Authors: Donna Fletcher Crow
“And now to what we came for, huh, Darren?” She turned with a smile that was only slightly forced. “The home of Shakespeare’s wife.” She looked at his hands stuck in his jeans pockets. “Didn’t you bring note paper?” She ripped a sheet from her pad. “Here. And I’ve got an extra pen someplace.”
“Nah, that’s OK.”
“No notes? Don’t you have to write a paper when you get back?”
Darren shrugged. “I’ve got a good memory.”
Laura laughed. “So do I. But not that good.” She wondered about Darren’s teacher. If he was bored in school, it could be the school’s fault. She didn’t know anything about the Canadian educational system, but perhaps Kyle should consider putting the boy in a private school.
They went on down the pleasant country lane to the cottage. The recent rain and cool nights had dulled the usual joyous profusion of the English cottage garden, but tiny black and brown birds still flew from bush to bush chirping their chickadee cheer, and the garden still wafted a country fresh herbal scent. Asters and white and purple Michaelmas daisies bloomed valiantly, and on one bush—a single red rose.
Oh my love is like red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June
—well, one in October could have inspired Rabbie Burns as well.
Till all the seas gang dry, my dear,
and the rocks melt with the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands of life shall run.
She looked at Tom further ahead in the garden. They had experienced them all: dry seas, melted rocks, scratching thorns, and killing frosts—and yet she loved that man.
A little cobbled path took them to the cottage door where the leather latch string was hung out for visitors. Tom pulled the thong. “… the only full-sized replica in the world, it was opened in 1959 to commemorate the visit of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to Victoria.” The period-costumed guide was just beginning her lecture. Laura caught her breath when the girl turned and revealed glorious strawberry blond hair hanging to her waist. The exact color of Marla’s. If Tom noticed, however, he was a better actor than Laura suspected.
They began in the parlor, its flagged floor warmed by the red-tongued fire in the stone fireplace filling one end of the room and by the rays of sun sparkling gently through tiny diamond panes in the leaded windows. The main feature of the room was the high, stiff, wooden courting settee on which Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare sat on those long-ago spring evenings when he came calling. “He was 18 and she 26,” the guide said. “And their descendants are still living in the Stratford area. The Hathaways were prosperous farmers. Eight rooms is a large cottage.”
The guide lifted a heavy wooden box from its stand near the dining table. “The Bible box. The family Bible was always kept locked up because it was the family’s most prized possession. They valued it for many reasons. For spiritual guidance, of course, plus it contained all the family records, and then, it cost the earth—as did all printed matter in those days. It remained in the parlor during the day, until the father read evening prayers after supper. Then it would be locked and carried to the master bedroom—always the job of the father as the spiritual head of the family.
“We’ll move on to the buttery now.” She ushered her guests before her.
“Mind your head!” The guide’s cry was just in time to stop a tall, red-headed man with stooping shoulders from cracking his head. “Sorry. ‘Mind your head’ is the perennial cry of the guides. The Victoria city building code required that our ceilings be eight or nine inches higher than the original, but tall men still have a problem. The men were about five feet, four inches in the Hathaways’ days, and the women about four feet nine.”
They stopped at the buttery—on the north side of the house with special ventilation for a cool breeze to keep fresh the butter and cheese made there. “And note this cupboard bearing the carved blessing, ‘He that fear God Shall want Nev …’” The guide ran her fingers over the raised words and the last two letters that continued to the far side of the chest in evidence that the illiterate carver had been given the text by the village priest and didn’t know how to space his letters. “This was a marriage chest. All grooms carved them for their brides in the 16th century.”
“Isn’t this fascinating.” Laura looked up from her notepad with a big smile at Darren. “Are you getting plenty of information for your project?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“What aspect of Shakespeare’s life are you focusing on? Maybe I could get you some extra information.” Perhaps the lad needed more encouragement with his studies. She was sure Kyle did his best, but with his long hours at work and all … another indication that Glenda’s help was needed.
“Oh, nothing special. Just stuff in general.”
