by Davis Bunn
“Our gift is to be a series of puzzles. In reading our clues and seeking our answers, we hope and pray you will find a future as well. A morrow filled with reasons to live, and a purpose grand enough to bestow upon you the gift of hope. For you deserve it all, my dear Brian. All the hope a tomorrow worth living can bring.
“Here, then, is the first clue: From the hope tossed skyward on your beloved’s happiest day, in a grand palace made to make a child feel grander still, search for the heart, search for the heart, search for the heart of your beloved. Yours ever, Heather.”
With a single, ragged breath Brian drew himself back from the realm of memories and silent voices. He stared into the dressing room’s mercury-backed mirror, but felt as though he had been observing a vision, one where angels with wings of gossamer dreams whispered songs from realms where lovers never mourned.
He wiped his eyes to clear them, when suddenly he found himself caught by a living apparition. It took a long moment to realize what it was he was seeing. Then he turned slowly, almost afraid to reach out and touch it.
It was the ribbon that convinced him. Faded and tattered as it was, there could be no mistaking Sarah’s handwriting.
The bouquet was of miniature water lilies and teacup roses, dried and faded to the color of time-washed silk. Upon the ribbon that bound the flowers was written a passage taken from the book of Ruth, which Sarah had woven into her marriage vows: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
Brian forced himself to pick up the marriage bouquet, marveling at how it had come to be here. Heather could not have caught it, for she had refused to attend their wedding. In fact, Heather had neither written nor answered any of Sarah’s entreaties for more than a year. Brian held the bouquet in his hands and wondered at a young woman’s love, one so strong it would retrieve the tossed bouquet, then hold it until it could be taken to a cross and lonely old woman. One whom Sarah had always wished would remarry and start life anew.
Brian stared at the whitewashed wall, from which hung a collection of hats and slippers and gloves. Then he realized that there was something remarkable about this particular hook, which had held the bouquet. In fact, upon closer inspection it looked almost like a lever. Hesitantly, Brian reached forward a second time and pulled the lever down.
The entire wall clicked back slightly. Brian set the bouquet on the dressing table, lifted his flashlight, and pressed. When the wall gave only a fraction, he put his shoulder against the door and pressed harder still. With a squeal of hoary protest, the wall gave way.
Brian pointed his light inside the windowless room, smaller still than the dressing chamber. For a moment he saw nothing, until he aimed his light lower. Then the sight of the past coming vividly alive caused him to cry out loud.
Six
CECILIA LYONS STOOD BY HER PARLOR WINDOW ON Thursday and tried to enjoy the slow December dawn. The day was overcast and cool, a mildness more suited to October. The sun had not yet crested the horizon, and all the day was pewter and still. The air was so windless she could hear the faint thunder of wings as birds flittered to and from her feeder. The day’s soft beauty seemed only to deepen her gloom. She had not slept well, worried as she was over Tommy Townsend. The previous afternoon she had done what was inelegantly called a sweat test, scraping the child’s skin with a sterilized ruler, gathering perspiration and then sealing it into a small glass vial. She had not bothered to hide from Tommy’s mother that she was checking the child for yet another early killer. Cystic fibrosis was to become Angeline’s latest nightmare.
Cecilia sighed hard, trying to push away worries over what the lab might report back. She decided to take her second cup of coffee and the morning’s work out to the riverbank.
Once every two weeks Cecilia had a half-day free for study. There were several such time slots built into her schedule—classes every quarter, conferences, opportunities to train further. She took advantage of them all.
A plastic box intended to cart drugs from the suppliers to the pharmacies sat beneath her tall pantry cupboard, which had been moved back into place by the same electrician who had returned power to her kitchen. On these free mornings the plastic box was jammed with medical journals—both English and American—and dozens of drug circulars left by the pharmaceutical company salespeople. She slipped on a wooly hat, fingerless mittens, and her favorite tattered cardigan. She balanced the cup on top of the pile and carried the box down the drive.
As she rounded the corner of the manor, the sun edged its way over the horizon. The narrow ribbon of blue between the meadow and the cloud-covered sky was instantly transformed into an eternal doorway, and all the world sang a golden chorus to greet the new day. Cecilia continued on as much by memory as by sight, for she walked straight eastward into the sun, and little was visible beyond the world of golden silhouettes. She knew the manor gardens so intimately that she thought of them as her own, and yet she entered a thrilling new realm. Even the dry leaves at her feet became fragile and jewel-like. The sky was no longer gray, but rather draped in streamers the length of heaven, a symphony of color. A pair of magpies flew to each side of her, seraphim sent to welcome her into this new day. She felt convicted by her inability to be happy with the gift, her heart made sadder still by this new failure. Tommy Townsend was not here, but he might as well have been. Her inability to help the little child left her veiled in a sorrow not even the morning’s glory could pierce.
She was almost on top of Brian Blackstone before she saw him.
Brian had a curious expression on his face as he watched her approach. Almost as though he was struggling with himself. And yet he offered her the quiet greeting, “You look so sad.”
