A Bridge Through Time: (Time Travel) (9 page)

***

“I have been meaning to ask you about the clothes you and Cedric were wearing when the portraits were made,” Jane said as Jestyn maneuvered the carriage out of the yard on their way to the village. “They seemed a little more old-fashioned than what you are wearing now. How long ago were they made?

“They were made when Cedric and I were in our twenties,’ added Jestyn. “That’s probably why they seemed different from what we wear now,” said Jestyn, as he led the bays down the lane toward the village.

“Do you still have them–the clothes, I mean?” Jane asked.

“If I still do they would be up in the attic. They were in fashion about seven or eight years ago and probably tight around the shoulders now.”

“And they would not have been given away? You’re certain they would still be in the attic?”

“I think they might,” Jestyn answered. “We don’t like to part with things,” he said wryly. “That’s why attics exist–to delay making the decision.”

“Do you think I could see yours? I would really like to see it again, Jestyn. Maybe we can find a clue in it, some sign that you held the pendant in your hand, however slim.”

“Let’s look for it, then.” Jestyn said eagerly. “There are trunks and wardrobes there holding clothes of centuries past but since I’m familiar with those clothes I’m sure I would find them easily enough. Would you also like to see the other costumes?”

“I would love that!”

“After we visit with Mr. Cannidge, then.”

“I’m so looking forward to our visit with him,” Jane said eagerly. “He might be able to tell us more about my pendant.”

“I have faith in that too, Jane, but don’t allow your hopes to soar too high. We don’t know that he will disclose what he knows to us, even if he knows about the pendant. If he doesn’t want to part with the information we must find a way to convince him to do so.”

“I hope he’s an amiable man. He sounds all right in his note and eager to meet with us.”

After a few minutes they reached the village and went down its main street. Only a couple of carts and a carriage with its driver were on the street.

“I think Lentricks Street is beyond the fountain,” Jestyn said. “I remember having visited Cannidge a couple of times with father before he contracted him to do our portrait.

CHAPTER 11

They turned into the street and very soon they were going down the short gravel path to a stone cottage that looked like it had been there since the Norman invasion. Jestyn parked the carriage in front of the modest gated garden which was just a few feet wide. The gate had been pushed back and Jestyn and Jane went up to the faded front door and Jestyn used the knocker.

The door was opened by the artist himself, who smiled broadly and greeted them warmly. Then he led them into a neat parlor and showed them to a stiff brown sofa. Both Jestyn and Jane took note that his eyes had immediately alighted on Jane’s pendant and that there was a startled look in his eyes as he stole glances at it.

The tea tray was brought in by a middle-aged woman with her hair in a disheveled knot at the top of her head.

“Thank you, Mrs. Drapey. That will be all,” Cannidge said. He appeared eager to have the woman out of the room as quickly as possible. She had hit the sofa with her knee and almost toppled the tea tray. Her grey clothes under her apron had an unkempt look to them. She looked more like a char woman than a house servant.

Once Mrs. Drapey had closed the door behind her Cannidge told them his aunt, Mrs. Radsing, was also his housekeeper and was busy tending to her niece, who was in labor. “Mrs. Drapey is helping with the household chores today, in my aunt’s place.”

Once Cannidge had poured their tea and settled back with his own cup, He addressed them.

“And how can I be of help, Mr. Greywick? I understand from your note that it has to do with the two portraits I painted of you and your brother?”

“Actually the
three
portraits.” Jestyn corrected him.

“Ah – you found the other one?”

“We did, yes,” Jestyn said, putting his cup on a side table and leaning forward.

“Mr. Cannidge, I’ll get right down to our reason for meeting with you. It’s extremely important to us that you relate the reasons for painting in a pendant that seems to be an exact copy of the one Miss Fielder is wearing.”

“Where did you get that pendant, Miss Fielder?” asked Cannidge.

“We cannot disclose that information unless we are certain it will not be repeated, Mr. Cannidge,” Jestyn cut in before Jane had a chance to answer the question.

“She doesn’t have to answer it, Mr. Greywick,” Cannidge said with a long sigh. I
know
she is not of our time. I have heard rumors about Miss Fielder,” he added. “Actually, had you not contacted me, I had every intention of calling on you to advise you about the gossip about Miss Fielder that has come to my notice.

“You must, Mr. Greywick,” he added, turning to Jerstyn, “remove Miss Fielder from the community so that the gossip will go down.”

“I understand Lady Millthorpe is behind a lot of the talk,” Jestyn said.