Definitely something wrong here. The group moved on upstairs to the solar, a special sun room for the ladies to sew that also doubled as a guest room—further evidence that the Hathaways were well-to-do for their class. Then on through the parents’ bedroom into Anne’s room with its extra-wide bed to accommodate a serving girl or two as well as Mistress Anne. It was covered by a canopy, “which served to catch the fallings—bugs, mice, sticks—from the bare thatch above. Cottage ceilings weren’t stuccoed in until the 19th century.”
The guide moved them on through the brothers’ room, where Anne’s brothers and the men working on the farm all slept together on the floor. Then the others went back down to the kitchen. But Laura returned to Anne’s room. She looked out the small dormer window to the garden below with its stone bench and birdbath at the far end. Visitors milled around the garden. The man who had almost cracked his head on the timber looked up at her. Oh, that was the man who had been in the inn last night. And he was still alone. Poor man, no wonder he looked so unhappy. Her gaze lengthened on across the field to the replica of Shakespeare’s birthplace, only slightly closer here than the original buildings were in Stratford. How many times had Anne stood at her window and thought of William? Or watched him coming to her across the field? Or was Will sitting on the other side thinking of Anne? And even as he thought of her were Katherine and Petruchio, Hermia and Lysander, or Romeo and Juliet taking shape in his mind?
And what of Laura’s pair of lovers? Gwendolyn and Kevin were floundering. Their creator’s mind had been too occupied lately to provide a stage for them to play out their dreams—just as in real life Glenda and Kyle were kept apart by the pressures of life. But she felt Gwen and Kevin’s unhappiness; and she ached to bring about happiness for all of them, as for herself and Tom.
But the distances were so great—less than a quarter of a mile for William to walk to Anne; how far for Gwen/Glenda and Laura to reach Kevin/Kyle and Tom? Somehow their lives were entwined with each other, reflecting each other like the pictures that had fascinated her as a child of a girl holding a mirror that showed a girl holding a mirror that showed a girl …
“Laura!” Oh, no. Tom was calling her. She turned abruptly and hurried down the narrow wooden stairs. This was exactly the shutting-everyone-else-out daydreaming that Tom hated.
She hurried to him. “Oh, Tom, sorry. I was just thinking how wonderful it would be to stay here while writing a historical novel!”
“Yes, you must come back,” the guide agreed. “Come for Christmas. We wear our fancy velvet dresses and sing old English carols, parade a boar’s head, have Christmas crackers—everything.”
“Wouldn’t that be wonderful!” Laura spoke the words with a brave smile, but her mind added,
If we’re still together by Christmas.
Always that dark cloud hung overhead.
“Well, that was interesting,” Tom summarized the morning as they drove back over the Esquimalt Bridge. “What’s on your agenda for the afternoon?”
“I have a whole list of spots I need to visit, places I just haven’t worked in yet.” She didn’t need to return the question. She knew he’d spend the afternoon working.
“Well, get them finished up. We leave tomorrow evening, you know.”
How well she knew. But she didn’t feel any of the relief about it that she heard in Tom’s voice. She couldn’t go back with nothing solved. The progress—and the regressions—only left it more impossible to return to life as it had been. The wounds had been reopened. Now if they weren’t healed properly they would fester, leaving amputation as the only recourse. That was how she thought of it—that “D” word—so common today that it was reported as a statistic in the daily newspaper alongside notices of other forms of death. She refused to allow it in her vocabulary. It was unthinkable. And so was the idea of accompanying Tom back to Marla’s world unthinkable.
And now there was an added problem. Having met Darren made her care about him so much more. Not just because he stood a hindrance to Glenda’s happiness, but for himself. “Right. But let’s get some lunch first.” She might not know much about kids, but she knew teenage boys were always hungry. She looked over her shoulder. “What time do you have to be back at school?”
“No time. I don’t have to go back today.”
“Oh, really? No afternoon classes?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but they’re no big deal. I called in sick this morning.”
“You what!”
“I can imitate Kyle’s voice. I’m pretty good at it.”
“You mean we’ve been helping you play hooky? I thought this was an authorized activity—a Shakespeare project.”
“Yeah, but it’s no big deal.”
Laura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Well, let’s get something to eat. I don’t want to cope with this on an empty stomach. Then we’re taking you to your brother, young man. I want to know what’s going on here.” She looked at his lowered eyes and sullen face. “You didn’t have any English lit project, did you?”
