The Rose Garden (30 page)

We slept late the next day. Jack was up and about before any of the rest of us. I heard him moving round the house and whistling round the kitchen on his way out to the stables. In the room beside me Daniel woke and stirred. I heard his feet thump to the floor and then the quiet movements while he dressed and went downstairs.

I thought of drifting back to sleep, but in the end I rose and dressed as well. It took a little while, and by the time I got down to the kitchen Jack was back indoors and arguing with Daniel, though this wasn’t like the argument I’d heard them have before. More like a stubborn disagreement.

‘Ay,’ said Jack, ‘I know what you were thinking, but I’m saying you were better to have let the lad come with you and then tossed him over halfway through the crossing, for that might have been an accident and no one could have called it any different.’

Daniel’s level look spoke for itself, but he elaborated anyway. ‘I do not murder beardless lads. Good morrow, Eva.’

With a nod I took the bucket from its hook beside the hearth and slipped between them.

Jack said, ‘Beardless lads who have been shamed in front of Creed may prove more dangerous than you might yet expect.’

I would have liked to have hung about longer to hear what Jack thought Creed’s unsuccessful spy might try to do to seek revenge, but being on thin ice already with Jack I knew it would be best if I kept to the things that a sister of Fergal’s would logically do. And right now, that meant fetching a bucket of water to start cooking breakfast.

The well had a simple design with a winch and a rope and a hook for the bucket, but hauling the bucket up full was more work than I’d thought it would be. I was leaning my weight on the winch in an effort to speed up the process when Jack banged his way out the back door and started across the yard.

Catching sight of me, he changed direction and came over, saying curtly, ‘Stand aside.’ I couldn’t help but think the force he threw against the winch was more from a release of temper than from any real desire to help me. The bucket all but flew up from the darkness of the well, and when he yanked the bucket from its hook it sloshed a wave of water out to protest such rough treatment.

‘There.’ He thrust the bucket in my hands and turned away, strode off four steps, and wheeled again to add, ‘If you
do
have a voice, you might use it to persuade my brother that there is a time when men must act to aid themselves, and not for honor.’

If I could have answered back, I would have told him there’d be no point in my telling Daniel anything. He was the way he was, and there was no force that could change him.

As I’m sure Jack knew already. With a final glare he turned and carried on towards the stables while I slowly lugged the water back across the yard.

Fergal, newly awake and still yawning, met me at the kitchen door and took the bucket from my hands, following my backwards glance with his quick knowing eyes. ‘Don’t you worry at all about Jack, he’s all bluster. He’s only been penned up alone in the house these past days, and he’s wanting a breath of air.’

I didn’t worry about Jack, as it happened. I knew he would live to a good age. It was the other two men that I worried about.

‘Breakfast,’ said Fergal. ‘And then I’ll be leaving you here to take care of the dinner.’

‘Why? Where are you going?’

‘Lostwithiel.’

‘Why?’

‘Not your business. Now, breakfast.’

‘Does it have to do with the guns you brought back?’

Fergal turned then and gave me a look. ‘I do hope that I never go forwards in time, for I’d not long survive in an age filled with women so curious.’ Setting the bucket down hard on the hearth he said, more firmly, ‘Breakfast.’

But I knew that I was right. And when he rode off in his turn an hour later, I wished hard that he would meet with no adventures on the road.

***

Daniel was busy upstairs with his books.

The pleasant scent of pipe tobacco met me on the landing when I went up with a mind to make my bed. Instead I went the other way along the corridor and found him in his study, deeply absorbed in a book that looked, even for this time, quite old. Glancing up from his seat by the window, he took the pipe from his mouth for a moment and asked, ‘Did you want me?’

A loaded question, I decided, if I’d ever heard one. Resisting the impulse to answer it, I simply told him, ‘I’ll be starting dinner soon. It’s fish—that’s all that Fergal’s left. How do you like it cooked?’

‘However you desire to cook it,’ was his answer with a smile. ‘Did he gut them first for you, at least, before leaving?’

‘He did, yes.’

‘A good man.’ Setting his pipe on the table beside him, he rounded his shoulders to stretch them.

I looked at the book he held. ‘What are you reading?’

For an answer he turned it round, holding it open at the title page so I could read the words myself.
The Sceptical Chymist
. The ‘chymist’ had me stumped a moment, then, ‘A book of chemistry?’

‘You know the science?’

