Time's Legacy (9 page)

The room was empty. Of course it was empty. And yet…

‘Mummy?’ she whispered again. ‘Are you there?’

There was no reply.

She stood for a moment longer without moving, then slowly and thoughtfully she went over to the chest of drawers which stood against the opposite wall and kneeling down she dragged open the bottom drawer. The tin box was where her mother had put it, wedged at the back amongst all kinds of boxes and packages and folders of newspaper cuttings. One day it would be up to her to sort through all her mother’s possessions. But not now. It was too soon. Too painful. Easing out the box she carried it over to the table and putting it down she stood looking at it for a long time. Had her mother realised that she was going to die? Obviously she had known she was ill, but wouldn’t she have said something if she had realised how gravely? Carefully she pulled off the lid. ‘You were going to tell me about this,’ she said to the empty room. ‘Why did you change your mind? What is so special about this lump of rock?’ Unfolding the cloth in which it was wrapped she looked down at it. The uppermost opaque crystal face gleamed softly and she ran her finger over it experimentally. It was cold; inert. Cautiously she lifted it out of the box and laid it on the table. Exposed like this she could see it in more detail. It was a roughly spherical lump of pure crystal with some two thirds of the surface exposed, parts of it crazed and cloudy, some of it clear as glass. The rest was hidden by the rock casing from which it had been hewn.

‘It is some sort of crystal ball,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Is that it? An ancient crystal ball?’ She glanced into the box. In the bottom, hidden by the crumpled silk was a piece of paper. Unfolding it carefully she squinted at the faded brown ink.

For my little Amelia. When you are grown up the Serpent Stone will tell its story to you if you listen. Treasure it and pass it on to one of your daughters when you in your turn are old. What you do about the story and who you tell is for you to decide. Elc

It was signed with a faint scrawl. Her great-grandmother had been called Amelia. Abi squinted at the signature. Elizabeth? Elspeth? Something beginning with E. She refolded the paper and tucked it back into the box. The Serpent Stone. She shivered. ‘So, you have a story to tell?’ she whispered. ‘A dangerous story.’ What had her mother said? It had destroyed her faith.

The door opened so suddenly she nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘What are you doing up here?’ Her father erupted into the room. He was panting heavily from the stairs. He was wearing the same checked shirt he had had on for three days. She could smell the stale aroma of sweat with a faint oily overlay of alcohol. She frowned. He must have been drinking in the privacy of his lonely study. She stood away from the table almost guiltily. ‘I just came up to be near her,’ she said after a moment.

He glared at her. ‘You can’t be near her. She’s gone. Don’t you understand? She’s gone!’ It was a wild cry of despair.

‘I know.’ Abi held out her hand towards him. ‘I miss her too,’ she pleaded.

Her gesture seemed to inflame his rage even further. ‘You? You miss her? You moved out! You betrayed us! You turned your back on everything we believed. You broke her heart!’ He stepped closer to her and spotted the box on the table with the stone sitting next to it in full view. He stopped in his tracks. ‘That thing! I told her to get rid of it.’ For a moment he seemed paralysed with shock. ‘How could she defy me? How could she lie? After all that happened!’

‘What is it, Dad? I don’t understand. What happened?’ Abi looked down at the stone then back at his face. Her mother’s voice echoed in her head suddenly. ‘This is something I have kept hidden from your father.’

He took a deep breath, visibly trying to steady himself and sat down heavily on the chaise longue by the window. He was still breathing hard from the stairs. ‘When we were first married we were happy. So happy. I had a research post at Bristol University.’ He appeared almost to be talking to himself, staring past her, his eyes fixed on some point in space she could not see. Then you came along. It was all so wonderful and then it was ruined.’ There was a long silence.

‘Ruined? By me?’ Abi whispered at last. Her own memories of her childhood were of sunny holidays, fond grandparents, laughing cousins, her parents holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes, sharing jokes, unspoken messages of tenderness, or complicity against the world. They had loved her. She was sure they had both loved her. When had it all gone wrong? And why hadn’t she noticed?

She moved away from the table and sat down on a wooden chair next to the wall. He didn’t seem to register that she had moved. ‘I was awarded a research post here at Cambridge,’ he went on. His voice was shaking slightly. ‘We were thrilled. It was one of the top jobs in the country.’

