Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5)

by Marilyn Harris

  But apparently Grandpapa didn't care and hurried to the bed. Despite Deasy Morgan's protest — she'd just put a camphor pack on his chest — Stephen snuggled into his arms and was glad the gray corridors were gone, yet wondered if he would ever see them again.

  “Grandpapa,” he murmured, nestling closer and wondering why he was shivering and burning up at the same time.

  Suddenly, over Grandpapa's shoulder, he saw the witch herself, Rose O'Donnell, materializing out of the gloom of the corridor. When had she returned, and why didn't she just go away and stay away, and he wouldn't want to tell Frederick, who surely would cry...

  “Good day, Stephen,” the witch said. “I hear you've been a bad boy and gone and gotten sick.”

  He felt Grandpapa ease his hold to look sternly up at Rose O'Donnell, but with one hand she waved Grandpapa away from the bed. Stephen was disappointed to see how docilely he went. In fact, everyone in the household, including Frederick and Deasy Morgan and even old Crosset Fletcher, moved when commanded to do so by Rose O'Donnell.

  “Let's have a look,” she commanded. Again with a wave of her hand she motioned for him to draw down the blanket and draw up his nightshirt, which he did without hesitation, because he knew from hard experience Rose O'Donnell's was the voice to be obeyed.

  Her hands were cold, and as Stephen pinched his eyes shut, he heard Deasy's voice as light as music but, as always, making no sense at all.

  As Deasy chattered aimlessly to the air, Rose O'Donnell moved her icy fingers down Stephen's chest like she was counting his ribs. “Are his bowels moving?” she asked anyone who cared to answer.

  Deasy stepped closer to the bed and stared mournfully down. “Like doorknobs,” she beamed in response to Rose O'Donnell's question.

  As Rose O'Donnell's examination continued, Stephen looked over her shoulder to see Grandpapa standing before the rain-splattered window, hands clasped behind his back, staring sadly out at the day. That was one thing Stephen didn't like about Grandpapa. He seemed happiest when he was sad.

  “Bleeding,” Rose O'Donnell announced, raising up from bending over with her ear pressed against his chest. “That's what he needs, a good bleeding.”

  “No!” This strong protest came from Grandpapa, who didn't look so sad any more as angry.

  “Congestion and infection,” Mrs. O'Donnell pronounced, and folded both hands together before her and looked like she was challenging Grandpapa.

  “He's too little and too weak,” Grandpapa argued, coming closer to the bed, fixing Stephen with a frightened eye. “It isn't necessary - ”

  “And how long has he been like this?” the witch inquired, circling the bed, playing with a big ring on her finger, twisting it then looking at it.

  Grandpapa looked helpless.

  Deasy followed Rose O'Donnell around the room, looking at the ring with her. “That's gorgeous, ma'am. Where did you pick up that pretty?”

  “How long?” Mrs. O'Donnell repeated sternly, and pointed back toward Stephen.

  Deasy answered accurately for a change. “Last week.”

  “Bleeding!” came the pronouncement again, and this time Stephen saw Grandpapa weaken.

  “A week is too long for this fever,” Mrs. O'Donnell said, and shook her head down at Stephen as though it were his fault.

  Still hesitant, Grandpapa drew out his rosary beads, which generally he kept hidden in his pocket. “Perhaps I should fetch the doctor again from Dublin,” he said.

  Stephen watched his fingers move quickly down the small black beads.

  “And pay a king's ransom in the process,” Mrs. O'Donnell said. “I guarantee it — and for the same prescription.”

  Grandpapa seemed to be listening closely. The money was what made the difference. Mr. Parnell always told Grandpapa the English had robbed him of everything, and money was always a problem, what with high prices and bad crops.

  “Is it... truly necessary?” Grandpapa asked. He looked like he was the one who was sick, and not Stephen.

  “Would I have suggested it if it weren't?” Rose O'Donnell said, her tone angry.

  Deasy moved close, a light smile on her face. “I was bled once, Lord Harrington, sir,” she confessed, curling the corner of her apron around one finger and looking sideways at the floor. “Didn't hurt a bit, no sir, it didn't, and the next day, just like the doctor said, I was good as rain.”