‘Only what I learned in school.’

‘Which was, no doubt, beyond what even the greatest of our current men of science could yet fathom.’ Giving a nod to the book he said, ‘This man, Robert Boyle, had a very great intellect, although he dwelt too much I think on alchemy. But when I was naught but a babe he conducted experiments dealing with fire and combustion, chemical combustion. I had hoped to find them detailed here, but this book was published before that time. Still, it makes for fascinating reading.’

‘What’s got you interested in chemical combustion?’

‘You. Your self-igniting spills.’ He flipped a page and settled back. ‘It does occur to me that phosphorous might have some useful qualities, but as for the other chemical or chemicals that one might need—’

I cut him off in something close to panic. ‘You can’t do that.’ But he could, I knew. It was the way his brain worked, turning everything he could not understand into a puzzle to be solved. A sort of game. Except, ‘You can’t be messing round with self-igniting matches, Daniel. They’re not meant to be invented till the 1800s.’

He turned another page. ‘Then if I do invent them I shall swear to keep the secret in my family until then.’

‘Don’t joke. You can’t do this.’

‘Why?’ Holding his place in the book with his thumb, he closed it and faced me with an air of intellectual debate. ‘What harm can there be in increasing my knowledge?’

‘A great deal if that knowledge isn’t something anyone should have in this time,’ was my argument. ‘Anything you do that you weren’t meant to do could change the future, change the way that things turn out.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Well, it’s common knowledge. Common sense.’ The first rule of time travel, really, I thought—so ingrained in society’s psyche through novels and films that it took on the weight of a fact.

‘But what proof do you have?’ Daniel asked. ‘Has a man ever done this?’

I said, ‘I don’t know, but—’

‘Have learned men studied the matter?’

‘They have theories…’

‘But how are they tested?’ he challenged me. ‘Theories are fine things, but I do confess that my own common sense tells me there is an order to life that cannot be so easily changed by the will of one man.’ He spread his hands to indicate the study. ‘All of this, this life that I have lived, it has already passed and faded from the memories of the people of your own time. It is rather like that poem you did speak of, with the moving finger writing words that cannot be erased. My page is written,’ he said, ‘and not even I can change a line of it.’

I wasn’t sure which one of us was right. I said, ‘But
I’m
not meant to be here.
I
might change things.’

Daniel looked at me a moment, then he set his book aside and stood and closed the space between us with his slow deliberate steps. ‘How do you know,’ he asked, ‘that here is not exactly where you’re meant to be?’

I didn’t have an answer for him, partly because my mind, as always, had lost all its power to form coherent thoughts with him so near. And partly because I wanted so badly for him to be right, even though we both knew that the thing was impossible. I shook my head and repeated those words: ‘It’s impossible.’

‘Why is it?’ His eyes gave no quarter. ‘Where is your proof?’

I had no hope of winning the argument, not with him standing there looking at me like that, but I still tried. ‘Where is yours?’

Daniel took my hand and held it to his heart so I could feel its beating. ‘Here,’ he told me quietly. His other hand came up to hold my face and tilt it up while his began a slow descent. ‘And here,’ he murmured, with his mouth against my own.

It was a thorough and persuasive kiss that made my senses spin until I couldn’t think of any reason not to be convinced.

When he drew back, the look he slanted down at me was so intense it stopped my breath. Intense, yet somehow questioning. He held my face still warm within his hand and asked me in a slightly roughened voice, ‘Would you desire more proof than that?’

I knew what he was asking, then. Knew too that I’d be complicating things beyond repair if I said yes. Because if I already found it difficult to leave him as things were, that would be nothing to the wrenching loss I’d feel when I was forced to leave him after this.

Looking up, I gave a nod and watched the question in his eyes give way to warmth. And then he lifted me, the trailing gown and all, and he was kissing me again and we were moving from the study down the corridor towards the corner bedchamber.

The door swung open with a crash and Daniel kicked it closed again behind us, and I heard the scraping of the key turned in the lock, and we were on the bed together and to tell the truth, I wasn’t much inclined to notice anything besides that for a while.

***

Time hung suspended. And for once, I had no question of my place in it. I was exactly where I was supposed to be, where I belonged, with Daniel Butler lying in the bed beside me. I could hear his even breathing, feel his warmth, the shifting of his weight against the mattress as he turned. His face in sleep was not so hardened as I’d seen it look. The lines were there but smoother, and the slanting shadows of his lashes crossed his tanned skin peacefully.

