The Puzzle Ring (43 page)

Roz suddenly drew back. ‘But . . . Bob! This is unbelievable. You're alive! I thought you were dead, we all thought you were dead. Where have you been?'

Robert took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. ‘I know you may find this hard to believe, Roz, but . . .' His words ran dry.

‘He's been trapped in the Otherworld, Mum,' Hannah cried, dancing about in excitement. ‘I went there and found him and brought him back!'

‘Don't be ridiculous!'

‘It's true. All the stories are true. Fairknowe Hill
is
a gateway to another world, and to other times too. We've been back in time, Mum, back to the time of Mary, Queen
of Scots! I met her! She was beautiful. We sang for her. And I swam through a whirlpool, and rode a kelpie, and—'

‘She's ill,' Roz said, feeling her forehead. ‘Delusional.'

‘It's all true, Roz,' Robert said.

‘Don't you dare go filling her head with all your nonsense!' Roz flared. ‘Where were you all the years I had to raise her alone? Where were you when I—'

He seized her hands. ‘If I could I would've been with you both, you must believe me!'

She snatched her hands away. ‘Believe you? When you tell me such rubbish? Where were you really, Bob?'

‘Oh, Mum,' Hannah said. ‘And you a scientist! Can't you trust the evidence of your eyes? Look at what we're wearing! Are these what people normally wear in the twenty-first century?'

‘You've been to a fancy-dress party?' Roz said weakly.

For the first time, she really stopped and looked at her daughter, and her eyes grew wide with amazement. Hannah was not the same girl she had been yesterday. She was taller, and her body was thin and wiry and strong, as if she had spent days walking and running and riding. Her mass of curly red hair was longer and wilder than ever, and her blue-grey eyes seemed much larger in her thin face. Most surprisingly, her face had lost its sulky defensiveness and was bright with humour and self-assurance.

Hannah laughed. ‘Come and listen to the others! They'll tell you.' She flung open the doors and called her friends in. They had all been waiting in the kitchen with Linnet, drinking hot tea and eating drop scones. They came in, wiping the jam and cream off their chins. Linnet came in too, pushing the laden tea trolley, hunch-backed, cloudy-eyed,
and more than four hundred and sixty years old. She smiled fondly at Roz, saying, ‘Och, now, it's all been too much for you, my lady. Sit you down and I'll pour you a nice hot cup of tea.'

The others clustered around Roz, looking as wild and filthy as Hannah. Words flew around the room. Phantom hounds. Fairy princesses. Men turned into toads.

Roz sat and accepted a cup of tea, looking dazed. ‘Collective madness?' she murmured. ‘Doesn't bad bread send people mad? Maybe you've all eaten something . . .'

‘You only get ergot poisoning from bread made from infected rye,' Max said cheerfully. ‘I read an article about it on the net.'

‘We haven't been eating rye,' Hannah said impatiently.

‘We haven't eaten much at all for an awfully long time,' Donovan said, grabbing another drop scone dripping with honey.

‘You all ate dinner here last night,' Roz said firmly. ‘Haddock and potato soup and roast chicken with oatmeal stuffing.'

‘No rye,' Max said. ‘Though you can get poisoned from eating green potatoes . . .'

‘We're not poisoned!' Hannah cried. ‘We're all quite normal and sane.'

‘Though very, very hungry,' Donovan said, through a mouthful.

‘You look so thin, my poor lambs,' Linnet said. ‘I'll have to cook you all a feast to celebrate your safe return.'

‘They were all here last night!' Roz cried.

They ignored her, bombarding Linnet with requests for their favourite food. Roz sighed, and drank some tea.

‘Please believe me,' Robert said, taking away her cup so he could hold her hand. ‘I know it's hard for you. It defies all logic. But some things are illogical! Like love, or faith, or trust, or . . .'

‘All right, all right,' Roz said wearily. ‘It doesn't help the fact that you've been gone from our lives for thirteen years!'

‘I'd give anything to have those thirteen years back again,' Robert said, and kissed Roz's hand. She blushed and snatched her hand away, smoothing her sleep-ruffled hair as she glanced anxiously at herself in the mirror.

