The Time Travelers, Volume 2 Page 13

  Police interviewed, scoured, searched, came up empty.

  Lord Winden, skittering around with his necklace and his horrifying monster of a mother, was not capable of finding anything.

  Flossie, in her new slum with her ridiculous husband, bringing shame upon her family, claimed to have no knowledge.

  The police were skeptical that there was a kidnapper. After all, they claimed, Mr. Stratton should be able to supply more detail if such a person had actually penetrated the church and seized his daughter right off his own arm.

  The wind rose. A flag snapped as hard as a snare drum.

  There was no heat in the tower. It would be a long winter for Aurelia. Possibly she would not survive.

  What have my children done to me? thought Hiram Stratton, his golf course and his gardens and his new fountain giving him no pleasure. A worthless son. A worthless daughter. I shall end up like my colleagues, having to give my fortune to some foolish university or worthless museum!

  He had lost his son and now …

  The truth came to Hiram Stratton.

  He began laughing.

  His laughter rose with the wind, and he knew it would be heard in the tower, for its walls were thin.

  The kidnapper, somehow, some way, had been Strat himself! The son who stormed off, pretending death, refusing his heritage, had taken his revenge by taking his sister. Strat had ripped his sister right out of the church.

  Hiram was suddenly quite proud of the son he had discarded. The boy has guts, he thought.

  He stopped worrying about Devonny. Soon she and her brother would be in touch with him, and they would want money, and he would bargain until he had what he wanted: their marriages and their offspring.

  Once more his step was jaunty, and he left for the city, and gave no more thought to the tower and the coming of winter.

  Aurelia Stratton accepted her fate. She deserved it. She had done a horrible thing to her daughter. She had had no conscience, just a selfish desire for her own comfort.

  This was how a worthless relative was treated. The severely brain-damaged, the grotesquely deformed, the emotionally crippled, the evildoer who belonged in jail but whose jail sentence would bring shame upon the household. Society agreed that such people belonged in the cellar or attic: lock them up, tell nobody they still existed, everybody would pretend they never had, and nobody would be forced to think of them again.

  And now one of those people was Aurelia herself.

  She heard the roar of laughter from the man who had fathered their two children.

  She heard the carriage leave, heard the creak of wheels and the clatter of horses’ hooves.

  And then there was silence.

  Only a few servants occupied the Mansion in winter. She had not seen them when the door was shut upon her.

  They would bring her cold food only: there would be no sugar on the oatmeal, no salt on the meat, no drink except water, no butter for the bread, no hot coffee, no comforting soup. She would see no person. Whatever was handed in she would take, and whatever she handed back, empty bowl or full chamber pot, would be carried away. But she would see no sky, hear no person speak, have nothing to think about but her own failures.

  She had slipped a note to the coachman. She could not include a bribe. She wondered if the note would be given to Hiram. Or had it already been given to him, and that was why he howled with laughter?

  “We most certainly will not!” shouted Hugh-David’s mother.

  Hugh-David winced. Really, he had been upset with the rude bellowing of Americans, but his mother could bellow as loudly as any New Yorker.

  “I believe I must,” he said, trying to hold his ground.

  “The woman is immoral. Evil. Disgusting. I am deeply disappointed in your silliness! Throw that note away immediately and stop whimpering over it.”

  Hugh-David did not think he had been whimpering. He had been considering. Considering a girl who once said that he had no spunk.

  “Just what do you think you will do with the woman once you rescue her?” shouted his mother.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Well, come up with something before you embark upon a ludicrous and unlawful excursion!”

  Hugh-David yearned to nail his mother in a frigid attic. What pleasure there would be as he walked away. He reminded himself that he was not a barbarian, and must honor his mother.

  This was a dreadful thought. The woman was bound to live for decades.

  He said, “I am concerned that Aurelia Stratton might take her own life.”

  “What difference would that make?” demanded his mother. “Her life is as good as gone anyway. It will save everyone a deal of trouble.”