Then as I watched his face, his eyes came slowly open, and he saw me too and smiled.

I closed my own eyes tight to hold the moment. Until I remembered how I had come into the past from the present this last time, and quickly I opened my eyes again.

He was still there.

Misreading my relief, he asked me, ‘Are you back to doubting whether I am real?’

His tone was dry, and so I kept my answer light. ‘After what just happened, yes, I might be.’

‘I shall choose to view that as a compliment.’ The smile deepened briefly. ‘Or did you intend the opposite?’

My gaze still held by his, I gave my head the slightest shake against the softness of the pillow and replied, ‘It was a compliment.’

I watched the green eyes darken in that now-familiar way, as Daniel bridged the space between us with a kiss that somehow managed the impossible and left me with an even stronger sense of longing than I’d had before.

He drew back, his expression turning serious, and let his head fall to the pillow close beside my own, his one hand sliding from my face into my hair, where he absently wound a long strand round his finger as though he were making a curl. ‘I have known many women, Eva, but for all that, I have only loved but twice. I cannot say that I am well accomplished in the way of it nor that I was the very best of husbands. I do hold the things I love too closely, sometimes, and I can be contrary for nothing but the sake of it, and I know well that I am not the easiest of men to make a life with.’

I held my breath and lay there watching him, and waiting.

He was studying my hair, now loosely spiraled in his fingers. ‘I have only loved but twice,’ he said again. ‘The first I took for granted, and now she is in her grave and gone. I would not wish…’ His hand closed briefly, tightening. ‘I would not wish to make the same mistake with you.’

I’d held my breath too long and had forgotten how to let it out, and when I did my head felt light. ‘Did you just say you loved me?’

‘Ay.’ His eyes were back on mine again. ‘And I would have you marry me.’ He must have thought that sounded too imperious, because he caught the words and phrased them differently. ‘I’m asking,’ he said, gently, ‘will you marry me?’

I felt my eyes fill hotly with the unexpected depth of my emotions, and I tried to blink the wetness back, to hold to that last ragged edge of reason. ‘I love you too,’ I said. ‘But…’

Daniel waited through the moment’s silence, finally prompting, ‘But?’

‘I’m hardly ever here. I come and go, I can’t control it. You can’t want to have a life like that.’

His face relaxed. ‘’Tis you I want.’ He trailed his fingers warmly down my cheek and brushed away the single tear that had escaped my lashes. ‘I care not on what terms.’

He didn’t try to catch the next tear or the one that followed after that. His gaze stayed steady on my own.

‘Say yes,’ he said so quietly it might have been a whisper. He moved his hand against my face so that his thumb could brush across my trembling lips as lightly as a kiss. ‘Say yes.’

As if there were another answer I could ever give him. ‘Yes.’

I’d never seen him smile like that. I knew that for my whole life I’d remember it, as I’d remember everything about this moment—the angle of the sunlight spilling through the bedroom window and the even warmer light in Daniel’s eyes.

And how his touch felt, gentle on my face.

‘Whatever time we have,’ he said, ‘it will be time enough.’

Fergal stood behind me in the shadows of the church.

We hadn’t needed any witnesses. Apparently the laws had not been written yet that made them a requirement. In fact, according to Daniel, we could simply have exchanged vows on our own, there in the bedroom at Trelowarth with no priest around to hear us, and then sealed the deal by making love—which had, I admitted, seemed rather appealing to me at the time.

But he’d laughed then and gathered me close and said we had in essence already done all of that. ‘The promise is the same no matter where we choose to say it, yet it seems to me more meaningful to say it in a church.’

‘We’ll have to wait then.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, because we’ll need a license or they’ll have to read the banns, or…’ I had paused, because I’d noticed he was looking at me strangely.

‘All we’ll need,’ he’d said, quite certain, ‘is a payment that will satisfy the vicar.’

He’d been right, of course.

Finding the vicar himself had been more of a challenge, but eventually he had been traced to the house of some friends in the neighboring parish, and Fergal, returning from Lostwithiel, had headed back out to go fetch him. And that was how I came to be here, with an hour to go till sunrise, standing in the aisle of St Petroc’s church by candlelight with Fergal at my shoulder and the vicar off discussing terms with Daniel in the vestry.