  The witch looked up as though surprised by the support from this unexpected quarter. For a moment she didn't appear to know what to do with it. In the end she decided to do nothing and commanded Deasy to go to the kitchen and fetch one of Crosset Fletcher's sharpest knives.

  At that Stephen decided it was time to pay closer attention. He had no idea what “bleeding” meant, but if it involved sharp knives, he wanted no part of it.

  “...Papa,” he whispered and heard how strange it had sounded. He'd meant to say “Grandpapa,” but it had taken too much energy, and now he looked up, surprised, to see Rose O'Donnell staring angrily down on him from one side of the bed. Grandpapa was on the other, though he didn't appear angry, just puzzled.

  “You... haven't been talking to him about you-know-who, have you?” Rose O'Donnell now demanded angrily.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then why...?” Abruptly Rose O'Donnell broke off, though she continued to stare down on Stephen as though she were trying to put a curse on him.

  “It appears I got here just in time,” he heard the witch say.

  “I knew he was getting worse, but I didn't know - ”

  “I don't think we want Mr. Eden aware of the unhappy fact his son is - ”

  “Don't!” The stern voice was Grandpapa's, who sometimes didn't like to hear people say certain things.

  “Then let me care for him. I know what is best for him.”

  “All right!” Grandpapa replied, as though impatient or annoyed or both. “I'll be downstairs in the library. Tell me when it's over.”

  “Of course, Lord Harrington.”

  There was something in the tone of both that alarmed Stephen, his Grandpapa's easy surrender and the witch’s tone of triumph. The wrong person had won, as always, and something was going to happen to Stephen that he would be powerless to alter, and it was going to hurt and, instead of making him better, it was going to make him worse and unable to find his way out.

  “...Papa,” he murmured, and wondered again why he was calling out “Papa” instead of “Grandpapa.”

  “He said it again,” the witch said, furious. “Are you sure you haven't been talking to him about his father?”

  Father.

  “No, dammit, I told you. I'd be an idiot to do that, now, wouldn't I?”

  Still relatively safe behind his closed eyes, Stephen listened to the voices swirling about him, male and female blending.

  Father...

  ...rather than Papa or Grandpapa. Suddenly he had the clearest of visions behind his closed eyes of a tall man — not Grandpapa-strong, with fair hair and a darker beard that tickled Stephen's face, a man that looked like one of the Norse gods in his mythology books, and this god came into the room where Stephen was playing with building blocks. Where the room was, Stephen had no idea. But there the man was, a giant, who at first frowned down on Stephen as though he'd displeased him in some way. But that couldn't be, because the next thing Stephen knew, hands reached down and lifted him and he was in the air, his feet sailing out behind him, looking down at the god's face — and it was no longer displeased, but grinning wildly up at him, whirling around with him until the large room and everything in it blurred.

  “Ah, here we are. Good girl.” Rose O'Donnell brought him back from his memory and deposited him in Talbot House, where he saw Deasy standing wide-eyed in the door, her broad white apron filled with mysterious items.

  “Well, come, come,” Rose O'Donnell said sharply, waved the girl forward, and commenced to arrange the items on the bedside table.

  Stephen tried to look in all directions at once
, at the ominous things being placed on the table, at the starched and rigid expression on Rose O’Donnell’s face, and — worst of all — at the fearful one on Deasy’s face.

  “Isn’t old Crosset coming?” Rose O’Donnell demanded, looking back through the door as though the second woman were lurking outside waiting for an invitation.

  “No, ma’am,” Deasy murmured, newly respectful of the witch. “She says to tell you to use this to close him up, leastwise he’ll bleed to... Abruptly she broke off. “Oh, ma’am, do you need me? I’d like to - ”

  “Of course I need you,” Mrs. O’Donnell snapped. “Holy Mother, I can’t do everything by myself. Now, go and prop the lad up on his pillow.”

  “Come on, Master Stephen,” Deasy urged halfheartedly.

  For a moment he thought she was going to cry. He would have liked to oblige her, but he had no more strength for “coming on.” Where precisely it had gone, he had no idea, but even the thought of lifting his head from the sweat-dampened pillow was more than he could manage.

