by C F Dunn
“Henry!” Matthew bellowed, lifting me from the car and carrying me, boneless, towards the house. “Henry, I need your help!”
I heard the Barn door open and Henry call across the courtyard. “Dad, what is it?” Footsteps and then, “Sweet Heaven! There’s blood everywhere. Has she been in an accident?”
“She’s haemorrhaging. I had a call from Sam Weisner saying he thought she shouldn’t be driving. I found her weaving all over the road.”
Henry opened the kitchen door, and chairs clattered as Matthew kicked them away from the table. Clearing it with a sweep of his arm, he laid me on the surface. I floated above it, cushioned by oblivion. Through a filter, distant voices debated, first Henry, alarmed, “We need to get her to the hospital.”
“We don’t have time; she’s already lost too much blood.”
“Dad, she needs an immediate transfusion. We don’t hold blood here. If we leave now…”
“She’ll be dead by then.” Matthew rolled my sleeve out of the way, exposing my arm to the air. “Get me my bag, Henry.”
I wasn’t dying; how could I die?
“What are you going to do?”
“Get me my bag.” I sensed his hesitation and Matthew’s growing urgency. “Now, Henry!”
I couldn’t leave my baby. “Rosie,” I mumbled.
Matthew leaned close, speaking swiftly. “Pat and Ellie have taken the children for a walk.” He was shoving his sleeve above his elbow, knocking the overhead light in his haste. It swam above me. My insides felt hollow, my feet and hands a creeping coldness. Henry returned carrying the medical bag, and handed it wordlessly to his father. I felt the familiar swab of something colder than me, and then a sharp stab. I moaned.
“Cannula,” Matthew said, stretching out his own arm and baring it to the light.
Henry didn’t move. “What are you doing?”
“We’re wasting time. Give me the cannula.”
“You’ll kill her!”
Matthew held out his hand. “I haven’t time to debate it. Give it to me.”
Henry grabbed his arm. “You know what’ll happen if you give her your blood. I can’t let you do this…”
Shaking himself free and snatching the cannula from his son’s hand, Matthew said under his breath. “She’s dead if I don’t.” He met my eyes with grim determination. “Trust me, my love.” I wanted to say I trusted him, but words had long-since evaporated as I began to shake uncontrollably. “Trust me.” He looked over his shoulder. “Henry, I need you to hold Emma still.”
Henry backed away into the shadows. “I can’t be a part of this. It goes against every oath I’ve taken, everything I believe in as a doctor.”
Teeth gritted, Matthew growled, “Then don’t do it as a doctor, but as my son.”
Henry stared into his father’s eyes, blazing now, then swallowed, nodded, and stepped into the light. His hands burned as he pinned my arm to the table. “She’s bleeding too heavily. There’s no point giving her blood – you’ve got to stop the bleeding first.”
“Wait,” Matthew said. A ribbon of red wound through the narrow tube between us.
“It’s pointless,” Henry insisted. “Your blood’s incompatible with every living creature on the planet. Dad, listen to me. The only chance she has is to stop the bleeding and get her to the hospital.”
“Wait…” Matthew didn’t take his eyes from me, as if looking for some sign, opening and closing his fist and driving his blood through my veins. I felt nothing at first and then warmth in the tips of my fingers. They flexed. Matthew and Henry’s faces merged, blurred, then sharpened into focus as spots of clarity appeared in my vision, like fog clearing in patches. I blinked, struggled for air, and the weight in my chest lightened. My tongue loosened, became mobile. I licked parched lips. “Rosie…” I mouthed. I became conscious of the burning in my womb again and twitched to escape the pain.
“She’s going into shock,” Henry warned. “There’s nothing you can do now. Your blood cells are attacking hers, releasing toxins – she’s dying, Dad – you’re killing her!”
