Ashton Park (4 page)

When soul and body languish, oh, leave me not alone,

But take away mine anguish by virtue of Thine own!

Be Thou my consolation, my shield when I must die,

Remind me of Thy passion when my last hour draws nigh.

Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, upon Thy cross shall dwell,

My heart by faith enfolds Thee. Who dieth thus dies well.

Jeremiah stood up in his clerical robes once she had finished and clasped her hand in both of his. The wooden limb and hand that replaced the right arm blown off in France eighteen months before pressed firmly against her skin.

“God bless you, Sister,” he said quietly, almost whispering, candlelight moving about on the lenses of his round glasses.

“It’s an honor to sing on this night,” she responded.

Jeremiah took his place behind the small hand-carved pulpit and delivered what turned out to be a brief and to-the-point homily—and yet, despite its brevity, here and there in the room, there could be seen the wiping away of a tear.

The service concluded with a benediction and the family left first, followed by the household staff, several of whom returned to the various small duties that remained before they could retire.

Long after the manor had gone to bed, her family and Jeremiah in upstairs rooms, the servants in the rooms below the main floor and just along the hallway from the kitchen, Victoria wrapped a deep green cloak about herself and went silently from the house to the stables, a night mist draping her shoulders and arms and head. A lantern was lit and hanging from a nail near a stall as she came inside. Several of the horses lifted their heads to stare, but picking up on her familiar scent, did nothing. Two arms suddenly enfolded her from behind.

“It’s about time,” said a man’s voice.

He began to kiss the back of her neck. She closed her eyes a moment to take in the feeling before turning around and looking him in the face.

“You weren’t at the chapel.” She used an accusing tone but smiled as Ben Whitecross kissed her throat.

“Ah, you know me. I’m not one for the High-Church mumbo-jumbo.”

“Jeremiah gave a nice message. Plain and simple.”

“Plain and simple, was it?”

“And I sang.”

“I know. That I would like to have heard. But you can sing a hymn for me now.”

“I will not.”

Ben pulled her against him and pressed his lips to her damp hair. “You’re perfect. Do you know that?”

“I certainly don’t know it.” She ran a hand through his dark curls. “I would like to have had you there.”

“A good Methodist like me in a Church of England chapel?”

“I would have liked you there, Ben.”

“Well. Maybe another time.” He took her face in his hands and she saw him take pleasure in her green eyes. “How long do we have?”

“An hour. No more. Sometimes Harrison gets restless in those rooms of his in the Castle and walks about and checks on the barn and stables.” Suddenly she laughed and stood on her toes in her boots and kissed him as hard as she could on the lips. “I think of you all the time, Ben Whitecross, with your black hair and blue eyes. You were so cute today bundled up in your coat and hat and scarf. I could be persuaded, oh, easily persuaded tonight, that I was falling in love with the curly-haired stable boy.”

“Could you now? And what would your father say to that, my sweet?”

“I’d prefer not to think of that. Why bring sadness to a night such as this?”

“Why indeed?”

The Easter weekend went by swiftly. Sir William spent a good deal of it walking with Harrison, the groundskeeper, who wore his perpetual adornment of tan corduroy jacket and brown fedora, wooden staff firmly in hand, while Sir William had on a tweed jacket and dark pants and flat cap. They wandered over the estate, examining the various stretches of forest and the half-dozen fish ponds where swan, geese, and ducks rested, Sir William wading in hip-high boots in Danforth Brook, which ran through the property into the sea, then taking a long look at the sheep and lambs Harrison and his assistant, Skitt, shepherded. The dogs, Gladstone and Wellington, were constantly at his heels but knew better than to chase the sheep.

Easter Sunday the sun came out of the clouds for a few hours. The windows in the chapel, although they faced southwest and did not catch the morning light, had their black crepe removed and glowed with blue sky that made the stained glass images bright and recognizable—Jesus feeding the four thousand, the healing of the lepers, the Sermon on the Mount. Bouquets of fresh flowers were laid on every sill.

Mrs. Longstaff prepared a pheasant for lunch and the spirit of mourning and somberness Sir William had insisted upon was banished as he called upon Ashton Park to honor Christ’s resurrection.

“He is risen!” he called to the servants before his family sat down to lunch.

“He is risen indeed, sir,” they responded as a body.

As Sir William tucked into the pheasant he glanced up at Tavy. “I trust Mrs. Longstaff followed my instructions.”

Tavy poured water from a silver pitcher into Sir William’s glass. “What instructions were those, sir?”

“A pheasant for the staff as well.”

“She’s cooked it to perfection.”

“And you’ll make sure everyone sits down to feast on it just as soon as we are done here?”

“We shall, sir.”

“A Happy Easter to you, Tavy.”

“And to you, Sir William.”

The next day, Easter Monday, Sir William was up early to run his shepherds and meet Harrison at the Castle hidden among the oak trees. A tour was expected to arrive just after nine.

“Good morning, Harrison.”

Harrison inclined his head. “Sir.”

“Did that Sunday meal put some flesh on your bones?”

