‘Stay with me, sweetheart,’ she whispered, pushing his dark hair away from his face with gentle fingers. ‘We’ll get through this together.’
He looked younger in sleep, innocent, and Tabitha felt a corrosive hatred for Lucia.
‘Not now,’ she told herself. She could not afford to waste her energy on anger with Lucia, there would be time for her to be brought to justice.
There was a small sash window and as the heat intensified, Tabitha opened it, but the mechanism was broken and it shut whenever she let go. There was no prop, so she searched for something to keep it open and as she forced a jar of body lotion in place, she heard the wail of a siren, saw the fire truck racing towards the house.
‘Here,’ she screamed, waving. ‘We’re here!’
Smoke billowed in the air and Tabitha wondered where Lucia had started the fire. How much of Cerensthorpe Abbey was damaged?
The heat was intensifying, and Tabitha willed the sirens to draw closer. Suddenly, there was a deafening roar as she heard the greedy flames reach the bed, sparks scattered like a thousand tiny stars through the gaps at the top of the doorframe, but, for now, the bathroom door remained intact. How much longer it would hold, Tabitha did not dare to imagine.
Panic seized her and she leaned out of the window again. The fire engines were at the front of the house and they could not see her. She shouted until she was hoarse, but they did not hear her cries.
‘No,’ she wailed, wondering whether she should try to manoeuvre them all into the bath. ‘Help, please help us.’
Tabitha’s vision blurred. She dropped to her knees beside Gulliver, grasped his hand, willing him to wake. His eyelids fluttered open, then closed. Edith gave the faintest sigh and stilled. Tabitha thought of Elizabeth Boleyn, of her words, her curse, echoing through the centuries. Was this how it ended? At the mercy of the Boleyn curse?
A white feather drifted onto the floor beside Tabitha and she stared at it in bemusement.
Gulliver stirred.
‘The whistle,’ his voice was distant. ‘It’s in my pocket, blow it. Let the firefighters know where we are…’
He pointed feebly to his jeans pocket and Tabitha scrabbled inside, pulling out the golden hawking whistle, the vines and tiny birds glinting in the gloom and in the centre, the words, ‘Two for joy’.
Love. A gift of love.
There was a crash below, followed by shouts and the heavy thud of axes.
She knew she would never be able to make herself heard by shouting, instead she put the whistle to her lips and blew. Each screech of the whistle echoed around the tiled room, deafening, unearthly. She would not let them die. She clutched Gulliver’s hand and as she blew with all the breath left in her lungs, she remembered the words:
If breath is loosed in love sincere,
The ancient curse shall break – and clear.
Smoke was filling the bathroom and she was struggling to breath, but still she forced herself to blow into Elizabeth Boleyn’s ancient hawking whistle. A gift from a king who did not understand love. But love would save them.
As her vision blurred, there was a thunderous noise and figures raced into the room.
‘How many people in here?’ the towering figure at the front shouted.
‘Three,’ she replied, pushing the whistle into her pocket before allowing herself to slump into the vice-like grip of the firefighter as she was carried away.
EPILOGUE
CERENSTHORPE ABBEY – SIX MONTHS LATER
Tabitha placed the bunch of flowers on the grave and stepped back to see whether they were straight.
‘To the left, I think,’ said Edith, who stood a few metres away.
Tabitha obliged and joined the older woman.
‘Perfect. Phyllis was always very precise about these things in life. If I leave a wonky bouquet beside her headstone, I wouldn’t put it past her to come back and haunt me.’
‘Shall we go and see Gulliver?’ Tabitha asked and Edith nodded.
