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Authors: Victoria Holt

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BOOK: Seven for a Secret
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“Weller …”

He wagged a finger at me and lightly touched my cheek. I shrank away from him, but he did not seem to be aware of this. His eyes were very bright.

He went on: “You kneel by your bed … in your nightgown.” The tip of his tongue protruded slightly and touched his upper lip before it disappeared.

“And you pray to God to forgive you for the sins you have committed during the day. You are young, but the young can be sinful.

Remember that you could be carried off to face your Maker at any moment.

“In the midst of life we are in death.” You yes, even you, my child could be carried off with all your sins upon you to face your Maker.


 

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, trying to move away from him without appearing to do so.

“No, indeed no. So … every night, you must kneel by your bed in your nightgown, and pray that all the naughty things you have done during the day or even thought may be forgiven.”

1 shivered. Tamarisk would have been able to laugh at

 

all this. I would have caught her eye and she would have made one of her grimaces. She would say the man was ‘batty’ as batty as poor Flora Lane, but in a different way. He just went on about sins and Flora thought a doll was a baby, that was all.

But I had a great desire to get out of this house and 1 hoped I would never come into it again. I did not under stand why this man frightened me so much but there was no doubt that he did.

I said to Aunt Hilda: “Thank you so much for asking me. My aunt will be expecting me back and I think I should go now.”

It sounded feeble. Aunt Sophie knew where I was and she would not be expecting me yet. But I had to get out of this house.

Aunt Hilda, who had looked uncomfortable while her husband was talking, seemed almost relieved.

“Well then, we mustn’t detain you, dear,” she said.

“It was so nice of you to come. Rachel, will you take your guest to the gate?”

Rachel rose with alacrity.

“Goodbye,” I said, trying not to look at Mr. Dorian.

It was a relief to escape. I wanted to run. I had a sudden fear that Mr. Dorian might follow me and go on talking about my sins, while he kept looking at me in that odd way.

Rachel came to the gate with me.

“I hope it was all right,” she said.

“Oh yes … yes,” I lied.

“It was a pity …” She did not continue but I knew what she meant.

If Mr. Dorian had not come in it would have been an ordinary tea-party.

I did say: “Does he always talk like that … about sin and everything?”

“Well, he’s very good, you see. He goes to church three times on

Sunday, though he does not like the Reverend Hetherington very much. He says he leans towards Popery.”

“I think he believes everyone is full of sin.”

“That is how good people are.”

“I’d rather have someone not so good. It must be uncomfortable.” I paused. I was saying too much. After all, Rachel had to live in the house with him.

At the gate I looked back at the house. I had the uncanny feeling that he might be watching me from one of the windows and I just wanted to run as fast as I could to put a great distance between that house and myself.

“Goodbye, Rachel,” I said and started off.

It was good to feel the wind on my face. I thought: He’d never be able to run as fast as I can. He’d never catch me if he tried.

I did not take the straight path home. That man had made such an impression on me, I wanted to wash it completely out of my mind but I could not. The memory of him remained. His dry hands that rasped when he rubbed them together, his intent eyes with the light lashes that were hardly perceptible, the way in which he moistened his lips when he looked at me. They aroused alarm in me.

How could Rachel live in the same house with such a man? But he was her uncle. She had to. I thought, as I had a hundred times before, how lucky I was to have come to Aunt Sophie.

Running into the wind seemed to wash away the vague unpleasantness.

This was a strange place . fascinating in a way. One had the impression that weird things could happen here. There was Flora Lane with her doll, and Mr. Dorian with . what was it? I could not say.

It was just an odd feeling of dread I experienced when he came near me and made me feel a special longing for Aunt Sophie’s down-to-earth conversation and her protective love.

Lucky me, to have come to Aunt Sophie, and poor, poor Rachel! I would be particularly kind to her in future to

 

make up to her for having an uncle like Mr. Dorian.

I had come round a long way and I could see the Lanes’ cottage, not as I had previously approached it, but from the back instead.