“She gossips about you constantly, Miss Fielder,” Cannidge agreed. “What her agenda is, I fail to see, but she has become your enemy. And, as she’s very wealthy, she’s able to pay a few people from other villages to stir up people around here. ”

“We want nothing more than to return Miss Fielder to her time, Mr. Cannidge,” Jestyn assured him, “but we need your help. We feel you may hold the key to it, because the key to it we are certain is the pendant, since that is how Miss Fielder came back in time.”

Cannidge rang the bell.

“Mrs. Drapey,” he said, “I’m going below stairs with my guests. Please let my aunt know where we are when she returns from her sister’s. She’s coming back here to get some clothes.”

He scribbled a note on foolscap he had retrieved from a desk nearby. “And give her this note,” he added, handing Mrs. Drapey the note.

“Very well, Mr. Cannidge,” the woman responded with a tooth-gapped smile as she took the note.

“Come with me,” Cannidge said, rising, and added when Mrs. Drapey had left. “I always let my aunt know when I’m going downstairs, just in case there should be a problem down there. She would know to call for help. But my aunt is away from the house and I must rely on Mrs. Drapey to tell her, as you saw.”

“I’m glad you told her,” said Jane. Yet she didn’t relish going down into the musty gloom of that underworld with only Mrs. Drapey, who did not look too bright, aware of where they would be.

Cannidge lit tapers on candle holders and handed one to Jestyn and one to Jane. Then taking up his candle rack he led them to the narrow stairs of a cellar. And although the stone stairs were narrow it was an incredibly long trip down. It smelled musty and dusty at once. Jane felt a shiver as she glanced at the ancient stones on the walls by the narrow stairs as they walked silently down the stone stairs for about fifteen or twenty minutes.

They finally reached a small square room. Cannidge walked a few steps across it and placed the candle rack on a small table.

“This cellar was once part of Cabling Castle, which went back to William the Conqueror and was destroyed by the forces opposing the invasion. I inherited it from my father. “The small house above it has been in my family for more than a century. But the cellar below it was filled with dirt, which one of my ancestors arranged to have removed. But it remained a secret in my family for decades. My family was very secretive and devoted to their Druid history. I, myself, continued to dig out the dirt, little by little, and painstakingly, I assure you, until the labyrinth was revealed. I continued digging because from the scrolls I had I knew there was more to be revealed.

“I will show you when we go down.” He stood up. “The underground part of it was built with blocks of stone and is all that remains. The upper part was destroyed several centuries ago and the cottage built over it when my ancestors came in possession of the land. It was given to them as a gift for their service to the then regent.

“I wanted no one to know about this place because I was certain it held a mystic magic connected to my Druid ancestors.

“How did you know about it, Cannidge?” Jestyn asked. “How did you know that there was more underground after your ancestor had stopped digging?”

“I had read about it in some scrolls I will show you when we go back up, Mr. Greywick.”

They reached a large room with a low ceiling. He crossed the room and when he reached the end of it he leaned and tossed aside a heavy square of rug.

There was a trap door under the rug and he lifted it with ease. Jane and Jestyn leaned down to see stairs leading down even deeper into gloom. Jestyn glanced at Jane, uncertain if she wanted to continue on down. She nodded and they followed Cannidge. Jane and Jestyn turned on Jane’s flashlight and snuffed out their candles, which they placed in the bag Jane had brought to the meeting, for Jane never went anywhere without either her flashlight or the pendant.

Once they reached a square low-ceilinged room, Cannidge placed his taper on a table around which there were several chairs.

“This room holds more history than the entire town or the area where the town is,” Cannidge told them. “It’s the only thing remaining from Norman-Saxon times.

Jestyn looked around. The walls were formed with heavy stones that fitted into each other and in the far wall there was a niche, in shadow.

Cannidge went over to the niche, felt inside it and removed a rectangle board. He then thrust his hand deep inside while Jestyn and Jane held their breaths.

He brought out a box and placed it on the table. On the cover of the box was an indentation and Jane and Jestyn glanced quickly at each other.

“Yes,” Cannidge said, “the pendant you’re wearing, Miss Fielder, fits into the top of the box and that’s where it was originally. “I’ll explain,” he said to their questioning looks and sat heavily on one of the chairs.

From another table on the side he took another box and brought out a rolled scroll from within.

