Blood Roots: Are the roots strong enough to save the pandemic survivors? (19 page)

‘How long ago was it … that Jasper retook Haver?’

Paul scratched his chin. ‘Ten months or so — early January it was. Most of what Diana had established has been swept away of course — the school, the committee, film evenings and sports days. Because we enjoyed some semblance of freedom under her, life seems even worse under Jasper than it was under Nigel.’

‘Well, we need to do something about it.’

There was fright in Paul’s eyes. ‘Forget it. Don’t even talk about
such things. It’s not safe. Apart from anything else, there’s almost certainly a traitor in our midst. Step out of line and you’ll suffer. Jasper’s got a hold on everyone. He’s told me that if I step out of line he’ll personally deflower Mary-Claire.’

‘The bastard.’

‘She’s only nine, for heaven’s sake. And he says he’ll make me watch.’ They both lapsed into an uneasy silence. ‘Has he got a hold on you too?’ Paul asked eventually. Steven didn’t answer. ‘I thought so,’ Paul said quietly. ‘So forget about escape, and forget about overthrowing the Chatfields. The best we can hope for is to see out our days and keep our families safe, and hope that when the Chatfield boys are dead and buried along with the rest of us, Prince Nigel will herald a new beginning for our children and our grandchildren. That’s assuming of course that Virginia or one of her daughters doesn’t give Jasper another son. If that happens, heaven knows what the future holds.’

‘What about Duncan? He helped my father and me when we escaped before.’

‘Steven, he’s scared witless! He’s so tired he hardly knows where he is. He’s on guard duty on the West Tower every night from dusk till dawn. He’s supposed to sleep during the day but often gets called on to work if no one else is available.’

‘So presumably he still has the odd nap up on the tower at night?’ There was a hint of hope in Steven’s voice.

‘No way! The Chatfield boys have told him that if he falls asleep while on sentry duty he’ll never wake up. And they mean it. Every so often one of them creeps up to the tower in the early hours of the morning to make sure he stays on his toes. It’s usually Damian. I’d say he’s dying to put a bullet between Duncan’s eyes.’

‘So presumably it was Duncan who saw us when we walked into the park, and warned the Chatfields?’

‘It was,’ Paul said glumly, adding quickly, ‘but don’t blame him, Steven. Put yourself in his position. If you had got into Haver without him reporting you, he would have been shot and probably half his family too.’

‘How come the flags were flying?’

Paul’s voice was uneasy. ‘I’m sorry. We’d hoisted them after Diana took over as leader to let you know it was safe to return. I took them down as soon as I got the chance after the Chatfield boys were back in charge. But the reason for flying the flags was common knowledge, everyone knew about the signal.

‘I suspect it was Virginia or one of her daughters who told Jasper about them. Next thing I know I’m ordered to hoist them again. It was then he threatened he’d deflower Mary-Claire if I ever stepped out of line again. I’m sorry.’

‘I understand.’

‘I did fly the Union Jack upside down in the hope you’d notice something was wrong. It was all I dared do.’

‘I never knew there was such a thing as a right way up for the Union Jack.’

‘Wide white stripe to the top. I thought everyone knew that.’

Steven shrugged. ‘I only remember the Union Jack as part of the New Zealand flag.’ There was silence for a few moments. ‘So you always thought we would come back?’

‘At first, but as time passed …’

‘But obviously the Chatfields thought we might come back, or they wouldn’t have ordered you to hoist the flags again.’

‘Whatever your father wrote in that letter to Nigel certainly put the frighteners on his sons. Do you think your dad will follow you back here?’

Steven sighed. ‘I don’t think so. You know how obstinate he is.’

‘What about Allison? You said he never knew she was coming. Wouldn’t that be enough to entice him?’

Steven was silent for a long time. ‘I don’t know. He certainly loved her, but I don’t think things were right between them towards the end. I don’t see how they could have been — I mean, she deserted him when she was pregnant with his child, however you try to dress it up. Knowing her family was more important than he was wouldn’t have been easy to live with. It would probably make him more determined than ever to stay in New Zealand.’