  “Deasy... what...?” He tried to ask a question, but she never gave him a chance and shushed him up, at the same time raising him to a half-sitting position, where his head wobbled bonelessly about for a moment and at last fell back into the familiar hollow of the pillow.

  From this vantage point he saw Rose O’Donnell coming at him with a piece of heavy twine — the sort old Crosset Fletcher used to tie the legs of chickens together before she put them in the oven — and she was bringing closer that heavy crockery pot which old Crosset used to fill with chips of ice from the icehouse for Stephen and Frederick to munch on during hot summer days.

  But there was no ice in it now, and no reason for it to be in Stephen’s room, because it wasn’t hot summer. Rose O’Donnell placed the big bowl on the side of his bed and apparently saw the expression on Stephen’s face.

  “Oh, come, now. You’re a big boy, a man almost. When my Denis Bourke O’Donnell was a man of nine, he was the sole support of his blessed mum and nine brothers and sisters. He went down into the mines and came up with the best of them, and earned a full day’s pay every day of his life until the bloody English - ”

  “Mrs. O’Donnell...”

  The timid voice was Deasy’s, and for once Mrs. O’Donnell listened to her and nodded in apology. “I’m sorry,” she muttered to Stephen. “It's just that you and Frederick have had it too easy, far too easy, and if you're ever going to grow up and be decent men...”

  He listened closely, feeling his lack and sorry for it, and tried to withdraw his arm as she reached for it. But she was stronger and bigger and sat on the edge of his bed and boldly pushed up his nightshirt sleeve and commenced to tie a heavy piece of twine about his upper arm, not so tight it hurt — he did want to be a man — but tight enough to be uncomfortable. He had to close his eyes and deal with the sudden rush of tears which were flooding in from behind his eyes.

  It was while his eyes were closed that he felt strong hands grasp his right arm, lift it, hold it steady. Then he felt the pressure of a cutting edge, felt it cut deeply, stinging into the flesh of his arm, heard a very small voice inside his head prudently advise, Don't look.

  But foolishly he ignored the voice. He opened one eye and saw a nightmare sight. Blood, more blood than he'd ever seen before, streaming freely, unabated, from the cut on his upper arm! Running down over his wrists, breaking up into smaller channels over his fingers, and ultimately streaming down into the big crockery bowll

  “Papal” he screamed, terrified, uttering the first word that came to mind, an unfortunate selection, for Rose O'Donnell renewed her grip on his arm and looked down on him.

  “Who are you talking about when you say that word?” she demanded, squeezing his arm, causing the rivers of blood to increase and crest, his entire arm red now.

  “No... one,” he lied, and again tried to twist away from the terrifying ordeal.

  But now it was Deasy who held his shoulders securely, and he closed his eyes against the fearful sight of his wet red arm and thought on the Norse god who had carried him through endless gray corridors, scaring him sometimes, tickling him at others, a mix of feelings Stephen couldn't understand — like now, except just thinking on him made him not quite so afraid.

  “Stephen! Answer me! Who do you mean when you speak of Papa?”

  But the low ugly voice could threaten all she wanted, for he was no longer alone. Behind his closed eyes, Papa had appeared, so clear in all aspects, and was now approaching Stephen across a wide place — where it was, Stephen had no idea, but it was wide and green and the sun was shining. As Papa came closer and closer, Stephen thought: Yes, it's him, the same one who used to pick me up and whirl me around and tickle my cheek with his beard.

  Despite the threats of the old witch and the sight of his blood-coated arm and the throb of the cut through which every beat of his heart seemed to be amplified, he looked up behind his closed eyes and smiled and ran to meet him, calling out with every step, “Papa!”

  London November 12, 1874

  A lesser man than Charley Spade would have turned back at New London Bridge and the worst traffic jam in the history of the world. But if Charley Spade resembled an ox, he had the tenacity of a bull terrier, and besides, he knew how much Mr. Eden was counting on him and he couldn't let the man down.

  So it was he arrived in London town on Saturday, Market Day, the day the creatures were brought in from the surrounding farms to Smithfield's for sale and ultimate consumption, the day Covent Garden spread wide its stalls and filled them with fruits, vegetables, and homemade sauces and jams and jellies, the day when London decided to “go to the stalls” all at once.