Abi remembered that. She had thought it was wonderful, so different from the Victorian cottage in Bristol, falling in love with Cambridge even as a small child with the ethereal beauty of the colleges, the Backs, the river, its magical atmosphere, its romantic stories and with the huge, rambling grey house into which they moved. The garden had been an exciting wilderness. It was the challenge of all those brambles, those hidden corners and those rampant nettles which had set her mother on the quest for order and beauty and peace which would lead her to fame and fortune. Well, fame. Abi gave a faint smile at the memory.

‘That thing was a farewell present from her mother.’ His voice grew hard and cold. ‘Some present! I didn’t even know about it. She gave it to Lally because we were moving so far away; in case we never saw her again.’ His voice trailed into silence.

Abi sat still, waiting. She didn’t dare speak. He was staring into space, no longer seeing her, his eyes fixed on some moment in the distant past.

‘We didn’t, of course. She must have known she was dying.’ He heaved another sigh. ‘Lally brought it to me one day. “Look at this, Harry,” she said, so pleased with herself. “You think you know it all but I bet you can’t explain this!” She was laughing, her eyes so bright. Excited. “Touch it!” she said. “Tell me what it is.” I could see what it was. Quartz crystal. SiO
₂
. Silicon dioxide. It can be quite beautiful, but this was a hideous lump of the stuff, still in its rock matrix. I told her to put it on her rockery and grow something over it. “Oh no,” she said. “No way. Hold it. Feel the vibes!” She was wearing a long gypsy skirt. She looked like a happy child. You must have been about six then.’ So he remembered she was still there. Abi shifted uneasily. ‘She put it in my hands.’ He paused. ‘I felt it grow hot. It was vibrating. The crystal faces appeared to be moving.’ He shuddered. ‘I told her it wasn’t possible. It was a trick. She snatched it away from me. “Women’s magic,” she said. “Not for you!” She laughed at me. She called me a silly old scientist.’ He looked at Abi at last and she saw tears in his eyes. ‘Why did she die! She was fifteen years younger than me. I should have been the one to go first!’

Abi bit her lip, trying to hold back her own distress. She knew better than to go to him again. At the crematorium when she had tried to take his arm he had shaken her off, in front of everyone, as though her very touch had polluted him.

As if reading her thoughts he looked up at her. ‘Don’t you dare try and comfort me with platitudes about your Jesus!’ His tone was vicious.

‘I wasn’t going to. I know better than that.’

He wasn’t listening. He moved towards the table and stared down at the lump of crystal. ‘She kept it. She hid it from me, but not from you. She told you. That’s how you were infected with this Jesus business. It not only stole my beloved wife. It stole my little daughter as well.’ His voice rose to a howl of anguish.

‘Dad –’

‘Don’t bother to deny it. Don’t even try. It’s all too late. I want you to get out. Pack your bags and go. Do you hear? Leave me alone. There is nothing you can do here. Nothing!’ Tears were streaming down his face.

‘Dad, please.’

‘Get out!’ The howl turned into a scream of fury. Abi flinched away from him. ‘Get out!’ He pointed to the door. ‘Now! As for this thing.’ He grabbed the crystal in both hands. ‘It can go and shatter on the rockery where it belongs!’ Taking three swift paces towards the window he hurled it out into the sunshine. It fell three storeys and disappeared.

Through the heavy cloud the sun threw splinters of light onto the waters of the mere. It was here he came to pray. He loved it here, outside, on the hill, on the sedge-lined banks, sometimes drifting in a boat, watching the flocks of ducks, the birds, listening to their calls, alien at first but now familiar, listening to the splash of otter and beaver, the cry of the fox and the wolf, the autumnal bellow of a great red stag high in the hills in the distance, a sound which echoed out across the wetlands and spoke of the power of God.

5

Abi pulled up at the side of the road and peered across between the lichen-covered stone pillars of the gateway up the short driveway. Woodley Manor was situated on wooded, rocky outcrop rising out of the Somerset levels, halfway between Wells and Glastonbury, barely seven miles or so from the Mendip village of Priddy where her mother and the bishop had grown up as childhood neighbours. The house, long and low with a pillared Georgian front door, and covered in deep richly crimson swathes of Virginia Creeper was built of warm honey-coloured stone under a roof of moss-grown slates and lay dreaming in the mellow sunshine. It was the most beautiful place she had seen for a long time. Pulling across the road and in between the gateposts, she drew up again and opening the door she climbed out, stiff after her long journey, to lean for a moment on the car roof. The air smelled glorious, of warm stone and grass and flowers.

