Wild Wood (18 page)

He nods. “For a while. My mum was a maid in this very building. Dad walked away not long after I was born, and Mum has never talked about him. I haven’t met him, don’t even know where he lives. He worked on the estate, though, and Mum said he looked after the livestock—sheep, principally. Hundredfield has always been famous for its wool.”

Another fatherless child,
but Jesse says nothing.

Rory runs his fingers through his hair. “Divorce was a pretty big thing in those days, but Alicia’s parents stuck by Mum because her family had been in service here. She worked part-time until I was old enough to go to school, and then she took over as housekeeper. When I was about nine, she married again and we moved away to respectability and a new start.” He grimaces.

Jesse’s eyes soften. “It can’t have been easy for you.”

“Worse for her. She had to cope all on her own while we lived here.” He points out the window. “We had one of the tied cottages on the other side of the river. The house belonged to the estate and it was free. That probably kept me out of the orphanage, because Mum had no family support. She always said we were lucky. I could never work out why.”

“So, you and Alicia?”

Rory sighs. “When I was little, we played together—older sister, younger brother, that kind of thing. There were no other kids on the estate by that time—a lot of the cottages were empty and most of the workforce gone. Turns out her father thought I was bright, and when she was sent away to boarding school at nine, I went as well. I was seven.”

“Pretty young.”

He nods. “I thought I’d been sent to prison, that my mum didn’t want me anymore.” He’s staring out into the night.

Jesse says nothing.

A moment later and Rory snaps into focus. “I survived. Lots had it worse than me.”

“What happened then?”

“Maybe that’s where luck really did come in. The Donnes, Alicia’s parents, paid for my whole education even though we moved away from Hundredfield not that much later. I never understood why her old man did that, but I’m grateful. I got my own scholarship to university, though. Edinburgh. Best medical school in the world.” A crooked smile. “So here I am. I owe them a lot, Alicia and her family, and I come back whenever I can because it still feels
like home, especially in summer.” He half closes his eyes. “Honeysuckle. What you first know as a child settles into your bones.”

“But before she went to London, Alicia lived here alone?” Jesse’s absorbing the honeysuckle statement.

He nods. “Yes. But now the house is shut up for most of the year.” He sighs. “It’s difficult. Hundredfield has always been hungry, and she’s got hard choices to make. Alicia’s an only child, and her father left things in a mess when he died. Lots more to tell, but . . .”

“We should go downstairs.”

“So?” Alicia offers Rory a bowl of buttered new potatoes.

He laughs as he serves himself with a tarnished silver spoon. “Obvious, huh?”

She flashes a grin at Jesse. “Like a pane of glass, you. Tell me all.”

Rory forks up a piece of poached salmon. “Very good, by the way. Hundredfield salmon?” He’s smiling.

Alicia looks pleased. “Caught this morning.”

He nods. “You always did have the touch. Under the bank below the bridge?”

She nods pleasantly. “And you can answer the question anytime you like, Rory.”

“But it’s really not about me.” He catches Jesse’s alarmed gaze. “Relax. This is normal.” He smiles at her.

Alicia watches the byplay. “Oh, no, you don’t. It’s you on the hook, not Jesse. Stop wriggling.”

“Hook?” His expression is so flagrantly innocent, both girls laugh.

“You and Ollie”—Alicia drops a morsel of salmon on the floor, snapped up by the Labrador—“opportunists from birth.” Picking up her fork, she stares at Rory. Her eyes are no longer quite so benign.

“You know me too well, Licia.”

“That I do.”

“All right, yes. I’ve a favor to ask.” He hesitates. “Thanks to you, I was handed this intriguing case after choir practice all those weeks ago.” A reassuring smile at Jesse.

“You happened to be there, that’s all. I could have asked someone else from Barts—that other doctor, the one who’s a tenor.” Alicia is polite. As if she’s slightly bored.

“Henry? He’s a pathologist. Wouldn’t have known one end of Jesse from the other; they look at people as collections of cells.” A grin. He’s baiting her.

“Rory.” There’s an edge to that polite voice and Ollie growls.

He throws up his hands. “Oh, all right. I
was
very grateful, Alicia. Fate. ‘The mills of God, they grind—’ ”

“ ‘—slow. And exceeding small,’ ” she finishes the quote. “Yes, I know. So?”

Rory nods. “So, I’ve been studying the long-term effects of head trauma, as you know. Principally, I’ve been investigating how we should best manage post-traumatic care to maximize rehabilitation outcomes.”

Alicia murmurs, “Goodness.”

Rory flicks Jesse a glance. “And all I want to say about this particular case is that it offers some interesting information on how the brain can heal itself.”

Alicia’s eyebrows ascend. She says smilingly, “You were a willing research subject, Jesse?”

Rory doesn’t let Jesse reply. “Just to finish what I was saying. Jesse made a good recovery and improved to the point where the next step was discharge from the hospital. I was down to take a couple of weeks off, and planning to spend it here—as you know—and I didn’t want to leave her to the tender mercies of National Health rehab.”