  He took a deep breath. With his mother around, his lungs got as much exercise as if he had taken up rowing. “I do not think she did enough to deserve such a fate, Mother,” he said, “and I do not think Devonny would wish to see her suffer. Certainly Devonny would not wish to see her die by her own hand. Devonny has a good heart. She would wish her mother’s happiness and prosperity.”

  “A good heart?” shouted the Duchess. “A wench who runs away from her own wedding?”

  “I cannot find or save my bride, but at least I can save her mother,” said Hugh-David. “A gentleman does not abandon a lady.” This was his new credo, difficult to remember when his mother was there. Some people deserved abandonment.

  “Pshaw!” shouted the Duchess. “She abandoned you!”

  His mother meant Devonny. “I don’t think so, Mama. I think Hiram Stratton set this up. I understand nothing, but I will wait this out.”

  “What might you mean by that stupid remark? Do you plan to wait a month? A year? A decade? Come to your senses. You’re like your father. Your blood is thin.”

  He studied his mother as she ranted and raved about Granny’s pebbles, which he had put at risk, and his duty, which he was failing, and America, which was annoying, and what should she wear to the party tonight in order to look better than anybody else.

  Devonny’s blood could be no worse than his own.

  He opened the sad little scrawl from Devonny’s mother and read it again.

  “Let’s drive down to Stratton Point, Tod,” said Devonny. Gianni Annello has a music room named for him, and we have a town beach and park named for us, she thought. Did we become friends? Of course we didn’t. I’m not there.

  She had been deeply anxious all day, and now anxiety ruled her body. She could not eat, she could not look at the television, she could not go for a run with Tod’s mother (a woman past her prime, a woman over forty, running up and down like a street boy!).

  Devonny thought of her own mother, and a horrible sensation attacked her body. She felt the attic. The splinters on the wall pierced her hand. She trembled in the total dark. The lonely silence gnawed the edges of her sanity.

  Tod was always willing to go for a drive, and he did have to obtain more designer water from the pump, so off to Stratton Point they went.

  Devonny clung to the seat belt that had once frightened her so. How eerie to drive on paved roads where there had been a dirt path, to pass parking lots where there had been meadow, and—most awful—gaze up at a hill on which there was nothing but grass. A hundred years ago, she had danced in a ballroom there.

  Her life was cut to the ground, not a trace remaining except the old red pump where the spring never ran dry.

  “I’m going to teach you how to drive while we’re here,” said Tod. “There’s nobody around except joggers and runners, and nobody needs them anyway; we’ll just mow ’em down. You get extra points.”

  Devonny was used to this talk now. In Tod’s Time, nobody meant anything by their threats, whereas in her Time, when Father threatened a person with being chained up … it happened.

  She said, “I like having a chauffeur. You drive and I’ll look out the window.”

  So he drove, and she looked out the window.

  At the top of that graceful hill, a hundred
years ago or perhaps now, her mother was afraid, alone and cold.

  Tod had the excellent heater of the big old station wagon blasting; he himself was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. Yet Devonny felt the cruel wind slip beneath the shingles, cut through the blankets and lay frost upon her skin.

  “Tonight Mom is taking us shopping,” said Tod. “She says you have to have jeans that fit.”

  They are refitting me so that I am part of their Time. I should thank Tod, and love him forever, but I want to go home.

  “Pretty soon we’re going to have to explain why you don’t have any family sending you spending money. I haven’t thought of an explanation. Have you?”

  Devonny was not thinking.

  She was seeing.

  There was a tower.

  There were three towers.

  There was a mansion.

  Her long thick hair lay heavily on her shoulders. Her eyes burned with staring. She was afraid to point it out to Tod. Perhaps he had not noticed.

  Had they driven through Time this Time, instead of falling?

  Was Time now a simple matter of taking a road?

  She was trying to listen, trying to hear her own century.

  From somewhere, for some reason, some Time was calling.