Harrison was a slender man with a quiet smile and eyes that always seemed to catch the light. “I look much the same as I did before the pheasant, sir.”

“Do you?” Sir William snorted. “I shall have to ask Mrs. Longstaff to roast an ox for your birthday.”

“Well, I love oxtail soup.”

“Never mind the soup and the tail. I want you to eat the ox itself.”

A horn sounded in the distance.

“There’s an old custom,” said Sir William, bringing his watch out of his coat pocket. “The coach driver announcing their arrival with a blast on the trumpet. Spot on nine. How many are we expecting?”

“Three coaches and two motorcars.”

“So many? The note I received at my rooms in London said only two coaches.”

Harrison shrugged. “There’s a lively interest in our English heritage these days. Perhaps it’s the war brings people out.”

“Hmm.” Sir William clapped a hand on Harrison’s shoulder. “Now you don’t mind my leading the tour of the Castle? You do it so many times during the year when I’m down at Westminster. I’m sure you know the ins and outs of it far better than I do. You live in the Castle, not the manor, for heaven’s sakes. But I take pleasure in doing it when I can.”

Harrison shook his head as the first of the coaches rumbled along the avenue through the oak trees pulled by its four horse team. “It’s your ancestors’ home, sir. Please do us the honor.”

The coaches pulled up followed by two shining black motorcars. Sir William greeted the people as they alighted while Harrison stood back. As Sir William spoke, introducing himself, the crowd gazed over his head at the Castle. To the left there were only walls, the roofs long gone and not yet restored, but to the right the keep soared three hundred feet, stone and mortar intact, no sinking into the mound of earth on which it was set, no leaning to the side, no crumbling at the turret. The buildings—baileys—attached to it were also well preserved, the flat roofs of stone and timber having been repaired and fortified, the walls still sturdy and erect. A moat that had once been there had mostly been filled in with rock and dirt and grass over the centuries.

Sir William rubbed his hands together and smiled at a cluster of schoolboys standing in front. “Well, let me begin then. The date for the completion of the tower you see, the Castle Keep, is 1086, so far as we know. There are some descriptions in letters and journal entries of the time. The idea of building a keep came from Anjou and Normandy with the Norman Conquest of 1066. And it was as well the Danforths had it up—they called themselves the Danfordes then and came from the south of England. Yes, it was just as well, because there are county records that indicate a Viking raid took place in the summer of 1087, only a year later. Come closer.”

The group walked up to the Castle behind him. He scooped up a fallen oak branch and tapped at streaks of black at the base of the Keep. “See that? The Norse raiders tried to bring the Keep down by building a fire to break up the mortar but it didn’t work. The tower was too well constructed. They might have tried to keep the fire going for days but they didn’t have the time. The oak forest here hid Lancashire men who began to pick off the invaders with their bows and arrows. So the Vikings beat a hasty retreat back through the oaks and ash trees to the sea cliff, where they climbed down a path to their ship.”

Sir William straightened and pointed at the oak trees with his branch. “Now, most of this is new growth, of course; none of these trees saw the Norse raiders except—and it is a great exception—three we have here behind the Castle that experts have declared to be at least one thousand years old. Follow me.” He began to stride around the left side of the castle and past the roofless buildings. “We’ve had to prop up the limbs of two of them to keep them from breaking off. But they certainly saw the Norse attack of 1087. And no doubt brave Lancashire men hid behind those ancient oaks and fired their arrows. Indeed, I will show you where a Norse spearhead is embedded in a trunk of one of the old girls—the Vikings sought to strike back at the bowmen. The tree has grown around the spearhead but you can still see it plainly. Rather large. We’ve never had it removed for fear of damaging the tree.”

The crowd followed Sir William to the back of the Castle, the schoolboys running up to get closer to him and closer to the Viking spearhead. Harrison smiled his smile and brought up the rear, while the coachmen and chauffeurs remained with the horses and the motorcars.

Victoria was about to slip out to the stables that evening, when a courier drove up by car from the nearby town with a cable from London. Instead of passing it on to Tavy to deliver, the courier’s indication that the message was of some priority made Victoria decide to take it to her father herself. She found him sitting in his private study, a room full of books and chess pieces and telescopes and microscopes and globes, spectacles on his nose, reading documents and discussing shipyard matters with Albert, Catherine’s husband.

“Ah, my girl.” Her father smiled. “What is it?”

Albert gave her a smile but seemed perturbed at the interruption. “I was finally able to get your father to look into our business concerns in Belfast.”

Sir William took off his glasses. “Plenty of time for that.”

“A cable has come from London for you, Father,” Victoria said. “The courier expressed concern that you receive it as soon as possible. I happened to be at the door so I decided to bring it to you myself rather than ring Tavy.”

Her father’s face dropped its smile. “He expressed concern, did he?” Taking the slip of paper from her hand he returned his glasses to his nose, opened the telegram, and read it. His face did not appear to change expression, but Victoria knew him well enough to understand the barely noticeable tightening of his lips.