The Passage (14 page)

Lady Everly poured herself a cup of tea and gingerly set down the china teapot before stirring in a lump of sugar and adding a splash of milk.  She always took her tea this way, although in the past it had been served to her by a parlormaid.  Lady Everly often spoke of the good old days when Everly Manor was fully staffed, the top floor buzzing with gossip and muffled footsteps as the servants retired for the evening.  Those days were long gone, faded into history shortly after Naomi Harrison came to Everly as a young bride over sixty years ago, but his mother loved to harp on them, driving Max to distraction.  He waited patiently until Lady Everly took the first sip before finally recalling her attention to what he’d been saying. 

“Mother, are you even listening to me?” he asked, annoyed that his mother didn’t have more of a reaction to news of Neve’s possible disappearance.  She appeared as calm and collected as always; her perfectly coiffed head bent just so as she considered him from across the room, the teacup delicately suspended in her right hand. 

“Mother, please tell me this can’t be true,” Max pleaded.  “Can it really be possible that Neve found the passage and traveled through time?  Should I go after her?” he asked, knowing perfectly well that this particular question would finally elicit a response from his mother who’d remained silent until now.

“You will do no such thing,” his mother answered, her tone far more businesslike than emotional.  “You are my son and the heir to this estate.  You will NOT take any risks, you hear me?” she admonished as she set down her cup with more force than she intended.

“You didn’t answer my question.  Is it true?” Max demanded, growing more exasperated by the minute.

“How should I know?” Lady Everly barked.  “It would appear so.  Where else could she have gone?  Have you searched the countryside?  Maybe she’s been attacked,” she suggested without much hope.

“So, she parked her car in the village, took off her clothes and left her phone and keys and ran naked from the crypt until she came across someone who attacked her?  Or should I say, killed her?  Because if she were alive, she’d have shown up somewhere by now.  The woman at the church saw Neve going down to the crypt with her bag
—
unmolested,” Max reminded his mother. 

Lady Everly gave an almost imperceptible shrug.  “The passage must exist then, although I find that bit of nonsense hard to swallow.”

“What do you know about it?” Max demanded.  He’d heard some story, years ago when he was a child, about an ancestor who disappeared and came back after suffering a breakdown, but he never paid much attention.  It wasn’t exciting enough to hold the interest of a small boy.  He’d been far more interested in space exploration and new technology than tales of Civil War and long-dead monarchs.

“I only know what I heard from your father, and I must admit that I wasn’t any more interested then than I am now.  It all sounded like the ravings of someone’s overactive imagination, but your father had been fascinated with the story, having heard it over and over as a boy and having actually known the miscreant at the center of the tale,” Lady Everly replied, her haughty face a mask of contempt. 

“So what exactly did you hear?” Max asked, his patience at an end.  His mother was doing this on purpose; she’d always done that to him.  She’d talk in circles while staring him down in order to avoid telling him a truth she found to be distasteful.  Max had learned over the years not to ask his mother anything, and find answers for himself, but in this case, there was no one else to ask. 

He suddenly remembered asking his mother about the woman he’d seen his father with at the hunting lodge.  The woman had been young and pretty, and Max was mesmerized by her laugh, which sounded like the tinkling of bells, melodious and magical as it floated through the open window of the lodge.  His father had laughed too, something Max didn’t hear very often at home.  Lady Everly, however, berated Max for traipsing through the woods when he should have been studying and scolded him for looking through windows, a habit most unbecoming to a future lord.  She hadn’t even acknowledged that there had been a woman at the lodge with his father, nor had mentioned it ever again.

Finally, driven mad by curiosity Max asked his father, who patted him on the head, told him the lady was a special friend of his who had a particular interest in hunting lodges built during a certain period, and asked him not to mention it to his mother while stealthily pushing a five-pound note into his hand.  That had been the end of that episode, but Max had never seen the pretty lady again, nor had he noticed any strain between his parents.  Funny how adults avoided talking about things, he thought then, promising himself that he would always be straightforward and courageous when he grew up.  He acknowledged with a sudden pang that he was neither and turned back to his mother, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. 

“Well?” Max demanded.