‘Then we’re doomed. Not that it would make any difference. Now you’ve come, the Chatfields are going to be more vigilant than ever.’

There was despair in Paul’s voice. Steven was almost relieved when his uncle stood up. ‘Well, I’m off to bed. I don’t feel too good, and neither does Susan. I’ve got the runs. There’s a bug of some sort going around.’

Steven opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He guessed the typhoid had kicked in. Perhaps if the Chatfield brothers all fell sick at the same time it would offer a chance to escape.

He was surprised the disease had taken so long to break out. He knew the medieval systems were in poor repair and was sure the sewerage system contaminated the water supply. He wondered where Susan and Jennifer had emptied the piss pot used in the cell. The contents of the bucket used in the Punishment Room had definitely ended up in the main sewer for the last few days. He had emptied it himself.

‘Did Allison say what she thought was wrong with me?’ Greg asked Steven through the bars of the Punishment Room window.

‘Don’t you feel well?’

‘I’m OK, but Jasper and Damian are ill.’

‘You shouldn’t have killed her. They’ll probably die without her nursing skills. Are you sure you feel all right? You don’t look too good to me.’

Steven took some satisfaction at the look on Greg’s face.

But the satisfaction was short lived. Both Ruben and Harry fell sick later the same day. Greg returned and demanded the key to the cell. When Steven refused he drew his pistol and directed it at Lee’s head. Steven had no option but to hand it over. Greg locked the cell door from the outside and took the key with him.

Steven and the boys were locked in the cell for almost two weeks. Greg supervised other members of the community who delivered food and drink and changed the piss pot. He was extremely nervous
and always had his pistol at the ready. By the time Greg fell ill, Damian had recovered sufficiently to relieve him.

Typhoid swept through Haver during the following days. When Penny delivered food and beer, Steven whispered to her to feign illness herself and to ask Luke to do the same. When Jasper finally staggered past the cell looking dreadful, Steven pretended that both he and Lee were recovering from the illness. As Allison had predicted, the variant of the disease Lee was carrying did not prove fatal to the white-skinned inhabitants of Haver.

The fact that Lee had brought the disease into Haver was successfully concealed, but with the Punishment Room door locked for the duration of the illness, the possibility of making an escape while the Chatfield brothers were temporary incapacitated evaporated. It was not until all three brothers were fully recovered that Jasper let Steven have the key back and they could again join their relatives at mealtimes and sleep in their own beds.

Allowed access to the community once more, Steven resumed piecing together information about the situation at Haver.

From their privileged positions under Diana’s regime, Diana’s sister Susan and daughter Theresa had been demoted to domestic servants, responsible for cooking, washing, ironing and looking after the staterooms. They were assisted by Jennifer Steed and a number of children, including Mary-Claire.

Paul and his daughters Cheryl and Bridget looked after the gardens within Haver’s walls. Paul also maintained the power plant and undertook repairs about the house.

The cattle were being tended by Kimberley and Rebecca Steed. The two women worried how they would manage the farm during the next harvest. Their hopes of having Luke nominated a farm-worker were dashed when Jasper announced the teenager would become his personal manservant.

Other members of the community resented the allocation of what were perceived to be light duties to Luke. Luke himself hated being a servant boy. Steven alone was pleased Jasper had taken Luke
under his wing.

It took Steven longer to build up a picture of the inter-family dynamics. His intelligence, gathered in hurried snatches of conversation at mealtimes, was supplemented by what Penny told him. He established that there were tensions amongst the peasant classes. Everyone was fearful of stepping out of line. People spoke in hushed whispers. Each family fought to secure their own patch, guarding whatever advantage they enjoyed. Everyone knew there was still a traitor in their midst and was suspicious of the other branches of the family.