1 made my way towards it. There was a wall round the garden. I could see over it, to the mulberry bush which Tamarisk had mentioned, and seated near it was Flora. Beside her was a doll’s pram and I guessed that the doll was in it.

I leaned over the wall to look more closely. She saw me and said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” I replied.

“Have you come to see Lucy?” she asked.

“Oh no. I was just passing.”

“The gate is there … the back gate.”

It sounded like an invitation and, spurred on by my ever-present curiosity, I went through the gate to where she was sitting.

“Shh,” she said.

“He’s sleeping now. He can be a little cross if anyone wakes him.”

“I see,” I said.

She was sitting on ‘a wooden bench and she made room for me to sit beside her.

“He’s one for his own way,” she went on.

“I can believe that.”

“He won’t go to anyone but me.”

“His mother …” I began.

“Ought not to have had children. People like that … going off to London … to my mind they shouldn’t have them.”

“No,” I said.

She was nodding and staring at the mulberry bush.

“There’s nothing there,” she said.

“Where?” I asked.

She nodded towards the bush.

“Whatever they say … mustn’t disturb, though.”

 

“Why not?” I asked, because 1 was doing my best to find out what she was talking about.

It was the wrong thing to have said. She turned to me and her eyes had lost a certain calmness which had been there when I arrived.

“No,” she said.

“There isn’t. You mustn’t… it would be wrong. You shouldn’t.”

“All right,” I said.

“I won’t. Do you sit here often?”

She turned her troubled eyes to me. Suspicion remained there.

“He’s all right … my little baby. He’s sleeping like an angel.

Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, you’d think. ” She gave a little laugh.

“You should hear him in one of his paddies. He’s going to be a tartar, that one. He’s going to get what he wants in life.”

Lucy must have seen me from a window of the cottage. She came out and I sensed at once that she was not pleased to see me sitting there talking to her sister.

She said: “It’s Miss Cardingham’s niece, isn’t it?”

I told her I was and that I had been passing, seen Flora in the garden and had been invited in.

“Oh, that was nice. Were you going for a walk?”

“I have been to the Bell House and was on my way home.”

“That was nice.”

Everything seemed nice to her, but I sensed this was due to a certain nervousness and that she wanted me to be gone. So I said: “My aunt will be expecting me.”

“Then you mustn’t keep her waiting, dear,” she said with relief.

“No. Goodbye,” I said, looking at Flora, who smiled at me.

Then she said: “There’s nothing there, is there … Lucy?” Lucy wrinkled her brows as though she were not sure what Flora was talking about. I supposed she often said things which had no reasonable meaning. Lucy walked with me to the gate.

 

The Rowans isn’t far. You know your way? “

“Oh yes. I know my way around very well now.”

“Give my kind regards to Miss Cardingham.”

“I will.”

1 was off running again, feeling the wind in my hair.

A strange afternoon, I was thinking. There are some very mysterious people here and this afternoon I had encountered two of the strangest, and I now felt the need to get back quickly to dear sane Aunt Sophie.

She was waiting for me.

“I expected you back before now,” she said.

“I saw Flora Lane in the garden and stopped to talk to her.”

“Poor Flora! How was the party?”

I hesitated.

“I thought so,” she went on.

“I know what they’re like at the Bell House. I feel sorry for poor Hilda. These good people who have their places booked in Heaven can be a bit of a trial on Earth.”

“He asked me if I say my prayers every night. I have to ask for forgiveness in case I die in the night.”

Aunt Sophie burst out laughing.

“Did you ask if he did the same?”

“I suppose he does. They have prayers all the time. Oh, Aunt Sophie, how glad I am I came to you!”

She looked pleased.

“Well, I do my best to give you a happy time and, if we’re a bit short on prayers, I hope some fun will be there. What about Flora? As crazy as usual?”

“She had a doll’s pram and a doll in it. She thinks it is Crispin St. Aubyn.”

“That’s because she’s back in the past when she was his nurse. She still thinks she’s there. Poor Lucy has a lot to put up with. But Crispin St. Aubyn is very good to her. He calls on her now and then, I believe. Well, she was his nanny, and he didn’t get much love from his parents.”

