Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5)

by Marilyn Harris

  Susan marched forward, thinking to thread her way through them while they were still struggling to identify her. Up close she recognized one of them, Tom Babcock, a local herring fisherman. His infant son had suffered lung fever last year. The child had survived, but Susan feared that his hearing was now impaired.

  “'Evening, Tom,” she called out, drawing even with the men, who seemed to be exerting massive effort simply to stand erect.

  Suddenly from out of the shadows she felt a hand descend upon her left shoulder. Massive and strong, it spun her about. She dropped the lantern and for a moment the entire world was converted into a whirlwind blur of black ocean and dancing whitecaps and distant eyes of light. In an effort to remain upright, she reached out toward the center of the men for any available support and found it on a broad chest and in two rough arms that within the instant ensnared her and drew her close to a bewhiskered mouth from which emanated the smells of all the breweries of the world.

  “Hal Caught you, plain Miss Sparrow,” the man laughed, and though she was struggling inside his enforced embrace, she looked up into the massive face and realized that she had never seen him before. Not of Mortemouth, she was certain.

  “Please... let me... pass,” she suggested with an admirable degree of calmness, for there was no cause for alarm. It was just the ale — too much of it — that had made them aggressive, and perhaps the fact that John Murrey Eden, whom they loathed, was suffering again, and that, of course, was worthy of celebration.

  “Pass, pass,” the giant teased good-naturedly, though he did nothing to release her. In fact, she felt his arms become a vise about her shoulders, a gesture that was in contradiction to his teasing. Then she felt one enormous hand work its way up her waist, closing about her breast, drawing her yet closer, the grizzled face bending over her, making it necessary that she look sharply to the left in an attempt to avoid intimate contact.

  The sudden struggle attracted the attention of all those men near enough to see. She was aware of them halting on the path behind her as though they too had encountered an insurmountable barrier.

  “Please... she gasped, pushing with her one free hand against the massive barrel chest. “I’m needed up at - ”

  “You're needed here,” the man hissed in her ear, and inevitably the arms tightened even more and she felt that one straying hand explore further, venturing back and forth across her breasts, the fingertips finding the softness, then plunging into it.

  After a moment of panic she reminded herself to stay calm. She'd been in similar situations before, many times, worse than this.

  But as the hand pressed further and the mouth came closer, she saw the gathering crowd, a few struggling to catch their breaths after the climb up, Reverend Christopher wearing a shocked and outraged expression but all of them holding their ground, as though they were frightened of the giant.

  “Please...” Susan gasped, and continued to struggle against the massive barrel chest and tried equally hard to avoid the grizzled stubbly whiskers that continued to bend close over her face.

  “Please let me go,” she repeated, trying to keep her voice as normal as possible.

  “Let you go,” parroted the giant, grinning. “Come back with us to the Green Man and show us what you got in your nurse's bag. Eh, Tom? Wouldn't you like to see...?”

  As all the men laughed, Susan suddenly — and to her surprise-pulled free. She wrenched left as the giant threw back his head to the right and invited the others to join in his sport.

  Freed, she backed hurriedly up the path, all the while keeping a vigilant eye on the stumbling, giggling men.

  “Leave her alone, Simon!” It was a weak voice compared to the giant's, and then she heard it again, as though the voice knew it was inferior and needed to repeat itself. “I said leave her be!”

  As no hands had as yet made insistent contact, she dared to look back from her position near the cliff wall and saw that Tom Babcock had come to her defense, though the pleasure was mixed because on his face she saw the completion of the chain, the practical application of Do Unto Others, and she had sat with his infant son for three nights. But she saw as well that he was clearly outmatched both in physical size and in weight of authority. The top of Tom's head barely reached the giant's shoulder.

  Still he came, leaning into the path's incline, his face placid as though he were confronting merely a bothersome neighbor or tradesman in need of gentle correction.

  “Leave her be, Simon, is what I say.”

