ENDLESS
TIME
Frances Burke
Endless Time
Frances Burke
This edition copyright © 2012 Frances Burke
eBook design by Tim C. Taylor
This book is dedicated to Trisha Sunholm, a great friend, a gifted critic and an unfailing supporter.
PREFACE
Devon – 1806
She stood by the window, holding herself stiff against the surge of shock and pain. Her eyes did not focus on the printed words she held in her hand, words of hate gouged into the paper with a furious quill, lines etched in poison distilled by a diseased mind. Instead, she gazed out unseeingly across the rose garden, shimmering in the heat given off by baking bricks, and wished she could recall the past minute and destroy the note before she ever opened it. But she could not. For as long as she lived she would not be able to erase those words from her memory. She would know that someone within the close circle of her family and friends, a person who looked at her from behind a false mask of love wanted her dead.
Antony’s voice rose up the stairwell, calling to her. She crumpled the note and thrust it into her skirt pocket, schooling her face to hide her distress. He must not know. Nothing must spoil this idyllic hour spent together with their child. It was the time she most cherished, and today was especially important.
‘In here, in the nursery,’ she called, running to open the door.
Antony bounded up the stairs to take her eagerly in his arms, fitting her neat brown head into the hollow of his shoulder.
You are blooming today, my Jenny. I could pin you on my coat and wear you like a rose.’ His voice, so deep and filled with love, reverberated in the small room.
The two-year-old Chloe looked up from her position on the rug and crowed delightedly. ‘Papa! Look! Bocks.’
Smiling, he drew Jenny with him across to the hearth and went down on his knees beside the child. Having admired the blocks and kissed their owner’s sweet face he rose, turning once more to his wife and saying with mock severity, ‘What is this piece of news that will not wait? I have exercised my mind over it since you teased me at the breakfast table, and I can be patient no longer.’
Jenny drew her hand down the lean cheek, admiring the strong line of jaw, wanting to draw the moment out, to keep it perfect and enshrined in her heart. Finally she said, ‘We are to have another child in the spring, Antony. Perhaps this time it will be an heir.’
He stood silent for a moment, his eyes glistening.
‘My lady sweet. My beautiful Jenny, it matters not whether ‘tis boy or girl. No words can describe my happiness.’
She went into his arms and let him lead her to the couch, where they sat in harmony, silently savoring the moment. Jenny was glad she had waited to tell him. Their time together was so precious, and especially this daily hour spent in the nursery. The estate took him from her during most of the daylight hours, yet she did not grudge him his enjoyment of the land. Although born to high position, his heart was in this particular corner of the Devon countryside, and she knew how he longed for a son to inherit the great Marchmont holdings, along with a name as proud as any in England.
Their hour passed all too quickly. Antony removed Chloe from his lap and kissed his wife once more.
‘I must leave you now. It is time for Chloe’s sleep and I have a dozen errands away from here.’
Jenny let him go reluctantly, feeling unaccountably sad to see him disappear down the curving stair. She watched him emerge from the tower door into the sunlight, look up to the window and raise a hand before walking briskly off towards the stables. When tears filled her eyes she dashed them away and busied herself with her child’s needs, enjoying the small services she could do in place of the nursemaid, and singing to cover the feeling that her wonderful day had in some way become shadowed. The letter in her pocket had begun to do its poisonous work.
*
The dog had been restless all morning, moving up and down the stairs from room to room, sometimes going to a window to stand on hind legs with nose pressed to the glass, staring out. Twice Jenny had left her baby and gone to look through the same windows. Feathers’ uncharacteristic behavior was unsettling. The spaniel had more sense than many of his breed and did not fuss unnecessarily. But there was nothing untoward to be seen. The east window of the nursery, set up in the tower because Jenny loved its curved walls and deep window embrasures, looked over a shrubbery and down a flagged path to the main carriageway. Nothing stirred under the leaden sky, not even one of the gardeners.
