty is all that’s left.’

  ‘We don’t need to reconstruct it. I’ve still got a copy.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Of course, it’s in my handbag.’

  ‘Could I have a look?’

  ‘You can have it if you like,’ Aunt Margaret said, as she bent over with difficulty and picked up her bag. ‘It’s about time it got passed on to someone who cares about these things. I don’t know that I’ve got much longer on this earth.’

  ‘You’ll outlive the rest of us,’ Mark joked. It was hard to imagine the community without Aunt Margaret’s cheerful smile.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said, slowly opening her handbag with arthritic fingers and taking out the piece of paper. ‘You keep it.’

  They argued for a couple of minutes, but in the end Mark accepted it. He could see his aunt really wanted him to have it. He took the chart and carefully spread it out on the tabletop.

 
; ‘So who are these three blank spaces in Nigel’s branch of the family?’ he asked. Aunt Margaret looked uncomfortable. ‘If I’m to be custodian of the family tree, I need to know,’ he said.

  ‘Poor little souls,’ she sighed. ‘Babies. Two were malformed and died soon after they were born; the other one lived for about ten years, but he was very disabled.’

  ‘How come we never knew?’

  ‘No one did, except the aunts of course. Nigel insisted it be hushed up. He had the child who survived put in a home. I went to see him once; it was pitiful.’

  ‘We had a malformed child born in Gulf Harbour. It was Steven and Katie’s little boy.’

  It was the first Mark had spoken of the matter since arriving. Aunt Margaret responded in kind to the confidence he’d shared.

  ‘There’ve been other malformed children born in the family,’ she revealed. Mark looked hard at her, searching her eyes, begging for an explanation.

  ‘Your grandmother and grandfather didn’t have eleven children — they had fifteen.’

  ‘Fifteen!’

  ‘Wasn’t unusual in those days, dear. There were the eleven children who are shown on the family tree and three other children who were stillborn and malformed.’

  ‘We thought the problem at Gulf Harbour was caused because Katie and Steven were first cousins.’

  ‘Probably was,’ Aunt Margaret said.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Mark said. ‘Since all the family secrets are out in the open, who’s number fifteen?’

  ‘Number fifteen?’

  ‘The fifteenth child. You said your mother gave birth to fifteen children. There are eleven on the chart and three who died. That makes fourteen. What happened to the fifteenth?’

  ‘Well …’ Aunt Margaret hesitated.

  ‘Aunt Margaret,’ Mark said. ‘Can it really be any worse than what you’ve told me already?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose not. It’s just that we all promised your grandmother we would never mention his name again.’