  At the same time, she saw Tom step upward to a position directly behind Simon and only lightly touch his arm. Simon whirled on the light touch as though it held real threat, and the last Susan saw was that enormous hand draw back in what seemed an eternity of gathering strength and finally shoot forward pistonlike and deliver an awesome blow to the side of Tom's jaw.

  Sickened by the crack of bone on bone and the sight of poor Tom literally airborne in his backward-tumbling descent down the path, it was Susan's turn to feel splintering intentions. If she stayed to lend her assistance, Simon would merely relaunch his conquest, and undoubtedly some other knight-errant would start up the hill to offer her rescue. Carried to its logical conclusion, she foresaw herself never reaching the top of the cliff walk and saw as well the path behind littered with the groaning bodies of would-be rescuers and saw no point to either projection.

  So... she ran. She gathered up her skirt and bowed her head into the incline — at its steepest here at mid-point — and heard an uproar of laughing men coming from behind as most cheered her on her way. She looked ahead and tried to draw deep breath for her bursting lungs and — to her surprise — saw a gnarled hand reach down in assistance and saw ahead of her on the path only a black-hooded figure, faceless, and heard a voice of no clear sex say hoarsely, “Hurry! You're needed, though you may wish old Simon had got you first.”

  In the momentum of her speed she couldn't break pace, and took the outstretched hand, grateful for the assistance, and was well past it when it occurred to her to look back for clearer identification, and when she did, she saw at the side of the path where the specter had stood — nothing, merely the silky heads of high rush weeds bending under the duress of the harsh channel wind.

  Where...? she thought, momentarily alarmed, then belatedly realized the path had followed the contours of the cliff and had curved, and the figure, whoever it was, had disappeared behind the cliff wall.

  Hurry! You're needed, though you may wish old Simon had got you first. She still felt the chill dampness of a hand covering hers and vowed when the crisis was over to inquire about the black-hooded figure. Hurrying on toward the fortress towering above her, she looked up as though the jagged crenellation had called to her. She hadn't realized how close she was to the top, for she saw more than crenellation now, saw the castle itself, enormous, imposing, a constant and steady landmark from her youth, along with Exeter Cathedral and the wild loneliness of Exmoor.

  Still struggling for breath, she thought of all the stories of Eden Castle she'd heard as a child, and had believed. Slowly she resumed speed as though the weight of her thoughts had steepened the incline in the last few yards. She remembered her father's perennial and classic rage at “them Edens,” the ancient question which always confronted mankind, confronting him with new immediacy and frustration, “why some slept warm and dry and others didn't, why some hurt all the time and others appeared never to hurt...

  At least Susan knew more than her father had known, knew the vast importance of that one benign word: “appeared to hurt...”

  All men hurt And women. It was that simple and that sorrowful. Nearing the top, she heard voices beyond her thoughts, heard a female voice shout, “Who's comin'?” over the wind, and looked up to see a sizable greeting committee, forty or more men and women, a few children, shifting as restlessly as rush reeds under the pressure of the wind.

  “It's only - ” she called back, ready to identify herself, when a strong male voice cut in. “It's her
. It's the nurse. Let her pass. She can...”

  She never heard the nature of his vote of confidence, for at the announcement of her identity, the group moved back to permit her to climb to the very top of the path, where a woman greeted her by shouting, “He's up there, he is,” and she pointed a finger toward the sprawling castle, where still Susan had seen nothing human or threatening save the outline of the castle itself.

  She pushed back the hood of her cloak and felt the hair close to her scalp wet with perspiration despite the cool wind, and looked closely at every jagged edge of crenellation, thinking she'd missed something and was, in fact, still missing it.

  “I don't... she began to the woman, and was quickly offered an explanation.

  “Oh, not there, dearie, but on the channel side, right down that path there, near the Eden graves, don't you see, or right above them.”