He learned a little of the dynamics between the brothers, too. Nigel and Diana had craved power: Nigel from his need to be in control, and Diana from intellectual arrogance. Jasper, however, viewed power simply as the means to secure a life of luxury and idleness. He had no interest in running his estate, leaving such trifling matters to Lady Virginia.

Virginia revelled in ordering her cousins about, but walked a tightrope between lording it over them and not usurping Damian, who resented her influence over his brother. Like others in the community, she treated Greg with disdain, particularly when Jasper was not in earshot.

Steven’s time alone with Penny was precious, a mere seven hours between finishing work at eleven and starting again at six the following morning — often he fell asleep as Penny told him about her day. Their lovemaking became infrequent, but their love for one another and for their son David remained as strong as ever.

Penny would wake him at five-forty with a cup of tea in bed. He would play with baby David for a few minutes before splashing water on his face, dressing and hurrying off to the Punishment Room with Lee, Ruben and Harry.

The toil was unremitting, seventeen hours each day, seven days a week, less a total of ninety minutes a day for meal breaks — if they were lucky. He had no life. It was slavery. When not entertaining the boys, leading their world cycling tour, playing word games,
educating them and listening to the stories, poems and limericks they composed, his mind was engaged in the search for a solution to his predicament.

The choices were escape or overthrowing the Chatfield brothers. Escape was out of the question for several months at least. He doubted they could survive the winter without access to the food stored at Haver, and so with the boys he cycled through the winter, and through Europe.

As spring blossomed, the days warmed and the gardens began to produce. Over lunch one day he turned to Paul and said, ‘On days like today you have to wonder whether you couldn’t survive easily enough away from Haver.’

Paul looked at him with alarm. ‘Maybe you could live somewhere else,’ he said, ‘but could you live with the consequences?’ Steven cocked his head to one side, not understanding his uncle’s drift. ‘Do you have any idea,’ Paul asked, ‘of the retribution Jasper and Damian would take on any member of your family left behind?’

‘We have no life here,’ Steven grumbled.

Bridget was eavesdropping on the conversation. ‘But at least it’s life of some sort,’ she said sternly. ‘It’s better than the alternative.’

‘No one else is going to attempt escape,’ Penny said when Steven climbed into bed beside her that night. ‘Bridget had a word with me this afternoon. Paul and she are terrified you are going to attempt a breakout. Paul in particular is worried — something to do with Mary-Claire.’

‘If we leave, we’ll take them with us.’

‘They won’t come, they’re terrified. So am I.’

Steven could hear the fear in her voice. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m pregnant again.’

He pulled her close. ‘That’s wonderful news. But it’s even more reason we should escape.’

‘I’m frightened … after what happened to Allison. I know it’s not much support, but I just want to be here with Cheryl, Bridget and the other women when the baby is born.’

There was an uneasy silence. ‘So tell me, when is our baby due?’ There was softness in his voice.

‘About Christmastime.’

‘You’ve had two sons already — can you arrange a girl this time? We could call her Holly, after … after her cousin in New Zealand.’

She pulled him close. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘And if things haven’t improved at Haver after the baby is born, I want to escape.’

She sighed, releasing him a little. ‘How can we possibly leave?’

‘I’ll find a way. I want to take you and Lee, David and Holly and whoever else will come away from Haver. We either have to escape or overthrow Jasper and his brothers. Whatever Bridget says, this is no life — not for you, not for me, not for our children, not for anyone.’

‘But how?’ Penny asked again, her voice full of despair.

‘I don’t know, but by the sound of things I’ve got more than a year to find the answer.’ There was a hint of bitterness in his voice, something Penny had never heard before.

She snuggled closer. ‘Maybe things will get better.’ He didn’t reply. ‘Are you really happy about the baby?’ she whispered after a while.

Still he didn’t reply. Exhausted, he had fallen asleep.

The months dragged by. All that changed for Steven and the boys were the hours of daylight. Apart from the few yards they travelled between the Punishment Room, the Great Hall and their quarters, ninety percent of the time they were awake was spent in the Punishment Room.