  The tower was supported by two crossing beams above Aurelia’s head. She dragged the cot to the middle of the room and stood on it, measuring the distance.

  Then she sat back down on the cot and methodically ripped the sheets in strips, weaving them for strength.

  She was afraid she did not have sufficient courage. But she knew she did not have enough courage to face this life of confinement.

  “O my son!” she cried out loud. “O my daughter! What courage did each of you need? And I was not there when you needed me. I contributed to your sorrow.”

  She clung to the torn edge of the sheet and said to her Maker, “I have sinned. Please forgive me. Please let me come to You in spite of my sins and in spite of what I am about to do.”

  “Stop the car,” whispered Devonny. “I have to get out.”

  Tod said, “Dev, it’s freezing out. You didn’t wear a coat.”

  She got out of the station wagon.

  Tod leaned on the horn.

  “Stop it!” she shouted at him. “Stop making any noise!”

  He stared at her and got out of the car, too, closing his door carefully so there was no slam. She was looking everywhere. She was touching air, she was stepping around things that did not exist. “Dev?” he said nervously.

  “Let go of me,” she said to him.

  “I’m not holding you.” She’s there, he thought. In her Time. She can see what I can’t, touch what I can’t, hear what I can’t.

  He was deeply afraid, and he hated his own fear. “Dev,” he said, wanting to hold her safe from pain and fear, wanting her to stay, and be his.

  She was strangely blurry.

  “No,” he said, “you’ve come such a long way, Dev, and you came for a reason, and we haven’t found it yet! Dev, don’t go.”

  “Let go, Tod,” she pleaded, although they were yards apart. “I need to go home. I was wrong and you were right. A lady cannot wait for a man to rescue her. A lady cannot be weak-minded. She cannot demand that somebody else do something! A lady must rescue herself.”

  Tod’s lips were numb and his hands stiff. “Devonny,” he said, and he thought, I wanted to rescue her.

  Devonny turned to him and she was clear again; she was herself and beautiful and gold and—he was surprised by this—strong.

  “Whatever is wrong when I get there, Tod, whatever I suffer, whoever hurts me, whatever my father does—none of that matters.”

  He was the one who hurt. He hurt all over, as if she were beating him up.

  “You told me I must stand alone,” she said.

  I didn’t mean it, thought Tod, trying to approach her again, trying to take her hand. He thought of his mother, when divorce seemed imminent, shrieking at Dad that she was just fine alone! fine! go! see if I care!

  But she cared. And she had not been fine alone.

  Alone was hard.

  He did not want Devonny to go alone into whatever Time was, and he did not want to be alone here.

  He wondered where Strat was. Alone? And where would Devonny be? Alone?

  And where am I?

  “Let go of me, Tod,” she whispered. “You are keeping me prisoner.”

  “No,” he said, shocked, “I never did that, I never meant that. I was only trying to help.”

  So he let go. He had touched her only once, and yet he had to unwrap his daydreams and release his half hopes, and let go.

  There was a gust of wind, as fierce as a hurricane, and he closed his eyes against it, and hunched his shoulders, hearing screams that were not his, pressed against shudders which were the suffering of others, and when it ended and he could open his eyes, he was alone with the grass and the wind and the seagulls.

  There was no Devonny.

  For a long time Tod clung to the edge of the car, waiting. It grew dark. There was nothing left to wait for.

  He drove home.

  NINE

  Lord Winden had meant this to be clandestine. He had intended to hire a carriage, travel at dusk, browbeat the few remaining servants, and then, soft and strong in the dark, carry the first Mrs. Stratton to safety.

  He had most certainly not intended that his mother would notify Hiram Stratton, and Mr. Stratton would come with his fourth wife, Florinda, a silly little creature whose assets were unknown, and that Mr. Stratton would bring not one but two attorneys, and his own mother, the Duchess, would come along with her maidservant and with Gordon and Miles, whom she had adopted as her escorts in New York.