‘You're as beautiful today as the day I met you,' Robert said.

Her cheeks reddened. ‘I'm thirteen years older,' she said caustically. ‘I have grey hair and wrinkles, while you! You don't look a day older!'

‘I'm sorry,' he said uncomfortably. ‘I never meant for this to happen. I promise you, I love you as much as I ever did. More, because I thought I had lost you forever.' He seized her hand again, and this time she let it lie in his, though her look of worry and puzzlement did not ease.

‘He couldn't help it, he was cursed, you know,' Hannah said to her mother. She was feeling rather giddy with relief and excitement and exhaustion. ‘He tried his best to break the curse. He found one part of the broken ring, and I got the other three!' Her voice rose high in jubilation. ‘Look!' She lifted her dress to show the bedraggled hem of her linen smock. Taking a knife from the trolley, she ripped apart the seam and three small loops of gold fell out into her hand.

‘You found them!' Robert shouted. ‘Oh, well done, Hannah!'

‘It wasn't easy,' she said. ‘I can't believe I haven't had a chance to tell you yet. Though we have been rather busy.'

He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close for a warm hug. ‘Oh, you clever girl, you brilliant girl! I can't believe you found them.'

‘All we need to know now is where you hid the loop you found, Dad. I've searched everywhere. But there are so many roses in this place! Ceiling roses, roses on cushions and carpets, hundreds of roses in the garden. I just couldn't figure it out.'

Her father laughed. ‘But I thought it was clear enough. I left it safe with the rose of the world, my
rosa mundi
. . .' He bowed towards Roz, who looked puzzled. ‘That's one of the meanings of Rosamund,' Robert explained. ‘From the Latin, meaning “Rose of the world”.'

‘Oh, yeah, I knew that,' Max said. ‘I take Latin at school. You've got to know it if you want to be a doctor.'

‘Why didn't you tell me?' Hannah demanded. ‘I practically dug up all of Belle's rose garden!'

‘I didn't know you wanted to know,' Max said. ‘You just asked me if I knew anything about double roses. Though you should know I hate gardening.'

‘Rosamund Rose, my darling double rose,' Robert said and smiled at Roz, who sighed and muttered, ‘Ridiculous name!'

‘So you gave the ring to Mum!' Hannah said, torn between exasperation and excitement.

‘It was her wedding ring,' Robert said. ‘I do hope you didn't throw it out, darling?'

Roz put her hand up to her chest in a familiar gesture, groping for the ring she wore on a chain about her neck. ‘No, I didn't throw it out,' she answered quietly.

‘I can't believe it! It was under my nose all the time! Can I have it, Mum? Please?'

Her mother unhooked the chain and let her wedding ring slide off it. Hannah caught it up with a crow of delight. Then she placed the four loops together on the table. Instinctively she laid them at the points of the compass, north, south, east, west. Hannah's voice shook as she clasped the hag-stone next to her heart, and said, improvising, ‘Hag-stone, help me break the bane, make the golden rose whole again.'

From the hag-stone whirled a rush of wind, which caught up the four slender loops of gold and dragged them up and around in a spinning vortex. Then the tiny whirlwind retreated back into the hag-stone, leaving a single ring rocking gently on the table. The loops were now intricately woven together, forming delicate leaves and thorns about a simple five-petalled golden flower like a sweetbrier rose.

Robert picked the ring up and turned it in his fingers. ‘More than four hundred and forty years it took us to find and mend this ring. Four hundred and forty years!'

Hannah was too full of emotion to speak.

‘So much sorrow, so much suffering,' Lady Wintersloe whispered.

Robert turned to Roz, who was staring at the restored ring with a stunned expression. ‘Rosamund Rose, I promised you that one day you would have the whole ring to wear on your finger. I had no idea it would take thirteen years, or that it would mean I would miss so much of our lives together. I swear I'll try to make it up to you. Will you let me give this ring to you again, as a token of my true love and my promise to never, ever leave you again?'