“Your grandfather’s younger brother went missing one day.  This was right around the turn of the century, and he was fifteen at the time.  A search party was mounted, but after days of searching no one found any trace of the boy.  The family was mad with grief, desperate for answers.  The local police came to the conclusion that he must have drowned; his body carried away by the current.  It was summertime, you see, and Henry went swimming nearly every day.  One day, he simply never came back.”  His mother set the cup down, warming up to her story. 

“So, what happened?” Max asked, suddenly breathless.  Was his mother really about to tell him that the boy time-traveled?

“Henry turned up several months later.  He was dirty and dressed in rags, his arms and legs covered in dry blood.  His mind had been affected by whatever happened to him.  He kept prattling on about the Civil War and the horrors that he had witnessed, but no one took him very seriously.  He’d always been interested in history, particularly that wretched war, so the family doctor just assumed that whatever Henry had experienced had driven him mad.  Henry was given laudanum and put to bed.  The doctor felt that he needed complete rest to recover from his ordeal, but Henry didn’t recover.  He stuck with his story, finally forcing his parents to accept that their son was quite far gone.   

After several weeks, it was determined that Henry should be put in an asylum where he could have round-the-clock care and medical supervision.”

“And?” Max asked, resenting his mother for drawing out the story just to torment him.

“And, he eventually regained something of his former personality and was released into the care of his parents.  He went on to marry and lead a successful and productive life, but after his death, a notebook was found among his things.  It described his passage through a tunnel in the crypt of the church and his arrival in the seventeenth century.  He spoke at length of the Civil War and mentioned several key battles.  The details included in the narrative were not something a fifteen-year-old boy could have made up.  He described the political and social situation of the time like someone who was there and lived it, rather than someone who simply read about it in a book.  Since there was never any reasonable explanation for where Henry had been, it was a family joke that Henry had indeed traveled through time,” his mother concluded.

“So, you believe it’s possible that he was telling the truth?” Max asked, suddenly struck by the fact that they were even discussing this with any degree of seriousness.  

“Max, have you known many people who traveled through time?” his mother asked sarcastically.  “I haven’t.  If such a thing were possible, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a family secret discussed behind closed doors for fear of having the taint of insanity associated with the Everlys.  Perhaps Neve simply ran off with someone.  There have been plenty of people who’ve faked their own disappearance and even death for the chance at a fresh start.”

Max gave his mother a look of utter incredulity.  “Why would she need to fake her own disappearance?  She wasn’t married, in debt, or accused of a serious crime.  She was just a lovely girl doing her job.”

“Max, forget about her.  Take the keys and pick up the car from the village after dark.  Leave it in the old stable by the hunting lodge in the woods and cover it up.  No one ever goes there, so no one would think to look.  Leave her hold-all in the car.  Make sure to wear gloves.  If Neve Ashley turns up, we don’t have a problem.  If she doesn’t, it has nothing to do with us.  Our main priority is to avoid any trace of scandal.  The Everly name doesn’t need to be dragged through the mud, especially if you have your sights set on a career in politics.”

“Should I not alert the police that I found Neve’s things?” Max asked, perplexed by his mother’s attitude.

“You always were thick, even as a boy,” his mother admonished.  “Telling the police anything will immediately get your name into the papers.  People won’t remember your role in the affair, but they will remember that you had something to do with the disappearance of a young woman who was your guest.  You know how sordid the press can be; you’ll be accused of all manner of things, when you were nothing but kind to the girl.  You’ll have to stand the trial of public opinion, which will accuse you and condemn you with or without evidence of your guilt.  Let the police do their own dirty work and stay out of it,” Lady Everly concluded, ringing for a fresh pot of tea.  As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over as well as their involvement with Neve. 

Max took a sip of his own lukewarm tea and turned over what his mother said in his mind.

“Does the notebook still exist?” he asked casually as he leafed through an architectural magazine.  He didn’t want to appear too eager for fear of alerting his mother to his interest, but she’d already moved on from the topic.

“Yes, it’s in your father’s study.  In the bottom drawer of the desk, I believe,” she replied, not even looking up at Max. 

Max took a few more sips and slipped out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time to the second floor and his father’s study.