All the resentment she had been carrying came rising up, filling the morning so tightly she could scarcely manage, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I understand.” He was silent a long moment, then added,“Would you like to sit down?”
She hated the fact that it was his right to invite her. This was her table and her garden, no matter whose name might be on the papers. But there was no alternative except to go back to the house, and the morning beckoned too strongly to retrace her steps. Cecilia set her box down on the wrought-iron table, retrieved her mug, took time for a sip and a long look at the horizon. The sun was a rounded crest upon the eastern hills, framed by bare-limbed trees and clouds of fire.
Brian’s hands were busy with something shielded from her by the table’s edge. The garden table was long and broad, intended to host as many as two dozen people. At each end, low iron side tables had been planted to support serving dishes and drinks. Cecilia liked to sit here and imagine how grand it all must once have been. But now wisteria vines clambered up the table legs and anchored the rusting chairs in place. Unswept leaves and wintry earth added their scents to the dawn.
“You were right.”
The words were so quietly spoken that Cecilia had difficulty believing they were directed at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“About the antibiotic. I didn’t need it after all.” Brian raised what appeared to be a tiny high-backed chair to his mouth and blew gently. But before she could see for certain, his hands disappeared back below the vine-covered table. “I’ve eaten three full meals since the stone passed and haven’t had any problems.”
He looked at her then, the strengthening light turning his gaze as clear as a child’s. “I can’t thank you enough for your help in the night.
If you hadn’t come, I don’t know what I would have done.”
She dropped her gaze, unable to meet either his eyes or her own flush of shame. Even the cup’s faint tendrils of steam were laced with color from the sunrise.
Brian sensed her muddled confusion and clearly misunderstood the reason. “I know, I know, doctors are like anybody else. They hate talking about their work outside the office. But I need to thank you.” He bent over his work, whatever it was, and continued, “I
n Colombo, the ward they stuck me on had twenty-seven beds and sixty-one patients. I had a bed all to myself only because I was so big. Most beds had patients at each end, and the beds with children held three, lined up like dark sardines.” Again he lifted and dusted and blew, this time holding what looked like a miniature chest of drawers. “I spent over a month staring through my mosquito net, watching the fans whirl overhead, listening to the other people around me, watching the families move back and forth in front of my bed and staring down at me like I was caged in a zoo, and wishing I was anywhere but there. It left me terrified of not ever getting better.”
Cecilia’s own sense of remorse and confusion only deepened. She reached inside her box, pulled out the top item, and stared blankly at the page. She could not apologize. Yet no matter what her mind might be saying, her heart would not still its remorseful beat.
As though in response to her own silence, the sun rose and slipped into the gray glove of day. Instantly the wonder was gone, the colors muted, the day chilled. The river turned to sullen slate. She forced herself to focus on the pages she held, only to exclaim, “How on earth did this get in here?”
“What?”
“Oh, it’s the latest village battleground.” She rattled the pages in the distance between them, glad for something safe to talk about. “The vicar is trying to raise funds to repair the church bells. Last month he took them down from all seven village churches at once to save money. The bells are hundreds of years old, and they’re in pretty sad shape.”
Cecilia looked up from the pamphlet and noticed for the first time just how handsome Brian Blackstone was. He was lean to the point of emaciation, but in the veiled daylight his skin looked as fresh and clear as his eyes, and the angles of his face looked as strong as an Indian’s. “A group of locals want to keep the bells from ever going back in. They call it noise pollution.”
She realized just how lame the whole thing must sound and hurriedly pressed on, “You’d have to live here to understand how hot people get over the silliest things. I try not to have anything to do with either side. But Trevor Parkes, the local vicar, has become a dear friend. These bells mean a lot to him, and he’s become so worried over this battle . . .”
She halted because Brian had frozen in his bent-over position. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s another letter.” Slowly he leaned back, drawing into view a folded envelope, brittle with age. “From Heather.”
“Heather was writing you?” Curiosity got the better of her, and she rose up in her seat to see what he had been working on. She gaped at the sight of a dollhouse, one so beautifully designed she could identify it as a copy of the manor even with its roof propped against the vine-covered table leg. As soon as the object came into view, she could not help but cry, “I want it!”
Seven
BRIAN SAT IN A HIGH-BACKED HORSEHAIR CHAIR, ONE THAT gave off a vague musty odor every time he shifted his weight. Beyond his parlor window, an ancient river craft chugged along the Thames. The Victorian slipper launch was all inlaid wood and brass fittings, with a softly puffing steam engine set amidships. The passengers had dressed for the occasion, the men wearing high-collared suits and flat straw hats called boaters. The women were in crinoline and carried parasols. A silver tureen full of freshly cut roses rested upon a table beside a wicker picnic basket. The women’s laughter tinkled as fresh as birdsong upon the still air. Brian sipped the remnants of his tea and discovered that the sound called to him. This surprised him. For two years he had done his best to avoid places filled with lighthearted people. Such contacts exposed his own wounds, as though he had been banned from a realm where laughter was welcome and cares could be set aside for an afternoon of sunlight and smooth-running water. But this day was different, and in a subtle way that suggested that he was healing. Not just in mind, but in heart as well.
