Authors: Murray Pura
The house was white with a green roof and trim, nestled in among the ash trees as if it had grown up among them. Libby was delighted to see a starling hopping along the eavestrough. Michael walked ahead of her as if to open the door and then looked back.
“Coming?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I think not.”
“But you helped plan this.”
“I know.”
“Ben and Vic have already moved into theirs. And Kipp and Christelle are doing the same this evening.”
“They’re staying, Michael. We’re not.”
He looked at her. “Why—we’ll be back, Lib. I swear it.”
“Do you? Then that’ll be soon enough.”
“Hey. I thought we had agreed on this. To try and get help from physicians in America, to visit with my family—”
“Yes, yes,” Libby turned away. “I’m sorry, Michael. I was in France for so many years my family thought I’d never return. Sometimes I didn’t think I would either. But then I did. With you. And I saw all this and I remembered how much I loved it and I wanted you to love it too.”
“I do.” He stood behind her. “Do you think I want to just take you away to America and never bring you back again?”
She looked up at the sun making its way through thousands of leaves. “Will you climb a tree with me, Michael?”
“What?”
“I loved to do it as a girl.”
“You’re in a dress.”
“If it tears you’ll buy me another, won’t you?”
She kicked off her shoes and reached up for the lower limbs of an old ash tree. Gnarled and twisted and rough, the tree offered many handholds and footholds. She moved rapidly and was fifty feet off the ground before Michael had even thought about beginning the climb.
“Aren’t you coming, Yank?” she called down.
“I never saw you do anything that fast before. Except outrun everyone to my airplane the day before the war ended.”
“I was excited. And I’m excited now. Race you to the top.”
“To the top? The top’s hundreds of feet off the ground.”
“You fly airplanes higher than that.”
Michael grinned and stripped off his leather flight jacket and began to work his way up. They were both high in the crown of the tree among leaves and thick branches before he was close enough to stretch out his hand and tap her on the foot. She laughed and held open her arms.
“No one’s ever kissed me in a tree,” she teased.
“That will be kind of tricky even for an American.”
“The branch I’m on is sturdy enough. Don’t hang back. You tackled the Flying Circus over France.”
“I actually never ran into the Flying Circus.”
“So then show me your courage now if that’s the case.”
He eased his way onto the limb. She kept backing up as she faced him until she had nowhere else to go. Laughing, she kicked at him playfully until he managed to pin her legs and pull her down toward him. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her while the bough waved back and forth in a breeze.
“There,” he said.
“How brave you are.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this high in a tree before. Once you can see past the leaves it’s almost like the cockpit of a plane flying very low. Treetop level, we call it.”
She nestled against him. “Now we can pretend we’re robins or starlings.”
“We could put a house up here, you know.”
“We couldn’t—”
“I mean like a tree house or playhouse. I’d build it. My brother and I built two or three in the woods back home. Then you could leave the house whenever you wanted to get away and climb up here. All alone.”
“Oh, I like the sound of that. If you could actually do it. Vic has her house close to the cliff because she loves to gaze at the sea. Kipp has his close to the Castle because Chris loves the old tower and battlements.”
“And yours is in the heart of the forest.”
“Yes.” She put her hand on his chin and brought his eyes to hers and away from the view of trees and meadows. “Will you bring me back? Or will you make an American out of me?”
“I’ll bring you back. I’m part owner of two British airfields after all. And I love England, Libby.”
“We might return with a child. We might, Michael.”
She imagined a girl with ginger hair standing at the base of the tree and staring up at them, smiling from ear to ear, freckles spotting the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. Libby called to her and the girl began to climb and climb and climb.
June 1923
Harrison was awake at three.
Everything was still asleep. The birds, the deer, the rabbits. And the hunters appeared to have called it a night as well. The owl that often flew from its nook at the top of the keep had already returned and Harrison, peering up at it in the summer dark, was certain its eyes were closed.
“Ye are not running off, are ye?”
Harrison smiled as Todd Turpin approached. “If I was marrying you, I might.”
“Is the Castle ready?”
“Well, the women have been in and out of it for two weeks, and for some reason Lord Scarborough is practically living in the keep, so I can’t see as it wouldn’t be. I’m not allowed a peek. Neither is Holly. Neither are you for that matter.”
“What’s the harm?”
Harrison shook his head. “Gave my word. And I’m a poor liar. They’d ask me and I’d stammer. No matter, Todd. Only a few hours to go.”
“So let’s be about that hike through the woods you wanted. Your last walk as a free man.”
Harrison patted Todd Turpin’s shoulder. “Old Todd Turpin. If you only knew how she unpinned my wings.”
Todd Turpin snorted. “Mine have never been pinned. So they don’t need fixing, do they?”
“I have no idea what sort of woman would be needed to help you out of your deep, dark hole.”
“I’m just fine.”
“A matter of opinion.”
“Let’s be off. I’ve used up enough words for one day.”
They went into the oak trees and when they had passed by the oldest ones, Harrison touching them with the tip of his staff, they headed toward the ash grove and the sea. Todd Turpin began to hum.
“I know that tune,” said Harrison.
“I’ll sing the verses and ye can join me on what they call the chorus then.”
“You said you were done with talking for the day.”
“Singing’s not talking, is it?”