When the dog moved to the south window Jenny followed, putting a hand on the domed head and saying softly, ‘What is it, Feathers? What do you feel?’ For it was obvious from the tremors under her fingers that the animal was upset. Yet nothing moved in the painted landscape. It looked as still and two-dimensional as a page in a Book of Hours. No leaves stirred, no lizards scuttled across the stone balustrade below. The Manor slept like Beauty’s castle in a dreaming world. Jenny shivered and stroked the dog’s long silky ear, trying to wipe out her own eerie fantasy that she and Chloe and the spaniel were the only real, living things in that space of time.
Telling Feathers to lie quiet, with the promise of a walk later in the evening cool, she returned to Chloe and her building blocks on the rug. Her mind followed her husband riding out across the fields of dried grass to talk with his tenant farmers, all thoroughly tired of this hot summer and all speaking in the most doom-laden terms. As if Antony could possibly control the weather, she thought indignantly. He had laughed when telling her that even the animals hung their heads and looked sullen when he went by. How weary he must be of complaints.
Chloe squealed as the blocks tumbled down and Jenny smiled and held up her hands in mock horror. A wave of love swept over her as she felt the chubby fingers tugging at her skirt. Was there ever a child so plump and fair as hers? Nor one so loving? Still clumsy on her feet at age two, Chloe gave promise of a future grace and beauty that delighted her mother.
Jenny herself possessed a certain wren-like charm, but had long since decided that her claims to beauty were best exchanged for other attributes – an interest in others, a certain skill with paints and brushes, and housewifely abilities. Antony clearly saw more. It seemed that he appreciated a pale skin lightly dusted with freckles, or so he often said. Her brown eyes reminded him of a pet doe he had loved as a child, and her long neck was made to be adorned with pearls. It was a mystery to her, but in Antony’s eyes these qualities easily outweighed her lack of presence and the limp that resulted from a long-ago fall from a horse.
He, on the other hand, was the epitome of a romantical maiden’s dream. She chuckled at the thought of his face if she were ever to put this thought into words. But in truth he was quite the most handsome man she had laid eyes on, even amongst London’s finest. His muscular frame reminded her of a pugilist she had once seen at a country fair, stripped to the waist and ready to take on any man who dared. Swarthy as a gypsy, lithe and fit as an animal that must hunt its prey, yet he had an innate gentleness that called to her own nature.
She had loved him from the first moment she saw him as he rode by her father’s rectory gate – loved totally and, as she thought, hopelessly; for the fashionable world of Lord Antony Marchmont lay far distant from her own.
But at her father’s death, the Earl of Roth insisted that his widowed sister and her children should move from Yorkshire and make their home with him. He sent his only son, Antony with the proposal, and to act as escort on the journey down to Devon. It had been a time of surprises.
Her Papa’s death had not grieved Jenny too much. He had not been a loving father, although she had enjoyed working as his assistant, visiting the needy, helping where she could. Her
life was even and slow-paced, a life of service, save for her painting. Her mother’s high connections made the neighborhood wary; and that fact, together with her twisted ankle and lack of expectations had, she believed, made her ineligible for marriage. However, magically, she had tumbled into love with her own cousin, who returned her affection.
Recalling just how he had reciprocated, she blushed and laughed. Looking down, she met Chloe’s brown eyes, so like her own, smiling up at her.
‘Bocks, Mama. Now.’ She tugged impatiently at her mother’s gown.
While mother and child played together the afternoon moved on. At intervals the dog got up and resumed his pacing, now made more irritating by accompanying whines of distress. Jenny offered to let him out, but he didn’t seem to want to go. He made her nervous. Several times she went to the window, then to the door, looking out down the stairs, but without seeing anything to disturb her. The poisonous note in her pocket seemed to weigh her down, destroying her peace of mind.