The trembling in my limbs lessened, my body quietened. I felt the hard table under my shoulder blades, the grain of the wood beneath my fingers, despite the slick blood. The gold watch on Matthew’s wrist glinted as it marked the seconds. Minutes passed. The light from the lamp became painful as it pierced my eyes. I turned my head to avoid it. Standing by my legs, Henry gave a sharp intake of breath and he released his hold on me. “She’s stopped bleeding. How the blazes…?”
“Rosie,” I managed audibly this time.
“Our baby’s safe. You’re safe.”
“See. Her.”
“Soon,” he promised, and at that moment the kitchen door opened, letting in fresh air and animated chatter. “Look, here she is.”
Pat screamed and her hand flew to her mouth, turning away as if protecting Rosie from the scene that greeted them. Still clutching Charlie, Ellie darted forwards. “What’s happened? Matthew, Gramps, what’s happened to Emma?”
Matthew had become wan, his hand limp against my own. “Too. Mush. Blood,” I murmured. “Mat’hew, stop.”
He grunted acknowledgment, and tugged the tube from his arm, the small wound dribbling, blood caught in the tangle of fair hair as he healed. Then more carefully, he removed the other end from my own, replacing it with his thumb. He swayed slightly. He looked how I felt. “Mat’hew?”
His colour began to return. “I’m OK, Emma.”
“For Pete’s sake!” Pat exclaimed, partially recovering. “What’s going on?”
“Yes, Dad,” Henry said quietly. “What just happened?”
Ellie took in the table flooded in blood, the pool coagulating on the floor by Henry’s feet, the discarded tube. “You’ve given Emma a transfusion? Of your blood?” Her eyes rounded. “Matthew, she should be dead…”
“Ellie, take the babies home and then look after Pat, please; she’s in shock.”
“Yes, sure, Matthew, but…”
“Now, please, Ellie. I will explain later.”
The door closed behind them, leaving Henry and his father facing each other across the length of me. The pain inside had subsided to mere throbbing, my skin vibrated, my blood alive and humming to a different tune. Matthew grabbed a handful of tea towels from the drawer and began to mop me up. Henry hadn’t moved.
“What will you explain, Dad? Why Emma spontaneously stopped bleeding, or why she didn’t die? Or will you explain how you knew she wouldn’t react adversely to your blood?”
I attempted to sit up, but Matthew restrained me. “Stay still.”
“You knew – you knew before this happened. You weren’t taking a risk, were you? You knew.”
“I couldn’t be certain; it’s a miracle it worked…”
“You knew,” Henry threw at him. “The only way I can see that she’s survived is that it’s a fluke, a million – billion-to-one chance she’s compatible.” He laughed roughly. “Either that or you share common genes…” He stopped, looking first at Matthew and then at me, colour draining from his face until his skin resembled the grey of his neat beard. “You… you said you didn’t know where you came from. Dad, you’ve always claimed you don’t know.”
With my clothes sticking to the table and the iron stench of a butcher’s shop filling my nose, I managed to struggle to a sitting position. “Henry…”
He stared down at me, nostrils flaring in temper. “And you know, don’t you, Emma? You’ve known all along.” He slapped the heel of his hand against his forehead. “What sort of fool does that make me? My own father keeps something like this from me after everything we’ve been through? After all these years?”
Matthew took a step towards his son. “I never meant to deceive you. I did it to protect you…”
“Like you did my mother? From what? From the truth?” His lips drew back from his teeth. “You’re a hundred years old, for the love of God! What have you to hide that I don’t already know? Isn’t it e
nough to have led a life hiding the truth of ourselves without you lying to us about our ancestry?”
“Henry, that’s not fair!” I burst out as Matthew visibly blanched. “You don’t know the circumstances. He would have told you if he could, but…”
He turned on me in a mixture of hurt and anger. “And you, Emma, he trusts you enough to tell you!”
“He didn’t tell me; I found out for myself.”
“How?”
“I… guessed – suspected – he wasn’t as he seemed.”
“How, Emma? What did you discover?”
