In the Blood (2 page)

Something about the assignment didn’t add up.
 
Now his preoccupation with it had just damn near killed him.
 
His mind was a torment of unsolved riddles.
 
Eleanor Fairborne
...
the children
...
why can’t I trace them?
 
What happened to them?

Chapter Two

T
ayte’s client was a busy man and breakfast meetings were to be expected if not always welcomed - though apart from the company, Tayte could think of few better places to enjoy a fine Tuesday morning than on the terrace of Walter Sloane’s luxury penthouse condominium.
 
Tayte was used to travelling to see his clients, but today he was weary from the four hundred and fifty mile drive from his home in Washington DC and the near death experience he’d had a few hours back.
 
Long night drives left him drained, but it was better than the alternative.

The condo unit was in South Boston, a few miles from his client’s business epicentre in downtown Boston’s financial district.
 
It was one of four corner plots that enjoyed total privacy, boasting views across the Old Harbour towards the Harbour Islands in the east, and north to the photogenic Boston skyline.
 
Tayte was sitting at a smoked glass and aluminium table close to the balcony, overlooking Carson Beach.
 
He dunked another croissant in his black coffee and continued...

“Somewhere close to a hundred thousand loyalists left America at the end of the War of Independence, loyal to King George III of England,” he said.
 
“Most went to England, others to Ireland, Scotland and Canada, particularly Nova Scotia.”

He unfolded some more of the genealogy chart that was part laid out on the table.
 
He still used charts for show.
 
Clients liked them; liked to see the family-tree grow as he revealed more and more of their past.
 
“Some of the family didn’t make it through the war,” he continued.
 
“Both parents and grandparents were already gone before it started - life expectancy back then for Massachusetts was only about sixty years.”

He traced a finger across the chart, moving through several generations until he arrived at the first American-born ancestor of his client’s wife.
 
“William Fairborne,” he said, “James Fairborne’s brother.
 
He moved away long before the war broke out.
 
Finally settled in what’s now West Virginia, and there’s nothing so far to suggest the brothers ever kept in touch.”
 
He closed the chart again and shook his head, surprised at his own findings.
 
“Seems unusual,” he added.
 
“People don’t often run away from money.”

Across the table sat Walter Sloane, a man who made Jefferson Tayte look fit.
 
He appeared to be at work already, nose buried in the
Boston Business Journal
, a stack of national papers beside his elbow.
 
He looked up.
 
“Maybe they fell out.”
 
His voice was gritty with an undertone of sub-bass that distressed the air as he spoke.
 
“If that’s who my wife got her temper from, they probably kicked him out!”

“Whatever the reason,” Tayte said.
 
“With only daughters following and James Fairborne moving the rest of the family back to England, that was the last of this particular Fairborne line in America.
 
James Fairborne returned to a comfortable estate and a baronetcy for his loyalty.”

Sloane turned another page and slurped from a thin bone-china cup, his fingers clumsy on the delicate handle.
 
He clanked the cup back onto the saucer.
 
“So where to from here?”

Tayte took a large bite from his croissant, dripping lukewarm coffee down his suit.
 
If he noticed he gave no indication.
 
His free hand riffled through a black notebook that was beside the chart.
 
“James Fairborne and his family left in ... August 1783,” he said.
 
“I’ve traced James back to that time - to the south-west of England.”
 
His niggling questions about Eleanor Fairborne and the rest of the family rushed back at him, interrupting his flow and causing his client to stare at him expectantly.

Tayte quickly continued.
 
“A county called Cornwall,” he added.
 
“Seems they arrived there...”
 
His words lacked conviction.
 
He knew he was speculating that the rest of the family had made it.
 
Without records to back things up, he couldn’t know anything for sure.
 
“But either I’ve got the wrong Fairborne, or...”
 
His words trailed off again as he questioned the possibility.
 
But he knew he had the right man.
 
What he couldn’t understand was why James Fairborne’s records continued beyond 1783 when the rest of his family’s did not.

Tayte stood up and finished his croissant.
 
He went to the edge of the terrace and looked out over the balcony, pointing down over the beach to the Old Harbour.
 
“The
Betsy Ross
sailed from somewhere down there.”
 
He spoke slowly, as though confirming things to himself.
 
He knew the brig had sailed.
 
He’d seen the departure entry in the Ship Index.
 
“They set up in England...”
 
He stopped again, still puzzled.
 
“Things get a little hazy from there.”

Tayte gazed out at the expensive views of tall skyscrapers and high-rises on one side, then to the contrasting sea on the other.
 
His mind raced with possibilities.
 
Think JT!
 
It was a clear day, just a little blurred towards the horizon.
 
He pinched the inner corners of his eyes, tired and gritty, in case it was just his vision that was blurry, but the horizon remained as diffused as his thoughts.

 
Walter Sloane closed his paper and slapped it down with the rest, focusing Tayte’s attention.
 
“Well get over there and talk to these people.
 
Confirm things.
 
Half a job’s no good to me.”

Tayte was afraid that was coming, however much he’d expected it.
 
His mouth cracked nervously at the edges as he snorted the beginnings of an uneasy laugh.
 
“Well there’s a lot more I can do from here...”
 
He closed his eyes, silently reprimanding himself, wishing he could take the words back.
 