 

“She talked about the mulberry bush and there being nothing there.”

“She’s full of fancies. Now, if I don’t get down to the shops there’ll be nothing for supper. Lily’s left it to me today. What about coming with me?”

“Oh yes, please.”

I held her arm as we walked down to the village shop.

I was filled with joy because I was realizing what sad things can happen to children who lose their parents. There was Rachel who had had to go to the Bell House and live with her Uncle Dorian; Crispin and Tamarisk, who had had parents but they might have been orphans for all they had cared. Of course, I had had a father who went away and a mother who was more concerned with what she had missed than with the child she had. But I was the lucky one. Fortune had sent me to Aunt Sophie.

Miss Lloyd and I were getting on very well together. I was far more interested in lessons than either of my fellow pupils. Miss Lloyd used to say: “We have history on our doorstep, girls, and how foolish we should be if we did not take advantage of it. Just think, more than two thousand years ago there were people here … in this very place which we now inhabit.”

My responses delighted her and perhaps it was because of this that one day she decided that, instead of sitting at our lessons every morning, we should take what she called occasional educational rambles.

One morning she took the trap and we drove across Salisbury Plain to Stonehenge. I was excited to stand there among those ancient stones while Miss Lloyd smiled at me approvingly.

“Now, girls,” she said, ‘can you sense the mystery . the wonder of this link with the past? “

“Oh yes,” I said.

 

Rachel looked somewhat bewildered. Tamarisk contemptuous. What was all this fuss about a lot of stones just because they had been standing there for a long time? I could see that was what she was thinking.

“Their age is assessed somewhere between 1800 and 1400 b.c. Think of that, girls! It was before Christ came that these stones were here.

The arrangement of the stones, which are set in accordance with the rising and the setting of the sun, suggests that this was a place for the worship of the heavens. Just stand still and contemplate that.


 

Miss Lloyd was smiling at me. She knew that I shared her feeling of wonder.

After that I became very interested in the relics of ancient history which surrounded us. Miss Lloyd gave me some books to read. Aunt Sophie listened with approval when I told her of the fascination of Stonehenge, and that it was believed that the Druids had worshipped there.

“They were learned people, you know. Aunt Sophie, those Druids,” I told her.

“But they did offer up human sacrifices. They thought the soul never died but was passed from one person to another.”

“I don’t much like the thought of that,” said Aunt Sophie.

“And human sacrifices I like still less.”

“Savages, I reckon,” said Lily, who had overheard.

“They used to put people in cages which looked like images of their gods and they’d burn them alive,” I told them.

“My patience me!” cried Lily.

“I thought you went to school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic, not about a lot of hooligans.”

I laughed.

“It’s all history. Lily.”

“Well, it’s a good thing to know what those people were like,” added Aunt Sophie.

“It makes you glad you didn’t, live in those days.”

After that visit to Stonehenge 1 began to look about me for evidence of

those who had lived here thousands of years before. Miss Lloyd encouraged me and one day she took us to Barrow Wood. This was quite close to The Rowans and 1 was delighted to have it so near.

“It is called Barrow Wood,” Miss Lloyd explained, ‘because of the barrows. Do you know what a barrow is girls? No? It is a grave. These in Barrow Wood were probably made in the Bronze Age. Doesn’t that excite you? “

“Yes,” I said, but a glazed look had come into Tamarisk’s eyes and Rachel was frowning in an attempt to concentrate.

“You see,” went on Miss Lloyd, ‘the earth and the stones have been piled up to make a mound. Beneath those mounds would be burial chambers. By the arrangement of the graves I imagine these must have been important people. And then, of course, the trees were allowed to grow round them. Yes, it must have been a special place . a shrine.

The people buried here were probably High Priests, leading Druids and the like. “

I was thrilled because I could see Barrow Wood from my bedroom window.

“Barrow is the name which was given these tombs. Tumulus is another word for barrow. So this is Barrow Wood.”

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