Max lowered the battered notebook and gazed at the purpling sky beyond the window.  The first stars of the evening were beginning to appear in the sky, winking at him as if they knew some delicious secret.  The table lamp shone brightly onto the faded ink of the narrative, the yellowed pages brittle and curled at the edges.  Perhaps now he knew a secret as well.  Having read Henry’s account, he couldn’t imagine that a fifteen-year-old boy could have made this up.  Sure, he might have enjoyed writing a story to pass the time, but the details didn’t seem like the product of a teenager’s imagination.  Henry described his confusion, fear, and an encounter with a group of soldiers who took him to Scotland to join Cromwell’s army.  Henry’s account of the battle of Dunbar sent shivers down Max’s spine, the chilling details making his hands shake as he held the notebook.  No turn-of-the-century boy could have described the carnage in such gory detail, nor invented such a story of survival and subsequent escape back to the twentieth century. 

Henry wrote this many years before the start of the Great War, so his knowledge of warfare would be limited to the schoolroom where no tutor would ever divulge such inappropriate details to a young boy, particularly the bits about the camp followers and the interludes with whores, which Henry described as well.  He spoke of losing his virginity to a fourteen-year-old prostitute named Mabel, describing what it felt like and paying great attention to his surroundings, which were sordid to say the least; people coupling out in the open without any shame or need for privacy; men grunting like pigs as they did their business without any consideration for the women they used, paying them in coin, food, or even gin – whatever came to hand.  Henry described soldiers waiting patiently as their comrades took turns with a particular whore, cheering each other on and offering encouragement and advice.  Despite rampant prostitution in Victorian England, a boy like Henry would have been sheltered and woefully ignorant of the lurid details, even if he was aware of the basic facts.

Unfortunately, what Henry did not describe was the location of the passage.  He said that he found a secret door, but never mentioned where.  The crypt was rather large and ran the entire length and breadth of the church building, and although Max had been down there several times, he’d never noticed anything out of the ordinary.  He’d have to go explore, but not before the business with Neve resolved itself.  It would look too suspicious if he started hanging around the crypt days after people had seen Neve Ashley go down there for the last time. 

Thinking of Neve put Max onto a different tack.  Henry seemed to emerge in 1649, but did that automatically mean that Neve would go to the same year?  Supposing the passage did lead to the seventeenth century, could it be that Neve found herself there earlier or later than Henry?  And what if she met Hugo?  Max had always had a bit of a fascination with Hugo, partially because of the lack of information about his fate, but what if Neve did something to alter Hugo’s destiny?  Max’s line descended from Hugo’s nephew, but what if Hugo didn’t die and fathered a child instead?  Clarence would never inherit, and Max would not be Lord Everly or master of the estate.  That was a very alarming thought, one that Max tried to push aside.  He had absolutely no proof that Neve went back in time, nor that she went to a time when Hugo Everly would be in residence.  And even if she had, would she be able to alter the past or was it set in stone; already a foregone conclusion since the twenty-first century was well under way?

Max watched as the last bit of light was leached from the sky, the darkness settling over the parkland visible from the window.  The stars were brighter now, the half-moon hanging low in the sky, almost skimming the tree line and leaning a bit to the side as if drunk.  Getting drunk seemed like an awfully good idea at the moment, but Max had to stay alert.  He’d wait until midnight to go and retrieve Neve’s car.  The village would be deserted by then, most inhabitants already asleep in preparation for another day.  He would be able to drive away unobserved, taking the car up the narrow track that led to the lodge and leaving it in the old stable under a tarp.  There was sure to be a padlock somewhere in the mudroom which he could use to lock the stable. 

Max looked at his watch and went to pour himself a drink despite his resolve not to have one.  If Neve went through the passage on Sunday morning, where was she?  What had happened to her?  Surely she would turn around and come right back when she found herself in the wrong time.  She was a clever and resourceful girl, not a naïve teenage boy who grew up during the Victorian Era.  What if she were hurt or accosted by someone? Max wondered as he took a gulp of his gin and tonic.  A part of him wanted to rush to the rescue and play out a childhood fantasy of the knight in shining armor coming to save the day, but another part of him suddenly wished that Neve never came back.  Her return would raise all kinds of questions, and what if she decided to tell the truth?  This was not the time of confining people to asylums.  Her story would cause an uproar, and bring all sorts of people to the Everly doorstep: scientists, archeologists, journalists, and all kinds of rabble who wanted to be a part of something sensational, or live out their fantasy of living in another time. 

Max poured another drink and stared at the clock.  Was he running out of time?