“The references in this scroll led me to a book that had been published about fifty years ago. As you know before the printing press was invented many years ago, books were painstakingly written and copied by hand on scrolls, so there were only a few copies of any book at any time and for that reason were greatly expensive. This book told the story of Marlaek, the warrior sorceress that accompanied Grelen in his battles,” he turned to Jestyn. “You are a direct descendant of Grelen, Mr. Greywick, and you, Miss Fielder are a direct descendant of Marlaek, a disciple of Andraste, Druid goddess of war. Both lines are direct Druid lines and there are few direct lines in the world.”

Speechless, Jestyn and Jane just stared at Cannidge, then guardedly at each other. Cannidge looked intently at Jestyn.

“After I painted the pendant in your hand on the first painting, your father was outraged and told me I had to paint another portrait or he would engage another painter. He would not accept that I remove or paint over the pendant.

“Your father refused to accept his family’s connection to Druid warriors, Mr. Greywick. He had denied his Druid ancestry all his life and didn’t want reminders of it. What’s more, he told me it was all gibberish and that he would sue me should I reveal any of this. You see, he was deathly afraid of magic, because sorcery and witchcraft were associated with it and he did not want to expose his family to danger.”

“How is it that the pendant can go backward in time,” Jane asked. “And can it go forward, back to my time? The only thing I remember is that the moment I touched the pendant on the painting I was blasted into the past.”

“In the book there is a reference to this,” Cannidge said. “Let me show you. He turned the pages on the book and then pointed to some lettering:

The pendant made from magic dolmen stone has qualities for traveling over time but instructions must be followed carefully lest a tragedy occur.

Jestyn and Jane looked each other, wide smiles on their faces.

“This is it,” Jestyn said. “This is how you can return to your time, Jane!” Then he was crestfallen and his joy suddenly turned to despair. Jane saw it instantly and placed her hand over Jestyn’s trembling one.

“I would not celebrate just yet,” said Cannidge. “It says here that the instructions must be followed carefully, lest a tragedy occur. We do not know what those instructions are.

“Once, a few weeks after I finished the second portrait and when your father made payment to me, I was extremely surprised to find him knocking at my doorway!

“I was very ill at the time and can barely remember what he said. He told me he wanted to give me a journal into my keeping. He said it was not to be in his house, because he despised sorcery and all that it entailed. He called anything to do with Druids sorcery. He was extremely agitated and I was extremely ill, so the meeting was, as you can imagine, very strange. I remember it as part delirium, for the doctor had given me some laudanum. Your father also said he had thought of burning it but wondered if by doing so he would bring back calamity to his family so he decided to just give it to me, instead. After handing me the journal he abruptly walked out of the sickroom.

“When my aunt brought back the doctor the doctor gave me little chance of recovery. Your father had come just when my aunt had gone off to call the doctor.

“In my fever, and stumbling about my house, while my aunt had gone to get the doctor, I put the journal away, Then I completely forgot where, for I soon fell deeper into fever. There followed weeks of despair for my aunt in which she felt, as she told me afterward, that she was given no hope of my recovery by the doctor.

“Yet I recovered, miraculously, but could not remember where I had put the journal.”

“It’s extremely important you find, it Mr. Cannidge,” said Jestyn. “You hold Miss Fielder’s life in your hands.”

“I will spend every waking hour searching for it,” Cannidge assured them. “I know how important the journal is for you, Miss Fielder.”

“Come, let us return above-ground,” said Cannidge, and led them through the meandering stone stairs until they reached the trap door that had been left open.

Both Jestyn and Jane sighed with great relief when they were again inside Cannidge’s house.

At the door, Jestyn again pressed the artist to try with all his might to find the journal.

They left with his assurances ringing in their ears but with their fears magnified. Would Cannidge be able to find the journal?

***

Lady Millthorpe greeted the woman who had come to confer with her and directed her toward the impressive curved stairway. She had told her butler to direct the woman to her in the study the moment she arrived.

“I’m interviewing her for a position,” Lady Millthorpe said impatiently to her husband when Lord Millthorpe inquired why the woman was being led upstairs.

“Really, m’ dear,” said her husband with a glance of disapproval at the woman who was dressed in threadbare grey clothing which a patched cape only half covered, “aren’t these interviews usually conducted in the study or the kitchen?”

“On this occasion I wish to interview Mrs. Drapey in my sitting-room, dearest. Do go about your business and allow me to conduct mine.”

Lord Millthorpe seemed about to retort, thought better of it and turned away without a word.

***

Lady Millthorpe showed her visitor to her sitting-room and closed the door behind her. “You said a necklace of sorts, Mrs. Drapey,” she said when they were both seated. “What did you mean by it? What sort of necklace?”