He glanced down to his pallet and the letter lying alongside. He had been rereading the second message when he had fallen asleep. It had been such a deep rest that there had been no dreams, only fragments of whispers as though the short sentences had followed him into slumber. His mind echoed with them still.
“Dear Brian,” Heather wrote. “Today’s weather has turned cold and damp, which means my joints are even more of a bother than usual. My hands are battling me, turning this letter into a struggle with pen and paper both. Age is such a dilemma; it traps the memory of youth within the dread reality of departure. I had hoped your darling Sarah would be writing these missives. But she has put her foot down, and we both know there is no shifting that woman when her mind is made up. She says her time in your life is over, and to write now would only cloud the waters of your transition. Hers is the voice of the past, and mine is to be that of your future. So it has fallen upon these fragile shoulders to say that somehow I am certain she is with you still.
“My day is not a good one, so that is all I have to say for now, except to share the next puzzle with you. The riddle is as follows:A little girl came to England and thought that her sorrows had not just followed, but multiplied with her arrival. Yet it was in this place of supposed darkness that she found not only a turning, but a healing. Seek where the darkness gathers, and find wings for your own renewal. Yours ever, Heather.”
Brian took his empty cup back into the kitchen, pleased that his stomach rumbled with hunger. All he had in the pantry was a last slice of Gladys Wainwright’s bread, which he ate as he inspected the prize discovered from Heather’s first letter. The dollhouse stood on the kitchen table, burnished by the brilliant afternoon light. It was an astonishingly exact replica of the manor itself, down to the columned portico and the portraits on the parlor walls.
As he inspected the chambers through the tiny windows, he felt Heather’s words striking with a resonance that shook him still.
He had come to England only because he had almost no money, resigned to entering a realm of memories that were not even his, and confronting sorrows that had pursued him all the way around the world. Instead, he was indeed greeted by a healing. The reception was so peculiar, he did not know what to think of it or how to respond.
The voices rose to greet him as he came down the stairs. He spotted Arthur standing in the front doorway, silhouetted by the sun. Arthur turned at the sound of his footsteps, revealing a face creased with worry, and said, “I am astonished the grass does not wither beneath her feet.”
Brian stepped to the doorway and observed a tall woman dressed in Burberry serge. She wore no-nonsense lace-up shoes and a peaked hat with a feather that shivered under her torrent. “I have been a loyal citizen of this village for decades. Not to mention a regular attendee at church! I have every right to request, nay, to demand that you halt your fiendish plot!”
Her prey was the vicar, and there was no sign of yielding within the man’s sinewy form. “Mrs. Winniskill, I regret to inform you that no amount of church attendance excuses either ill conduct or a desire for conflict.”
From his position beside Brian, Arthur murmured, “Lavinia Winniskill. Resident mover and shaker. Married into the town’s wealthiest clan. Her husband is director of several large companies. The woman loves nothing more than a reason to stir the pot.”
To Brian’s mind, Lavinia Winniskill sounded like a donkey learning to yodel. “What an offensive and uncouth thing to say. I desire nothing but an end to that infernal racket!”
“Some people happen to find our village bells very appealing.”
“Then they are not in their right minds!” She flung her arm about, missing the vicar’s nose by mere inches. “They live in some archaic past filled with romantic claptrap!”
“I happen to love those bells,” the vicar replied. “And I class myself as neither archaic nor particularly romantic.”
“Then you have most certainly taken leave of your senses!” She took a threatening step forward. “I warn you, this has gone quite far enough.”
“Indeed it has,” the vicar agreed. “I must therefore request that you
cease in this senseless and argumentative stance you are taking.”
“You . . . I . . .” Clearly the woman was unused to having someone oppose her so directly. “I’ll have you know Bishop Henries is a personal friend!”
“Then he has my abject sympathies.” Trevor Parkes showed all the resilience of good English oak. “Now I, for one, have more important matters to attend to and must bid you good day.”
But when he started up the stairs, she spotted Brian there on the stoop and cried, “Oh no, you don’t! Mr. Blackstone, I implore you, don’t listen to this man’s ramblings!”
“Actually, I am here to see my old friend.” Up close, the strain was etched much clearer upon the vicar’s features. “Good afternoon, Arthur. Hello, Brian. How are you feeling?”
Lavinia started up the stairs herself. “Mr. Blackstone, you are surrounded by the enemy! Arthur Wainwright is a traitor! He is aiding their plan to repair and replace those wretched bells! He has sold out his heritage and left this village to die on its feet!”
“Oh really, Lavinia, do be sensible.” Arthur affected a condescending drone. “We’re talking about a few church bells, not the invasion of Hitler’s army.”
Lavinia pushed herself up close. “Mr. Blackstone, I beseech you. There are seven churches at various locations around the center of our village. Seven, Mr. Blackstone. These deranged folk insist upon ringing them every hour of every day. When those bells are replaced and all start banging away at once, the racket is enough to drive a person mad. As a local landowner, you of all people must see how utterly vital—”