Roz hesitated, biting her lip. She looked up at her husband, then at Hannah's pleading face, then at the circle of expectant
watchers. Then she laughed, shrugged and jammed the ring on her left ring finger. ‘You have a lot of making up to do,' she warned, then at last her face broke into a broad smile and she leapt up and cast herself into her husband's arms. He folded them about her, and buried his face in her soft brown hair.

Hannah expelled her breath in a big sigh. Lady Wintersloe dabbed at her eyes, while Scarlett pressed her hands over her heart, turned her eyes up to heaven, and said, ‘So romantic!'

‘I think we deserve that celebratory feast now!' Linnet said, smiling happily. ‘I'd better start cooking! Children, why don't you all go and ring your parents and tell them where you are? Then you really all need a long, hot bath, I think. You've brought more than a whiff of the sixteenth century back with you!'

‘Bringing back memories, hey?' Donovan grinned.

‘And not all of them pleasant,' Linnet retorted.

It was a joyful meal. Linnet cooked sizzling-hot bacon, eggs, and sausages, croissants with strawberry jam, warm cinnamon rolls and frothy hot chocolate with marshmallows. Deep happiness radiated from all the members of the Rose family, and everyone else was so relieved to be safely home that jokes and laughter and teasing banter flew from all sides of the long table.

Only Hannah remained quiet and thoughtful.

Donovan leant close and spoke in a low voice. ‘Are you worrying about . . . you know. The black witch.'

Hannah nodded. ‘She'll find a way through that hedge sooner or later. It was dawn, and so her powers were weak. But some midnight, she'll come back.'

‘But not for a while, surely? It's seven weeks until the next thin time,' Donovan reassured her.

‘Linnet said she can come any time, if her will is strong enough. At sunset or sunrise, or midnight or noon, or when the moon is full or new, or when her name is called . . .' Hannah stopped, the thoughtful expression on her face deepening.

‘So she might be coming through any time now?' Donovan looked alarmed.

Hannah nodded. ‘I think I need to go and talk to Miss Underhill.'

‘Miss Underhill? Why?'

‘I think she may know a way that we can trap her.'

‘Really? Okay. Should we go now?'

Hannah smiled. ‘I'd like to, though I'm really, really tired. I feel that if I go to bed, I might never get up again. So I thought I'd go now, and then I'll be able to sleep easy.'

‘Yeah. Good idea.'

Hannah hesitated. ‘Donovan . . .'

‘Yeah?'

‘You know you really are Eglantyne's son? That Allan is not really your father?'

Donovan bent his head so his long black hair fell over his face. ‘Yeah. I know.'

‘It means we're cousins, in a weird sort of way. I mean, your real father is Lord Montgomery. He died soon after the battle where Queen Mary was defeated, when the old castle was burnt down. His younger brother inherited the castle and I'm descended from him. That means your uncle was my great-great-great-great-grandfather—with probably about twenty ‘greats'. That makes us kin.'

Hannah loved the word ‘kin'.

Donovan shook back his hair and smiled at her. His blue-grey eyes were filled with light. ‘Kin,' he repeated softly.

‘It means we're both Roses,' Hannah said.

‘So
I'm
the Black Rose in the old story, the one who had to be saved by a Red Rose before the curse could be broken,' Donovan said. For a moment he looked away, his thin cheeks reddening, then he flashed her a smile. ‘You did save me, and for that I thank you.' His words were oddly stilted and formal, as they so often were.

‘So don't you think we could just call ourselves cousins? I've always wanted a cousin,' she said.

‘Me too.' Donovan flashed a smile at her, but bent his head again so the hair fell over his face, obscuring his expression again.

Hannah knew him well enough now to know what he was thinking, though. She touched his arm gently. ‘It was pretty amazing what he did, you know. I mean, my dad turns up out of nowhere, with some strange girl, and thrusts her upon him, saying “Look after her” and then he goes and disappears, and the girl has a baby and then dies. Your dad . . . Allan, I mean . . . could've given you away. I mean, for adoption or something. But he didn't. He looked after you all this time, not even knowing who you really were. I think he thinks you're really my dad's baby. I mean, you do look a bit like him. Apart from not having red hair.'