I moistened dry lips. “It’s complicated, Henry. I think… I mean, if…” But Matthew placed his hand on my arm as I struggled for words.
“I think,” he said quietly, “that it’s time I told the family the truth.”
“All of it?” I whispered.
Matthew looked his son straight in the eyes. “Yes, all of it.”
CHAPTER
11
Revelation
I moved into a more comfortable position. Bits of me still throbbed from the after effects of the haemorrhage the day before, but it was nothing compared with the impending discomfort of the family meeting as they gathered in our drawing room, voices muted to a rustle. Uncertainty crowded their faces and lay in hunched shoulders. Matthew waited as each member of his family found somewhere to sit, but he had withdrawn into himself over the last twenty-four hours and raised his defences, so that even I found them difficult to penetrate. Rosie lay sleepy and warm in my arms, unaware of the rising tide of tension around her.
Ellie came in last from the Stables, having put Charlie in his crib, and she now sat next to her parents, flicking anxious looks between Matthew and me. Subdued, Henry stood by the window, arms folded, grim. Tight-lipped and sitting on the edge of her hard chair, Pat was beside him.
“Pat, Henry, won’t you come and sit down here?” Matthew indicated the comfortable sofa which had been left vacant for them. When Henry didn’t answer, Pat coughed to clear her throat.
“We’re fine here.”
Matthew looked at the assembled faces regarding him as if he were a stranger – a freak.
“Thank you for coming. Especially you, Joel – I know you had to get special leave – and Harry, having travelled all night to be here,” he began. He laced his fingers, his knuckles white. “This isn’t going to be easy, and I’ve spent your lifetimes trying to find a way of telling you what I am about to reveal now. Before I say anything, I want you to know that I have always tried to act in the best interests of all the family, and I regret any hurt I might cause you – especially you, Henry.” He paused, gathered himself, and then, “I want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you my story from the beginning…”
Leaning with his elbows on his knees, Joel was the first to break the hush that had fallen on the room after the last syllable had left Matthew’s lips. “You’re how old? Geesh!” Jeannie didn’t correct him for once, and instead looked at Matthew with new eyes.
Dan pulled his earlobe. “I had no idea.”
“No,” Matthew said.
“I can see why you didn’t say anything before,” Ellie ventured, when she found her voice at last. “I don’t know what to think.”
Harry said nothing, biting his thumbnail, absorbed in his own thoughts. Standing to shut the French window, Joel locked it and, shoving his hands in his pockets, leant against the frame.
“The fewer people who know, the better our security, right? That’s why you didn’t tell us.”
“Yes, to keep you safe, and… because I didn’t know where – or how – to begin.”
“But Emma knew,” Jeannie said, with a hint of an accusation that Maggie had also adopted in her wooden expression as she fingered the head of her snake necklace.
“Emma bears no blame in any of this,” Matthew started, but I stopped him, swivelling in my chair and facing his family.
“I know Matthew’s history because I found out, otherwise he wouldn’t have told me.” And I explained, step-by-step, the path I had taken to trace Matthew back to the Lynes of New Hall and Martinsthorpe. “But he’s incorrect in saying I have no part in this – I have. It was because of me that Guy Hilliard turned up, and he already knew some of the story. It didn’t take much for him to piece the rest of it together.” I saw Ellie’s expression cloud. “We couldn’t tell you – even you, Ellie. Guy would have winkled it out of you one way or another. This information is a time bomb.”
“What we don’t know we can’t tell, right? It can’t hurt us,” Joel said. “Yeah, that’s how it is in the Army – need to know, and all that.”
“What I don’t understand,” Dan said, “is why Emma survived a transfusion of your blood.”