His chin dropped to his chest.
 
So unprofessional.
 
If his university peers could see him now - Jefferson Theodore Tayte, on the brink of killing yet another perfectly good assignment because he was afraid to fly.

The assignment was nearly finished.
 
He had a briefcase full of records and transcripts: births, marriages and deaths, covering everyone directly descended from William Fairborne to the present day.
 
From that first American-born ancestor he’d gone back to William’s father and
his
father who originally settled in America from England back in 1712.

Most of his clients had no interest in brother’s or sister’s families to any great extent.
 
They just wanted to trace their direct ancestry - their roots.
 
But he had to get clever; had to open his big mouth and convince Walter Sloane that it would be great to trace the Fairborne name back to England again through William’s brother, James.

Well he’d done that.
 
Now a job he was about to wrap up had become a total mess.
 
Question marks for James’s wife, Eleanor and their children; for his sister, Clara and her husband Jacob.
 
And one big question mark over whom the current Fairborne line in England descended from.
 
Complications had certainly arisen.
 
Questions he knew he couldn’t answer in his usual stay-at-home way had presented themselves.
 
He knew he had to go.
 
How else could he finish the job in time?
 
He sat down, suddenly uncomfortable in his coffee-spattered suit, which was more creased than usual from the long drive.

Sloane leaned in across the table, stone-faced.
 
“I hired you for this because someone told me you were the best.”
 
His words were calm but firm and Tayte gave no argument.
 
“I could have gotten Schofield for half the price!”

The man leaned closer still.
 
His eyes widened until his brows looked like they were about to slide off the back of his smooth, well-oiled head.
 
“I’m not paying you to sit around on your fanny tapping keys and making phone calls all day.”
 
His knuckles pressed into the glass, spreading to twice their usual size.
 
“Get your ass to England, Tayte.
 
Find out what you need to know and get back here and finish the damn thing!”

Tayte blamed his tiredness, itself a by-product of his fear:
Pteromerhanophobia.
 
He thought they could have come up with something easier to pronounce, but figured the idea was that by the time you said it properly, the flight would be over.

Sloane got up, grating chair legs carelessly against the buff limestone flooring.
 
“You’ve got one week!”
 
He raised a single stubby digit so there was no misunderstanding.
 
Then he turned in the direction of the French doors that led back into the condo, pausing as he knocked into a telescope.
 
“Keep me updated,” he called back.
 
“Leave a message with my PA if I’m busy.”
 
He glared purposefully at Tayte.
 
“Don’t you fail me!” he warned.
 
Then he disappeared inside.

One week.
 
Genealogy had never been an easy business to make money at.
 
The popularity of Tayte’s profession had perhaps never been greater, but that popularity had pulled the competition wriggling from the woodwork.
 
Now it was eating at the pie he used to enjoy with relatively few like-minded friends - back when there was plenty to share.
 
If business had been better, he might have told the man exactly what to do with his chart.
 
One week wasn’t long in light of what he had to go on.
 
He knew it would be tight.
 
He also knew he was kidding himself if he thought he could walk away from this one.
 
He had to find these people.
 
There were bigger issues at stake.

Then there was the mention of Schofield.
 
That upstart!
 
The kid had been breathing down Tayte’s neck for a few years now and much as Tayte hated to admit it, he was starting to get to him.
 
Totally new-school, Peter Schofield had jumped straight out of Senior High and onto the Internet with nothing more than his blonde-haired, pearly-toothed looks and a truck-full of charisma, seemingly fuelled by the singular ambition of knocking Tayte off his top spot.
 
He’d told Tayte as much at a recent genealogy convention.

“You’re a forty-something who’s had his day,” Schofield had said after the usual banter had fallen into decay.
 
He was flaunting the latest copy of
Genealogy Today
magazine, the front cover of which carried an annoyingly cocky portrait of the new wonder-boy.

“Yeah, right,” Tayte replied, feigning a smile.
 
“And that’s thirty-nine.”
 
He’d kept walking, past Schofield’s stand, discouraging any further exchange.

“Oh, come on.”
 
Schofield ran ahead and thrust the magazine in Tayte’s face with both hands.
 
“This!”
 
He poked aggressively at his own image, creasing it.
 
“This is what they want now, man!”

Tayte held out a hand, still walking.
 
“There’s no substitute for experience in this game, kid,” he reminded Schofield.
 
But all he got back was that grinning magazine cover, dancing arrogantly in his face, telling him he’d better watch out.
 
He never could forget Schofield’s parting jibe.

“Least I know who my own folks are!”

It was way below the belt and it hurt.
 
After twenty plus years of searching, all Tayte knew about his parents was that his mother had an English accent and that she’d abandoned him to some South American mission when he was just a few months old.
 
She’d been good enough to leave him a photograph at least; he liked to think that she couldn’t bear the idea of him growing up not knowing what she looked like.
 
He’d kiss her image goodnight at the end of every day, and she’d watch over him from the bedside table as he slept.
 
That’s what he liked to think she had in mind, but who knows?
 
He didn’t even know his date of birth; not that birthdays ever meant much.
 
They were just a sore reminder to him that, while he seemed perfectly adept at finding connections for other families, he just wasn’t good enough to find his own.