GENESIS (GODS CHAIN) (70 page)

             
Si, the girl is going to be trouble....

CHAPTER X

THE VISITORS

The days passed by
and
the temperature had decisively dropped since the earth tremor in late October.
Most
of the
roads and pavements
were
blanketed once more
with
hard frosts on top of the packed ice
,
disguising
the roads’
treacherous foundations.
November moved on with more snow falls and bleak conditions that continued into
a savage
December.

A once
-
thriving mining community last century
was
now
just the simple
village of Ma
uc
hline
, where nothing much happened
.
The people inside the taverns would laugh and speak of things they had done years ago
,
and still found those
same old stories
fascinating
year after year
A person might leave and seek
his
fortune elsewhere in the world
and
then come back twenty or thirty years later and find folk
still
talking about the same old things.
Unless you were born in the village and raised
from an infant there,
then you were always classed as an “incomer”. Such was rural life.

Coal mining had
halted
forty or fifty years ago
,
as well as
the digging for much
-
harder granite stone
,
which had
fuell
ed
the once
-
popular game of ice curling; these stones had then been cut,
carved and polished in the local curling stone factory.
This indigenous line of work too had ceased production
a few decades ago, and t
he mine had
long
since closed.
How extensive and how deep
did
these ancient granite mines
go? One
could only guess
.

Ancient red sandstone quarries went further back in time
,
and
were
located not far away
—
just outside the west
end
of the village
,
next to the muir
. The quarry was
started centuries ago by monks in order to build the village church and castle.
Such buildings represented
the beginning of village life proper. Some said
that
the village
was
as
old
as the sixth or seventh centur
y
.

Charity lived in a large private house called the “Old Manse”.
It was a
white
-
painted building with roughcast walls and
a
slated rooftop with several chimneys
atop it
and extensive
,
mature gardens
surrounding
.
The house stood solid and sturdy behind a thick
,
twelve
-
foot high green hedgerow
on
front and sides, lowering to about six foot high at the rear of the house.
The home had
wooden front double doors painted dark
-
green like the windows frames
,
set to match.
Everything was topped with thick snow.

To the rear
of the house
was
Charity’s
bedroom window
,
which had a
beautiful view
of
the bright open countryside and the smooth
,
sweeping
,
snow
-
sloped fields.
T
he huge boulders
that stood
on top of the hill stood out clearly against the deep blue sky and
the
tree
-
lined ridges.

It was comfortable and cosy inside her large house
,
with its characteristic wooden beams.
There was a large mantle-piece and
a wide
mirror above
,
and the furniture was old in character
.
The house
had wooden floor with a rich Indian rug on top
and a well-stocked bookshelf
.
On the walls hung peculiar artefacts from Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.
The Floods kept a lot of the original décor
of the house,
which they
had
inherited by their father
’
s uncle, Captain
Fludd
,
who
’d
passed away several years ago.
Captain
Fludd
had no family other tha
n
his brother, Charit
y’
s father, Robert
Fludd
.
Charity and her
mother
,
Jessica
,
would forever be
“incomers”
to
the village.
Charity’s father
was hardly ever at home
,
which made
life for Charity very lonely.

Her father
had begun
a niche medical company
that
was competitive and worth a fortune
.
H
is research team worked hard
to
develop the “$99 genome”
.
It was a breakthrough
that
drastically cut the costs of
the
clinical testing of genes
,
set currently at $100,000
.
His
p
atent would have been astronomical
...but
he did not have time to lodge the
patent before the takeover
.

Robert
Fludd
was a talented scientist
whose science
was not in question
.
T
he man had
a poor
head for business,
however, and
reli
ed strongly
on his associates and accountants for advice.
The
y
reward
ed themselves with
a massive payout, letting Dr
Fludd
down completely.
He had
,
without warning
,
lost a crucial
,
framed contract for the manufacture and supply of these specialised analytical tools
—and that
was only the beginning of his
woes
.
After that,
he became very unwell
,
suffering from a nervous breakdown after his business was
acquired
without prior notice.
These days, Charity’s
father did not speak of his past work and stayed at home.
He would go out seldom
, and
talked so little that it seemed to Charity
still that he was never really at home.

It seemed that the
Fludd
s once had everything,
and although
they were still rich,
they
had a lovely home and both parents
enjoyed
great success until recently
.
C
h
arity’s
school was second to none for providing a unique education
,
and
that was
why they had come here to live.
One thing that was missing
, however,
was a happy daughter.

Charity loved puzzles and crunching numbers of all kind
s,
al
though in contrast her mind was still that
of
little girl
who
liked to stir up a little mischief
here and there
.