“That’s simple.” Henry broke his silence at last. “They must be related. Isn’t that so, Matthew? We didn’t spot it when we did that first analysis on Emma’s blood because we weren’t looking for a connection, but you did. That’s why you ran everything through E.V.E.” Matthew’s lack of response confirmed it. “All this time, all these months, you’ve known, but you kept it from us…”
“I suspected, Henry, but I couldn’t be certain. When I met Emma for the first time – heard her name, discovered where she came from – I suspected the coincidence was too great to be one. Yes, we are related – separated by generations – but related nonetheless. My grandmother was Emma D’Eresby.” Everyone’s eyes fell upon me at once as if I’d sprouted gills. I felt I owed them an explanation.
“In the region I – we – come from, there’s quite a lot of intermarriage between some families down the generations. It’s not really surprising we’re related. It kept land and property within the family and strengthened political ties…” I tailed off as Henry cut me dead with a look.
“You’ll find you’re the only one who hasn’t been taken by surprise.”
I dropped my gaze, unable to withstand the bitterness in his, and hugged Rosie.
“Then the genetic component that made us the way we are, and which you share with Emma, is the key?” Ellie asked Matthew.
“The genetic component, yes, but I still don’t know why this happened to me in the first place any more than I did a hundred – two hundred – years ago. It was certainly triggered as a result of my uncle’s attack, but I don’t know what the scientific reasoning behind it is now any more than I did then.”
Joel grunted. “Some fluke, you and Emma meeting like you did.”
“Fluke?” I interjected. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t believe in coincidence.”
Harry’s head shot up and I found myself confronted by inquisitional eyes. “Are you saying this was meant to be?”
“I believe so, yes, Harry.”
“And you think we should accept it at face value?”
“You know that I do.” I noted the emotions of each of them: the doubt, uncertainty, denial – subtle, shifting colours echoing the confusion they all felt. Ellie voiced it, “So what now?”
Joel pushed himself away from the window. “We carry on, sis; nothing’s really changed, has it?”
“Hasn’t it?” Henry’s voice, hoarse and cracked, came from the back of the room, and the subdued conversations came to a halt. “Everything’s changed. You laid a foundation of trust on nothing but lies. I believed in you, Dad. I believed every word you ever said to me and it turns out to have been a lie.”
Matthew held out his hands, palm up and offering atonement. “Henry, my love for you has never been a lie; you know that. You know you mean everything to me, and I’ve done everything I can to protect you and the family.”
Henry nodded at Rosie. “You have a new family to protect with your lies now. You betrayed me, you’ve betrayed all of us. I hope you can live with yourself, because I can’t.” He about-faced in a wash of red-hued bitter disillusionment and, pushing past Joel’s surprised form, flung open the door between the two homes, and left.
Smoothing her palms over her skirt, Pat stood u
p. She threw an apologetic look at Matthew and followed her husband, leaving the room to its emphatic silence. For what seemed like minutes, but was probably only a matter of seconds, we stared at the blank-faced door.
“Gee-eesh,” Joel mooted.
Standing, Dan cleared his throat. “Jeanette and I have some work to be getting on with for Monday. We’ll leave you to have some time to yourselves. Ellie, are you coming? Charlie will be waking from his nap.” Riddled with anxiety, lips pressed into a bloodless line, she nodded. “Boys, you coming? Maggie?”
Harry followed his sister, but Joel hesitated, shoulders broadened by his military stance as he hipped his hands. “Gramps won’t say anything to anyone. Nobody’ll say anything.”
Matthew didn’t reply, so I said, “I’m sure they won’t, Joel; they know what’s at stake.”
“Yeah, Gramps’ll come around.”
Maggie hadn’t moved. She hovered by the door as if she wanted to say something, then took a last look and followed Joel through the door to the Barn.
I waited until the door closed behind her and we couldn’t be overheard before turning to Matthew. “Henry’s in shock. He probably didn’t mean it the way it sounded. He’ll think about it and want to talk more, but he’ll forgive you, darling, you know he will.”
Bleak-eyed and hollow-voiced, Matthew sat on the edge of the sofa, nails digging into his hands and his head bent as he stared blindly at the floor. “No, I don’t think so. Not this time. He meant it – he meant every word of it.”
PART
2
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