  “I forbid you to do this!” shouted Mr. Stratton. “You may not enter my home!”

  Hugh-David entered. The police had been so breathtakingly courteous during the church episode that he was confident they would not dream of arresting a man with a title. His title was minor, almost meaningless, and nobody in England cared, since everybody (especially his own brothers) came ahead of him, but here they did not know that.

  He had always wanted some great expedition, some new world to conquer. He had thought possibly of exploring the Amazon or reaching the South Pole. Possibly joining one of the splashier commands in order to defeat mountain tribes who did not want to become Queen Victoria’s subjects.

  Breaking down an attic door was not world-shaking. Gordon and Miles were smirking, preparing yet another story to tell London about pathetic old Hugh-David. Perhaps Devonny was correct and he was horse manure.

  There was an incredible amount of commotion. Mr. Stratton was yelling. The attorneys were yelling. The Duchess was yelling. Servants were yelling. The fourth wife was yelling.

  “I do not know why you are making all this racket,” said Hugh-David with as much dignity as he could muster. “I am simply going to see that my fiancée’s mother has proper housing. Please lower your voices and behave in a reasonable manner.”

  Nobody took this suggestion.

  They entered the huge Mansion. What had been beautiful and romantic by summer was grim and haunted by winter. The floors creaked and groaned. The servants carried lanterns, which cast shadows, creating hollows and pits where none existed. The flat floor felt treacherous, as if it might tilt beneath his feet like the deck of the ship where Gianni Annello had been imprisoned.

  “If you think I am going to take on the burden of some divorced creature, you may think again!” shrieked his mother.

  His manservant had armed him with a hammer but Hugh-David had no idea how to use the weapon. Luckily, the same servant had whispered in his ear that all he really needed to do was slide the bolt on the attic door. Hugh-David reminded himself that it was not his mother on whom he would use the hammer.

  “Stop this!” demanded his mother, planting her ample body in front of him. “We are returning to England before you make an even greater fool of yourself.”<
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  “I will return to England when Devonny is found.”

  “Why are you doing this when I have expressly forbidden it?” demanded his mother.

  He found the great stair. He could see none of its colors in this dark, none of its riches and splendors. It was colder indoors than out. How could that be? Hiram Stratton’s cruelty to his ex-wife seemed especially horrible because it was so cold.

  “I’m doing this,” said Lord Winden, “because it is right.”

  Gordon burst out laughing. “If you could see yourself, Hugh,” he said. “You look utterly ridiculous, storming across America to rescue some shriveled-up old prune as if she were a beautiful golden-haired princess.”

  They were at the bottom of the great stair. The cold swirled down from the height of the open shaft, so fierce and dreadful they looked up, half expecting icicles on the chandeliers.

  There stood the princess.

  Screams rose in their throats, choked back from fear of what they were screaming at.

  It was a specter. A dark ghost. A thing of medieval horror and power.

  It was Devonny.

  Hugh only half recognized her, for she was garbed in some sort of trouser, like a barbarian in the hills. Her lovely hair was loose, and somehow dusty, and disarranged. She stood silently above them and he felt a tremor, as if they were her subjects, and had disobeyed.

  “Where did you come from?” he whispered. “Are you all right? Have you been here all along? Did your own father lock you in the tower with your mother? What is going on, Devonny? Please forgive me! I did not think of looking in your own house.”

  Behind Devonny stood her mother, a wraith more real.

  Down they came. Step by step. Slow as a wedding march.

  Hiram Stratton backed away. He mumbled, “No, that’s not true, I didn’t do that, it isn’t me, it didn’t happen.” He tripped and fell heavily.

  Devonny asked Hugh-David, “You were on your way to save my mother?”

  “Yes,” he said. He was numbed by her loveliness, shocked by the garb her father had forced her to wear. The audacity of the man! First imprisoning the son, then the former wife, finally the daughter! To what end? For what reason?