She had put Chloe down to sleep, and now she wanted to regain that peace in the pleasure of sorting through a box of books newly arrived from London. She especially looked forward to a new volume of poems recommended by a friend. Titled ‘Hours of Idleness’ they were the works of a certain young Lord Byron. But it was not possible to concentrate with Feathers misbehaving like this.
‘What is the matter with you today, boy?’ The dog looked at her and whimpered softly. With a sigh, she opened the door and pushed him out. ‘You are too restless. Go and chase rabbits for an hour.’ She went back to the books.
*
While dealing with her recalcitrant pet she had failed to hear the door close downstairs, and the sound of a bolt being drawn into place. There was now no exit from the tower rooms into the Manor itself. The outer door still stood open. A shadow moved in and out from the shrubbery, very busy, very silent. There was no one to hear the lamp oil splashing from the overturned jugs, no one to smell the fumes rising from a rope of sheets trailing across the stone passageway and up the first few turns of the stairs.
Bates, the butler, rested off-duty in his pantry, his swollen feet propped on a stool. The heat did not agree with him. Mrs. Bates, too, had her feet up for a half-hour on the couch in the housekeeper’s room. Elsewhere the maids and menservants took advantage of their freedom in divers ways, none of them near the nursery wing where a kind but vigilant young mistress might sight them.
Other members of the household had taken refuge from the stupefying heat either in their bedchambers or down by the lake, under the dubious impression that there was always a breeze over water. Even the horses in the stables nodded. Only Feathers padded warily down the spiral stairs, his claws tapping on stone as he avoided the strips of offensively pungent cloth affecting his sense of smell.
The shadow drew back behind the door and, as the dog passed by, stepped out and clubbed him down. The unconscious animal was dragged by the collar into the shrubbery and left hidden under rhododendron branches now brittle and dry.
By the time Jenny had soothed her child to sleep the business was done. The tinder had been struck, the burning spill thrown into the pool of oil, the outer door slammed and locked against a fountain of fire that erupted through the base of the tower. The shadow watched and waited.
Soon smoke foamed under the door and through the open window on the stair, followed by bursts of cinders from burnt cloth and timber. Flames roared up the well with the runaway force of fire in a soot-filled chimney. The walls seemed to pulse with heat. Burning ash dropped through the air, setting alight parched bushes below.
The shadow ran.
*
Two miles away Antony Marchmont turned his horse towards home.
Ashbourne Manor, while recognized as one of the notable houses of Devon, could not compare with the principal seat of the most noble Earl of Roth, a somewhat draughty castle in Wales. In fact, Lord Edward, under his various titles, held no less than six country homes, as well as Rothmore House, in London. The newly restored Ashbourne Manor, however, remained his favorite, with its parklands famous for stands of hundred-year-old oaks, and rhododendron terraces running down to a valley where a stream-fed lake lay covered in lilies and water hyacinth. Protected by rising hills to the north, with money and attention lavished upon it, it was a Palladian gem, renowned through the southern counties and beloved by the family who owned it.
Antony, as heir to the Rothmore title and estates, had chosen to make this his permanent residence when he married. His aging father retired into the west wing to nurse his arthritic limbs and bask in the love of his widowed sister and his new daughter in law, who was also his niece. Chloe’s advent had been a slight disappointment, but the vine was fruitful. And now preparations were in train for a party in celebration of Jenny’s twenty-third birthday, with family members traveling from London and friends and neighbors coming to share the sunny fortunes of such a respected household.
Antony was still a mile distant when the shrubbery beneath the west tower exploded and bloomed in a ball of light. Flames reached up over the stones like some new, virulently active creeper, and a veil of heat caused the stones to shimmer and dance like a desert mirage.
He dug spurs deep into his horse’s belly. Man and animal seemed to take to the air, speeding towards the distant spectacle.
Jenny’s first warning came when she smelled smoke, acrid and unmistakable. She put aside her books and limped to the door, where a rustling sound like mice in paper made her pause. Then she flung the door wide.