  As the woman spoke, Susan followed the direction of her hand and saw little but that strange brooding terrain which was characteristic of all the moors, grassy yet virtually devoid of all else, with gaunt ribs of rock, heather, and wind-tortured clumps of gorse and bracken. No reassuring trees or hedgerows, fields or meadows, just the bleak repetition of emptiness and desolation.

  She drew one final lung-filling breath and glanced briefly behind her, expecting to see the sharp descent, and saw nothing and remembered that the woman had led her away from the treacherous edge and had now abandoned her for whispered gossip among her friends, having pointed the way to where something was going on that required Susan's attention.

  With no offers from anyone to guide her farther or assist her in any way, she shrugged the hood of her cloak farther back onto her shoulders and felt the good clean coldness of ocean wind and tried, as she started off alone down the path, to resurrect from memory an image of John Murrey Eden as she'd last seen him in the army hospital at Scutari, his right shoulder wounded from the massacre at Station Number Seven on the Brassey Railway. She'd heard it all, every grim detail, not from Mr. Eden, who had been strangely silent during the days of his recuperation, but from other survivors of the same tragedy. Not that there had been that many. She tried now to remember the final count of the dead. There was something safe and objective in a number, far better than the memory of men's screams which had awakened her earlier on this bizarre evening. Over five hundred, she recalled; and as always, the dead had been the fortunate ones. For days, weeks, the less fortunate had hobbled or been carried off the ships at Scutari Landing, many amputees who had endured the first surgery under rough battlefield conditions, some clearly insane from the weight of the pain.

  Suddenly Susan looked up to discover that she'd wandered off the path, moving toward the cliff's edge, away from the castle, as though her instincts, if nothing else, were trying to warn her...

  Then she heard it again, that deep plaintive wail that seemed to start low, then climbed the length of the scale, though it was not a human scale, for she'd never heard a human voice make that piercing cry.

  Before she stepped back up onto the path, she looked again in the direction of the sound. Straight ahead, wasn't it? It seemed to be, and she saw through the shadowy night yet another group of Morte-mouth's citizens several hundred yards up ahead, lantern flares dancing at macabre angles under the pressure of the wind. From where she stood, a distance removed, they seemed to be simultaneously looking up at something and yet backing away.

  “Hurry!” someone shouted, and she quickened her step.

  As she approached the large gathering, she saw their faces, their eyes recording something at the top of the castle. A few, incredibly, were grinning. But most bore stiff frozen expressions, varying degrees of horror, several of the women pressing the hems of aprons to their mouths, the men standing deceptively casually, hands shoved into well-worn trousers, the tension manifested in the manner in which teeth chewed at the corner of a lip.

  Suddenly a communal and sharp intake of breath issued from the closely watching crowd and at last the stragglers from the cliff walk drew near and caught her in their flow and pushed against her as though at last forcing her to turn and face whatever spectacle was taking place at the top of Eden Castle.

  She could see a dark shape, the figure of a man, though the head seemed to blend with the shoulders, the shoulders with the torso, until, reaching midsection, it appeared to elongate as though he were carrying in his arms another...

  “Who is...?” she began of anyone who cared to answer, and never finished, for suddenly the specter stepped closer to the edge of the escarpment, bearing the silent figure with him, a figure detailed now, as Susan observed, by the fullness of the thick skirts.

  A woman.

  “Who was in the castle with him?” she asked, and wished that someone had the knowledge to answer.

  But apparently all were lacking, for in the split second before the wind died, no one answered, either through lack of knowledge or the greater fascination that the figure was less than a single step from the edge of the roof, only the shortest of movements separating him and his mysterious cargo from the edge and the sheer descent down to gravel four stories below.

  “Who is with him?” she demanded, and for a moment thought irrationally that she must find a quick way up and relieve him of his burden before they plunged over the edge, either singly or together. But there was no quick way up, none that she knew of. Before her, skirting the walls of the castle, she saw the gravel path which led back around the northern expanse of castle, on around to the western front to the gatehouse, through the gatehouse and inside the inner courtyard, up the steps of the Keep, where the trail disappeared into the vastness of the castle itself.

