She walked to the first chest in the line, crouching and holding the lock. Marcus crouched next to her and fitted the key. It turned smoothly and he removed the lock. Selina was dismayed by the quantity of papers contained within. In this chest, there seemed to be loose pages and letters bound together with string. There were no books or diaries, ledgers, or accounts.
“His correspondence. We tried to keep different types of documents together. This was clearly for letters.”
“I will begin looking through them. Why don’t you take the next chest? That way we will get through them quicker,” Selina suggested.
Marcus agreed and moved to the next chest, unlocking it to reveal an assortment of large volumes in various states of repair. Selina lifted out the first bundle of letters and untied the string. Then she began to read. Periodically they were visited by Beveridge to bring food and drink. The butler took one, fastidious look at the state of the attic room and returned later with blankets and cushions. Selina smiled at the man’s thoughtfulness. He was a devoted servant who had served Marcus for his entire life. That said a lot about the character of both men. Nothing was revealed in the letters she read through. Jeffrey Roy corresponded frequently with his bankers and others on the subject of money and business but did not mention his heirs or, for that matter, anyone in his family.
Marcus moved from one chest to another, having discarded most of the contents of the first as being ledgers, referencing nothing more than columns of figures, tracking the movement of money and goods. Selina could feel her spirits falling with each failure to find anything that would help. Marcus was becoming irritated, throwing aside useless account books with grunts of disgust before picking up the next. As she watched, his temper broke. With a yell, he threw a ledger across the room where it struck a beam and fell apart in a shower of loose leaves. Marcus sat back on the floor, head falling into his hands. Selina went to him, putting her arms around him and running her fingers through his hair.
“Don’t lose hope. There must be something here,” Selina said, “in all of this, there must be one document that references his sons.”
“If there is, I have never seen it. Not where I am concerned. He erased me from existence, believing that Arthur was the heir he wanted. And how wrong he was proved to be,” Marcus laughed bitterly, “Arthur proved to be weak and my father decided to change his mind at the eleventh hour. Too late as it happens.”
“But if he had decided that he wanted you to inherit, then he must have set something down in writing, especially if he knew he was dying,” Selina insisted.
“Or perhaps it was all another cruel trick. Perhaps his summons was sent after his death, so that I would never be able to inherit. A last torture.”
“We must not lose hope,” Selina insisted.
She got up and retrieved the ledger, gathering up its pages.
“We can’t predict where we will find what we need so we must look through everything… what is that?”
She had been crouching beneath the low eaves of the roof to gather up a stray page. On the edge of their combined lantern light, she could see that something had been carved into the beam. But the light was too dim to make out exactly what it said. Marcus raised his head, looking over. At first, he frowned and remained where he was. Then recognition dawned on his face and he scrambled to her side, bringing a lantern with him. Under the bright light, it leaped into sharp relief. Someone had carved into the beam two inscriptions. One was the name Arthur Roy followed by a date including the day, month, and year. Beneath it and bearing a date one day later was the name Marcus Roy.
CHAPTER37
“Iremember this!” Marcus cried out, “I was hiding from my father. I had discovered this place trying to get as far from him as I could. And I found that Arthur already knew of it, had been here before me. He had carved his name and the date of his birth on this beam and I did the same! He was only hours older, but as my birth was after midnight, he was born a day before me. He would tease me about it too, and I would despise it!” he roared in laughter.
Selina, too, laughed for joy at the sudden, unexpected revelation. “Does this prove who you are, do you think?” she asked.
“You can see that the engraving is old. The exposed wood has been so for a while. How else would my name appear here unless I am a son of Jeffrey Roy?” Marcus said, “they will say that I added this here myself to support my claim but any carpenter should be able to look at those engravings and give an estimate on how old they are.”
He hugged her impulsively, laughing and she gladly returned the embrace. They had been guided here by destiny, driven to despair and anger, and through that emotion finding the proof that they needed. Selina could feel the relief flood through Marcus’ body as he slumped against the beams, looking up at the old carving, touching it.
“I had forgotten this day, as though it had never existed. But now I remember it. I remember the smell of this room. I said so when we first set foot here. The longer we’ve been here, the more comes back to me. They were not always so dusty and inaccessible. Not always simply used for storage…”
He had been tracing the carving with his finger, over and over again as he spoke. Now, he froze. His eyes glazed over for a moment as though he were seeing through the gloom and the dust into a brighter past.
“I remember being here with my mother,” he whispered.
Selina made to sit next to him but he was on his feet like a shot, so quickly that he banged his head on a beam.
“Selina! I remember being here with my mother. She was leading me by the hand. She was…she was laughing, smiling. Kind. My god but I always thought that she had been in league with my father, that she didn’t care. But, being here has unlocked a memory and…I have to find it!”
“Find what? What are you talking about?” Selina protested.
But Marcus was snatching up the lantern and hurrying away into the shadows. Selina followed.
“Does this have something to do with the proof we were looking for?” she asked.
“Itisthe proof we were looking for,” Marcus said, looking back over his shoulder with a triumphant grin, “there is a place up here, I will know it when I see it. I can’t say for sure how to find it but…at the highest point of Valebridge, there is a circular window. You can just about see it from the outside, but the room that it belongs to is lost. Beveridge believes it is a false window but I’ve remembered being on the other side of it, looking out. With my mother beside me. It is in these attic rooms somewhere. It was a private space for her, her own escape from my father.”
They continued their search along narrow passageways, up and down stairs beneath thick, cobwebbed beams.
“I think I remember Arthur telling me something of a refuge for your mother. That his father had it boarded up? I assumed it was a room of the house.”
“Boarded up? That must have happened after I left. I have no memory of that,” Marcus replied thoughtfully, “that will make it harder to find, although if I am right, it should be right around…”