‘Abi?’ The deep voice behind her startled her; she had thought she was quite alone. She turned. A tall middle-aged man in an open-necked shirt and shabby cords was standing a few feet from her. ‘Hi. I’m Mat Cavendish.’

She gave a rueful smile. ‘You caught me, I’m afraid. This place is so beautiful I couldn’t believe it could be real. I just wanted to get out of the car and stare.’

He laughed. ‘I feel that way every time I drive in. Can I hop in and hitch a ride up to the front door?’

His wife, Cal, was standing on the steps waiting for them as Abi drew up. ‘I saw you coming. The kettle is on. You must be knackered after your long drive, my dear. Come and have some tea, then Mat can help you with your bags. These are Pyramis and Thisby.’ She indicated the two portly black Labradors which sat on either side of her, tails wagging. ‘Known to their numerous fans as Pym and Thiz. And before you ask,’ she shrugged ruefully, ‘those names are all that now remains of my misspent student past when there was talk of a thesis about plays within plays and Shakespeare. All now forgotten, thankfully.’ She laughed. ‘This way. Mind your head, the lintels are low.’

Abi followed her hosts down a long, paved hallway to the back of the house and into a cavernous kitchen. She stared half-appalled, half-enchanted at the huge inglenook fireplace where a fire burned steadily under an enormous black kettle which was suspended by an iron bar which was swung out from the back wall of the chimney. ‘You don’t cook on that?’

Cal laughed. ‘I have been known to cook soup there occasionally, but I’m afraid I have an ordinary cooker for the day to day stuff. Over there, lurking in the shadows, overwhelmed with an inferiority complex because it’s electric! Do sit down, my dear. Take the weight off your feet.’ She paused and took a deep breath. ‘We were so sorry to hear about your mother, Abi. What a terrible shock for you.’ She turned away tactfully. When she turned back a few moments later she was carrying a plate with a chocolate cake on it. Both dogs immediately sat down respectfully one on either side of Abi, their eyes huge and imploring.

That first evening Abi found herself confronted by a confusing whirl of facts and names and faces. The house, she learned, had been inherited by the three brothers of whom Mat was the middle. Ben, the eldest, her designated mentor, was rector of a parish some three miles away. The youngest brother wasn’t mentioned beyond the fact that ‘he was away at the moment’. Mat and Cal had ‘drawn the short straw’, to actually live in the place and try to stop it falling down. Apart from anything else they were the only ones with children so far. ‘Three. All grown up. All out of the nest. Thank God! All possible heirs to the pile.’ It didn’t seem to have occurred to them that they might sell the place and Abi, hearing the affection for it in their voices, was beginning to understand why. Cal cut a slice of cake for Abi and another for herself. (‘My parents christened me Calliope. Can you imagine! I hope you would refuse if anyone asked you to abuse a child by giving God’s blessing to a name like that!’) Mat had disappeared to do something urgently. The dogs were still gazing at Abi and the cake, dribbling disgustingly. Abi suddenly found herself smiling for the first time in weeks. She was going to enjoy living here.

‘The bishop said I’d be able to help,’ she said when she could at last get a word in edgeways. ‘I want to earn my keep.’

Cal smiled. ‘You will. Just keeping ourselves going is a full time job. I want to you rest and do absolutely nothing for a while. Take time. But when you’re ready I’m going to suggest you muck in with Mat and me and do anything and everything that we do! Honest hard work.’ She raised an eyebrow and gave the deep throaty chuckle which appeared to be her signature. ‘Then if you show an incredible talent for something like painting walls or sanding medieval woodwork we’ll jump on you. Or gardening.’ She looked up cautiously.

Abi smiled. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a gardener. I did help my mother when I was a child.’ She took a deep breath and steadied her voice with an effort. She could and must talk about her. ‘I loved doing it, but I haven’t had much time or space for gardening in the last few years, to be honest. I can weed with the best, though, and cut down brambles.’

‘But not till I’ve had the blackberries.’ Cal poured them both more tea. ‘There is a fabulous garden here. Somewhere. We hoped we might one day be able to restore it. Put it to work. Maybe get people to pay to come and see it. Mat took early retirement, which was a huge mistake as it turns out. He doesn’t have nearly enough pension to support a house like this.’