  Again the man moved closer to the edge, his cries rising with the wind, the same cries she'd heard for the last fifteen minutes, a depth of mourning that could not and should not be maintained.

  “Are there servants?” she asked, beginning to address those directly on either side of her. She needed specific answers.

  Suddenly, from behind, she heard a puffing though familiar male voice. Reverend Christopher's.

  “Thank heavens,” she exclaimed, pleased to see someone moving toward her who might have information and the courage to share it.

  As she waited for him to push his way through the crowd, she glanced over her shoulder, to see the tableau at the top of the castle unchanged, the bearded figure with face and features obscured still tottering on the brink, the woman in his arms unmoved as far as Susan could tell, apparently not protesting her fate in any way, though occasionally the persistent wind lifted a skirt and altered the silhouette and gave the appearance of life and movement.

  Standing next to her now, Susan saw the same old woman she had encountered earlier on the path, the only font of willing information on the scene, apparently. “It's his retribution, don't you see?” the old woman announced over the wind, smacking her lips in a curious manner, as though the words tasted good.

  “For what?” Susan inquired.

  “Who are you?” the old woman demanded, squinting over the limited distance that separated them. “Oh, it's the little nurse.” She grinned, answering her own question. She stepped closer, and Susan smelled a garlic plaster. “You got your work cut out for you up there, now, ain't you, dearie? If I was you, I'd just turn...”

  Behind her she heard the familiar puffing and looked back to see Reverend Christopher, more red-faced than usual, draw even with her. “I was afraid of this. How many times I have tried to reach him with the promise of God's forgiveness, but he really didn't want... forgiveness.” The bewilderment in his voice reflected the greater bewilderment of his soul. Who in their right mind would turn down God's blessed forgiveness?

  “He's not seen things clearly for ever so long,” Reverend Christopher went on, whispering.

  How long the tortured man and his cargo would be content merely to howl at the moon, she had no idea.

  “Who is with him?” she interrupted.

  Reverend Christopher looked up toward the
crenellation as though somehow the distance and shadows had altered and now he could see. “Well, I'm... not certain,” he murmured, his eyes becoming two slits as he peered upward.

  “Who was in the castle with him?” Susan asked urgently.

  “No one,” he said flatly. “No one was in the castle with him.”

  Surprised, Susan was certain that this was misinformation. How could that be? The Eden family was large, like most of the great families of England, half-brothers and -sisters and countless London associates. As frequently as three years ago the only carriages she ever encountered crossing the moors were elegant London coaches, all bound for Eden. No, she was certain that Reverend Christopher was mistaken when he said that John Murrey Eden lived in the castle alone.

  “Then who is in his arms?” she asked.

  But before he could answer, a voice, steady, unperturbed, male, came from behind. “It's the Lady Harriet,” this voice announced calmly. “Mr. Eden's aunt, or mother, or lover, or mistress, depending upon which tattler you choose to believe.”

  Even as the voice spoke, Susan turned, hearing the weight of authority she needed. There was no speculation or guesswork in those clarion and slightly arrogant tones. Someone knew. She saw in the dim night a pencil-thin, yet erect male figure, dressed in a black coat. His face was old, with a solemn expression in his eyes and thin drawn-down lips. His hair was wispy and white and seemed to lift under the force of the wind as though it had a will and energy of its own. She couldn't remember having ever seen him before in her life.

  Still he spoke on in a deep, well-modulated voice, a touch of sorrow audible in his tone, a deeper sorrow in his eyes. “It's the Lady Harriet, yes, I'd bet on it.” He nodded, looking effortlessly up, as though something had provided him with a clearer vision.

  “And you are...?” Susan began, feeling the need to identify the strange old man who might, with luck, lend her a particle of understanding concerning the grim and apparently fixed tableau at the top of Eden Castle.