Only the minds of the Four Musketeers were free, though maintaining the charade was a struggle at times. During the summer and autumn they cycled across Russia, through China and down the Indian subcontinent.

In mid-December Penny gave birth to a son. They called him Christopher after his great uncle who now lay buried on Marina Hill in Gulf Harbour. Initially the baby brought Penny and Steven great joy, but early in the New Year Steven felt Penny drawing away from him. He was sure something was wrong, but try as he might he could not find out what troubled her. He guessed Paul and Bridget knew what the problem was, but despite his probing
he could get no answers from them either.

Many nights Penny did not sleep with him. She slept instead with the baby in an adjacent bedroom, claiming that Christopher would disturb him. Now even the warmth of her body was being removed from his existence. It all added to his despair.

As winter gave way to spring, the Four Musketeers cycled across Australia. Steven was relieved when they arrived at Brisbane and Lee hogged the story. It gave him more time to think about the problem forever on his mind. How to escape?

When not thinking about escape he worried about Penny’s withdrawal. Confined to the Punishment Room he could not find answers to either question. He was torn between trying to get himself relieved of his responsibility for electricity generation and looking after the boys’ welfare.

When the cycling party began their journey around New Zealand, Steven taught the boys a few words of Maori. He, like Jane, Nicole and Zach, had learned Maori in school, and was surprised how much he’d remembered. He also taught them the Maori war chant — the haka. At the end of a particularly good session on the cycles they would perform it as a celebration of their achievement.

While Lee entertained his cousins with exaggerated stories about his former life at Gulf Harbour, Steven finally decided he would have to overthrow the Chatfield brothers rather than attempt an escape. His Uncle Paul was right. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing, or suspecting, the retribution that would be wreaked on his relatives by Jasper and his brothers if he and his family escaped.

But how could he seize control? Not only the Chatfield brothers, but Virginia and her daughters had to be overpowered simultaneously. The brothers were armed, and for all he knew Virginia and her daughters might be carrying weapons concealed in their dresses. At mealtimes one brother — usually Greg — was on watch, manning the machine gun on the top of the West Tower. The exception was Sunday breakfast, when Jasper addressed his subjects and issued his instructions for the coming week. At that time Greg manned a machine gun in the Minstrel Gallery in case any of Jasper’s edicts
triggered dissent. The staterooms were alarmed at night, and Paul was convinced Damian had rewired and relocated the sensors since Paul had installed them.

Despite the difficulties, Steven commenced formulating a plan. It was not one he could execute alone — he would need help. How could he persuade other members of the community to conspire with him? How could he even risk talking to them, knowing a traitor lived in their midst?

The one person he trusted, apart from Penny, was Luke, but it was difficult to talk to the young man. Luke served at the top table at mealtimes and slept in the Dalton quarters. Steven dared not risk being caught outside his own quarters during the dusk-to-dawn curfew.

A successful takeover appeared impossible. To make matters worse his relationship with Penny was crumbling rapidly as she became ever more withdrawn.

In the second week of April, the Four Musketeers were completing the final leg of their tour of New Zealand’s North Island and were about to catch the ferry across Cook Strait.

It was ten-fifty; only another ten minutes and the clock on the West Tower would chime eleven. Lee had taken over Steven’s cycle and was hogging the narrative. The boys were doing well. The dials’ needles were high, as they always were when the story was interesting.

Steven stretched his limbs. ‘Right lads, just ten more minutes. Let’s give it a final whirl.’ Ruben groaned. ‘The more you get in tonight, the less you’ll have to get in before breakfast tomorrow.’

He yawned; it was time to top up the batteries. Taking a bottle of distilled water, he turned on the dim light in the equipment area of the Punishment Room and made his way into the maze of racks, wires and battery cases.

Seconds later, the boys on the treadmills heard him give a strangled gasp.

‘You all right, Uncle Steven?’ called Ruben.

There was a pause, then Steven replied calmly, ‘Yes, I’m all right.’ He paused again. ‘I thought I’d seen a ghost.’