Alicia glances at her guest. “Hope you don’t mind being talked about in the third person.”

It has been annoying her, but Jesse shakes her head. “Rory
was very kind to me in the hospital, and when he offered me a lift, I was grateful because I was planning to visit Scotland anyway. Jedburgh, actually.”

Rory jumps in. “Yes, I did do that, but that was after I got the idea of supervising Jesse’s rehabilitation and advancing my research at the same time. Which she was good enough to agree to.”

“Ah. So you thought you might do that here?” Alicia’s expression is bland.

“Just for a couple of weeks.” A contrite glance at Jesse. “I tried to ring you last night, Alicia, really, but . . . I hoped you wouldn’t mind if we came up anyway.”

Alicia catches Jesse’s embarrassed expression. “He’s always been like this. But why would you particularly want to go to Jedburgh?”

Jesse’s brusque. “I was born there and given up for adoption. My adoptive parents took me to Australia.” She moves the salmon around her plate. She feels like she’s taking her clothes off in public. “They didn’t tell me. I found out by accident.”

Alicia puts her napkin down as the silence stretches. “You’re welcome to stay, Jesse. Truly. Least I can do, considering.” She flashes Rory a
You’ll keep
glance. “It was always full house in summer at Hundredfield when I was little. Lots of parties. I miss that.” Her eyes are wistful.

Rory leans across the table. “Come on, Jesse, what have you got to lose?”

The light beside the bed spills a line of pink under the door of the bedroom. Jesse sees it as she walks along the corridor. The glow is comforting somehow, a welcome of a kind. She pushes the door open and stares at the room. She hasn’t said she
will
stay, but why does she feel so upset? Rory and Alicia have a complicated relationship, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t have to affect her. She’s here for a purpose. Two purposes.

With a snort, Jesse marches over to the window to pull the curtains closed. And pauses.

There it is. The keep. Black and silver. Moonlight disguises the damage of centuries—it might have been built last week.

Jesse’s heart bumps quickly in her chest. A wrench, and the curtains swing closed. She stamps to her case beside the armoire. Upset? There’s no one word for what she’s feeling, but it will do just fine till another comes along.

Snapping the catches on the bag, she stares at the clothes inside—all so neatly packed.

The other me did this.
That girl who planned ahead, who didn’t run off with doctors, who didn’t draw buildings she’d never seen with her left hand. Underwear, pajamas, two skirts, two pairs of jeans, a jumper and one dressy cardigan, three shirts, two T-shirts, flat boots, one pair of heels and one of sneakers—plus her jacket. Obedient witnesses to the fact that that girl was real, the one who’s currently gone missing.

On automatic, she starts to unpack and notices two shirts where there should be three. Of course. She’d told the first nurse to throw the damaged one away—once she could write. She’s never been any use at sewing or mending.
Like you can’t draw?

All the clothes she owns in the world are now arranged in neat piles on the shelves of the armoire. Leaving Sydney, she only took things she’d bought for herself—nothing her parents had given her made it into the case. Slowly, she takes out her sponge bag and a pair of pajamas, then hesitates. Suddenly, she flips the lid down. Snapping the catches closed is satisfying; so is bundling the case in the cupboard where she doesn’t have to see it.

Out there, somewhere in the dark, are her real parents. Her real mum and her real dad. And whatever Rory might want, whatever he thinks he can do to help her brain repair itself, what she
needs
is to find them. And she will.

A library and a phone book. In St. Bartholomew the Great all those weeks ago with Rahere as her witness, she’d promised herself
she’d ring everyone called Green in Scotland. And she will. But she’s weary now—so tired—and this whole experience from soup to nuts feels like some kind of hallucination.

Has the world gone mad, or is it just her?

She’ll think about what that might mean in the morning.

17

C
ROSSING THE
inner ward, wind sliced my face as I went to find Ambrose, the carpenter who served the keep. His father, a charcoal burner, had trained his son well, for the man was skilled at picking good timber to cut and work, and in splitting, sawing, and shaping logs into useful things for the castle.

A bier is assuredly a useful thing at the end of life, but there would be little time for its fashioning today, and Ambrose, a craftsman, must be convinced to hurry. He would not like that.

As the day faded, I passed three men I did not know. The woad-dyed hoods that all the Hundredfield serfs wore were pulled low over their faces, and they did not meet my glance or respond to a greeting. In the keep Godefroi never acknowledged our servants, but that was not my way; at another time, I would have stopped and spoken to them, found out their names and where they worked on the estate. As it was, I hurried on to the carpenter’s hut. Sullen faces and silence seemed normal in Hundredfield now. That would have to change.
Godefroi
would have to change.

“Ambrose?” I pushed back the panel of wicker that served as
a door. The place was empty and shavings blew across the floor like leaves.

“Lord Bayard?” Robert was behind me. He held up a torch and the light hollowed his face to a mask.

“Where is he? There’s a bier to be made.” But the flare from the torch told the story. No tools remained in the hut.