They disappeared in the blackness of the woods but their voices carried back to Ashton Park, where Holly Danforth slept with her window up. She opened her eyes and listened until the song became too faint. Then she smiled and closed them again. The rough voices and plaintive music worked its way into her sleep.
Here’s forty shillings on the drum
For those who’ll volunteer to come
To ’list and fight the foe today.
Over the hills and far away.
O’er the hills and o’er the main.
Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain.
King George commands and we obey.
Over the hills and far away.
Then fall in, lads, behind the drum,
With colours blazing like the sun.
Along the road to come-what-may.
Over the hills and far away.
O’er the hills and o’er the main.
Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain.
King George commands and we obey.
Over the hills and far away.
Sir William bent over the cables in the front parlor while his valet brushed at his jacket.
“Here. This is from New York City. Libby and Michael are doing extraordinarily well. They invite Harrison and Holly to join them on their honeymoon. And now we have the one from Jerusalem as well. Beautiful weather. Palm trees. Robbie asks us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Of course we will. Confound it.” He snapped his head around to glare at the valet. “Have you quite finished brushing me off, Liscombe?”
“Sorry, sir. A lot of long blond hairs, sir. Stiff. Hard to get off. It’s like they’re glued on.”
Sir William sweetened. “Ah. My dogs. Forgive my ill temper, please. I seem to be more worked up over marrying off my sister than I did seeing all seven children to the altar.”
“That’s all right, sir. I’d sooner go back to the Somme than to the altar.”
“Ha.” He tucked the telegrams in the pocket of his morning coat. “What time is it?”
“Just on eleven, sir.”
“Eleven! The ceremony starts at noon. I must get over to the Castle, Liscombe.” He smiled and patted his valet’s back. “I’m grateful for the brushing but it’s time to go over the top.”
Liscombe, a thin man with silver hair, returned the smile. “Give me leave and I’ll blow the whistle, sir.”
Tapestries had been brought out of the Rose Room and returned to a well-washed and dusted Castle keep. So had suits of armor and swords and pikes polished to a brilliance. At the moment Holly Danforth approached the altar, Lord Scarborough signaled to a half dozen footmen to peel sheets off windows high in the tower that had been open to rain and wind for centuries. Stained glass had been set in place under his direction and paid for out of his pocket as a gift to the bride and groom and the Danforth estate. Rainbows of green, blue, purple, scarlet, and gold streamed down over Holly’s head, a head displaying hair that was, for one of the few times in her life, piled high and interlaced with ribbons that were encrusted with diamonds. Harrison watched her come as if she were floating on a river of crystal.
“Your mouth is open,” she whispered as she came up to him in a cascade of light.
“There’s no help for it. You’re more beautiful than the forest and all its trees.”
“You’re given to hyperbole, Harrison.”
He smiled. “Never.”
She slipped her white-gowned arm under his. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in a morning coat. You look dashing.”
“The way they’ve decorated this place I feel as if I ought to have jumped into one of those suits of armor.”
“I should have liked that. Will you do that for me when we’re all alone here, love?”
“I will.”
Jeremiah smiled at them. “Are you two ready then?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Harrison winked. “Can’t get there fast enough.”
Lady Elizabeth and Norah stood for Holly, while Sir William and Todd Turpin stood for Harrison. Sir William glanced out over the faces of family and servants seated on benches that had been hauled out of a dry dungeon, where they’d sat like great stones from the time of Oliver Cromwell. His children with their children. Servants that had been with them for ten years, twenty years. Ben the stable boy, now his youngest daughter’s husband. Charlotte the chambermaid his oldest boy’s beautiful wife. Kipp married into a French family and the French family married into the Danforths. His sister marrying the groundskeeper—as fine a man as Sir William had met in or out of Westminster or Buckingham Palace.
“Are you ready to take your vows, Mr. Harrison?”
“I am, Reverend.”
“Miss Holly Danforth?”
“I am, Reverend.”
Sir William’s eyes went beyond the Castle erected by Danforths a thousand years before in a time of war and hazard and found the graveyard by the chapel. There lay Victoria’s first child. There lay Albert, Catherine’s Irish husband. Fathers and mothers were there. Dozens of his ancestors had been placed under the ash trees—where were they now? How many had gone home to God? He was no judge of that. But he and his wife had carried their family forward on prayer and faith and they would continue to do so no matter what hardship befell Ashton Park or what bitter grief they yet had to bear. The moment came for him to pronounce a benediction on his sister and her husband, and he spoke out clearly.
“I wish you the beauty and grace of God, my sister, in this new life He has given you,” he said, looking at her.
She smiled. “Thank you, William.”
He looked at Harrison. “And I wish you all the wisdom and strength the Lord wishes to bestow. Receive it.”
Harrison nodded. “I will, sir.”
“From the book of Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 21:
And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Amen.
”
Mrs. Seabrooke could not recall much of what had happened before the air raid that killed her husband in 1917, but she had found her way back to the one thing she loved to do—organize. Tavy no longer had to manage the household and play butler. With the wedding Mrs. Seabrooke had been reinstated as manager of the manor’s staff and put in charge of arranging the reception. When the people spilled out of the Castle keep there were tables and chairs set up under the oak trees, with the table of honor for Mr. and Mrs. Harrison set under the thousand-year oak with the Viking spearhead embedded in its trunk.