I felt a surge of nervousness again and smoothed the skirts of my green gown till Fergal told me, ‘Quit your fussing. You look fine.’

Obedient, I stilled my hands and then, not knowing what else I should do with them, I clasped them both behind me. I whispered, ‘They’ve been in there a long time.’

‘You’re meant to be my sister, and a Catholic. I’d imagine that’s what’s keeping them.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’ve no call to worry. For the price that Danny’s offering, the vicar will be sure to keep his disapproval to himself.’

I looked away again. ‘Like you.’

‘What’s that?’

I shook my head and murmured, ‘Nothing.’

Fergal took a step around to stand where I could see him. ‘Do you think I disapprove?’

‘I think you care about your friend,’ I told him with a shrug, ‘and you don’t want to see him hurt again.’

‘I want,’ he answered carefully, ‘to see him with a woman who will love him in the way that he deserves and know the value of the man whose heart she carries.’ In his voice I heard that same fierce challenge I remembered from the first time we had met, when we’d squared off across the corner bedroom with me in my borrowed gown and him as mad as blazes. ‘Has he found that?’

Looking up, I met his eyes and saw that underneath the challenge lay what looked to be affection, and not sure that I could speak around the lump of pure emotion in my throat, I gave a nod.

‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘why the devil would you think I’d disapprove?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So you should be. Leaping into judgment.’ There was humor in the dark glance angled down at me. ‘If I truly disapproved, you’d not be here.’

‘Where would I be, then? At the bottom of the well?’

‘Most likely, ay.’

‘Big scary man,’ I called him, low.

He didn’t hide the smile this time. But he did step back again where he had been before, behind my shoulder, where he could more clearly see the vestry door.

The flickering candles had burned at least half an inch lower before Daniel came through that door with the vicar beside him—a middle-aged man with stooped shoulders who looked as though he wasn’t fully awake. But he seemed game enough for the task at hand.

‘Have you a ring?’ he asked Daniel, before we began.

Daniel looked an apology at me and started to say something but with a shake of my head I reached over and slipped off the Claddagh ring, holding it out, and his fingers brushed warm on my palm as he took it and handed it on to the vicar.

It was, I thought, a fitting thing to use Katrina’s ring for this. A way to feel her standing at my side, where I had always thought she would be when I married.

With a cough the vicar set the ring with care upon the pages of his open prayer book, ready for his blessing. ‘Since I am told she cannot speak, I’d ask Mistress O’Cleary to—’

‘Her name is Ward,’ said Daniel, and the vicar stopped.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Daniel said, ‘Her name is Eva Ellen Ward, and in this place of God she has a voice. For surely this is not a place where anyone should speak aught but the truth.’ He held the vicar’s gaze directly. ‘Nor where anyone should fear betrayal.’

The vicar paused. Then nodded slowly. ‘No, indeed.’ He turned to me. ‘Now, Eva Ellen Ward, is it your wish that you be married to this man?’

I looked at Daniel, grateful for his giving me the chance to say the words out loud. ‘It is.’

‘Then let us now begin.’

***

The ring felt strange on my left hand instead of on my right. My thumb kept seeking out its smoothness there and twisting it around to feel the clasped hands and the heart, till Daniel caught my hand in his and held it while we walked.

We were taking the longer way back through the fields, having let Fergal go on ahead of us. The rising sun had just begun to push its way above the hills that lay to the east of Polgelly, and over the wet grass our shadows stretched long.

He’d been right. The words we had just said to each other had seemed much more meaningful, spoken aloud in the church, than they would have done if we’d exchanged our vows privately yesterday. Something of the solemnity of the traditional service still clung to me, keeping me silent till Daniel’s hand lightly squeezed mine.

‘You are lost in your thoughts. May I know them?’

‘I doubt they’d make sense to you.’ Turning, I showed him a smile. ‘I’m still sorting things through.’

‘And what is it,’ he asked, ‘that needs sorting?’

‘You know. How we’re going to manage this.’

His turn to smile. ‘The same as any other married man and woman might. How else?’

‘But we,’ I said, reminding him, ‘are not like any other married couple, are we? We can’t really make plans for our future, not like normal people can.’

‘Why not?’

I answered with a dry look. ‘We’re lucky enough if we make plans for supper. I might disappear before then.’

‘Life is always uncertain,’ he said with a shrug. ‘We cannot let the fear of what might happen stop us living as we choose.’ His fingers twined more tightly round my own.