  “You can't make it that way, guv,” Charley shouted at a fast-moving brougham which cut through the line of wagons and climbed up onto the bridge to add to the clogged congestion.

  But the driver never even acknowledged the warning, brought the whip down over his horses, and eased through between a large milk wagon and a straw wagon, then turned sharply, unexpectedly to the right and disappeared down a narrowing cobblestone alley that appeared to lead nowhere except back to the Thames.

  Curious, Charley — more mobile than most with just a horse to manage — eased up with no difficulty between the congestion of wagons and looked down the steep, narrow alleyway and saw the brougham moving along a narrow ledge of embankment that ran parallel to the river.

  So, with only a fleeting thought to the moot question was it the wrong or right thing to do, he brought the whip down lightly over the horse's back and guided him carefully between the wagons down the embankment, not having one idea where it was leading him but hoping it was away from this awful place of screaming, shouting voices.

  “Gawd!” Charley muttered only a few moments later, and wondered what he'd gone and gotten himself into now, for suddenly he looked up to discover he was the only rider in sight. Everyone else was walking, trying to keep dry in the slow drizzle which had just commenced. For a moment he tried to steady his horse, which was growing nervous with so many people passing at such close quarters. And still they came, all the people of London town — or so it seemed.

  “Hey, don't!” he shouted as he felt hands pull on his stirrups. “What do you-?”

  But he never had a chance to complete the question, for suddenly something was brought down across the back of his head. At the moment of impact he thought of walnuts, of when he was a child how his father would go up the coast near to Bristol and gather baskets of walnuts, and all year long they would crack and eat them.

  The last sensation was of falling from the height of his horse, the horse itself spinning and rearing, as scared as Charley.

  Gawd! North Devon seemed like paradise after this hell. As a fierce ringing erupted in both ears, he vowed if he ever made it back to his little fishing village, he would never again leave that blessed paradise of clean wind and sun-swept beaches, where politeness still mattered, where you greeted your neighbor with a smile, and where m
en did not go about knocking other men in the head.

  Never at his best when aroused from a deep sleep, Alex Aldwell swayed, bleary-eyed, in the door of his house near Hanover Square and wondered what in the hell Jason was doing on his stoop at this hour of the night.

  “All right, Jason. Try again,” Alex invited, trying to clear his head of sleep, for Jason had come from Aslam, and that was a source to be taken seriously.

  “It's as I said, Mr. Aldwell,” Jason began again, looking mildly heavy-eyed himself, as though Alex wasn't the only one whose sleep had been interrupted that night. “Lord Eden took the man in, then suggested I come right away over here and fetch you because of the letter which was all the man had on — ”

  “Wait!” Alex commanded, holding up one hand as though to stay the confusion before it overtook both of them again.

  “No time, sir,” the tall man interrupted. “It was bad enough finding a naked man left on the stoop, but then Mr. Eden opened the letter, and - ”

  Alex started forward. “Mr... Eden?” he asked, bewildered.

  “The young one. Master Aslam,” Jason explained, a look on his face which suggested he understood Alex's confusion. For years there had been only one Mr. Eden — John Murrey Eden.

  “What... naked man?” Alex asked tentatively.

  “Can't remember his name,” Jason said apologetically, “but he come from North Devon and went to Paris with Mr. Eden — the other one.”

  “You say he's from Devon?” Alex asked.

  Jason nodded. “Naked he was, like the day he was born. And he was left by a man and a woman, and he was wearing the woman's cape in an attempt to hide - ”

  “All right, wait,” Alex commanded wearily again. “Come inside. I'll get my clothes on and we'll - ”

  “No!” Jason interrupted, then apologized. “I'm sorry, sir. Of course get your clothes on, but Mr. Eden — the other one — asked me to ask you to call at this address, if you would be so good, and deliver this letter. Most important, he said it was.”

  Bewilderment mounting, Alex took the letter. It felt thick, and the seal had been broken. Apparently Aslam had read the contents. But most significant of all was the name of the addressee written in bold strokes by a hand as familiar to Alex as his own.