They turned a bend in a passageway in which they had to stoop to avoid the roof beams. Ahead of them was a dead end. Thick boards crisscrossed the space ahead. Marcus held up the lantern, scrutinizing the boards and comparing them to the wood that made up the walls of the passageway.
“These boards are a different kind of wood to the rest of the construction and newer,” he said, “this is it. Stand back.”
Selina took a few steps back and Marcus lifted a booted foot and kicked out at the lowest of the boards. It cracked and splintered. Two more kicks and it had snapped in two. Marcus began attacking the next, then the next. Finally, there was enough room for Selina to crouch and shove the lantern into the gap revealed to see what lay beyond.
“I see the window!” she cried, “you were right.”
Encouraged, Marcus renewed his assault on the other boards, pulling at them and ramming them with his shoulder until they had all been cleared. Beyond was a broad room with a sloping roof to either side and a window at the far end. A chaise longe lay against one wall. A small armchair, clearly made for a child, stood next to it. A large picture leaned against the sloping roof opposite the chaise. There wasn’t much daylight coming into the room through the grimy window. Marcus went over and rubbed at the years of accumulated dirt with his sleeve, clearing a patch for pale daylight to shine through.
“Is this your mother?” Selina asked.
Marcus turned with trepidation. When he had returned home, there had been no pictures of his mother on the walls. He himself had removed any of his father and had assumed that Arthur had disposed of those in which their mother was the subject. Now he looked at her and it was as though a lock had been turned in his mind, opening a door into the past. The picture was of a woman with auburn hair and green eyes. Her skin was pale and her full lips upturned in a secretive smile. Her cheeks were high and angled, giving her a look of the exotic. Beside her stood two boys of five or six years old.
“This one is you. I can see the resemblance,” Selina said wonderingly, “and that is Arthur. This is your proof, Marcus!”
But Marcus was staring at the painting, seeing through it to a day of the distant past.
“She brought me up here to watch the swallows flying from the eaves of the house. That window over there gave a perfect view of them. Father was angry and mother wanted me out of his way. To protect me. I stayed here while she went to fetch supper from the kitchens. I fell asleep on the chaise. When I woke up, it was my father in the room, not her. He dragged me downstairs and that was when this room was discovered. He couldn’t bear that we had an escape from him, an innocent respite from his cruelty. I have a memory of sitting in that armchair while my mother wrote in a book. I asked her what she was writing and she just said a word I didn’t understand at the time. Posterity.”
“So, she kept a diary?” Selina asked.
“Yes, though I’ve never found it. But then I had forgotten all about this room.”
He looked about himself with wonder, memories flooding back to him. Some were no more than blurred sensory impressions, a smell, or a sound. Some were more concrete. He felt guilty that he had forgotten so much of his mother, that his mind had erased those memories.
And I did not even have the courage to walk into the asylum in which she spent her last years. I owed her that much. She was not cruel, she was as much a victim as Arthur and I.
He went to the chaise, seeing the elegant, gentle form of his mother sitting there writing in her diary. Saw himself sitting in the little armchair, feet dangling and drawing squiggly lines in his own jotter, pretending to write. Sitting on the chaise, he ran his hands over the cushion where it joined the arm, then the back. But there was nothing.
“It was too much to hope for,” he said with chagrin, “I had thought that maybe she would have hidden the diary here. I suppose there is nowhere to hide it that father would not have found it.”
Selina sat next to him, taking his hands. As she sat, the sound of something hitting the floor came from beneath the chaise. They looked at each other for a moment and then scrambled to look. Selina saw it first, reaching beneath the chaise to the wood-bound book that must have been secured to the underside of the furniture. Over time, the fastening had perished, until Selina’s slight weight was enough to dislodge it. And there was the final answer they sought. The carving and the picture linked him to the house and now the private journal of the Duchess of Valebridge, who loved her children above all else. Marcus opened it with shaking hands. He was presented with a neat, elegant hand. Each page was headed with a date but there were inconsistent gaps of time between the dates.
The earliest entry was around the time that Marcus would have been three or four. He skimmed the dates, looking for a reference to a birthday or Christmas, where children might be mentioned. Part of him wanted to read the book from cover to cover but he knew there wasn’t time. Selina was reading over his shoulder as he impatiently rifled through the pages and it was she who saw it.
“There! Go back, look Marcus!” she said excitedly.
A moment later, Marcus saw what she had seen. A passage written in a more untidy hand than the other pages. He saw among that hasty scrawl his own name.
‘The monster has finally done it. He has finally gone through with his threat after all these years. And god forgive me I do not have the courage to fight him, nor to leave him. Marcus has been sent away. I do not know where, only that it is somewhere that I will never find him. Of that, Jeffrey was positively gleeful about. By now he is lost to me and while I want to leave this devil masquerading as a man, I cannot. For I still have Arthur. Of my two sons, I still have one. The blackguard has decided that Marcus is too weak to be Duke, that he must be exiled and written out of our family history…’
Marcus could read no more. The book fell from nerveless fingers, his eyes blurring with tears. Selina was there, embracing him and he felt his head cushioned by her bosom. She held him tightly as he cried.
CHAPTER38
Captain Hamilton was summoned from his lodgings in Folkington and the Runner returned promptly the next day. He had a look of polite curiosity on his face, neither expecting to be amazed nor with mind closed to the prospect. Marcus showed him the painting that had been brought out of the attic and placed in the cold light of day in a drawing room, proving the existence of two sons. In the pale daylight, the resemblance the young Marcus bore to his older version was striking. And the similarity between mother and son was equally striking. Next, they showed him the diary entry pertaining to Marcus’ exile. He nodded and noted. Finally, Marcus led the investigator into the attic to examine the carving on the beam. He noted down everything before finally replacing his pencil and notebook in his pocket.
“I think I have seen enough, Your Grace.”
“Then you believe us?” Selina asked.
They were back in Marcus’ study once more. Tea had been served. The journal of Marcus’ mother lay on a table between them and the portrait stood next to the fireplace. Hamilton cast frequent looks from the painting to Marcus, as though testing the comparison between the two. Hamilton took a cup of tea, swallowing from it appreciatively.
“It is not for me to conclude whether you are telling the truth or not. Usually, it would be for the magistrate of Bow Street to decide, based on the evidence that I present him with. But, as I said, the Regent has a personal interest in this case. He will likely be the final judge.”
With that, the Bow Street Runner took his leave of them as though he had simply popped in for a cup of tea and to pass the time of day. Selina was left stunned but Marcus seemed quietly confident. After the doors of Valebridge had closed behind Captain Hamilton, Marcus swept Selina from her feet in jubilation. They glided around the Great Hall to their very own phantom orchestra, Marcus holding Selina with her feet off the ground, his strength more than equal to the task. She giggled and laughed as they spun and flew around the hall, the huge room echoing to the sound of laughter. Finally, her feet touched the floor again and they were still. She stood with her arms about Marcus’ neck.
“So, now we must convince the Regent,” she said.