A blast of hot air hit her with the force of a gale. A choking black streamer spiraled up the stairway, enveloping her, surging into her lungs. She coughed, struggling for clean air. Tears streaming from her eyes, she clawed at the entrance, blinded and disoriented. Her groping fingers found the handle and she slammed the thick paneling shut. Leaning against the door she strove for control. Gradually her breathing eased. Panic skirted around the edges of her mind. She forced it back. She had to find a way of escape for herself and Chloe.
There were only two entries to the tower, one in the outer wall, and one leading into the east wing of the house. Dear God! She was cut off from both.
The windows? One glance showed the fire there, too. Heated air, smoke so thin that it was transparent, floated beyond the glass; and even as she watched several panes cracked and flew inwards, scattering deadly diamonds all over the chair where she had been sitting just minutes ago.
Now, for the first time she heard the voice of the fire, a crisp crackling punctuated with sounds of exploding bushes and glass shattering. Chloe started to scream.
‘Hush, baby. Mother is here. You are safe.’ Jenny clutched the child frantically to her chest, her concentration destroyed by Chloe’s fear. What in God’s name was she to do? Where could she go?
The roof. If she could carry Chloe up there and somehow find a way out onto the leads, perhaps they could cling there long enough for someone to find them and bring them down.
But first she must face the stairwell.
Feathers! He was out there. Her faithful dog must have gone down into the inferno, pushed by her! She could not rush out and search for him. There was no way down those stairs. No, Chloe needed her. She was the important one now.
Taking a jug of water from the stand she saturated a small blanket and wrapped it around her child, now crying wildly and flinging her small fists about. Crooning soothingly through the wet mask she formed from a napkin tied about her mouth and nose, Jenny wasted no more time. She picked up Chloe and opened the door.
Heat. Unimaginable heat, searing skin and hair, making a mockery of the mask, stabbing and tearing at her lungs. She staggered back a step, then, eyes tightly closed, felt her way along the burning stone to the upward flight of steps. Her feet scorching in their thin-soled slippers, she forced herself up, step by step, a whimper of pain escaping her whenever her arm came into contact with the wall. Elbows blistered and bleeding instantly dried into crusts of blood. Twice sh
e fell on her bare arms, protecting Chloe, her cries lost in the terrible cacophony that pursued her from below, growing ever closer.
The exploding timbers that fed the fire were like cannon shot echoing around the tower. The red glare of hellfire beat against her eyelids. She was blinded, deafened, her throat closed and parched, her feet two baking lumps of meat.
She longed to give up. The struggle was too much. She could not take another step. Then she felt the shivering bundle in her arms and willed herself on. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears, louder even than the fire. When she forced her eyelids apart the tower walls swung in dizzying arcs about her. She swayed with each pace she took, her strength almost done. But something more than willpower had taken over. The loving bond with her husband and child gave her the thrust she needed. With each agonizing step she soundlessly repeated her litany of ‘Antony, Chloe, Antony, Chloe’, drawing on the spiritual underpinnings of her life, forcing herself to move… move…
She rounded the last bend breathing rapidly but a little more easily. There was fresh air here. Tearing off the mask she turned eagerly to the light. It was not a window. The builders of the tower had made a small opening for air under the roof, leaving it unglazed. A dog might have squeezed through, but not a grown woman, however small.
Frantically her eyes searched the groined arches overhead. They formed a perfect lid on a pepper pot. There was no way out. With a mewling wail no louder than a kitten’s, she slid to the floor, grazing her burning face against the wall.
It was Chloe’s screaming that brought her back to sanity. Chloe. There must be a way to save her. She dragged herself to her protesting feet and stood on tiptoe to peer through the air vent.
Below her a group of men and women formed a chain with pitchers and pails leading up from the lake. More men were busy lashing together lengths of ladder to prop against the wall, but clearly they would never reach her eyrie.
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