They pulled up at a small restaurant on a tree-lined side street in a mostly residential neighborhood. In his best Scoutmaster mode, Tom ushered the youth to a seat inside. Laura dropped her things on the bench across from them. “Order fish and chips for me. I’ll be right back.” She turned to the ladies’ room.
A few moments later she heard a crashing chair and shouting male voice. She rushed back to the dining room just in time to see Tom dash out the door in pursuit of a fleeing Darren.
Laura was halfway down the sidewalk after them when she saw that Darren was carrying her briefcase. He clutched the handles, the shoulder strap flapping beside him.
Tom was doing a valiant job of keeping up, but the teenage boy was fleeter of foot and showed no signs of tiring. Darren would likely have made his escape if the briefcase strap hadn’t caught on a fence post.
He stopped and yanked. Hard.
Laura cringed at the sound of her favorite bag ripping, but stopped, gasping with relief when she saw that Tom had a firm grip on Darren’s arm. Her heart still pounding in her ears after the mad dash, she stooped to retrieve her briefcase. As she picked it up, her papers fell out and she saw that the damage had been far more severe than she realized. “Oh, and this was practically new. Look, the lining’s all torn away—”
She lifted the black and white checked fabric lining and gasped.
“Owgh! Why you—” Tom’s sharp outcry jerked Laura’s attention to him. “The hoodlum bit me.”
Darren vaulted the fence and disappeared around the back of the house.
“Let him go. Good riddance.” Tom cradled his bleeding fingers in his good hand.
“Tom, call the police.”
“Kyle can do that. I don’t want him back.”
“No, not about Darren. Look.” She held out her ripped bag. Tiny plastic bags of white powder padded the inside of her briefcase like batting in a quilt.
“One pound of heroin.” The young officer in the crisp blue-black uniform of the city police shook his head. “More than $70,000 Canadian.”
Laura looked at Tom. “That’s $50,000 American.” He supplied the math for her.
“Right.” The policeman had red hair and freckles. His badge said Sgt. Monaghan. “It’s sold on the street by the paper—about one-twelfth of a gram—for,” he paused, “about $25 American. A paper will provide an addict with one or two hits.”
“All that in my briefcase.” Laura shook her head. “I noticed it was heavy. But I thought it was just the extra books.” She thought for a moment. “But I don’t see how it got there. I mean, wouldn’t it take ages to put all these little bags in so neatly?”
Sgt. Monaghan shook his head. “Matter of a few minutes, I should think. For someone experienced, that is. Slit the lining with a sharp knife, the bags have the fixative already on them, then this quick-fix sealant to reseal the cut.”
“I just can’t believe I carried this day and night for two weeks and didn’t have any idea.” Laura’s mind whirled with questions. “How—?”
“Thank you, Sergeant, that will do.” A middle-aged, balding man in a tweed suit and plaid tie entered the room and introduced himself as Detective Inspector Snow. It was clear that he had not come to inform, but to be informed. “Now, Mrs. James, you say you have absolutely no idea how the drugs got into your briefcase?”
“Of course not! Would we call you if we were smugglers?”
D.I. Snow made no reply.
“Obviously someone put them there when I wasn’t looking. But I can’t imagine when that would have been possible. My briefcase is hardly ever out of my sight. I all but sleep with it.”
Her statement drew an ironic look from Tom.
Laura struggled on. “But obviously someone wanted me to carry it back to the States. I’ve heard that Seattle has a growing problem—”
“So if they wanted to get it to the States, why did they try a snatch here?” D.I. Snow leaned toward her.
“What! Darren? Part of a drug ring? No. He’s just a mixed-up kid. He ran away because he didn’t want to be turned over to his brother with a truancy—” Laura protested. But even before the detective voiced the question, her mind was asking—so why did he take your briefcase? She had no answer. “Have you gotten a hold of Kyle—er, Dr. Larsen yet?”
“We have. The boy hasn’t turned up. We’re looking for him.”
With Tom’s help Laura answered all the investigator’s questions as thoroughly as she could. But there was little she could say. She really didn’t know anything. Drug traffic in Victoria seemed as incongruous as a viper in Wonderland. But then, there was that serpent in the first garden.
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the L
ORD
God made. And he said unto the woman …