And then to lighten things, I said, ‘At least I didn’t disappear in church.’

‘No, you did not.’ He swung my hand a little as we walked on further, then his steps began to slow. ‘You did not disappear in church,’ he echoed. Stopping, he looked down at me. ‘Nor when we were on the
Sally
.’

I knew his thoughts were traveling the same path mine already had and coming to the same conclusion.

‘I know,’ I assured him, ‘I’ve noticed the same thing. Whatever’s been happening seems to be tied to Trelowarth itself.’ And I told him about the Grey Lady who’d vanished years before me.

He was thinking. ‘So then if you left, it would most likely stop.’

‘It’s possible, yes, but I don’t know for certain. It’s only a theory.’

‘And theories are meant to be tested, are they not?’ Not waiting for an answer he went on, ‘Perhaps we ought to go away for a short while, to Bristol or to Plymouth. You did say you always return to the moment you left your own time, yes? Then there is no danger. If we have guessed wrongly you’ll merely go back as you would have done had we stayed here. But if we are
not
wrong…’ There was no need to finish the sentence.

‘We could hardly be sure,’ was my argument, ‘after just one trip away. There’d be no guarantee.’

‘No. But we could repeat the experiment, surely. I gladly would go where I needed to go if it kept you beside me.’

I looked away briefly, in thought. We were standing where, three hundred years from now, the Quiet Garden would be coming into bloom with Mark’s beloved roses, safely walled to shield them from the sea-blown weather, but just at the moment there was nothing here but a sloping field with wildflowers speckled through the bowing grass that tumbled down towards the roof and chimneys of the house below.

I asked, ‘You’d leave Trelowarth?’

‘I can serve the Duke of Ormonde and the king aboard the
Sally
just as well as I could serve them from on land, mayhap a good deal better. And rebellions all must have an end.’ With a faint smile he brushed back the hair from my eyes where the wind kept on blowing it. ‘Ill or fair, I mean to be alive to see the end of this one. And there has been talk that if this new attempt to set King James upon his throne should flounder, he will send the Duke of Ormonde to the Spanish court for aid, and I should think the duke will need assistance there.’

‘In Spain.’

‘Have you been there as well?’ His eyes crinkled with humor.

‘Well, actually, yes.’

‘Did you like it?’

I lifted my chin. ‘Very much.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘we will take it in small steps. Beginning with Bristol.’

Sealing the bargain, he drew me in close for a quick kiss that lengthened to something more, making me hold to his waist for support, and my hand touched the top of the knife handle slung at his belt.

Drawing back in surprise, I looked down at the dagger, and Daniel’s gaze followed mine. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked.

It was not the same knife. This one had a bone handle, a cruder design. I said only, ‘You have a new knife.’

‘Yes. I’ve mislaid my favorite, but ’tis not a matter for concern. Most likely it is somewhere on the
Sally
.’

I should tell him, I thought. I should tell him I knew where it was. But I couldn’t, because if I did then it wouldn’t be there in the cave for the boy Mark to find it, as he was supposed to. And if I changed that, then what else…?

‘Eva?’ Daniel was holding me, watching my face. Waiting.

I shook it off. ‘Sorry.’

And then for the first time I realized the
way
he was watching me; noticed the look in his eyes as the landscape around us began to change, wavering.

I tried to cling more tightly to him, knowing that I couldn’t, and my voice this time was no more than an anguished whisper. ‘Sorry.’

Daniel’s arms came more closely around me. I saw his mouth moving and knew he was telling me something. I thought he was saying he’d wait for me, but he had already started to fade and I only caught one faint word: ‘Wait.’

Then the wind rose and swirled and collapsed on itself in a rush of unbearable stillness.

My eyes were shut tightly.

I kept them that way, not only because I knew if I opened them I’d only see the green walls of my empty bedroom at Trelowarth and the empty bed that I was lying on alone, but because I felt them filling with the stinging heat of tears.

I thought I’d learned the pain of loss, but this was nothing like I’d ever felt before. I’d never in my life felt so alone.

I turned my face into the pillow just in time to catch the first sob rising from this newly hollow place inside me, and the tears came with it, swelling in behind my eyes and spilling over with a force I couldn’t stop or fight.

And through it all, the thing that seemed to me the most unfair was that the birds outside my window went on singing as though it were just like any other morning.